Patheos.com — November 17, 2021: [This will be the first of five blogs on my new book.]

• A. Dealing with the Euphemism

  There is a euphemism often used in the Judeo-Christian world to refer to certain parts of the bible. The phrase is, “the difficult passages.” If the chief protagonist were anybody else except God, he’d be immediately branded as a genocidal psychopath. But God-fearing Bible believers can’t go there. Instead, they attempt to dodge the issues by claims such as, “He is God, who are we to judge his behavior?” or “God has his reasons, we just don’t understand them” or we succumb to the Stockholm Syndrome whereby prisoners who are being held captive and brutalized by a captor begin to psychologically agree with his rants and viewpoints in order to survive the ordeal.

  In any case, God is given a pass by those who believe in him while, for atheists, these passages are the final proof God is simply the ‘opium of the masses.’

  As a Catholic of 75 years and an ordained priest of 49 years, I’ve taken a very different tack. And that was my purpose in writing this book which I’ve titled, Setting God Free: Moving Beyond the Caricature We’ve Created in Our Own Image.

• B. Putting God on Trial

  The Biblical Book of Job puts God on trial for crimes against Job; and in Auschwitz, a group of incarcerated Jews, led by Elie Wiesel, put God on trial for crimes against Jews. In this book, I put God on trial for crimes against all of humanity.

  The case against God is based on his own ‘journals’ (the Torah/Pentateuch) but in order to present my case, I first needed to explain what is meant by the terms ‘biblical revelation’ and ‘the inerrancy of the Scriptures’. In turn this forced me to look at how we know what we know (epistemology), how we decide what is ‘true’ or worthy of belief (ontology) and how we then organize our beliefs into a coherent paradigm (cosmology.) So, I first needed to set psychology free.

  When I was in the seminary in the 1960s, psychology was included in the philosophy department. In fact, philosophy—the love of wisdom— had several branches; among them were ontology (the study of the nature of reality), epistemology (the study of how we know what we know), ethics (the study of moral behavior), and cosmology (the study of the universe—physical and metaphysical.) So, before we can set psychology free, we first need to spend some time looking at epistemology, and cosmology. And let’s take a look at ontology while we’re at it.

• C. Assembling the Biblical Jigsaw Puzzle

  Imagine trying to collect all of the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that have been scattered throughout the house by a three-year-old child. To make matters worse, the dog has chewed up a corn flakes box, and now pieces of it are in the mix. Some faculty of yours has to be able to tell the corn flakes box pieces from the genuine jigsaw-puzzle pieces. That part of you is what you activate when you employ epistemology, which is the art/science of figuring out how you know what you know. It’s the data-gathering phase. Second comes ontology – which is how you distinguish the ‘real’ pieces from the corn flakes box pieces. Without ontology, you’d be trying to integrate corn flakes box pieces into the design, not realizing that they don’t belong. Then comes cosmology, which is the part of you that figures out how the real puzzle pieces go together. So, without cosmology, you’d have all the correct pieces but be clueless about how to assemble them into the picture.

  The first task of my new book, then, was to apply this analogy to sorting out our basic worldview, religious/spiritual beliefs, personal values, etc. before attempting to evaluate the importance or message of the Bible.

  Therefore, we need to gather all the data, then we’ll make sure there are no corn flakes box pieces in the mix, and finally we’ll explore how to go about recognizing which combinations of the real pieces might allow us to re-create the picture on the cover of the jigsaw puzzle box. The process involves three main questions:

  1. How do we know what we know?
  2. How do we decide what is true?
  3. How do we organize what we know into a philosophy of life?

  With this framework in place, I created a courtroom scene to bring Yahweh to trial for crimes against humanity. The prosecution called three expert witnesses and the defense called four expert witnesses. In the next four blogs I will cover the four parts of this new book, namely:

  Part I - Setting Psychology Free
  Part II - Setting God Free
  Part III - Setting Spirituality Free
  Part IV - Setting Science Free

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — August 18, 2021:

• Introduction

  Today – August 18, 2021 - is an anniversary of sorts. Because on August 18, 2020, I was forced by the Walbridge Fire in Sonoma County, California to evacuate my home in Tír na nÓg. For twelve very stressful days, I wondered if I would have a home to go back to. The smoke was so dense that not even the Fire Department of Geyserville could tell me if it had survived. Before my hasty departure, I’d set a 110-year-old statue of the Virgin Mary – which had originally belonged to my great-grandmother - in the window of my bedroom facing the oncoming inferno. I said, “You’re in charge, Mary, please protect my home!”  I live on a mountain top, in the middle of a forest of oak trees, redwoods, madrona and manzanita. When I finally returned everything, in front of my house, and behind it – including my propane tank – and on both sides was destroyed, but my house was in pristine condition. I immediately went upstairs to my bedroom and hugged my Protectress.

  I actually had to ‘chain saw’ my way home, as the dirt road leading to my house was a tangle of fallen trees. Once I had settled back in and had time to survey the damage to the forest, I used my cell phone to make a photographic record of the changes Nature had wrought. To my surprise, I discovered She had used the fire to create some extraordinary art. So, I wrote the following poem to honor her genius.

• The Poem

  A little leaf with liver spots
  landed on my sandal.
  “Come follow me”, it beckoned,
  as it held aloft a candle.

  Then began a forest tour
  throughout the eve and morning.
  She pressed her fingers to her lips.
  “Be silent” was her warning.

  She opened up my mystic eye
  and led me through the valley.
  She counted off the silent trees
  as I was keeping tally.

  She parted Nature’s many veils
  and whispered in the stillness,
  “I want to show you fiery art,
  and how to cure an illness.”

  She pointed out the stoic dead,
  the hollowed trunks of oak trees;
  the blackened, bark-less, head-less stumps
  and their mourning, wailing Banshees.

  But out of each a spirit rose,
  the incarnating Soul-self;
  the blueprint of its future form
  practicing its Role-self.

  For Gaia plays with ancient arts
  and so does Pachamama;
  they color in the empty frames,
  creating panorama.

  Wildfires do as Shiva does,
  reframing all the pieces;
  sprouting green where there was grey;
  and blessing as she pleases.

  From out the ash does Phoenix rise,
  like Christ’s own resurrection;
  ascending with the morning sun,
  bestowing benediction.

  We now await a Pentecost,
  the Paraclete descending;
  a tongue of fire on every head,
  so we can stop pretending.

  Then all shall speak a single tongue,
  dissolving Maya’s fear-trance;
  and holding hands across the globe,
  join in heaven’s love-dance.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — July 6, 2021:

• A. Let Us Play!

  As a child, I learned from the Baltimore Catechism that God has only one nature – a divine one – but has three distinct persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. Patrick allegedly used a shamrock to explain this to the Celts of Ireland in 432 CE. But now, at age 74, the child in me wants to have mathematical fun with this great mystery. Here goes: God has one nature and three persons, but one of these three persons – the Son – incarnated and became a man, thus adopting a second nature – a human one. My question is, after his Ascension, didn’t Jesus sneak a second nature into the Godhead since he was divine and  human at the same time? Or did he have to surrender his human passport at the pearly gates?

• B. Let’s Get Serious

  The early councils of the church wrestled with this notion of three persons in the one God. And what was the issue? The Councils of Nicaea in 325 CE and Constantinople in 381 CE, claimed that both the Son and the Spirit ‘proceeded’ directly and solely from the Father. But later councils said that the Spirit proceeded from the Father and from the Son. In other words, where Jesus proceeded directly and solely from the Father, the Spirit proceeded from both the Father and from the Son. Those last four words, ‘and from the Son’ in the English version of the Creed are a translation of the single Latin word, ‘filioque.’ Theologians who had debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, now abandoned the dancefloor, and redeployed their mental weapons in trying to score hits in the ‘filioque’ war. Various camps took up the cudgels for the three injured parties. For some, the term ‘filioque’ implied a serious underestimation of the Father’s role in the Trinity (the Son was stealing part of the Father’s thunder); for others, denying ‘filioque’ implied a serious underestimation of the role of the Son (making him inferior to the Father within the Trinity). And for some, the poor Holy Spirit was being made the runt of the litter or simply a dove – if you don’t mind me mixing my metaphors.

  By 1014 CE, this phrase – ‘filioque’ - had been incorporated into the Western liturgy. In 1054 CE, this led to a schism between the Eastern (Greek Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic) versions of Christianity. In time, it became a very bloody affair and is still a source of dogmatic disagreement between them.

• C. An Analogy

  I’m gonna develop an analogy that draws upon nature, philosophy, mysticism and quantum mechanics! The great Roman citizen and Egyptian philosopher, Plotinus (died 270 CE), whom some regard as second only to Plato, in the hierarchy of philosophers, distinguished between ‘creatio ex nihilo’ (creation out of nothing) and ‘emanatio ab Deo’ (emanation from God). He believed that the universe and all its denizens arrived through the latter mechanism. I’m in full agreement with him. I don’t believe that God goes into his workshop when His alarm clock goes off in the morning and wonders, “What will I create today?” and then proceeds to pull previously non-existent parrots and rabbits, oak trees and hippos, dolphins and mosquitoes out of His hat. Rather, I believe, that the phenomenological world (all that can be experienced) is a manifestation of His Very Being.

  There’s a wonderful story of St. Francis encountering a ‘dead’ snow-clad apple tree in mid-Winter and pleading, “Speak to me of God!” Whereupon the tree burst into bloom, shaking off the snow and clothing itself with a costume of pink blossoms. What happened? Was there a sudden shift in the biochemistry of the tree? Or was it that Francis, the mystic, entered an altered state of consciousness which transported him out of space-time, allowing him to see all of the seasons, or any season of his choice (Winter, Spring, Summer or Autumn) in the barren, icicled apple tree?

  But it gets even more curious. According to quantum mechanics, all possibilities are present ‘in potentia’ until an observer collapses the wave to a specific outcome. Thus, all phases or possibilities are inherent, but their manifestation depends on the consciousness of the observer in order to become actual experiences.

  So now to the analogy. Daffodils are my favorite flowers; I love the tall, straight, elegant, poised stalk with its orthogonally directed yellow, fringed cup. The bulb is kinda ugly; I’m glad it stays underground. So, here’s the deal. I don’t think that the bulb creates  the stalk, rather the stalk is a manifestation  of the bulb. Similarly, the flower is a manifestation of the bulb. Now, here’s the question: Is the flower merely a manifestation of the bulb or is it a manifestation of the bulb and of the stalk? If the latter is true, then count me in on the ‘filioque’ side of the debate. So, the Father might be the bulb, the Son the stalk and the flower the Spirit.

  To compound matters, we humans are simplistically imposing chronology on a timeless phenomenon. We are overlaying the daffodil with an artificial time-template. To the human, the bulb comes before the stalk which comes before the flower, but in actuality they are all concurrently present.

  Maybe when Jesus said, ‘look at the lilies of the field’ he was saying the same thing as I just said but, obviously, his favorite flower was the lily!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — July 13, 2021: A huge part of the ‘problem’ of understanding the Trinity is that we are operating with a translation from both the Greek language  and the Greek culture. When we speak of three ‘persons’ in the one God, we are overlaying the original conciliar image with fourth century Latin and with modern psychology’s notions of personality theory. Let’s start digging. The Greek word used in the councils was ‘prosopon’ which was the mask worn by an actor when he came on stage, to indicate to the audience what kind of character he was going to depict. There were very many such masks, for instance to depict a tragic role or a comic role. So, the mask was a kind of a ‘heads up’ to the assembled theatre goers.

When the Western Church wrestled with this, it translated ‘prosopon’ (in Greek) as ‘persona’ (in Latin) which literally means, ‘that through which one makes sounds’ i.e., ‘per’ meaning ‘through’ as in ‘permeable’ and ‘sona’ meaning ‘sound’ or ‘sonic’. In actual fact, the mask contained two peep holes for the eyes and one opening for the mouth, so that the actor’s words would not be muffled.

Now, the mask is not the actor, but simply a hint for the audience. The mask was how the audience experienced  the role the actor was playing. So, then, the three persons of the Trinity, I contend, was not meant to be an ontological description of who God is, but rather three modalities through which we experience  God. It is not a portrait of the utterly ineffable transcendence of God but merely a template to organize our experiences of God’s immanence. So, Christianity went on to develop a theology which arranged these experiences into ‘God the creator’, ‘God the redeemer’ and ‘God the sanctifier.’

Having dealt with the language translation issues, let’s have a look at how modern personality theory has affected our notion of Trinity. In time, ‘persona’ morphed into ‘person’ which was taken to being the totality of the individual human; and ‘personality’ became the descriptor of this person’s interface with the environment of family and culture. By now, the Christian Trinity of three persons had disintegrated into three dudes elbowing each other around in heaven for the best seats.

Carl Jung, who I believe was the greatest psychologist of the 20^th century, realized that each ego adopts a mask or even a series of masks e.g., my masks as a son, a sibling, an adult, a priest etc. in order to disguise the ego and make the best possible impression on others. Often the first stage of courting or flirting is two personas trying to seduce each other by wearing the most appealing masks. Unfortunately, in time, the egos will emerge, the personas dissolve and the battles begin. Given enough good will and discipline – and, perhaps, some therapy – the souls of both parties may eventually emerge, and the seduction of the personas and the battling of the egos give way to the dancing of the souls.

One could make the argument that all the great religions have their own trinitarian depictions or Source.

In Judaism, it might look like the following: the God who is, the God who makes covenants with Israel and the God who demands strict adherence to the terms of these contracts. Most of the Pentateuch – especially from Sinai on – consists of breaches and punishments of these covenants.

Though Buddhism is not a theistic system, it has its own trinitarian formula which might be the following: Buddham Saranam gachami (I take refuge in the Buddha), Dharmam Saranam gachami (I take refuge in the Teaching), Sangham Saranam gachami (I take refuge in the Community).

And Hinduism (which I will speak of in much more detail in blog #3 in this series) has two trinitarian formulas. The first is the potently packed phrase, ‘Sat, Chit, Ananda’ which can be unpacked as, ‘Being, Knowledge and Bliss’. I believe that this is also a valid way to exegete the Christian notion of Trinity, with the Father representing the Isness or Essence of God; the Son representing Knowledge or Self-awareness – the Logos or Word of God; and Spirit representing the Love that God has for whom/what She knows Herself to be.

And, if I may digress for a bit more on this Christian detour before I go back to Hinduism, I believe that this particular unpacking of the Christian trinity is not merely a theological exegesis but a profound psychological insight. If God proceeds from Being to Knowing to Loving, then human evolution into enlightenment consists of reversing those steps. I believe that – psychologically and sociologically – it is a mistake to think that I cannot love  another person until I first know  him. On the contrary, I believe that I cannot know another until I first love him, because the other is not free to be  himself until it is safe to reveal or even recognize his core being; and to do this he must first be loved. Only when a person feels loved can she drop the mask and the ego, abandon the defense mechanisms, and recognize and identify with her own soul.

So, on the journey back to God, love comes first, knowledge and self-awareness come second; and being/essence is the final step.

As I mentioned, Hinduism has a second trinitarian formula which I will discuss in the final blog of this series.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — July 20, 2021:

• A. Introduction

  In the two previous essays in this series, as I examined the notion of a Holy Trinity, I focused on the Christian version while touching briefly upon Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu versions. In this, the final essay in the series, I want to focus on another Hindu version and use it as a springboard for understanding and transcending our current global situation.

• B. Shiva Energy

  In the first version of the Hindu Trinity – one I dealt with in the second essay in this series – God is spoken of as, Sat (Being), Chit (Knowledge), Ananda (Bliss). There’s a second version that speaks of God as Brahma (Creator), Vishnu (Sustainer) and Shiva (Destroyer). Shiva doesn’t sound particularly spiritual, godly, or inviting, but that is because we don’t understand either his title or his function. ‘Destruction’ is the essence of evolution and progress. Were it not for the dissolution of the previous arrangements, we – and the very universe itself – would be stuck in a boring stagnation, a kind of Groundhog Day, in which nothing grows or flows or develops. It would soon lead to a cosmos-wide dementia in which long-term memory is lost and we keep re-living an incarcerated present moment. And there is a huge difference between a ‘present moment’ which is eternal and embraces ‘The All’ – on the one hand – and a ‘present moment’ in which we are locked into a single detail which is utterly without context. It is the difference between monochromatic tunnel vision focused solely on the little patch of ground beneath my feet and never being able to move them, and a 360-degree, 3-D holographic image of Source.

  Imagine watching a movie by going into the projectionist’s box and fingering the frames one at a time, only to completely forget the frames you’ve previously scanned while, concurrently, being utterly unable to anticipate future frames. That’s what life would feel like without Shiva energy.

  Without a sense of history, our times are going to look like ‘The End Times’; indeed, that is what many of the doomsday demagogues are proclaiming. But we’ve been here before. Many times. Which is not to say that we should simply go along for the ride. With the advent of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the evolution of consciousness has given way to conscious evolution. We are no longer hapless victims of negligent Nature nor of a Distant Demanding Deity. Rather, we are architects of our own future; but we can build either a global Auschwitz or a cosmic cathedral. Either way, it is Shiva at work.

• C. Dissipative Structures

  In 1977, a brilliant Russian-born, Belgian scientist, called Ilya Prigogine, was awarded the Nobel Prize in biochemistry for his notion of ‘dissipative structures’. He had found an elegant solution to a long-term conundrum in science, namely how can complexity and entropy co-exist. Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, states that all natural systems left to their own devices will eventually run themselves down into chaos e.g., a steaming hot cup of coffee left unattended for a couple of hours will become tepid and settle itself at room temperature; or a bicycle left out in the rain over the winter will rust itself into extinction. And yet, according to evolutionary theory, more and more complex life forms continue to develop e.g., simple single-celled organisms, over the course of 3.7 billion years, became dolphins and Irishmen. How come? Prigogine showed that by re-arranging its own constituent elements, a system can avoid entropy and attain complexity.

  Let me use an analogy to simplify this. Imagine you’ve just bought a jigsaw puzzle and your young child attempted to build it. He spills all 1,000 pieces onto the table and attempts to solve the puzzle. After a week, he gives up. There are huge gaps in the puzzle, lots of pieces wrongly forced together – creating humps and hollows – and lots of other pieces left over unused and apparently no place for them to fit in. So, you patiently take over. You’re gonna have to disassemble most of what he has done, and then by putting the same pieces into different locations, you wind up with the ‘perfect’ puzzle – no gaps, no bumps, and no pieces left over. Well, that’s pretty much what dissipative structures did.

  But it is not simply a scientific issue, it’s the very secret to life. If you’re serious about your psychological wellbeing and your spiritual purpose, you must realize that, in the jigsaw puzzle of incarnation, all the pieces that you need are present and all the pieces that are present are needed. There are no extraneous people, events, or situations in your life; you have to use all of them to build the image of God during this journey. And that is the function of Shiva, to help you, to help humanity, in fact, to help all sentient life to keep evolving. Which brings me to my next point.

• D. Revolution Versus Evolution

  There is a huge difference between these two words and between these two processes. Revolution is always fast, angry, and ultimately (long-term) ineffective. It always eventually creates a backlash, which can be another revolution or an evolution. Revolution has no appreciation for tradition and its achievements. It is a form of fundamentalism, reducing history to simplistic, critical bumper stickers. In fact, it quickly reduces complexity to an ideologically precipitated entropy. All the hard-won gains are lost, and the great heroes of yore are sacrificed on the altar of ingratitude. Revolution cuts itself off from its own ancient roots, reducing the fruit-bearing tree to mere firewood.

  Evolution, on the other hand, is always gradual, gentle, loving, and long-term effective. It is epigenetic, meaning that each subsequent stage of development transcends and  incorporates all of its previous stages. As a tree stretches its branches and leaves towards the sun, it is stabilized and nurtured by its roots. And, as equal partners, the leaves – via photosynthesis – harvest sunshine for chlorophyll, sending needed nutrients back down to the roots. Evolution honors tradition and builds upon it. Leaves cannot survive without roots, nor can roots survive without leaves.

  In most tree species, the volume and spread of the root system is almost a mirror image of the above-ground branches, twigs, and leaves. Were it not so, strong winds would topple the tree and expose roots, disconnecting them from their food source. And, of course, a trunk, limbs, branches, twigs, and leaves that took an axe to their own root system, would achieve the most inglorious of pyrrhic victories. It would be a murder-suicide pact.

  We’ve reached a bifurcation point in human development, between what I call Homo Sociopathicus (dedicated to violence) and Homo Spiritualis (dedicated to love). We must choose to be either agents of revolution or agents of evolution.

  Om Namah Shivaya!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — June 8, 2021:

• Introduction

  This poem came to me in a dream in the early hours of May 1^st, 2021, which is the ancient Celtic feast of Bealtaine – the first day of summer in European calendars. For the Celts, Bealtaine is one of four great times when the very planet itself becomes a Caol Áit (a thin place) and the veil between dimensions becomes diaphanous.

  Then, there is a cosmic dance between the mystical and the mundane, between the sacred and the secular. The Faery folk have full permission to visit ‘our’ realm and the courageous human has the opportunity to peer in and even venture into their world.

  For the merely curious this can be an adventure but for those who want to draw closer to God, it is a chance to transcend mere human perceptions and cosmologies and ascend to higher levels of reality. The ultimate level, of course, is union with Source and it is from that level that the great “I Am” statements emerge. In that space, there is no ego - and the ego is certainly not the author of such statements.

  We find them in all of the great mystical traditions. They can be found among Sufi sages, Christian Mystics, Jewish Rebbe’s and Hindu Rishis. John’s gospel – in the mouth of Jesus - is filled with such statements. And the ‘Song of Amhergín’, the oldest poem in any Celtic language, is perhaps one of the most beautiful articulations of “I Am”. It was sung by the bard/druid/leader, Amhergín, from the prow of the first Milesian (Celtic) ship to penetrate the numinous fog off the Irish coast around 500 BCE, as they ‘discovered’ Ireland.

  Since the poem I have written – or more precisely, dreamed - is a ‘song of God’ it reminded me of the great Hindu epic – the Bhagavad Gita, which means, ‘the song of God.’ Hence, the title I have given to the piece.

• The Poem

  I am unlimited Love
  Holding, in my holographic heart,
  all that was, is and ever can be.

  I am unlimited Light
  the mother-matter,
  the building blocks of life,
  which await the touch of the master’s hand.

  I am unlimited Logos,
  the master who fashions this light
  into multitudinous forms,
  deftly weaving the baton
  that conducts the symphony of my star stuff.

  I am unlimited Life
  in all its many phases,
  pre-incarnational, incarnational
  post-incarnational and re-incarnational.

  I am flowers and butterflies;
  I am toothlessly smiling infants
  and great mustachioed walruses.
  I am playful, agile kittens
  and great lumbering elephants.
  I am turbulent oceans
  heaving and hurling tsunamis
  at the stoic cliff faces.
  I am serene, stable mountain ranges
  solidly and silently contemplating eternity.

  I am unlimited Laughter
  breaking through the illusion of the pseudo-reality
  created by the tyranny of fear-filled thinking.

  I am the cross of Resurrection
  grounded in incarnation
  while my crown chakra pierces the heavens.
  I am the atoms of my own immanence
  aligned in ultimate laserized coherence,
  and embracing all beings
  with my outstretched arms.
  I am the Source Soul
  holding and hugging the entire mantra of manifestation.

  I Am Who Am.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — May 11, 2021:

• Introduction

  A few days ago, I had an image of the major events in the life of Mother Mary and her son, Jesus. So, I grabbed a bunch of Gospel passages, arranged them chronologically, edited them very slightly and wrote them as if they were entries in Mary’s journal. Here’s how it came out.

• Entry #1

  In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to my hometown, Nazareth. I was a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. My name is Mary. And he came to me and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you."  But I was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to me, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”

• Entry #2

  So, Joseph and I went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because Joseph belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with me, who was pledged to be married to him. I was expecting a child. While we were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and I gave birth to my firstborn, a son. I wrapped him in swaddling clothes and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for us.

• Entry #3

  When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and I took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When we brought our child to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God. Then Simeon blessed us and said to me, as the child’s mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

• Entry #4

  Every year Joseph and I went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When Jesus was twelve years old, we went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while we were returning home, our child Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but we were unaware of it. Thinking he was somewhere in the group, we traveled on for a day. Then we began looking for him among our relatives and friends. When we did not find him, we went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days we found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When we saw him, we were astonished. I said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”  But we did not understand what he was saying to us.

• Entry #5

  Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When our extended family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”  Then his brothers and I arrived. Standing outside, we sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” “Who are my mother and my brothers?”  he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

• Entry #6

  On the third day of the week, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. I was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When all the wine had run out, I said to him, “They have no more wine.” “Mother, why do you involve me?”  Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”  But I overrode him and said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

• Entry #7

  So, the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic we call Golgotha). There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle. I was standing near the cross as well as my sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw me there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to me, “Mother, here is your son,”  and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”  From that time on, this disciple took me into his home.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — April 5, 2021: She emptied the big earthenware pitcher into a wooden basin and splashed the cool water on her face. Her deep brown eyes were swollen and bloodshot. She tied back her long shiny-black tresses with a piece of cloth and bundled them into a veil. Her face was pale and gaunt after her 50-hour fast. Hastily she threw a cloak about her shoulders, carefully picked up the Alabaster jar, took the wooden bar from the inside of the door and stepped into the half-night. The chill of the fetal day stung her throat as she turned swiftly and sped along the silent streets. Yellow-white ribbons of un-darkness infiltrated feebly from the East erasing the fainter stars.

She hadn’t expected it would end like this. She didn’t know what she had expected - except that this had never occurred to her. It was still difficult to believe it had really happened. But, like everything else about him, she accepted it completely with the total love only a woman is capable of offering a man. Life had never been the same since she met him: the searching gentleness of his eyes and the soothing healing touch of his hands had melted the bitterness within her, had banished the despair and depression that until then had frequently enveloped her like a thick, choking, claustrophobic fog. It had given way to a deep tranquil peace.

In the darkness of a doorway a mongrel dog stood up, arched his back, yawned and then stealthily watched her.

“My God” she thought “Is all the blackness and nauseating despondency to return now that he is gone? Gone. Gone! He is gone. Is there nothing for me now except to remain faithful to a memory?” She skirted the hill and her sandals kicked up fluffy cloudlets of red dust. As she opened the gate of the garden, she suddenly remembered that there would be a very large stone at the mouth of the burial chamber. Frustrated, she ran the last few yards and stopped abruptly looking at the gaping mouth of the tomb. Terror wrapped itself about her heart.

“Even in death is he to find no peace from the relentless pursuit of his enemies?” she thought. Hysterically she raced back to the city and told Peter and John what had happened. In utter bewilderment they ran to the graveyard to see for themselves, while she followed breathlessly far behind. Peter and John saw and began to dare to believe. They headed back for the still-slumbering city, rushing past her without a word.

Again, she was left alone with an empty grave. Her pent-up grief exploded, and she fell to her knees, body shaking convulsively, disheveled hair spilling about her face and tears trickling ticklingly through her fingers. “My God, let all this be just a bad dream. Let me wake and find it is only a phantom of the night!” She raised her head and looked into the tomb again - two young men were seated there. They asked her “Woman, why are you weeping?” “They have taken my lord away” she sobbingly replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

As she said this, she was conscious of a movement behind her and looking around she saw another man standing there. He asked her the same question. Tears shimmeringly refracted her vision, stray locks of hair stuck to her wet face and the new-born sun was silhouetting his form - so she did not recognize him. Thinking him to be the keeper of the graveyard she bowed and clasped his feet and pleaded, “Sir if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him.” Jesus smiled and called: Mary!”  It was enough!! The intonation, accent, sensitivity and love all intertwined in that one word could only be his. She struggled to her feet and fired herself at him, smothering him in an embrace. He stroked her hair and gently brushed the tears from her face with his fingertips, smiling all the while. Then her said, “Mary, do not cling to me, go and tell my brothers and sisters that I am alive.” “No, Jesus, let me stay with you. I don’t ever want you to go away again” she protested. He smiled again and said, “I also want to remain with you - always. And I will, but how you do not yet understand. Do you believe me?” “Yes, oh yes I believe - and I love. And my love gives me understanding. I know  that you will keep this promise also.” He kissed her gently on the forehead and said, “Go, then and tell them what you have seen.”

She pressed his fingers to her lips and then left him - lightly dancing her way back to the city. Early groups of workers were beginning the week sluggishly. A wizened old man in a white flowing beard stumbled out of a doorway as she was about to pass. “Shalom” she smiled at him. “Shalom, shalom, daughter of Sion” he replied, wondering how swollen blood-shot eyes could laugh as hers did. “Did you have a pleasant Sabbath yesterday?” he asked. Her bottom lip quivered involuntarily. “No, ancient one, not yesterday - today is my Sabbath!”

He looked quizzically after her departing figure. “Strange” he thought. “Strange! Strange eyes, strange face, strange words, very strange words!”

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — March 23, 2021: I have long been speaking and writing about a bifurcation point in human evolution whereby Homo Sapiens Sapiens is in the process of splitting into Homo Spiritualis (people dedicated to peace, compassion and justice for all sentient beings) and Homo Sociopathicus (those committed to warfare, exploitation and greed.) Now, I am beginning to see that Homo Sociopathicus has recently spawned a new subspecies which I’ll call, Homo Narcississimus, which is a group consisting of individuals, each of whom is dedicated to having legislation enacted which guarantees that everybody else must, in all circumstances, ensure that they are never made to feel uncomfortable. This is the ultimate form of service-to-self, in which they make all decisions for personal selfishness while simultaneously insisting all other people spend their entire lives catering to the spider at the center of the new social web. This is Caligula on steroids.

So, what happens when two members of this new subspecies encounter each other? Who ‘gives in’? We now have a brand-new hierarchy in which the most committed ‘whiner’, the most self-engrossed ‘victim’ fashions the world in his/her own image. The ultimate self-pitying, absolutely self-engrossed, most unhappy and victimized member of this new tribe sits atop this new pyramid of power.

The essence of personal evolution – psychologically and spiritually – is that we use ‘uncomfortable’ life situations to grow. These narcissists, however, are the self-appointed exceptions. They can only be happy when everybody around them is bullied into making them feel safe, honored, protected, respected, elevated - and living in a bubble which all others are tasked with creating and erecting about them. Imagine trying to be in a romantic relationship with such a one. Imagine being a child of such a parent!

And, of course, at the very bottom tier of this new pyramid of power are the groveling, White, heterosexual males who must – like the untouchables of India – constantly apologize for their whiteness, straightness and maleness. As a member this latter, accursed group, I have to eschew any personal ambitions for relationship, education or employment lest I inconvenience anybody who is non-White, non-straight, non-male, or make any of them feel uncomfortable by any, even unintentional, unconscious, ‘micro-aggressions.’ God forbid that I should ever attempt to pursue my own dreams unless I first check with each and every member of this new ruling subclass that my humble aspirations don’t in any way conflict with their agenda. A hair on the tail of the dog is now wagging the entire animal.

How very empowering and satisfying it must be to fashion a world in which disappointments and discomforts, toothaches and tetanus, dandruff and diarrhea are always somebody else’s fault. This must be the final stage before mystical union with Source. Oh, happy day!

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — February 10, 2021

• Introduction

  Bernard Haisch is a German-born American astrophysicist, and he gave one of the most fascinating lectures I ever heard in Palo Alto some years back. He posits this beautifully elegant theory of “Creation by subtraction.” Let’s use an analogy. Imagine you plug in an old-fashioned slide projector but don’t insert a slide; what you get on the screen is pure white light. We know that white light contains all of the colors in the visible spectrum. Now if you put in a pure blue slide, the screen turns blue. But here’s the ‘miracle’ – the blue slide did not add blue to the screen, it simply filtered out all of the other colors except blue! So, there you have it, creation by subtraction. In other words, to use Haisch’s phrase, “by limiting infinite possibility, you create finite reality."

• A. The ‘Given Wisdom”

  Which brings me to the subject of this blog: Pareidolia. The given definition of pareidolia is, inferring non-existent patterns from random data e.g., you see a cloud in the sky, and you exclaim, “look it’s exactly like and elephant!” Or you’re walking in the forest and you jump in fright as you ‘see’ a snake only to realize that it's just a discarded piece of rope. Or, to use a more cosmic example, when you look to the night sky and identify Orion or The Big Dipper, you need to realize that these are distinct stars which do not lie on a two-dimensional plane but some of which lie far deeper in space than others – from our perspective - and, therefore, seen from a different vantage point in space, they would fall into a totally different configuration. Sorry, Leo is in the eye of the beholder!

• B. An Alternative Theory

  Since the ‘blue slide’ worked, not by adding what was not previously there, but simply deleting what is not pertinent, I believe that our ability to infer cloaked, embedded or ‘hidden’ patterns is the essence of the search for truth in all disciplines, from art to science to mysticism. Here’s a simple illustration. If I give each member of a high school class, a sheet with a matrix consisting of a hundred rows by a hundred columns of simple dots, and ask them to identify the hidden geometric image, I warrant I’d get the following list: “there’s a square hidden there; or a rectangle or a triangle …” They are all correct, but, with a trained eye, a student might infer the Mona Lisa or a sunset. And, in my belief system, all of the students would be correct.

  To use another analogy. What did Michelangelo have to add to the block of Carrera marble to create the Pieta? Nothing! He simply chiseled away the stuff that was hiding it.

  On Holy Thursday 2020, I had the following vision. I was swept up into the air about 10,000 feet and below me was a crowded golden beach thronged with happy holiday makers. All were wearing sombreros. Some sombreros were green, some blue, some white and some black. Then a great ‘orchestra conductor’ waved his baton and the people assembled themselves into two perfect circles underneath which lay a rectangle. The people in the two circles effortlessly assembled themselves in such a way that I shouted out in delight, “Look, they represent the two hemispheres of planet Earth!” The blue and green sombreros did a perfect imitation of the oceans and dry land; and in the rectangle, the black and white sombreros spelled out, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”  – with the black representing the words and the white representing the spaces between the words.

• C. Application to Life

  Here, then, is my thesis: Reality is in the mind of the beholder. And this is true not just of our visual sense, it’s true of all our senses. And, it is also true of science, of religion and of ‘the news.’ Don’t you still remember the childhood game of joining the dots, in your coloring book to discover the hidden image? That’s the entire purpose of incarnation: joining the dots of our experiences.

  And isn’t it interesting that in Relativity Theory, to travel at the speed of light means, literally, to subtract space and time because Einstein’s famous theory posits that while mass becomes infinite, both space and time shrink to zero, if you attain the speed of light. I would say, then, that enlightenment is loving and living at the speed of light - God-light, which allows us to dance on the cosmic ocean of Unconditional Love.

  Once, we understand that, we quickly realize that fake news, fake history, fake probabilities are all just versions of the ‘wave’ awaiting an observer in order to collapse it to a particular outcome. Which one is ‘real’? They all are! The deeper question is, “Which one do I want to live in ? Presumably, the one selected by loving choices; the one we get when we subtract the dark tulpas. So, you’re not just “making it up”, you’re revealing what’s hidden – and every possible image is hidden in the data. Then, you realize that the ego is uni-perspectival, the soul is multi-perspectival, and God omni-perspectival. It’s vital to infer images and ‘truth’ that create peace in our hearts, so that we may discover the image of God, hidden everywhere.

• D. Contemporary Judgments of Jesus as an Example

  We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. Many people saw and heard Jesus speak and act, but each selected a different image of who he was and what his mission should be. Here’s a smattering of these perspectives.

  - His mother (they have no wine – John c2)
  - His brothers/sisters (thought he was crazy – Mark c3)
  - His aunt (special treatment for her boys – Matthew c20)
  - His apostles (a hierarchy of importance – Luke c9)
  - The priests (a blasphemer – Matthew c26)
  - The Romans (a rabble rouser – John c2)
  - King Herod (an entertainer – Luke c23)
  - The crowds (a distraction from the drag of daily living – John c6)

• E. Conclusion

  So, we select the outcome by our attention and intention. Hence, we must be very mindful of where our attention is focused and what our intentions are. You can’t just water the weeds in your garden and then complain that the flowers are dying. The genius of autistic savants seems to lie in the fact that their brains “lack” filtering mechanisms! For the rest of us the brain is a limiting faculty to protect the ego from being swamped.

  It’s a huge cost to pay. Therefore, it takes a deep connection with the soul to strip away some of these filters, so that we experience the faith that can move mountains.

  I’d like, then, to finish by reversing Haisch’s articulation of how we construct our reality and say, “By unlimiting finite reality, we reconnect with infinite possibility.”

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — January 12, 2021: My home city, Cork, in Ireland, is built on an ait. For those of you who may not have heard the word, an ait is an island in the middle of a river. Having flowed about 60 miles eastwards, from the mystical place of its origin in Gougane Barra, the river Lee bifurcates and then rejoins, several miles before it reaches the Atlantic Ocean at Cobh - the last port the Titanic visited on its ill-fated maiden voyage. That bifurcation gave birth to an ait upon which Cork was built over 800 years ago. Initially, there were only two exits/entrances to Cork: the Northgate Bridge and the Southgate Bridge. They both still exist but, over the years, they have been joined by a host of new bridges.

One sunny, summer day around 1956, when I was nine years old, I found myself seated on the northern bank of the Lee downstream from where the two branches had reunited. And though rivers have always fascinated me, my attention, on that day, was not on the Lee’s fabled waters but on a group of workmen on the southern bank who were attempting to sling a thick steel hawser across the 150 yards of river. They were ESB (Electricity Supply Board) workers tasked with connecting cables from a new generating station to the homes and businesses on my side of the river. The huge cable was already attached to a great pylon on the southern bank, but the problem was: how to ferry it across, given that they only had a small rowboat. Even if they could have gotten the roll of steel into the boat, the weight of the cable would immediately have sunk the skiff.

After lots of cap-tugging, head-scratching and several Woodbines (the cigarette de jour of Corkonians in the 50’s), someone had a brainwave. He went off in the company van and returned some 30 minutes later with a coil of rope. They attached one end of it to the steel hawser and dropped the bulk of it into the boat. One guy rowed slowly across the Lee as another paid out the rope. When they got it to my side, they persuaded a farmer, who was passing by in a new Ford tractor, to give them a hand. They hitched the rope to the tractor and began to pull the rope and the hawser across the placid waters. I watched in fascination as the steel first entered the river and quickly began to sink. I wondered if the tractor would have enough power to handle the strain. It did. Within an hour the steel cable was firmly attached to the pylon on the northern bank, and the suburb of Tivoli was about to be illuminated!

Many years later this incident would spring, unbidden, into my awareness as I explained to somebody in a therapy session that it is important to test new relationships and not reveal too much too quickly, nor commit one’s heart too soon. Here’s the image I used: the steel hawser  of a life-time commitment should be preceded by the rope  of a strong friendship, that was built upon the string  of a budding bonding, founded upon the dental floss  of initial encounters. This I believe to be true in all relationships - romantic, professional or even spiritual.

Typically, when two people first meet, it’s their two persona’s that dance with each other. It’s me at my best waltzing with you at your best. This is the dental flossstage. If the relationship lasts a few months, the persona’s will, occasionally, retract and expose the two ego’s underneath. This is the string phase. Eventually it becomes too much work to hold the persona’s in place and now the two egos are going at it full time. This is the rope phase. If you are very lucky and if your Pre-Conception Contract called for it, you may have encountered your soul mate; in which case the ego’s tire of their fear-based, narcissistic battles and let the divine essence shine through. Now, it is twin souls dancing. The steel hawser is in place; now north bank and south bank share the same light. They have transcended even the river of life.

I learned that lesson from the most unlikely of teachers: ESB workers and a tractor owner. Just yesterday, I learned a beautiful articulation of this insight in another unlikely place - a hardware store! Nestled nonchalantly between a chain saw and a garden hose was a painted wooden sign that said,

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — December 28, 2020: The best stories of all are “re-magined”. Re-magining is when you cross remembering with imagining. It is the child who can turn ordinary events into exotic adventures, transforming drab, black-and-white photos into colorful, 3-D holographic videos. It is the gift most prized by poets, seers, artists and scientists, to enable them to go where none have gone before them. It is the quest of the old-spirit-in-a-young-body who is happy to sift through the dung heap to discover the pony hiding in its warm, moist, steamy embrace. It salvages the miraculous from the illusion of the mundane, prising open the sand-camouflaged oyster shell to reveal the pearl of great price. It is the mystic releasing the eternal from the clutches of the mortal.

And it is the charism I will use to recall my Christmas of 1950, when I had just turned four. I lived then not with my parents but with my grand-parents - Big Mammy and Big Daddy - at 34 Saint Rita’s Avenue, in Gurranabraher (we locals just called it, “Grán”) together with four aunts and three uncles, one of whom, Uncle Noel, is two months younger than me. A regular visitor was my paternal great-grandmother, whom I loved dearly and whom I called, “Muddy”.

Back then, Ireland was, economically, a very poor place. In fact, there was only one phone - a stand-alone kiosk - serving all of Gurranabraher’s 3,000 plus residents. Nobody phoned out, we couldn’t afford to; but there would be queues each evening to receive calls from our many emigrant relatives in the USA, Canada, England and Australia. The system went like this. An emigrant daughter would write home and say, “I will phone you at 6pm on July 19th.” She would have to give us several weeks warning to make sure the letter arrived well before the phone date. On the appointed day, by 5pm, the family would join the long queue at the phone kiosk, outside McAuliffe’s shop, excitement running high. Inside the kiosk, the phone would ring shrilly, dancing on its cradle. Before it had rung thrice, the first in line would grab it, hoping the call was for her. Mostly, it wasn’t so she’d open the door and announce, “It’s for the Murphy’s!” and the Murphy clan would surge forward trying to stuff as many bodies as possible into that one-butt kiosk. Everybody else could hear the Cork end of the conversation. Soon the rest of us would grow impatient and murmur, “Hurry up, we’re expecting a call at six o’clock!” This ritual would be repeated several times, and we’d be lucky if our call squeezed into a gap before 7pm. By 10pm the last of the stragglers had been serviced. Somehow the family never managed to coordinate our conversations and, inevitably, as each one of us got a chance to talk to the disembodied voice, we’d simply ask the same questions the other family members had asked before us: “How are ye doing?”, “What’s the weather like over there?”, “When are ye coming home?” …. When we got back to #34, we’d try to piece together the puzzle…”She sounded really great…”, “She sounded lonely,” “She said she’d try to come home for Christmas…”, “She said she’s earning five pounds and ten shillings a week!!”…..

Given, then, the state of communication - no computers, faxes nor iPads, and only one phone for all of Gurranabraher - establishing contact with Santa Claus (or “Santy” as he was known in Cork) was rather tricky. Even snail mail was costly; the postage to the North Pole was prohibitive for most of us, so “Santy” had devised a special arrangement for the children of Ireland. Here’s how it went. Sometime during the last week before Christmas, after school was out, you’d tear a clean page out of your “copy book” and write:

Then you’d put the sheet of paper, sans envelope, up the chimney, making sure it didn’t get burned (nor your elbow either) by the ever-glowing turf fire. The hot air wafted it upwards and sped it towards the North Pole. You’d rush outside to watch its progress. Sometimes it would be snowing and you’d have a gaggle of street urchins like yourself, standing on Saint Rita’s Avenue watching the snowflakes float down and the Santa letters float up, like speckled salmon fighting against the rapids on their journey home.

They always made it.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — October 6, 2020: When I was a child in Ireland, every village had “characters” who, through their idiosyncratic behavior, generated memorable stories. Kitty Ahern was one such character, living near enough to us in Mayfield. She was a “widda woman” (widow) in her late seventies and had a household of cats who lived, slept, mated and defecated in her house, on her bed, and atop her dining table. The place was filthy, and the crockery and cutlery hadn’t seen a lick of water since before Jesus was barmitzvahed. Nobody wanted to visit her, because reverse hospitality required that you not refuse food in anybody’s house.

A new parish priest was appointed to our church, and duty demanded that he pay a house call on all his charges. He had been briefed on Kitty and was dreading the visit. Finally, he could no longer postpone it, so mustering all his courage he knocked on the half door and said “Bail ó Dhia anseo isteach!” (the blessings of God precede me in here!”) This is the normal greeting on entering an Irish house. In the case of the pastor, it was probably more like a despairing plea for divine protection. “Fáilte ‘gus fiche romhat, a athair!” (A welcome and twenty welcomes to you, father!) replied Kitty. She shooshed a half a dozen cats off the sofa, brushed the seat a few times with her palm and invited him to “lig do scíth” (take your ease). He gingerly lowered himself between the arms, already aware that his black suit would never be the same again. Cat hairs wafted their way to his great nostrils, and he sneezed violently three times. It was the signal for instant retaliation. Great clouds of dander answered his expulsion of the first wave of missionaries and his proboscis shuddered and snorted and shivered. Kitty may as well have been in a sanitized bubble for all the harm it seemed to have been doing her. She crouched on her own chair, solicitously watching him and chanting “Dia linn! Dia linn!” (God be with us; God be with us!) to his every sneeze. In the periodic lulls between bouts, he managed to enquire after the state of her immortal soul. She assured him that all was well and that she was happy to go any time the good Lord beckoned. Right now, the pastor feared that he himself was a more likely candidate for the call. And then when it seemed that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, his good luck broke and she invited him to have “a mug a’ tay and a cut a’ bread” with her.

Since the invitation was a mere formality, given that no guest could honorably decline, particularly a new pastor with ultimate responsibility for the state of her immortal soul, she didn’t even wait for an answer. The kettle was already “singing” on the hob. She reprimanded several of the cats who were grooming themselves on the dining table and got particularly annoyed with one big tom cat who was drinking from the milk jug “Cat out of dat! Are ye goin’ to lave us a drop at all for de tay!” And she pulled his big head out of the jug and threw him onto the floor. The pastor’s stomach did somersaults.

She threw some slops out of the big mug and took a fistful of tea leaves from the tea canister. She threw half of these into the mug and the other half into a glass jam jar. She took the heavy black kettle off the crane and poured the boiling water into the containers. He could see the tea leaves swirling around inside the jam jar. Then she poured milk from the recently rescued jug and wiping a spoon in her voluminous black skirts measured out two overflowing heaps of sugar into the mug. “I’m off sugar, meself, for Lent, father”  she added virtuously. She plunked the steaming, grimy, filthy mug down on the arm of his seat. He crossed himself and intoned despairingly “Bless us, Oh Lord and these thy gifts which of thy bounty we are about to receive, through Christ our Lord – -.” “ Amen!”  she responded triumphantly.

His mind was in turmoil. There was no way he could avoid drinking the tea, but was there any way he could minimize the damage? He knew with an infallibility, which the pope in Rome would envy, that this mug was her normal drinking vessel, now offered in love to her esteemed guest, while she made humbly do with a glass jam jar. She was grinning toothlessly at him, like a mother watching her favorite child consume a special tidbit that she had heroically acquired at enormous personal sacrifice. He figured there was only one tiny victory that might marginally reduce the possibility of typhoid, cholera and yellow fever – he would hold the mug in his left hand and drink from it that way. He closed his eyes and took a draught. Kitty clapped enthusiastically and with all the joy of a stranger in foreign places serendipitously meeting a native of one’s own country, she exclaimed “Ah father, I see you’re a ciotóg, (left-hander) just like meself!!”

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — December 9, 2020:

• Introduction

  As part of my missionary career in Kenya, I was the headmaster of Kipchimchim Harambee Secondary School for a number of years. I also taught math, physics and religion. One day during a lecture on the evolution of the Bible from an oral tradition to a written form, and the difficulties attendant upon translating an ancient Hebrew text, written without vowel signs, into Kenyan languages, I decided to do an experiment. I asked three students to step outside the classroom and then I wrote a simple paragraph in English on the blackboard. Then I brought in one of the three students and asked him to write a Swahili translation of it immediately underneath. Then I covered the English version, brought in the second of the students and asked her to translate the Swahili version into Kipsigis. I then covered the Swahili version and brought in the third student. His job was to translate the Kipsigis version into English. Finally, I uncovered the original English version and watched as the class compared the two English versions. As you might suspect, the two versions bore little resemblance to each other!

• A. Oral Language

  Before we can understand the vagaries of oral language, we have to understand sound. Remember the old chestnut, “if a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody present to hear it, does it still make a sound?” And the correct scientific answer is, “no it doesn’t!” When a tree falls in the forest, it simply sets up air vibrations, and if the frequency is within a certain range (20 – 20,000 hertz), the human ear will interpret it as sound.  Any frequencies outside that range, simply go in one ear and out the other! “Ha”, you say, “but what if an animal is present!?” The same principle holds true. Each animal species has its own range of frequencies which it will interpret as sound. Otherwise, silence - and a slight breeze - is all that happens.

  Ferdinand de Saussure, possibly the preeminent linguist of the 20th century, posited three components to oral language. First, the “referent” - the object in the real world. Secondly, the “signified” - the internalized image (part visual, part auditory, part tactile, part olfactory, part gustatory.) And thirdly, the “signifiers” - the verbal symbols you use to communicate your internal “signified” to another person. This last piece changes from language to language; for example, a tusked pachyderm will be called “elephant”, “ndovu” and “belyot” in English, Swahili and Kipsigis respectively.

  Now, there obviously are prelinguistic languages that can use one or more of the senses to send and receive messages. Here are some examples. Trees will send out pheromones -olfactory signals - toward nearby trees to warn of approaching herbivores. The acacia trees of Kenya do this to alert the neighbors of the presence of giraffes. The acacia trees then produce a noxious oder that soon dampens the giraffes’ interest. Since it takes about 15 minutes for the tree to marshal this defense, the “whistleblower” sacrifices a bunch of its foliage before the giraffe moves on only to meet the other trees in full battle armor.

  Also, many animals use pheromones to attract mates with a signal that says, “I’m in heat, let’s talk.” Other animals, especially birds and octopi, use color displays to impress possible mates. And flowers do it, even using ultraviolet colors to attract pollinators. Humans get in on that act as well. We also use visual cues like waving at, beckoning and dismissing somebody.

  Obviously, touch, also, can be significant, as in hugging and shaking hands. And let’s not forget Braille. And then there’s the whole language of prelinguistic sounds found all over the animal kingdom, from frogs croaking to dogs barking, birds singing and whales whistling. Animals, obviously, are using nonlinguistic vocalizations to communicate; as do young children.

• B. Telepathy

  In order to have a telepathic exchange with somebody, do you need to speak the same language? Or is the telepathic download pre-linguistic, trans-linguistic or post-linguistic? In other words, is there a whole bunch of information that’s not attached to any language system and therefore is clean and not biased in any way by terminology or the misuse of or misunderstanding of terminology?

  Language consists of information bytes, information consists of energy quanta, and energy is the movement of Cosmic Mind. So, from which level does telepathy operate? It may operate directly from mind to mind without using language or even information, however when the recipient begins to “unpack” the download, language comes into play and often it’s frustrating because language can’t really express the treasure trove of mind. Language is like trying to eat tomato soup with a fork. Mystics and people who have Near Death Experiences all report the same frustration. Saint Paul said famously, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it even entered the human heart, what things God has prepared for those who love Him.”

• C. The First Pentecost

  Once upon a time, the world was changed radically; and it wasn’t done by the politicians, or the military or even the priests. It was done by a carpenter, a bunch of bumbling fishermen and a group of dedicated housewives. It is known as the “Jesus movement” and it ushered in era of Christ consciousness. But first, it was driven underground by persecution and then later it was seduced by power and the need to be “respectable.” The mind transcending message of a tradesman/mystic was eventually - but only temporarily - hijacked by a new brand of leaders who resorted to crusades against the nonbelievers and inquisitions against the unorthodox believers, until it finally produced a leader who claimed infallibility. This same trajectory has been the story of both secular and religious organizations. But now it is time to harvest the seeds sown by the carpenter from Nazareth.

  In the story of Pentecost, Babel is undone. The miracle was both in the speakers and in the listeners. Each one heard in their own tongue, not because Peter was multi-lingual but because Spirit is trans-lingual. They thought they were hearing it in their ears and understanding it in their minds; but they weren’t. They were hearing it in their hearts and understanding it their souls. This is true Spirit-tinged telepathy.

• D. Closing the Evolutionary Loop

  So how do we translate ultimate reality into every-day experience? There are three stages or translations to this process - just as I did the translation experiment with my class in Kipchimchim many years ago. The first stage is the realization that ultimate reality is the Holy Spirit. The second stage is a translation of Spirit and it is mathematical in nature: this ultimate reality is expressed in Boolean algebra or Binary numbers. The third stage is a translation from mathematics into quantum mechanics. QM tells us that it is the observer who collapses the wave of all possibility into the discrete particle or specific outcome. We are not really creating an outcome, we are simply – by observation – selecting a single outcome from all the pre-existing possibilities. Imagine a radio station sending out electromagnetic signals; they spread not just in expanding concentric circles but in expanding concentric spheres. But as soon as you stick up an antenna, you can pluck the signal and reduce it to your own particular radio. The radio ‘traps’ and translates the signal into words or music etc. The fourth stage is where the sensorium translates the quantum world into physical objects in what we foolishly call, ‘the real world.’

  That is the devolutionary trajectory: from Spirit to mathematics, to quantum mechanics, to the sensorium, to reality. It’s difficult to retrace the steps, so in evolution we simply close the circle. The complete circle looks like this: Spirit to math, to quantum mechanics, to senses and back to Spirit via spiritual practices like altered states of consciousness, dreams, visions, fasting, fevers etc.

  So now I want to revisit a statement I frequently make: life is a dream which the ego is having; the ego is a dream which the soul is having; the soul is a dream that Spirit is having; and Spirit is a dream that Source is having. I want to now give a second version of that progress and say the following: life is a dream that the senses are having; the senses are a dream the quantum mechanics is having; quantum mechanics is a dream that mathematics is having; mathematics is a dream that creative Spirit is having; and creative Spirit is a dream that Source is having.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — July 14, 2020:

• A. Introduction

  I awoke in the middle of the night with the sudden realization that, before Jesus, no other great religious thinker had ever called God, “Father” – and not just “father” but “daddy!” Not Lao Tzu, nor Confucius; not the Buddha, nor Mahavira, nor Zoroaster; not the Hindus, nor the Hebrews, nor the Greeks.

  So, how did he come to that realization? Or, how did he develop the chutzpah? The earliest time we hear it is in Luke, Chapter 2, where he was lost for three days in the temple in Jerusalem, as a young bar mitzvah boy of 12 years of age. When his frantic parents finally found him and his mother scolded him for causing them such pain, his response was, “didn’t you realize that I must be about my father’s business?!”

• B. What Does That Mean?

  There are many ways to unpack this, and each exegesis creates its own theology. Let me suggest a few. Firstly, it might mean that he – Jesus – is God enfleshed; that he was a unique incarnation of the divine Source. John’s Gospel would suggest that version e.g., “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

  A second version might be that Jesus was claiming a unique biological relationship to God. We find this in both Matthew and Luke where the Holy Spirit “overshadows” Mary and causes her to conceive. This has shades of Genesis, Chapter 6 – a very enigmatic passage that tells us that shortly after creation had gotten started, “the sons of God found the daughters of men to be very attractive and took them to wife, as many as they chose” – thus, giving birth to the “Anakim”, the “mighty men of old”. This trope, of divine beings impregnating human women, is found in Hindu, Celtic, Greek, Roman, and many other traditions. So, was Jesus a hybrid, a demi-urge, whose father was an ET?

  The third interpretation is that Jesus was fully human but had a unique interpersonal relationship with God. If this is true, then Jesus is claiming to be a uniquely advanced human being, without peer among previous avatars. This can be inferred from Mark’s gospel which has no claim of Jesus’ divinity.

  Fourthly, it might mean that Jesus – though fully human – had a unique understanding of the relationship to God of all humans, indeed of all creatures. In this case, by calling God, “Father”, he was offering this knowledge of our relationship with Source to all of us. Strangely, John’s Gospel, whose prologue had claimed Jesus as the Divine Word made flesh, towards the end of his gospel, in the story of the last supper, introduces two fascinating ideas.

  Firstly, in Chapter 14:12: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” And, secondly, John 17:22-23 “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” This is like Russian dolls; with the human being as the outer doll, Jesus being an inner doll and the Father being the innermost doll.

  In other words, calling God, “Father” is the birthright of each one of us.

• C. Conclusion

  Whichever way you unpack it, it represents a huge advance in theological and mystical thinking. Unfortunately, Christianity has reduced this Father, once more, to a distant demanding deity, and reduced Jesus himself to a judge, assigning us – as sheep or goats – to heaven or hell. Leave it to hierarchical institutions to turn an awe-inspiring mystical vision into a dogma-driven ghoulish nightmare.

  What, then, is the meaning of the second coming? It is not the physical return of a Jesus who is now really angry that we still haven’t learned from his previous visit. Rather, it is the flowering of a seed which has lain fallow in the soil of civilization until a generation is born that fully understands that, “I (am) in them and you (are) in me.”

  Could we possibly be that generation?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — July 1, 2020: An image from childhood, of repentant Catholics beating their breasts, confessing their guilt and proclaiming, “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” rises unbidden in my memory. In this essay, I want to suggest that brow-beating might be more productive than breast-beating.

I want to ask, and then answer, two questions: What is a thought? And how does it arise? I would suggest that a thought is simply a conversation between the ego and the soul. Science says that a species is organically alive if it can feed itself and reproduce itself. And that is the agenda of the ego – survival and self-replication. On the other hand, the agenda of the soul is a Unity Consciousness and Unconditional Love. And therein lies the rub; for during incarnation, these two conflicting agendas have to dock. Thought is the child of that union. The ego makes a useful servant but a dreadful master. That which was meant to be the COO of the Earth mission wants to become the CEO, president, CFO, and board of directors, all in one.

A thought is, initially, a zygote conceived of a soul-sperm and an ego-egg. For nine months, the zygote-become-embryo-become-fetus lives within the womb of this dialogue, almost completely controlled by the mother (ego). But then it’s born, separated from her and quickly develops a will of its own. Now the two – ego and thought, mother and child – are in a relationship in which each side hugely influences the other.

In time, the thought/child is fully independent of the ego/mother. Buddhism will call this a tulpa. And a thought/tulpa which is regularly the focus of attention and intention becomes a very powerful entity in its own right, and can dictate, overpower and even imprison the ego/mother while utterly ignoring the soul/father.

It gets even worse! Like an antisocial teenager, this tulpa will join with other like-minded thoughts birthed by other egos and form street gangs that can terrorize entire neighborhoods. Scaled up, such gangs can become “rogue states” that make warmongering a national past-time. For over 5,000 years such tulpas have roamed the Earth graduating from the use of cudgels to weapons of mass destruction.

Sometimes, these tulpas are given a personality and a name e.g., “Satan” or “Dracula” but mostly they are simply memes plying their trade through consumerism, national security propaganda and fake news. Jesus warned us about them 2,000 years ago – “For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. These things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”

A selfish, angry, vengeful thought is a weed that can overrun even the garden of Eden, smothering the food crops and fruit trees, hogging the sunlight and monopolizing the nutrients in the soil.

“But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every idle word they have spoken”, said Jesus. He might as easily, and as insightfully, have said, “for every idle thought.” This is not to say that God is a kind of a cosmic CPA, recording our every misdemeanor and reporting us to some heavenly IRS agent, but rather that thoughts and words create a template for action and become the prototype of the future.

These thoughts/tulpas, obviously, can lead one into bodhisattvic mysticism or into self-serving pathology. Each person, each community, each nation, even the entire species – at each stage of its incarnational journey – sits in the crosshairs whose vertical axis is transcendence/immanence and whose horizontal axis is compassion/sadism. Whichever end is watered and weeded - through attention and intention – thrives. Hence, the ebb and flow of human history. In our times – 20% of the way into the 21st-century – are we ebbing or flowing? Are we becoming Homo Spiritualis or Homo Sociopathicus?

Look at the state of our world; let us beat our brows, not our breasts, and attempt metanoia as we intone, “Mea tulpa, mea tulpa, mea maxima tulpa!”

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — April 7, 2020:

• Introduction

  According to the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul spent the last two years of his life under house arrest in Rome. But he continued to preach the Good News and he became, probably, the greatest architect of the Jesus movement. I wonder what kind of a mystical, transformational movement this shelter-in-place, coronavirus-induced house arrest could create in our times? Pachamama seems to be giving Homo Sapiens Sapiens a timeout to reconsider how we have lived as a species, especially in the light of the last three revolutions and their unintended fallout: the scientific revolution (beginning in 1453 with Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes and Newton), the industrial revolution (beginning in 1760 with the mass migration from farms to factories), and the information revolution (beginning in 1440 with Gutenberg’s printing press.)

  In this essay, I want to examine what the invitation of this timeout might be for the individual. Incarnation is a journey, to prepare for which we need four considerations. Let’s look at them.

• A. The Purpose of the Journey

  Every one of us volunteered to be Here, Now, in order to evolve our souls and to evolve the planet. But it is ‘improv theater’ for which there are two basic rules: first, you have to work with whatever line your fellow actors feed you; and, second, you should feed them lines that make them look good. And if you’re looking for a plot and a script, for this life-journey, there are none! You are creating both script and plot by your responses to the situations which arise from the past thoughts, words and actions – including your own – of all the players involved since the dawn of history.

  As a simple way to figure out what your life purpose might be, I suggest the following exercise. Divide your life into seven-year chunks (0-7, 7-14, 14-21…) and for each chunk ask yourself three questions: Who were the important players at each stage? What were the important events at each stage? And what were the important lessons you learned at each stage? The lessons are often only seen in retrospect. You will probably find that while the players and the events may be different for different stages, the core lessons will probably be the same.

• B. Your Self-identity on the Journey

  My passport says that I am male, stand at 6’1”, weigh 150 pounds and have grey hair and blue eyes. What would happen if I attempted to board a plane with a passport that said I am female, stand at 5’3”, weigh 100 pounds and have red hair and brown eyes? Most of us carry the wrong ID through life. So, Hinduism reminds me that: I have a body but I am not my body; I have emotions but I am not my emotions; and that I have an intellect but I am not my intellect. I would add to that, I have a personality but I am not my personality, since personality is simply the interface between my soul and the environment. So, in different incarnations, my soul will inhabit bodies of different genders, ethnicities, social classes, religious beliefs… and, therefore, manifest different personalities.

  Who then am I, if I am not my body, emotions, intellect or personality? I am a spirit in a spacesuit; I am a bite-sized piece of God who volunteered for incarnation. I was never born and can never die, though I will, someday, shuffle off this mortal coil and re-discover my eternal essence. Because life is not what happens between birth and death but, rather, what happens between my emergence from Source, before time existed, and my re-merging with Source when my soul’s evolution is complete.

• C. A Road Map for Life

  If I want to drive from Healdsburg, CA to Denver, CO but all I have in my car is a road map of Ireland, I’m probably going to get very lost. Worse yet, if I don’t know where I am and I don’t know where I want to go, I’m probably not currently where I want to be and will probably never get to a place that feels like home.

  This is the importance of having a Personal Cosmology. We all actually do have one but it was unconsciously acquired – from parents, school, media, church – and in any situation, it is unconsciously accessed. So, we really don’t know why we’re thinking, saying or doing what we’re thinking saying and doing. It is vitally important to bring this personal cosmology to full consciousness. As Socrates famously said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’

• D. Your Resources for the Journey

  In your wallet you probably have some cash and a credit card to finance your trip, but what’s really in your wallet of incarnation? Well, we come in bearing two kind of gifts. Firstly, our talents – to be used for others. We do not own our talents anymore than a mailman owns the letters in his mail bag. But mostly we hog them and try to make a killing from them. Secondly, we come in with a few personal problems in order to make us grow; to make sure we get a chance to stretch, to evolve and to develop. These problems will recur throughout life. If we continue to learn, each time we encounter them, we spiral up into enlightenment; if we do not learn and keep repeating the same kind of dysfunctional behavior, then we simply go around and around in circles, digging ourselves into an ever-deepening rut.

  Right now, Gaia is giving us time to examine both. We have an opportunity to decide whether we’re Cell mates locked in by the virus or Soul mates given a Sabbatical by it.

• Conclusion

  There has never been a significant evolutionary shift that wasn’t caused by a great crisis. If it hadn’t been for a Supernova, billions of years ago, which scattered its elements into the cosmos, there never would have been a planet Earth. And if mitochondria hadn’t developed in response to early cellular life’s initial inability (make that one billion years of trying!) to metabolize oxygen, then there would never have been daffodils or banana slugs, let alone humans.

  When this crisis has passed, and it will pass, you want to be able to look back and gratefully say, ‘it was the best thing that ever happened to me!’

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — March 25, 2020:

• Introduction

  Coming, as it has, during Lent, it feels as if Mother Earth is giving us a ‘time out’ to reconsider how we’ve been doing life for the last three hundred years. We have reached a bifurcation point in the evolution of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. It will be as great a separation as was the split between Neandertals and Cro-Magnon. Cro-Magnon, unfortunately, has been on the road to becoming Homo Sociopathicus, and is leaving a trail of vanished fellow-traveler species, as well as polluted air, land and water. We’ve been crucifying the planet since the Industrial Revolution and now it’s sequestering us in order that Homo Sociopathicus may die off and Homo Spiritualis may be born. Handled properly, this dark night of the soul can birth the light of a new era.

  In this brief essay, I want to use the last seven statements of Jesus on the cross as a template for understanding the different facets of this virus and its global effects. I’ll rearrange Jesus’ statements. One of them is found in both Mark and Matthew, three in Luke and another three in John. I will arrange them in the chronological order in which I feel they probably occurred.

• A. Mental Anguish

  Suspended between heaven and earth, in what is probably the most vicious method of execution ever devised by sick human minds, the impaled Jesus literally feels as if he has been forsaken by the Father – perhaps, even, that he has been duped into a ministry that was a tragic illusion. From the depths of his despair he cries aloud, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabactani!?”

  How many Chinese, Iranians, Italians… and, now, Americans, in the throes of this deadly virus are calling out in a similar fashion?

• B. Physical Pain

  Drained of energy by the two interrogations, a vicious scourging of 39 lashes, forced to wear a cap of cruelly pressed-in thorns, he then had to carry a heavy beam over his shoulder from the city all the way to Golgotha. And having fallen several times, he is now dangling grotesquely in the boiling Middle eastern midday sun. It seems strange that of all the physical discomforts, thirst is the one he complains about: “I thirst.” He has to constantly shift his position on the cross, putting his entire weight either on his wrists or on his feet. When he sags and depends on his feet, his chest constricts, collapsing his lungs and making it impossible to breathe; when he pushes himself up by his feet then his entire weight is on them.

  And that is what many victims of this virus are experiencing: inability to breathe even as they feel a whole slew of other symptoms.

• C. Care of Family

  True to his nature, having experienced and transcended his own suffering, he now focuses on his devastated family – his mother, his beloved companion, Mary of Magdala, and John the Apostle – standing at a distance, sequestered by the bored soldiers. Trying to console and provide for them in his last hours, he beckons with his head and says, “Son, behold your mother, mother behold your son.”

  Among those dying of Covid-19, I suspect there are some making the same kind of compassionate, self-effacing arrangements for those who will be left behind to grieve.

• D. Compassion for Fellow Sufferers

  Suffering brings out the best and the worst in human nature. One of those crucified with Jesus gave vent to his own fear and pain and anger by railing against this pretend-Messiah for failing to rescue them from Roman occupation and now from their present personal condition. Another crucified man could recognize the divine in Jesus even in the midst of his own agony. He called out, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus, who by now had utterly transcended his self-concern, replied, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

  And I am sure that there are Covid-19 victims who, even in the midst of their own agony, are praying for other sufferers.

• E. Forgiveness of Enemies

  Now comes the most extraordinary statement of all. Living under the brutal regime of the Roman Empire all his life, his is now being ‘guarded’ by dice-playing soldiers who, while gambling for his few possessions, are detailed to keep the mocking priests, and the curious mob at bay. Even in these three groups, Jesus can see their human, frail shadow sides but can see beyond that into their incarnation-occluded souls. Reaching deep inside his own eternal essence, he prays, “Father, forgive them, they have no idea what they are doing.”

  And who do the Covid-19 victims need to forgive? The mad military scientists who experiment with bioweapons? The Chinese authorities who failed to promptly report it and then fudged the numbers while silencing whistle-blower doctors? The national leaders who failed initially to take it seriously? The heedless, self-centered citizens who put all others at risk because they themselves don’t see the need to obey sensible, life-saving restrictions?

  Forgiveness is not excusing, let alone condoning, any of these parties but it is to not be further burdened by anger; to not add rage to the medical and economic stresses of this pandemic.

• F. Commitment to Incarnational Mission

  Jesus had ticked all of the boxes that represented his Earth mission, resisting the temptation, on several significant occasions, to refuse the chalice even when he had the mother of all panic attacks in Gethsemane the night before he died. It was a panic attack so fierce that he sweated blood. Next day, at the end, when he was pierced by the soldier’s lance, only a few drops were left – and some beads of water. His entire body and heart were drained of blood. All that remained in that suspended corpus was love – infinite love. And light. A light that was so intense that, while in the tomb, he would scorch his burial shroud with radiation more intense than that of our own sun. A radiant burst of light that, 2,000 years later, is still imprinted on the Shroud of Turin.

  And what of those who have and who will succumb to Covid-19? Will some of them be able to say as did he, “It is complete!” – I have honored my mission. And will those ones imprint their own radiant images on the hearts and memories of those who survive?

• G. Ultimate Trust

  Now Jesus has come full circle. The tortured man who hours before cried “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?!” is now fully re-aligned; his faith is fully restored. Like a small child, infinitely confident in his father’s love for him, he cries aloud, “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” – roughly translated as “Abba, hug me!”

  And that is my prayer for all those who transition at this time. I wish for them a kind of terminal lucidity where they remember their own divine nature, their Spirit origin, and break into great smiles as they recognize the open, welcoming arms of the God who was always both immanent experience and ineffable transcendence.

  Ah, it’s good to be finally home!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — February 11, 2020:

[This is the first in a series of essays that examine the interconnection of karma and original sin.]

• Introduction

  It’s known as the Gombe Chimpanzee War – a violent conflict between two communities of chimps in Tanzania, lasting from 1974 to 1978. Originally, it had been one group. Typically, the carrying capacity of a chimp troupe is 15 to 40 members. [This was also true of early hunter/gatherer human bands]. Beginning in 1974, Jane Goodall, who lived among the Gombe chimps and studied them, noticed that the original group of 14 adult males, 15 adult females and their young, was now splintering. A new group, consisting of six adult males, three adult females and their young, broke away. And, then, the war started! Over the course of four years, one by one all of the adult males in the new group were brutally killed by the original group. Previous close friendships and even mentoring counted for nothing. Moreover, the killings were really vicious; in one case a victor held his cupped hands under the chin of a dying victim and drank the blood.

  After each killing, the victorious chimps celebrated boisterously, hooting and howling and flinging sticks and stones about. Goodall was shocked. And, as the pièce-de-résistance, she witnessed a high-ranking female kill and eat her own infant. For years, Goodall hesitated to report this behavior; and she who had once written that chimp social life very closely resembles human society except that chimps were “rather nicer” was now witnessing their dark side.

  And why is this story so important? I believe it’s important for two reasons. First, we

• A. Aspects of Karma

  I think karma has three distinct aspects. First, it shackles us to the past  – to our previous thoughts, words and actions that created neuronal circuitry and habits which cannot be overridden without either a lot of conscious deliberation and disciplined behavioral changes, or else harsh negative feedback from the environment – like a dog that tangles with a porcupine and winds up like a pin-cushion with a throatful of needles.

  But karma is also a great resource  which allows us to learn from our mistakes and build upon our successes. Karma is the most basic law of science: cause and effect. You do A and B happens; if you like B, keep doing A; if you don’t like B, stop doing A. It’s important to point out here that karma is not all negative. Many effects are positive; they flow from loving, compassionate choices. It is the original form of ‘paying forward.’

  And, third, karma is an invitation to perfection  – properly understood. Perfection (from the Greek, Telos) does not mean a stainless-steel sinlessness but, rather, a commitment to the evolution into enlightenment. Hence, teleology means the influence of a future-desired outcome on present choices – you want to be a concert pianist at age 20, start practicing at age three.

• B. Karmic Timelines

  The effect flowing from any cause can occur in one of three basic timelines. It can be immediate: two four-year-old’s – Johnny and Tommy – are playing together. Tommy grabs Johnny’s train-set whereupon Johnny bops Tommy on the noggin with his baseball bat. Or the results can be deferred to a later stage. You spend your teenage and early adult years gorging on a diet of hamburgers, French fries and Pepsi and you have chronic diabetes in your 40’s. Or, if you are a slow learner, the effects can be postponed until a future lifetime. I think the Hitler’s, Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s of history fall into this category; but so, too, do the rest of us. Some karma is so large that it needs to be spread out over several future incarnations.

• C. Levels of Karma

  It’s important to realize that we don’t just generate karma at an individual level. Life is arranged in holographic fractals; each a lesser version of the whole but, nonetheless, containing all of the original. So, there are familial, cultural and global versions of it. In fact, the solar system, the galaxies, the cosmos, the multiverse and the interdimensional also create karma.

  These levels parallel the stages of the Pre-conception Contract – an agreement, as we volunteer for incarnation, that involves, in ever-widening circles, a soul-mate, a family, a tribe, a nation, a species and, finally, all sentient beings. It’s like a pebble dropped into a pond; irrespective of the size of the pond, the ripples will eventually reach the entire perimeter, no matter how squiggly or distant that perimeter is.

  All sentient beings, from single-celled protozoa to angels – even Seraphim – are agents of evolution and, thus, of karma. In fact, anything that has agency contributes to evolution and karma. Some life forms do it through pre-programmed instincts but, nonetheless, have an influence on the environment. Other creatures do it through choices that lie on a spectrum from totally unconscious to full awareness.

  In humans, this pre-programmed instinct lies in the hindbrain – the so-called ‘reptilian brain’; while full conscious decisions come from the forebrain – the neo-cortex or newest part, evolutionarily speaking. However, only a self-aware species can deliberately tweak the trajectory. This introduces a very significant factor. We go from ‘evolution of consciousness’ to ‘conscious evolution’; from ‘nature’ calling the shots to ‘culture’ calling the shots.

  This has awesome consequences. It means, I believe, that as the most evolved and, theoretically, most self-aware species on the planet, we have both the ability and the responsibility to deal with all of the karma generated on planet Earth over the last 3.7 billion years! By ‘responsibility’ I do not mean we caused it all, rather, I mean we have response-ability (the ability to make responses) to all karma generated from all agents throughout all Earth-life. That is also part of our Pre-conception Contract which involves commitment both to personal enlightenment and planetary ascension – the bodhisattva vow.

  This, I hold, is the real meaning of the teaching that Jesus came “to take away the sin of the world…” He is not alone in this mission, rather, he is the archetype of this mission. Hence, “the same things I do, you will do, and even greater…”

  This is the human mission: to unleash Christ consciousness; to uncover our Buddha nature; to bring about Tikkun Olam. It is Tonglen writ large.

  I will develop these ideas further in the other essays in this series.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — February 25, 2020:

[This is the second in a series of essays that examine the interconnection of karma and original sin.]

• Introduction

  In the first essay in this series, I made two important claims: first, that anything that has agency creates karma; and, second, that the human mission is to heal all of the karma generated by all life forms on planet Earth over the last 3.7 billion years. I want to expand on those two assertions in the next two essays. And I also want to offer five practical exercises, at the end of essay #3, that will help us to clean up karma.

  Over these next two essays, I’ll suggest that there are five increasingly-important dimensions to karma: the basic dimension, the practical dimension, the moral dimension, the spiritual dimension and the mystical dimension.

• The Basic Dimension of Karma

  Very simply, karma means ‘cause and effect.’ It is the basic law of science, of spirituality, and of life itself. Apart from science’s ridiculous claim that the entire cosmos is the result of an uncaused Big Bang, it conducts all of its affairs on the sine qua non  that says, ‘nothing comes from nothing’; there is always a cause; and all actions generate results (effects.) Spirituality agrees but calls the uncaused cause, God – who lies transcendentally outside of the physical universe. And, in everyday life, we all assume that all experiences – inner and outer – have antecedent causes. Even little children, defending themselves against the charge that the shattered plate lying at their feet ‘just broke’ won’t convince their parents of the veracity of this claim.

  Every thought, word and deed generates an effect which affects the entire evolutionary trajectory of the cosmos. This is the logical outcome of chaos theory and the ‘butterfly in Beijing’ cascade. And that is the basic dimension of karma. Let me give you a simple example. A book falls off a shelf and injures a sleeping cat. That’s karma (cause and effect). A law of mathematical physics says that force equals mass times acceleration (F = MxA). So, the blow the cat experiences is equal to the weight of the book multiplied by the acceleration due to gravity (32 feet per sec per sec). More accurately, it’s not actually the acceleration due to gravity that causes the injury but, rather, the very rapid deceleration once the book hits the cat. An old joke says of a man who fell from a 10-story balcony, “It wasn’t the fall that killed him, it was the sudden stop at the end.”

• The Practical Dimension of Karma

  Where the first dimension specifies that karma simply means cause and effect, the second dimension asks the question, “did it work?” For example, a hungry lion sees a skunk and thinks, “Aha! Here is lunch!” So, he bites into the skunk who, instantly sprays him with utterly noxious gasses. The lion stinks for days, losing his pride – in both senses of the word. So, did it work? No! And the lion is unlikely to try that again.

  Nature tends to favor and to repeat successful patterns. This is called, ‘natural selection’ or ‘survival of the fittest.’ Here’s a good example. One billion years ago, there was no color on planet Earth because no creature existed who could infer color from the electromagnetic spectrum – the reason being that the eye had not yet been invented. Then, about 542 million years ago, sea-faring arthropods, called trilobites arrived, complete with eyes and lasted for 300 million years. Nature was so proud of this new invention that she decided to do it again, and again, and again, and… So, today, we find eyes in the oceans, among birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. Never change a winning team!

  Here’s another example. Family didn’t always exist. The amphibians (e.g., frogs, crocodiles and turtles) and the reptiles (e.g., dinosaurs and snakes) lay their eggs, sometimes cover them in sand and then leave. The result is that their babies are on their own pre and post hatching. So, the mortality rate is very high. Then nature had a rethink; she threw up a species (e.g., birds) that laid eggs, kept them warm and protected, fed the newly-hatched and trained them in independent living. The mortality rate got lower. Eventually, two-parent arrangements arrived to split the duties of warming, protecting, feeding and training the offspring – and the mortality rate diminished even further. Humans took it to the next step: the extended, multi-generational family. Now, there were aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins and neighbors looking out for the little ones; and the mortality rate plummeted. Nature knows a good thing when it invents one! Now, it takes a village to raise a baby.

  “God” also tends to favor and repeat effective patterns. So, truly successful individuals and societies are those who practice love and compassion, and, thus, experience peace and stability. And, I believe, the Eight Beatitudes are the spiritual DNA that, when tried, will lead to a huge evolutionary shift.

  Species that don’t recognize and align with successful habits tend to go extinct. Over time and overall, things tend to get better and more complex; this is a dance between entropy and complexity, between order and chaos. According to the historical and demographic research of Steven Pinker (“The Better Angels of Our Nature”), we live in the least violent period in human history. Paradoxically, in spite of living in the safest era, we also live in the most anxious of times – courtesy of the mass media who seem addicted to the trope, ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’

  In his Nobel-Prize-winning work, the biochemist, Ilya Prigogine, showed how complexity vanquishes entropy, not so much by introducing new elements into the mix, but by simply re-arranging the already-existing elements. Rather like re-organizing the pieces of a badly-done jigsaw puzzle, so that the picture on the cover begins to emerge.

  This evolution, however, is not a straight-line progress; many species are just placeholders to be jettisoned if they aren’t successful. Within the human species and our organizational systems of government, this is also true. For instance, various versions of Marxism, Communism, Leninism and Fascism in the 20th. century saw the emergence of tyrannical regimes that, while espousing liberty and equality for all, led to the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of the ‘comrades.’ Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could also jettison the notion that we can create peace by making war?

  [In essay #3, I will continue with a discussion of the moral, spiritual and mystical dimensions of karma.]

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — March 3, 2020:

[This is the third in a series of essays that examine the interconnection of karma and original sin.]

• The Moral Dimension of Karma

  This involves placing an overlay of a new template on the raw data of life events. Cause and effect are present from the beginning, but now the categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are added to the mix. Only now do the notions of blame and praise arise. Let me give you an example. I lived for a few years in a Catholic rectory attached to St. Aloysius Church, in Palo Alto – now owned by the Ananda Community. Each evening, I would walk in a nearby park where there were groves of great redwoods and pines. One evening, I saw two little children – a boy and a girl, aged around six or seven. They were accompanied by an adult female. Suddenly, a baby squirrel fell from a tree and, instantly, the adult female ran, grabbed it and started to shake it violently. The children screamed at her to stop and I, too, ran to intervene. Too late, alas, the squirrel died in my hands and I carried it home and buried it in the rectory garden. The children were sobbing as I left.

  Now, the karma question: was the behavior of the adult female good or bad? Would you say she committed a crime? Was she guilty of a sin? How would it affect your thinking if I revealed to you that the adult female was, in fact, an Alsatian dog? Obviously, her behavior would fall into dimensions 1 (basic) and 2 (practical) but not dimension 3 (moral). She had no guilt.

  This moral dimension is very complex; one with which all of the great scriptural, legal and wisdom systems have wrestled – and continue to wrestle. It is, perhaps, the major theme in all great literature.

  For grins, let’s go back to the book and the cat. So, whose fault was it that the feline got bopped on the noggin? Was it the cat for sleeping in a dumb spot? The person who placed the book carelessly on the shelf? The carpenter who built the shelf on a tilt? The contractor who built the house and didn’t allow for subsidence? The minor earthquake that caused the subsidence? Or the cosmic geologist who designed tectonic plates?

  Within the bible itself, there are six different attempts to assign blame. First, Adam and Eve – two pre-rational humans – disobey God, whereupon they and all their future progeny are kicked out of the Garden of Eden. For one parental sin, all unborn humans are held guilty. In stage two, Moses comes up with a much better system of punishment: each year all of the Israelites would confess to Aaron, the high priest, who would then take a spotless goat, lay his hands on it and transfer the combined sins onto the animal and then hunt it off into the wilderness – no doubt to wind up as lunch for a lion (the one who no longer ate skunks!) This is the origin of the term, ‘scapegoat.’

  Then comes a third stab at assigning blame. God, in his infinite mercy, is only going to mete out punishment to the third or fourth generation. Native American belief is that we humans, as we make decisions, need to factor in the effects on the next seven generations. Stage four arrives with the prophets Jeremiah (c. 600 BCE) and Ezekiel (c. 550 BCE) both of whom quote the Hebrew proverb, “the parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” But, henceforth, say Jerry and Zeke, this will no longer be true; rather, only the individual who sins will be punished. No more killing a million Iraqi’s to punish Saddam Hussein.

  Jesus moved the ball two more stages forward. First, he said that those who invent and impose bad laws are guiltier than those who subsequently break these bad laws. In retrospect, I wonder what was the Catholic Church thinking when it taught that anyone who eats meat on a Friday would burn in hell for all eternity! What in God’s name were they smoking?

  Then, Jesus went on to teach and to exemplify the final stage in the process, which is to not judge anybody but to forgive everybody. This is not about excusing or condoning bad behavior but about letting go of anger, anxiety and resentment, as we attempt to bring about peace in our times.

  In general, this moral dimension of karma asks a question which gives very complex answers. We state, in all religions, that killing another human is wrong, and yet we send troops into battle with a mandate  to kill. We execute criminals; we are allowed to kill in self-defense; and we kill via abortion – according to some candidates in the political scramble for party nomination, we can even kill newborns.

• The Spiritual Dimension of Karma

  Shakespeare says, “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” In other words, good and bad are humanly-invented categories that we overlay on the data of life. Certainly, the Alsatian dog would agree with that.

  The poet Rumi said, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” I believe this is the recognition of a spiritual state in which behavior is not dictated by a moral code but by dwelling in alignment with divine love. St. Augustine said, “Love God and then do as you will.” Those who are truly in love with God will instantly recognize the divinity in all others and treat them accordingly. To drive this even deeper, the apostle John also says, “Anyone who says he loves God while he hates his brother is a liar; how can you love God whom you cannot see, if you do not love your brother whom you can see?” John is giving a Christian version of the Hindu ‘namasté’ (the God in me recognizes and honors the God in you.)

  This spiritual dimension of karma is best accessed by deeply pondering the following questions and then aligning with the answers: Who is God? Who am I? Who is my neighbor? And What is my mission?

• The Mystical Dimension of Karma

  I believe that we are ‘response-able’ for the state of creation, not because we caused all of it but because, as self-aware fractals of Source, we volunteered to bring all of creation back into alignment with its divine essence. St. Paul says, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed… in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship.”

  Humans, as the high point of consciousness on this planet, have the ability and the task of burning off all Earth karma. This is our vocation; this is why we volunteered for incarnation. This is where Jesus is the archetype par excellence of Tikkun Olam (a Hebrew mystical teaching meaning, ‘Fixing the planet’). In one of the most extraordinary single phrases in all the scriptures, Paul says, in 2 Cor 5:21, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Paul did not simply mean that a naïve Jesus who did not know what sin was, later figured it out. Rather, Paul is saying that Jesus, who was himself in total alignment with the divine essence and, therefore, sinless, absorbed the world’s darkness into his very being – like blotting paper soaking up an ink spill. Even nature herself has given us a prototype of this process: plants, which absorb our carbon dioxide waste and transform it into oxygen – the essential food for all animals. The Christ archetype is the ultimate reason for our volunteering to incarnate. If we want to be healers for a violent world, we cannot resort to violence ourselves – in thoughts, words or deeds – in the hope of ending  violence. To reprise Jesus’s words, “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst” I would say, “where two or three are gathered in love, there is Christ consciousness; and where two or three are gathered in anger, there is Chaos consciousness.”

  Buddhism’s version of ‘forgive your enemies, pray for those who persecute you…’ is the practice of Tonglen which consists of a conscious breathing technique where one takes on the suffering of others with the in-breath, transforms it in the loving furnace of the heart, and, on the out-breath, gives it back as happiness to all sentient beings. And Buddhism’s version of Tikkun Olam is the bodhisattva vow to keep on reincarnating until every sentient being awakens to its true nature.

• Five Practices in Order to Become a Christ Conscious Karma Gobbler

  Number one, forgive, not from your lips only but from your heart. Forgive personal insults; forgive insults to your family; forgive insults to your tribe or culture or religion or nation. Seek reconciliation.

  Number two, tell yourself better stories. And stories come in four basic flavors: personal stories, tribal stories (sometimes known as ‘history’), cosmological stories and theological stories. Simply pick a different sample  of data from the past; no need to make them up; just choose more carefully, more lovingly. It’s never too late to have a happy past.

  Number three: try to make as many people as possible smile today; fellow motorists, people in line at the Post Office; your spouse, children, friends and colleagues. Physiologically speaking, it takes far fewer facial muscles to smile than it does to scowl. Moreover, it feels  good and does  good.

  Number four: be as curious as a child. Aren’t you jaded from being jaded? Open your eyes a little wider; then your ears; and, finally, your heart.

  Practice number five: talk to a tree; better yet, listen  to a tree! You can do this vibrationally through your hands or telepathically by softening your gaze and your heart. You will find that it is quite easy to become fluent.

  The future belongs to karma gobblers because they are the ones creating  the future. They are the new species that will inherit the planet, just as Jesus promised. Sign up today.

  [To be continued in essay #4.]

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — April 21, 2020:

[This is essay #4 – the final one – in a series entitled, “Original Sin and Karma.”]

• Introduction

  In the play, Hamlet, an officer in the Palace Guard famously opined, “Something is rotten in the State of Denmark.” If he had been more aware of the human condition in general, he might have said, “Something is rotten in the state of the world.” And, indeed, it is. This issue of human vicissitude is probably the most oft-treated theme in world literature. The writers of all scriptures get into it; so do the philosophers, metaphysicians, psychologists, playwrights, novelists – and Calvin and Hobbes. And I’ve had a shot at it myself. I’ve looked at it through the twin lenses of karma and original sin, in these four brief essays.

• A. The Biblical Version – Genesis Chapter 3

  The Judeo-Christian scriptures, after two slightly-conflicting accounts of creation (Gen 1 & 2), very quickly knuckle down to wresting with the question of human suffering, and our apparent alienation from God. And they did it in the most trusted and tried method ever devised by us – they told a story whose real importance is neither its historical veracity nor, yet, its judicial fairness but, rather, its colorful explanatory power. Because, ultimately, we can survive – nay, even thrive – in any situation in which we can overlay meaning, as Viktor Frankl, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and countless others have realized. The biblical writers were keen observers of the human condition and their objective was to provide a narrative to the suffering populace that made sense and gave hope to ‘John-Smith-on-the-street’ (make that Joseph-ben-Yehuda-on-the-donkey.)

  So, how to account for the travails of childbirth, the difficulties of agriculture for clue-less desert nomads who had just recently become farmers, the reality of patriarchy, and our fear of snakes?! In one brilliant little vignette, they gave answers to all of those questions.

  But kids grow up, civilizations evolve, and soon the folktales and fairytales have to be re-engineered and re-interpreted. We have to be really careful not to throw the baby of wisdom out with the bathwater of storytelling. I have a sister, Dearbhla (pet name, Della) who is 22 years younger than me. She was only three years old when I left for my first tour as a missionary in East Africa. I would come home every three years and she would beg me to tell stories from the mythologies of the world. And I did so. They filled her soul with wonder as her eyes widened and her mind travelled in foreign climes. Then she went to college and took a Masters in Sociology. Thereafter, we would revisit all the old tales and harvest them for their inner wisdom and their powerful relevance to new times and new circumstances. The beauty of stories – as Jesus was well aware – is that the same ancient fable can be freshly unpacked to shed light on current events: ‘the little story that could.’

  So, what do I think today about our exile from the Garden of Eden? Obviously, the ‘original sin’ was not about a pre-rational couple being tempted by a slithering snake to eat a piece of fruit. Rather, it was about the gradual exercise of the gift of freewill in the employ of service-to-self and, thus, to the slide out of alignment with the Divine Order of the Cosmos. Original sin and karma were born at the same time. But birth ripens into the ‘terrible two’s’, into the addiction of the toddler to words like, “me”, ‘mine” and “no!” It further hardens into teenage rebellion and, eventually, into crabby, pessimistic ‘old age.’ And that is why there is a promise built into the Genesis story – of redemption, an awakening, a conquest of selfishness, a move towards compassion and service-to-others; in other words, Christ Consciousness.

  This misalignment with the Divine Order quickly resulted in the first murder. In the scheme of things, a single murder wouldn’t make even the back page of a newspaper today. But this one was different. Not only did it set the template for all subsequent murders, it wiped out 25% of the human race. There were only four people on the planet at the time: Adam and Eve and their sons, Cain and Abel. When Cain killed his brother, it left only three humans alive, two males and one female. Not a very auspicious start to ‘project human.’ Maybe some of it was God’s own fault; his behavior in dumping Adam and Eve out of the garden for a single transgression and barring the gates of paradise to all of their progeny wasn’t exactly the kind of reaction that might inspire gentleness and brotherly love in Cain. Of course, as I said earlier, these were simple stories to explain complex situations; and the volatile divinity of Genesis is not God, he is the coagulated projections of human behavior. The original sin, therefore, was neither about apple-eating nor divine anger but the gradual use of freewill to widen the gap between alignment and misalignment.

• B. The Theological Version – St. Augustine

  As a convert to Christianity from a rakish, promiscuous lifestyle, Augustine had a fairly simplistic explanation for the very real impediments we experience. He lived at a time (circa 400 CE) when the Roman empire was coming under increasing pressure from the Vandals of northern Europe. Augustine regarded Roman law and society as the apex of civilization; almost as the image of God. On the other hand, the irrational, barbaric behavior of their enemies was as far from godlike as it is possible to go. He then made a mighty leap: at the moment of orgasm, a couple is most irrational, most out of control and, therefore, most un-Godly. And it is at that precise moment that a child is conceived. Thus, each zygote (though he didn’t use that word) is saddled with this ‘original sin.’ I wonder what he’d say about a child conceived via in-vitro fertilization?

  In any case, he then went on to say that there are three grave consequences of being ushered into incarnation though sexual activity. First, our will is weakened. He’s right on, there! We are addicted in so many ways as individuals – and, indeed, as a global community – to substances, relationships, anger, warfare and divisive memes. We repeat dumb mistakes at every level – from smoking, all the way to spending billions of dollars on creating weapons of mass destruction. How many cancer deaths will it take to stamp out smoking? How many holocausts will it take before we dismantle our WMD’s? Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it; and those who do not learn from the repetition of world-wide wars are destined for extinction.

  The second consequence of original sin, said Augustine, is that our intellects are darkened. It is obvious, even to the most casual of observers, that we have a very limited ability to appreciate the cosmic plan or the divine will. Neither science nor psychology, for instance, can even define  what ‘consciousness’ is! And the very best that materialistic science can offer us is the Big Bang and a meaningless universe that, miraculously, appeared ex nihilo in a lucky sequence of random occurrences. Theology, for its part, particularly in its ‘orthodox version’, has given us a volatile God, who plays favorites, and thinks nothing about condemning most of his human children to the everlasting flames of hell. How dark can the intellect get!

  And the third result of original sin, Augustine said, is that our bodies are subject to illness and death. He’s batting 1,000 on that one. Of a cumulative total of 111 billion humans who’ve ever lived on planet Earth, 104 billion have died, and things ain’t lookin’ so rosy for the rest of us. In fact, in comparison to many of the ‘lower lifeforms’ we humans have a very short shelf life. For example, turtles can live for 180 years, sea urchins for 200 years, the Greenland shark for 400 years and some varieties of ocean clams up to 500 years. Maybe, these guys have very rational, controlled orgasms.

• C. My Own Theory of Original Sin

  I believe that original sin is a tapestry woven of three strands, rather like a Celtic knot. Let me quickly enumerate them and then go into more detail on two of them. First is personal karma. If I were to butcher Wordsworth, I would say, “trailing clouds of karma do we come…” I went into detail on this in my first essay of the series. In brief, we are carrying the karma of our individual histories throughout all of our lifetimes. Second, we arrive into a world which is contaminated by the karma of all Earth life that existed before us, including the previous incarnations of all current lifeforms on the planet and how that past karma is affecting their current behavior. And, third, we are born into physical bodies that evolved from our non-human animal ancestors. At every stage of that 3.7-billion-year journey, our forebears were selfish and they frequently resorted to killing in order to gain access to resources – territory, food and mates. As illustrated in the Gombe Chimpanzee War, this sometimes involves blood-thirsty boisterously-celebrated genocide. So, we inhabit spacesuits that have billions of years of murderous behavior encoded genetically and epigenetically in our DNA.

  Before even self-awareness, freewill or sentience entered the evolutionary equation, pre-programmed instincts and predispositions enabled a wide variety of species to colonize and kill. Plant parasites, like mistletoe, suck the life out of other plants while contributing nothing to their ‘hosts’. Where I live, a non-native plant called, Scotch Broom, is conquering the open spaces, smothering native species in the process. In the 26 years I’ve lived in my forest home, I’ve actually watched the Scotch Broom march, mile by mile, along the dirt road, capturing all available space. Plants even turn carnivorous. The Venus Fly Trap, a colorful seductress, invites flies and insects into its open mouth only to snap it shut when a visitor arrives, and then slowly digest the guest.

  Higher up the chain, sharks eat all manners of fish. They even operate as a team herding shoals of fish into the shallow waters off the north coast of Australia, the better to assuage their hunger. When aquatic life became amphibious e.g., crocodiles, they learned to drag migrating wildebeest into the water, drown them and eat them. In turn, jaguars in South America, have been videotaped jumping into crocodile-infested waters, grabbing one, dragging it ashore and feasting on it. From dinosaurs to mammals to hominids, we find this same system of predator/prey. Whether it’s different species e.g., lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, jackals or dingoes, competing for the same resources e.g., gazelle, zebras…; or species for whom another species is the resource e.g., hawks and sparrows, our planet seems to be equal parts symbiosis and strangulation (plant life), cooperation and competition (animals) and creativity and killing (humans).

  Advanced as we are, we still carry the reptilian brain and the mammalian brain tucked resourcefully behind the very recently-acquired neocortex. Original Sin is still calling the shots. But it contains, within its deepest shadows, the Original Blessing which can only be midwifed by Christ consciousness.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — January 28, 2020:

• Introduction

  My great-grandmother wouldn’t have won any beauty contests. She was as wide as she was tall – almost spherical, like a beach ball with a basketball on top. She was also blind in one eye. I don’t know if this was the result of an accident or of a disease but there was a blue-gray patina over it.

  However, she was a visionary and a mystic – the first one I ever met. She would converse, aloud, with God and especially with Mary, the Virgin-Mother; and from early childhood, I got to listen in to these conversations.

  This month, God willing, I go to an ophthalmologist to remove cataracts that have been interfering with my own vision for several years. It feels synchronistic that the year 2020 may well be the year when I, once more, have 20/20 vision.

  But even more important than physical sight, I have a vision for America and for our world in 2020. Here it is.

• A. The Schizophrenic Soul

  I believe that each soul is a cosmic womb pregnant with the possibility of Christ Consciousness. Each soul arrives with all of the necessary resources to birth and raise Christ Consciousness; to be a mother of God. We are holographic fractals of Source; byte-sized bits of God; spirits in spacesuits, souls on safari on planet Earth.

  Our pre-conception contracts are predicated on Tikkun Olam (healing the world.) We volunteered to be here at this precise time in human history, in order to usher in a period of peace. The ‘second coming’ is not about the return of the physical Jesus but about the unveiling of Christ Consciousness in our times, the recognition of our Buddha nature.

  But, alas, incarnation involves three strikes against us. First, is our incarnational history – the many lives and many crimes we’ve committed. To butcher Wordsworth, “trailing clouds of karma do we come from the past which is our home.”

  The second strike is that we are born into faulty bodies with an intellect that is darkened, a will that is weakened and a corpus which is subject to illness and death. Trying to make sense of the world with only a three-pound lump of wetware between our ears puts us at a distinct disadvantage.

  The third strike is that we are born into a flawed world – flawed parents, flawed families and flawed cultures. The real meaning of Original Sin is that each of us has to marinate in the soul-soup of human history.

  So, life is a dance, a struggle, even a war between the light and the shadow; between the twin archetypes of Christ and Satan. All infants start out at the service-to-self end of the spectrum, loudly demanding food, warmth, affection, cleaning and reassuring voices dedicated only to them. They have to; otherwise, they wouldn’t survive. But, in the course of life, compassion and Christ Consciousness invite us to move our center of gravity towards the service-to-others’ end of the spectrum. Few manage to make it even to the halfway mark.

  Whether or not you believe that a bent-out-of-shape God was so undone by a simple act of disobedience from a pre-rational Adam & Eve, that he demanded a human sacrifice, and that Jesus had to die for our sins, it is surely true that Christ Consciousness is crucified inside each one of us because of our own sins – our misalignment with love; and that Christ Consciousness is crucified in our country and in our world, when the political narrative is about retaliation and war.

  Our sins are dragging our individual souls and the ethos of our planet up to the hill of Golgotha for another orgy of immolation.

• B. America in The Year 2020

  When we relate through judgment, refuse to forgive or become enraged, we are feeding the Satan in ourselves and in our world even as we project it onto others.

  There are two ways of viewing a movie in a theatre – one way is to climb into the projectionist’s booth and feed the celluloid roll, one frame at a time, through your fingers. The other way is to run it through a spool, shine a bright light through it and cast it onto a screen where it creates 30 feet by 20 feet images.

  As kids in Cork in the 1950’s, we would go to Saturday morning matinees at a big barn of a movie house grandiosely called ‘The Lido’ – with its white-washed concrete ‘screen’ and its hard, wooden benches. We’d first fill our pockets with stones and when things got particularly hairy for the hero, we’d shout advice and pelt the villain with our long-range missiles – totally convinced that we could influence the outcome.

  We’re still doing that today – still shooting our physical and verbal missiles at the illusions on the screen of our media-fabricated villains. Carl Jung wrote a lot about the notion of psychological projection. He taught that it is meant to be only the first part of a two-part technique, the second part of which is ‘retrojection.’ Like the in-house movie, we project our inner issues – which are too subconscious to enter our awareness – onto the screen afforded by others in order to enlarge them and create the illusions of time, motion and change. Having seen them, on the screen, in great conscious awareness, we should now retroject them, own them and work with them. But, of course, we don’t; instead we are utterly convinced that the problem is ‘out there.’

  And we engage in two kinds of projection. We project our hopes and aspirations – thus creating heroes; and we project our fears and angers – thus creating villains. And each side’s heroes are the other side’s villains. Some oligarchy sets up the screen; the mass media tell us who the heroes and villains are; and then we add our projected energy to give them life. Together, we outrageously amplify the rage and widen the chasm.

  The present state of our world and of our country is the result of mass projections and will only be healed by withdrawing our shadows and unveiling our Christ Conscious core. If we think that continued anger, hatred, judgment and schadenfreude are going to fix America, then we are utterly wasting this entire incarnation and contributing to a culture-wide karma that all of us will have to deal with in a future shared lifetime.

  The politicians, media and reigning oligarchy are continually pouring gasoline on our psyches. The question is, ‘why are our psyches so inflammable to begin with?’ I thought we were followers of Jesus?

  We are creating a national – even a global – tulpa. In Hinduism and in Tibetan Buddhism, a tulpa is a thought-form that takes on an existence and independence of its own. It is created and fed by conscious and unconscious attention until it becomes a monster dictating the mood and then the actions of its creators. It is fed, often, through negative emotions, particularly anger, fear, rage and unforgiveness. Our current political process is creating a tulpa which is gorging itself on our partisan prejudices. The tail is wagging the dog.

  Whatever happened to the pre-conception contract? Each one of us needs to realize that who we become over the next ten months – what we think, what we speak and what we do – will have a far bigger influence on the America of 2021 than the votes we cast in November of 2020. We are creating America now; the ballot box is just a symbol.

  When Jesus said, “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in their midst”, he really meant is, “where two or three are gathered together in Love, there is Christ Consciousness; and where two or three are gathered together in Anger, there is Chaos consciousness.”

• C. A Guided Meditation

  Here’s an exercise that may help you to take charge of the rudder of your life; to bring to full awareness the effect you want to have on the healing of our nation.

  Get yourself into a really relaxed space through slow, deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation. Then imagine the scene on Golgotha 2,000 years ago as Jesus is being crucified. You know that when you dream at night, you are creating all facets of the dream – location, costumes, plot, script – and you are playing all of the roles, though you identify only with the dream ego. A psychologically powerful way of interpreting any dream is to realize that each character in the dream is an aspect of yourself. Apply that understanding now to the crucifixion scene. All of the characters are facets of your personality. Jesus is; so are the good thief and the bad thief; the haughty, hypocritical high priest; the fickle mob; the bored soldiers; and the two Marys. But whom, in waking consciousness, in ‘real’ life, do you want to most closely imitate?

  Now shift the scene dramatically. Imagine you are having your life review at the time of your death, with the heavenly mentor who prepared you for this incarnation. Without any judgment on the mentor’s part, you are being debriefed: how well or poorly did the life just ended align with your intended mission? In particular, the mentor points out that the year 2020 seemed to be especially significant. As you review it, you express the wish that you’d really like to have another shot at living it. And your wish is granted. The clock is turned back; you are alive once more and 2020 is just beginning.

  You are watching another crucifixion scene but this time it is America and planet Earth that are being crucified. However, all of the same archetypes are involved: there is a compassionate, uncomplaining healer; a good thief asking for forgiveness and the promise of paradise; a bad thief foul-mouthedly cursing from the depths of his pain; a self-righteous high priest justifying his part in the execution; a fickle mob hoping for a display of magic; soldiers just doing their job and dividing up the spoils; and the two Marys – mother and beloved companion, whose love is far greater even than their sorrow.

  With whom do you wish to align your thoughts, words and deeds in this second chance at 2020? It’s going to have to be a day-by-day, moment-by-moment commitment, batting away the tendency to anger or fear, until love and compassion become your default position. It’s hard to live in that kind of awareness. So, do you want to honor the pre-conception contract – or just hold on to the cataracts?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — January 14, 2020:

• A. Humans Are the Problem

  Any discussion of the state of the planet is going to fall on a spectrum. At one end, are the uncaring military-industrial types who don’t seem to give a damn how their agenda and greed are ravishing Gaia – and, ‘incidentally’, impoverishing and killing millions of humans as ‘collateral damage’. And, at the other end, are those, whom I will call, ‘Nature Nazis’, who also don’t seem to give a damn about homo sapiens sapiens; and are quite happy to wipe us all out in order to liberate Pacha Mama from our destructive behavior. One gets the impression that these particular activists lie on their own spectrum. At one end are the kamikaze pilots who are willing to go down with the passengers in order to save the ship. And, at the other end, those who plan to get rid of all of us, so they themselves can survive in order to enjoy the benefits of exterminating us vermin and getting an “Attaboy!” from Mother Nature.

  In between the nature Nazis and the military-industrial demons lie the rest of us, mindlessly raiding mother’s fridge and never thinking to re-stock it by doing our own grocery shopping.

• B. Nature Is the Problem

  Somewhere in our discussion, we have to realize that we are part of nature. Life is not a binary equation with homo sapiens sapiens on this side and brute nature on the other. This realization has two consequences. Firstly, it makes no sense, nor does it have any practical, problem-solving value, to view ourselves as distinct from all other creatures. And, secondly, it means that nature itself must take some responsibility for who we humans are, and how we’re acting. Children who misbehave are always operating under two forces: first, personal pathology and, second, family (particularly parental) dynamics. So, there’s both enough blame to go around and enough intelligence to move forward.

  Let’s look, then, at nature’s part in this situation. Not everything nature creates makes sense; take mosquitoes or poison ivy for instance. Or realizing that dinosaurs were killing and eating little mammals long before Adam. Moreover, nature can sometimes be a moody teenager herself – from her day-long wind squalls to week-long hurricanes. At other times, she is positively perimenopausal as she oscillates between millennia-long ice ages and devastating hot flashes that cause hell-like seasonal wildfires. Sometimes she suffers from tummy upsets or heartburn and the results are earthquakes and volcanoes.

  Nature evolves, as we do through trial and error. Darwin called this, “Natural Selection” and “Survival of the Strongest.” So, we – mother and child – are growing each other up. She continues to learn how to be a mother, and we continue to learn how to be mindful, respectful, grateful children, even as we ride our bicycles out of the planetary neighborhood towards the stars.

• C. The Fractal Nature of the Cosmos

  From individual atoms to full galaxies, we are all holographic fractals – quarks of nature! We are a solar family; children of mother Earth, under the energizing gaze of father Sun, who is himself a member of a galactic tribe (the Milky Way). We are denizens of the garden of Eden, called, “the multiverse.”

• D. Conclusion

  All incarnations are voluntary assignments we’ve undertaken in order to grow in love and compassion for all of the other souls on safari. We are here for both Tikkun Olam (the healing of the world) and for personal, spiritual evolution. We invented time in order to gauge growth but, in the process, we forgot that we are timeless spirits on a quest to remember our eternal divine origins and nature.

  Thus, the original ‘nature’ is not the world nor even the cosmos that we see around us but the Word and the Kosmos that we re-discover within us.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — December 31, 2019: It is 4:44 AM and I know I have been dreaming furiously for some time. All kinds of philosophical, scientific, artistic, theological and mystical notions have been swirling about in my head. But they have been coming in elegantly complete sentences; almost as if I was being tutored by a most articulate teacher. Finally, I broke through into semi-wakefulness and wrestled with the idea of ignoring the messages and trying to go back to sleep. But I knew that I would be very annoyed with myself in the morning if I didn’t try to record them. So, I dragged myself out of bed, put on a very soft light, grabbed a pen and paper and started to write. I am back in bed by 5:22 AM. Here is what I produced in the interim. It is a very strong condemnation of how badly astray we have gone as a species.

We have captured an elegant gazelle, as it bounded like the wind through the savannah and reduced it to a bowl of soup. We stand, self-importantly, at the side of a dead elephant, one foot on his supine form, rifle mockingly pointed at his sad, silently staring eye, as we smile for the camera. Photo op completed, we allow the sun, the hyenas, the vultures and the insects to finish the work, until only the rotting flesh and quickly bleaching bones remain.

We have traded the golden sands, blue-green lagoons and vaulted cathedrals of the great underground sea-side caverns for the mayhem of gas-fumed, horn-honking, hurried and harried commuting in box cars that snake impatiently and loudly along the concrete rivers of our city streets.

Like flies meandering randomly across the greasy, cobweb-occluded windows of an unkempt kitchen, we are mere millimeters from a freedom, which is our birthright, but ultimately, we fall on our backs on the dusty window ledge, feet pointing pleadingly in the air, petitioning a God in whom we no longer believe for a liberation that we no longer expect.

We have solved the mathematics of the cosmos but reduced the symphony of the universe to mere technology – the technology of war mongering.

We have explained away awesome sunsets as the random activity of helium and hydrogen atoms; and reduced mother-love to the cunning biochemistry of the selfish gene.

We have found a priceless painting by Michelangelo, stripped off the paint and liquefied it, winding up, triumphantly, with a pot full of pigment and a blank canvas.

We have taken the Complete Works of Shakespeare and grandly pontificated that they merely consist of X number of words and Y number of white spaces.

We are deadbeat dads, financing our follies with money stolen from our own children; while we deliberately avoid the fear-filled, tear-brimming eyes of the children of the ‘enemy’.

We have pulled planks from the hull of the ship that carries us over the ocean of evolution, in order to make a fire that will cook food for the elite in the cabin, not realizing that the resultant hole is going to sink all  of us – the full-bellied first world-ers and the slack-bellied third world-ers alike.

The two-year-old, who met each day with awe, has become the 30-year-old who meets each day with angst, and, then, the 60-year-old who meets each day with cynicism.

We have squeezed the mystery out of the myths and crowed atheistically over the desiccated skeleton of a world without either meaning or hope.

Spirit’s sacred safari from Source has been interpreted as the accidental fabrication of the cosmos from the mindless meanderings of intergalactic winds.

Having murdered God, we are now in the process of committing global suicide. We who are  God have killed God and thus created a radical self-alienation.

We have replaced the dead deity with individual and global narcissism, unleashing again the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Only their names have changed. They are now called, Deconstructionism, which dismantles art in the service of scientism; Reductionism, which chops up life in order to produce death; Materialism, which mistakes the senses’ knowledge for the soul’s wisdom; and Consumerism, which replaces cooperation among species with competition for fast-failing resources.

If we be the image of God, he be a demon god.

However, there is a solution. When faced with the mystery, we must resist the temptation to analyze it or to interpret it. Instead we must stand silently in its presence; humbly worship it and thus become it.

Because the mystery is  the message.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — December 18, 2019:

Forewarning: This blog will possibly upset you; perhaps even infuriate you. That is not my purpose. I’m hoping that it will stir up some deep thinking about, firstly, the importance of myth – properly understood as a deep truth in story form – and, secondly, how we have both advanced and regressed the Jesus myth in the 2,000 years since the original event in Bethlehem.

So, here’s the modern American version.

• A. Opening Scene

  A Black-clad SWAT team with anti-glare visors, in bullet-proof armor, bearing automatic weapons and a battering ram, broke down the rusty, rotting door of the stable, shouting, “Hands up, everybody! Get on your knees! This is the FBI.” Their leader, Herod, made a beeline for the child and yanked him out of the manger, as four burly special agents – two apiece – handcuffed Joseph and Mary. They were half-marched, half-dragged out into the winter night where a caravan of black vans with blue lights flashing awaited the criminals.

• B. No Shows

  A cursory glance at the scene of the crime would have showed a significant lack of either sheep or shepherds. The latter had long since disappeared because sheep were now raised in factory farms, where they were quickly separated from their lambs and stuffed full of growth hormones and sawdust and denied any sight of green pastures or blue skies.

  The angels also failed to put in an appearance because the US military had strict orders to shoot down any UFO’s that invaded US airspace. It had been years since any angels had made it to the birth of a human baby.

  And the Magi – the wise men from the East – had been apprehended at the border and found to be in violation of NAFTA and, also, of trafficking in embargoed goods – gold, frankincense and myrrh.

• C. Joseph

  Under California Code 261.5 PC, Joseph, a middle-aged man was found guilty of statutory rape, having had sex with a 15-year-old girl. His protests that it was consensual drew an extended sentence from the presiding judge, who would not listen to the argument that such an arrangement was culturally sanctioned, even blessed. On hearing of the situation, the Carpenters’ Union nullified his license and confiscated his retirement monies. The FBI had broken into Joseph’s computer and found that he was in cahoots with Santa Claus, and was an accessory, before and after the fact, to Santa’s frequent “breaking and entering” escapades.

• D. Mary

  Mary was accused of child endangerment on several counts. Firstly, failing to have her child inoculated according to the schedule of the CDC, which mandated vaccines beginning on the day of birth. Secondly, she had dumped her neo-nate in a flea-infested animal manger which exposed him to all kinds of possible infections. And, thirdly, she had wrapped him in swaddling clothes which research had shown could lead to hip dysplasia and SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome.)

  She was packed off to Juvenile Hall where she was tested for drug use. Under the careful eyes of matronly social workers and bespectacled psychologists, she was subjected to a battery of tests, and forced to attend daily individual and group therapy sessions. The final verdict was Bipolar II.

• E. Jesus

  Jesus was rushed off to Child Protective Services where he was bottle-fed the best artificial formula milk that Big Pharma could sell, brought up to speed on his vaccines and, then, shipped around to a series of foster homes who made money as he cried himself to sleep in a warehouse filled with “rescued kids.” As a substitute for the “Agony in the Garden”, he now experienced, daily, the “Agony in the Nursery.”

  The child Jesus grew up to be a troubled teenager, never finished high school nor held a job. The really bad news is that God realized Jesus could no longer be the intended redeemer. So, though he was lucky to avoid crucifixion, it meant that he didn’t die for our sins. The upshot? We’re still locked out of the Garden of Eden.

  Bummer dude!

• Conclusion

  But America rested, safe in the conviction that crimes had been discovered, the guilty punished, and the innocent child saved and lovingly prepared for life in the 21st. century.

  Now isn’t that a much more inspiring version of the Christmas story?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — December 4, 2019:

• Chapter One – Billy Bubble

  The three-year-old boy only enjoyed being bathed when he could bring his boats and ships and rubber duck into the bath. Sometimes his mother put a liquid in the water that created mountains of bubbles, and then he would clap his hands ecstatically and attempt to grab one. Occasionally, his daddy was the one to bathe him and then he would hear stories about dinosaurs and forests, airplanes and whales, stars and galaxies.

  Once, his daddy was telling him the story of the Big Bang; how an itzy-bitzy point grew to be this universe of ours, which is even bigger than a whole country. The little boy stared wide-eyed into the space inside his mind. But he wasn’t the only one whose imagination was set aflame by that story. He had been playing with a bar of soap and had managed to create quite a lot of bubbles, and one of those bubbles – let’s call him, Billy – was also enthralled by the cosmic tale. As the little boy followed his own thoughts, Billy decided on a bold plan. It was a big plan; in fact, it was a very big plan. He decided, then and there, that he wanted to become a universe! So, he held his breath and then blew it out with such force that he became several times larger than he had been. Success breeds success. So, he sucked in his breath again, held it for a few moments and then blew it out. He kept blowing until he was positively blue in the face and his lungs so empty that they had crinkled themselves like squished tinfoil. By now he was 20 times bigger than before. He was tired from all this exertion so he took a little rest. While he was resting he did a quick calculation and figured out he’d be a real universe by his seventh birthday. This felt good, so he set to his task once more.

  By now he could feel himself floating up out of the water. His skin glistened with all of the colors of the rainbow, and he marveled at his spherical perfection. He could see the face of the little boy looking at him with admiration. This gave him extra motivation. He huffed and he puffed and suddenly there was a loud POP! It deafened him some, but the boy squealed in delight. Billy felt numb; worse still he felt gone. He felt that he no longer felt at all. It was the weirdest sensation. He had once heard the boy’s father ask teasingly, “Where does the light go when you blow out the candle?”  Now he felt himself asking, “Where does a bubble go when its surface tension snaps?”  He didn’t know. There wasn’t even a him to not know. There was nothing left to not know. What else could nothing do except not know?

• Chapter Two – Bobby Bubble

  Billy’s little brother, Bobby, had also heard the story of the Big Bang; and he had heard Billy disappear with a big bang all of his own. Bobby was sad for Billy, and he determined to keep his memory alive by fulfilling Billy’s dream. He knew, however, that Billy’s plan needed to be modified. He had a brainwave. He’d noticed that occasionally two bubbles would bump into each other. Mostly, they just linked arms but every so often they managed to merge; and then you instantly had a twice-as-big bubble without any huffing and puffing or strenuous breathing exercises. What if the entire bath of bubbles could be persuaded to join forces? He set to his task with all the eloquence and diplomacy at his command. Some bubbles were ecstatic, some dubious and a few downright hostile. He decided to begin, anyway, with the enthusiasts. Somebody pointed out that the bathroom itself would inhibit their plan because it would prove far too small for their ambitious merger. Bobby agreed. So, they determined to initially cluster in smaller groups, float out through the window of the bathroom and then mega-merge in the open air. And that is precisely what they did. Tennis-ball-sized clusters and even a few basketball-sized ones made it through the window. Merging on the outside proved a little trickier because it was quite windy out there. But eventually they all managed to dock successfully and, finally, a huge bubble, the size of a hot-air balloon, was floating over the boy’s house. “Hurrah!” shouted the mega bubble, with not a trace of the individual bubble voices left. “Hurrah, I am well on my way to becoming a universe. The trick was to think bigger than Billy and even Bobby!”

  Inside the bathroom the other bubbles saw and heard. The dubious ones wondered if there still wasn’t time to join the evolution. Singly and in clusters they left the bathroom and all were welcomed.

  The hostile bubbles said, “Humph! Let’s see what becomes of their fine  adventure.” But they never found out because the boy’s mother pulled the plug on the bath and they all got sucked down the drain – a black hole in space.

  The little boy’s ten-year-old cousin was visiting and had taken his bow and arrow along for the ride. As they stepped out of the car his daddy said, “Oh, my gosh, will you look at the size of that bubble!” Before anybody could stop him the ten-year-old fitted an arrow to his bow, stretched it taut and released it with a “twang!” “Bobby” felt numb; worse still he felt gone. He felt that he no longer felt at all. It was the weirdest sensation.

• Chapter Three – Benny Bubble

  The youngest of the family was Benny. He had never actually known his brothers Billy and Bobby, but he had heard so much about them. In bubble lore they had achieved semi-divine stature. Benny had a greater plan than either of his brothers. He didn’t just want to preserve their memory or lessen his parents’ grief; he wanted to set all bubbles free. One day he floated through the bathroom window, all on his own, and came to rest under a bodhi tree. He was determined not to end his vigil until he had become enlightened. Day after day he sat in compassionate meditation. The winds blew but he clung to his spot beneath the tree. Someone closed the bathroom window, which meant that he could not go back; but still he remained steadfast.

  And then he got it! Billy’s handicap was that his individual  surface tension was his identity. He was a surface-tension-encapsulated ego. As the ego inflated it strained his identity to the breaking point. When it snapped, there was no ego left but no identity either. Bobby’s handicap was that the group’s  surface tension was its identity. It was a surface-tension-encapsulated culture. When this boundary was pierced the culture collapsed and with it all sense of identity. Benny realized that the whole problem lay in identity. And he got it that any identity short of Ineffable Source is a time bomb waiting to explode. Benny was the Source experiencing itself as Benny. And Benny was able to experience as the Source. Source had also experienced Itself as Billy; but Billy had been unable to experience as Source. So, Billy had an expiration date. Source had experienced Itself as mega-Bobby but mega-Bobby had been unable to experience as Source. So, mega-Bobby had a shelf life.

  Benny got it. “I don’t have to do anything. I don’t need to huff and to puff. I don’t need to merge. All I need to do is to let go of the surface tension of separation and Bingo! I already AM the cosmos.

  The little boy now takes his bath in the bathroom in a small town in a large country on a tiny planet in a medium-sized galaxy in a universe that is called, “Benny the Buddha Bubble.”

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — November 19, 2019:  When I was a child growing up in Ireland in the 40’s and 50’s, there was a wonderful Catholic custom on November 2nd each year – the feast of All Souls. Each time you visited a church and offered an “Our Father”, “Hail Mary” and “Glory be to the Father” for the pope’s intentions, you gained a plenary indulgence which you could apply to spring a soul out of purgatory and send on its way to heaven. You could repeat this as often as you wished as long as you left the church for a few moments between iterations. After school, you’d find hordes of compassionate kids running in and out of the church; the sky over the building would be thick with escaping souls, dancing their merry way heavenwards.

My grandfather, Daddy Jim, told me of one such occasion in his own life. He was a plater by trade, making shovels and spades and ‘sleáns’ (instruments for cutting turf/peat out of the bogs) in a dark, dismal foundry over white hot flames accompanied by the metronomic thud of a great big mechanical hammer. The place was called “Monard Mills” and was located a few miles from Blarney where he grew up.

On one All Souls’ evening, sometime in the 1920’s, after he had finished work, he walked to the church in Blarney to liberate some suffering souls. In those days there was no electricity in rural Ireland, so the church was lit by a few candles. Most of the parishioners, and certainly all of the children, had long since gone home, so only a few stragglers remained – perhaps workers like himself.

He completed his first and second rounds of prayers, but during the third trip inside, he fell fast asleep. Sometime later the sacristan came to close up for the night. He looked around the darkened church and convinced himself that it was empty. So, he blew out the candles, locked the doors and left for the night.

On the stroke of midnight, Daddy Jim woke up suddenly and sat upright. There were two candles lit on the altar and an old priest was coming out of the sacristy vested for mass – carrying the chalice, purificator, paten, host and pall. He looked into the body of the church and called out, “Is there anybody here who can answer my mass?” There was something very strange about the old priest’s appearance but Daddy Jim raised his hand and said, “I will, father.” So, he rose from his seat, walked up the aisle, through the altar rails and knelt on the bottom step. With his face to the altar and his back to Daddy Jim, the old priest began, “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” “Amen” responded my grandfather. “Dominus vobiscum” continued the priest; “Et cum spiritu tuo” replied my grandfather. “Introibo ad altare Dei” intoned the priest and Daddy Jim replied, “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.”

The mass continued right through the offertory, consecration and communion until the “Ite, Missa est” and the final response, “Deo gratias” brought it to a conclusion.

Then a very strange thing happened. The old priest asked, “What is your name, my son?” and Daddy Jim answered, “My name is James Murphy, father.” The old priest put a hand on his head and said, “I was a priest in this parish over 100 years ago; and on one occasion, I was given a stipend to say a mass for a parishioner’s intentions. But I forgot to say the mass and I died some months later. Since then, on every November 2nd, I’ve come back here to say that mass but, as you know, Canon Law forbids a priest from offering mass without a congregation of at least one other person. Only on a handful of times was there anybody in the church and on those occasions, they fled in terror when they saw me. You, James Murphy, have had the courage and the compassion to answer my mass, thus setting my soul free from purgatory. And so, I promise you that when it is your time to die, I will be there to assist you.

Daddy Jim died in our home on December 4th 1956 – and I have no doubt that the old priest was there to escort him through the veil.

On Dia de Los Muertos, in the Hispanic community and in cultures throughout the world, there are ceremonies to honor the dead. Some peoples believe that souls only live on as long they are held in the memory of the living. The belief is that when there is nobody still alive who remembers them, the forgotten souls dissolve into non-being. I, however, have a different theory and here it is.

There is a necklace created by memory which links all of the players who’ve ever incarnated throughout human history. There is a river of life that carries us all along to the ocean which is the heart of God. Bobbing about on the current are all 111 billion humans who’ve ever incarnated on this blue-green pearl. Here’s how it works: I remember Daddy Jim. I was 10 years old when he died. He was born in 1882, and was 62 years old when I was born. Naturally, he remembered his own grandfather who was born in 1818. And that man remembered his grandfather who was born around 1754, who remembered his grandfather who was born around 1690, who remembered his grandfather who was born around 1626, who remembered his grandfather who was born around 1562, who remembered his grandfather who was born around 1498… who remembered his grandfather – Enosh – who remembered his grandparents – Adam and Eve, who were ‘born’ in 4001 BCE, if you accept the Bible’s dates as accurate!

So, there is nobody who is not held lovingly in that memory-stream of life. Hence, in an argument with the Sadducees, who did not believe in life after death, Jesus reminded them that, at the burning bush, God revealed himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He concluded by saying, “God is not the God of the dead; he is the God of the living.” So, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob live on, though they had ‘died’ hundreds of years before the time of Moses.

There are no dead people; there are simply souls on both sides of the diaphanous veil that creates a sensory separation between the mystical and the mundane, between Nirvana and Samsara, between the Bardo and Incarnation.

I remember you, Daddy Jim, can you see me?

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — November 5, 2019:  I remember well the day I fell in love with geometry. I was 10 or 11 years old and had recently been exposed to it in school. At first it was merely another subject, like geography or English Literature, and it didn’t seem any more useful than either of those. It was just another way of disciplining kids in educational institutes while their parents worked. Grandparents wondered how on Earth it would help us make a living in the real world of roads and buses, farming and food production. I had no answer until that day in the backyard with my little five-year-old sister, Eithne. We were playing under the apple tree when she asked, “Seán, how tall is the apple tree?” I said, “Let’s measure it!” Now our mother, Peig, was a seamstress, so there were lots of six-feet-long cloth tape measures in the drawers of her Singer Sewing Machine. Eithne ran and fetched one and we began climbing the tree; but the top branches were very thin and weak. We could neither stand on them nor persuade the end of the tape measure to stay put as we attempted to throw it atop the highest twig. It was frustrating and not a little dangerous.

And that was when I got the brainwave! I said, “Let’s climb down, I’ve got a better idea.” I ran into the house and returned with my camán (hurley), a curved ash instrument used in an ancient Irish game called, Iománaíocht, that dates back to 1287 BC. I measured the camán; it was 36 inches tall. I stood it upright beside the apple tree and asked Eithne to hold it firmly in a vertical position. Then I measured its shadow; this was 48 inches long. I told Eithne, “the relationship between my hurley and its shadow is 36 to 48; that’s the same as 3 to 4; so, it’s going to be the exact same relationship between the apple tree and its shadow. So now all we’ve got to do is measure the length of the tree’s shadow!” We did. It was 24 feet long. “Now,” I pronounced with Pythagorean certainty, “that means that the tree is 18 feet tall.” She was almost as thrilled as I. We looked around the backyard; over near the fence was tip of the shadow of the chimneystack on the top of our two-storey house. My heart leaped for joy. “Here” I said to Eithne “hold the tape at the foot of the wall of our house.” And we marked off our measurements with our little six-feet-long cloth tape measure. The shadow of the house, complete with chimneystack, was 32 feet long; which meant that the house plus stack was 24 feet high.

By now I was in a mystical state. I said to Eithne, “I know what we’ll do, let’s go up to Spillane’s field (the local farmer) and measure the tallest tree there! We ran through the house, out the front gate, across St. Joseph’s Park and up the Bóthar Buí (the Yellow Road) ‘till we reached the first of Spillane’s fields. We climbed over the fence and there, in a corner, standing alone in all its glory was a magnificent sycamore tree. Eithne held the tape to the gnarled base, and we measured off its shadow. It was 96 feet long, which told us that the great tree was 72 feet high.

Almost as high as I myself was in that moment.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — October 15, 2019: [Note: This Event Happened to Me on March 10, 2009]  I haven’t seen such a sight since my childhood days in Ireland: a young mother bathing her baby out-of-doors. It stopped me in my tracks and I was flooded with memories, some my own and some far more ancient than mine. I wondered if I should just pass by, but I couldn’t. I was utterly fascinated. The mother was in her teens but with the kind of face that morphs continually; now with the aspect of an innocent child; now with the aspect of vibrant teenager; then with the aspect of a sedate matron; and, finally, with the aspect of a wise old woman. A shock of thick, red tresses tumbled down her back, beyond her waist. She was kneeling beside a stone tub, in which she was carefully and ever-so-gently washing her newborn boy-child. He had the mesmerizingly blue eyes of his mother but with a mop of curly black hair.

The mother’s own locks were floating in the water and these were the washcloths with which she bathed her babe; silky fibers that caressed his pink body and brought a beguiling smile to his ruby-red lips.

I said, “Bail ó Dhia ar an naíonán”  (the blessing of God on your infant.) She turned her sky-blue eyes on me and replied, “An bhail chéanna ort”  (the same blessing be upon yourself.) In an instant I knew whence she was; she was a woman of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and her infant was a faery child. Immediately, I understood what had really happened fifteen minutes before.

Kayla, my dog, and I had been climbing down the steep hillside, following a rocky ravine which was channeling the excess water from the rains of the last few weeks. We had come to a particularly tricky place, very steep and very rocky. I had thought long and hard about proceeding. It would be a difficult and dangerous route ahead, but the alternative was to climb back up and undo the work of the last hour. I opted to try my luck. I was hampered by the fact that while I had my sturdy walking stick in my right hand, my left hand was dedicated to carrying a deer skull with huge antlers, which I had found on the hillside about twenty minutes before. I wasn’t willing to abandon it.

At this point, the two slopes of the opposing hillsides had vectored into a V-shape, through which the water was cascading with quite some force. Holding my stick and the antlers, I used my elbows, one against each wall, to lower myself into the crevice. When I set my feet on the bottom, it was so narrow that one foot got jammed. I had a fleeting vision of being found next year – a human skeleton holding a big-antlered deer skull and a walking staff. I managed to wrestle my foot free. The water was mid-thigh and the pool about fifteen feet long. I half-waded, half-elbowed my way to the end. There it dropped off into a six-feet-high waterfall. As I was trying to figure out a way down, I heard Kayla crying.

When I looked back, I saw that she was spread-eagled, two legs on each rock face, sliding and scraping and getting no purchase. She was freaking out, unable to either proceed or reverse. I tried to encourage her to come to me, but her nails just scored the rock and she continued to slide, sometimes slipping under the water. So, I set aside the skull and the stick and waded back into the pool. I grabbed hold of her collar and pulled her after me; all the way to the end. Then we found a way down the waterfall – but only to be met with a surprise. The next level contained exactly the same setup, except now the water was waist deep. Having retrieved the stick and the skull I elbow-waded my way to the end of the second pool only to discover that, once more, Kayla was stranded and crying pitifully. Again, I laid aside my baggage and went back to rescue her. She resisted and I had to really pull hard to get her moving. We did it. Now the way forward was relatively simple, but that was when she grew really fearful. It was then, having rounded a corner, that I saw the mother and child. Only now did I understand that most of Kayla’s fear was that she had detected, long before I had, that we were about to jump dimensions, to step through the veil into a “Caol Áit.”

The bathtub, in which the faery mother was bathing her child, was another rock pool set in the crevice of the hillsides. I knew that she was as ancient as the mountain itself. She reached out her hand and stroked Kayla, who had been cowering by my side. It worked. Kayla started to wag her tail, then she licked the woman’s hand and, finally, began to lick the baby’s face. The baby, the mother and myself, all broke into huge grins.

She only said one more thing to me, before she vanished, “treat this mountain as lovingly as you’ve seen me wash my infant.”  It wasn’t only a message for me, it was a message through  me.

Then, like a cloud that changes contours in the sky, finally teasing itself asunder and disappearing, mother and child began to shape-shift until they completely dissolved. The Portal closed. Kayla and I were alone once more.

I sat by the pool for a long time trying to emblazon their features on my mind’s eye, and their message on my soul.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — October 2, 2019:  When angels visit Earth and tire of dancing on the head of a pin to amuse scholastic theologians, how many of them, do you think, can clamber aboard a leaf and row themselves down Pena Creek, onto Dry Creek, thence to the Russian River and onwards to the Pacific Ocean? I’d love to get invited along sometime.

A cluster of leaves is making its way slowly down the creek, calling out to other clusters which are clinging tightly to the rocks, “Come with us; let us see the world!”  Mostly, they are met with dull stares, but, occasionally, a retort will ring out, “You silly kids; how do you know what lies ahead? How do you know that you won’t all be destroyed? Cop yourselves on; come ashore.”

A young leaf, nestled into his mother, is watching curiously yet cautiously. Something inside him longs for the adventure. His mother senses this and darts him a warning look. The floating cluster veers towards him and one of them reaches out a hand to the young one; he instinctively grasps it and for the moment he is being tugged apart – his terrified mother trying to pull him back and his laughing friends pulling him from her clutches. They win. With a loud wail she surrenders him and they whirl away downstream. But his heart is not fully in it; he keeps looking back at the ever-diminishing figure of his mother. Now his convoy is approaching another landlubber cluster. Again, the same joyful invitation and again the same sullen looks and dire predictions. “Come away oh leafy child to the water and the wild!” they sing.

“How can you be sure you will ever reach the ocean!”  is the retort. “We cannot. But of this we are sure, we will see a lot more of life than you will. Life is not about reaching a destination, nor yet of hunkering down awaiting salvation. Life is a great journey in which dreams of destinations are merely the seductress enticing us to let go of our fears, for eye has not seen, nor ear heard nor hath it entered into the human heart, what God has prepared for those who dance with Her.”

Once more they veered towards the bank, stretching out hands to invite others to join them. This time the “little leaf” grasped a landlubber and, disengaging himself from the cluster, hauled himself ashore. He had lost his mother but at least now he was safe. The little convoy continued downstream and then an unexpected thing happened. A strong wind out of nowhere rushed upstream skating over the surface of the water. Initially it stopped the convoy in its tracks and then forced it backwards. The convoy passed the “little leaf” in his newly-adopted home, and the cynics announced with glee, “So much for the great adventure!”  Backwards they went, even passing the distraught mother. She called out to them, “What have you done with my son?”  They told her where he was, which was some consolation, but they may as well have told her he was safe on the moon.

But the cluster never lost heart. For truly it was more important to them that they were moving than where they might be headed. Soon the wind tired of its trick, for though it could quite easily sweep back the surface skin of the water, it soon realized it was no match for the current, which during all of this time was relentlessly flowing downstream.

Soon the backward movement stopped. For a moment the cluster was absolutely still and then, ever so slowly, it once more began its seaward journey. They set up a loud battle cry of victory and the landlubbers gawked in awe as they again approached. When she saw them coming, the mother leaf pleaded, “Please take me this time; I want to find my son.”   They veered towards her and she swam out to meet them in order to shorten the time. She was amazed at how easily it came to her. She scanned the riverbank for signs of her son, and soon he hove into view. A shout went up from the landlubbing leaves, “Here comes that crazy cluster again!”  It almost drowned out the sound of his mother’s voice, but not quite. “Over here, son; over here!”  Once more the cluster veered towards the bank, once more mother and son held hands, but this time it was the mother who pulled hardest, and now she and her son were part of the journey-cluster, for a dream had awakened in her own soul. She had no idea how long the journey would last or where it would take them. She only knew that she was feeling better than she ever had, since the days of her bud-hood. What begins in bud-hood is meant to lead to Buddha-hood, and anything or anyone who does not encourage you into that journey is far too small for you.

She cried; she hugged her son; then she threw back her head and laughed until the echo came back. It is the ancient response of the hills of the planet to the rivers of the planet. It is a cry of “bon voyage!”

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — September 18, 2019:  Today, Pena Creek is a living necklace whose diamonds are pools of never-repeated shapes. Steelhead trout, crawfish, salamanders and frogs play there. In February, weary but determined salmon laboriously make their way upstream keeping their promises to visit their ancestral homes.

During the rains, Pena takes on a totally different persona; it becomes a raging torrent effortlessly rolling huge boulders along and bearing great trees aloft in an urgent journey to the ocean. When it has tired of this game, it settles into a happy gurgling stream, but the telltale marks of its winter face can be seen for months. There are logjams: trunks and severed limbs hastily stitched together like the lair of a careless dinosaur. The trees that form a guard of honor along both banks can’t resist dipping their pointed twigs into the torrent to spear passing leaves and tufts of grass, and now they look like skewers of vegetables on a B-B-Q.

Today, I came across a most exotic piece of evidence. I waded upstream from pool to pool. Sometimes the water just reached mid calf, sometimes it was chest high. Then I noticed a bleached pig skull on a branch six feet above the water. Obviously, this, too, had been swept downstream during the rains only to be expertly trapped by a branch. However, the search and rescue mission did not end there. Left to its own devices, and gravity, it would soon have fallen back into the river, were it not for the fact that a spider had fastened it to the tree trunk with great swathes of fine silk. She did as fine a job as the Lilliputians of old when they trussed up the unfortunate Gulliver. Here was the skull tightly moored and sitting bolt upright.

And then, the pièce de résistance, a bird had built a nest inside it – a small, perfect, semi-spherical home whose interior was soft and downy. Some stray pieces of the building material were sticking out through the vacant eye sockets. It took my breath away. If I had wanted a simple, elegant lesson in recycling, here it was. If I had needed further proof of nature’s symbiotic agreements, I had it literally before my eyes.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — September 3, 2019:  For a few years in the 1970’s, I was the headmaster of Kipchimchim Harambee Secondary School at the western end of the great Rift Valley of Kenya. I also taught math, physics and Scripture. At one stage we were studying Luke’s gospel and we came upon the story of the boy Jesus being ‘lost’ in the Jerusalem temple. Chastened by an upset mother, we are told that he returned to Nazareth with his parents and was obedient to them. Then Luke adds, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”  In an earlier story, the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple some 12 years before, we read, again in Luke, “And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.”

Theses phrases led to a very interesting discussion. The students had no problem accepting that Jesus might have grown in age or size or physical strength but baulked at the idea that he progressed in wisdom or grace. After all, wasn’t he divine? Wasn’t he God-incarnate? Wasn’t he God’s only son? Ipso facto, he must have been omniscient and, thus, wouldn’t have needed to grow in wisdom or in grace. So, I teased them and asked, “Do you think Jesus could speak Kipsigis  (the local language)  or Japanese or Portuguese? Did he know the height of Kilimanjaro?  (which lies on the Kenya/Tanzania border)? Could he solve a quadratic equation? Or recite Boyle’s law?”

Jesus as a real, incarnated human, was not omniscient. Moreover, he sometimes got things wrong e.g., in Matthew chapter 15, when he, at first, refused to heal the Canaanite woman’s seriously-ill daughter, saying dismissively, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel…It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  As well as using mixed metaphors, it was an extraordinarily-insulting and narrow-minded retort to a suffering mother. So, God whacked him upside the head and he finally acknowledged that he found her faith to be amazing.

In another encounter, John 4:22, in a very judgmental encounter with a ‘sinful’ Samaritan woman at a well, he pompously says, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.”  He was still learning and still somewhat stuck in cultural and religious prejudices. He was fallible; and sometimes he was fearful; otherwise he couldn’t have been an exemplar for us. He wasn’t just God-pretending-to-be-human. When he cried out on the cross, “My God, my God why have you abandoned me?!”  he wasn’t just quoting Psalm 22; he was really in distress. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before, he had the mother of all panic attacks; fear so intense that he literally sweated blood.

With my Kipchimchim students, I tried to illustrate visually what Jesus’ wisdom and grace looked like. I took a balloon and blew into it. I then asked, “Is there any space in this balloon that doesn’t have air in it?”  They correctly answered, “No.”  I blew some more, increasing its volume and repeated my question. Once again, the answer was, “No!”  A third time I inflated the balloon and asked once more. They averred that there was no empty space in it. Then I asked, “Is the balloon the same size as it was when I had first blown into it?”  They shouted, “No, it is much bigger now.”  I told them, “That is what it was like for Jesus to grow in wisdom and grace. At no stage of his life was there a discrepancy between his potential and his actualizing of it. There was no ‘empty space’ in him; no gap between what, on the one hand, God and life was teaching him and, on the other hand, his instant willingness to embrace it.”

That’s what perfection (telos) really means; to be radically committed to the mission for which one has volunteered and incarnated. Perfection is not about a stainless-steel sinlessness; it isn’t about not making mistakes; it is about the radical devotion to one’s life purpose. It is the acorn hell-bent (pardon the phrase!) on becoming an oak tree.

Part of Jesus’ growth was to, initially, buy into the mythology of Moses and the 613 precepts of Torah but to, eventually, reinterpret the meaning of these laws. In his own words, he came not abolish the Law but to bring it to fulfillment. But look at what ‘fulfillment’ meant to him. Again, and again, almost like a mantra, he would proclaim, “You have heard that it was said to the people of old…but I say to you…”  Then he would go on to take issue with some of the most important precepts e.g., an eye for an eye, the uneven field of divorce, the Sabbath rest, the death penalty for adultery. In conclusion, he would say that the Law was made to serve humans not the other way around.

You could say that Jesus was to Moses as Einstein was to Newton.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — August 20, 2019:

• A. Introduction

  There is an important difference between free will – the ability to do as I please – and freedom – the ability to do as pleases God. Free will is a faculty that can be used for good or bad, for building or destroying. Freedom, on the other hand, is always good because it is the essence of the soul and the object of enlightenment. Freedom does not mean that we’re just performing to satisfy the demands of a distant deity but, rather, to bring ourselves into perfect alignment with our own inner divinity.  It’s not about being obedient, it’s about being whole.

  Incarnation, then, is how we test the soul’s ability to experience freedom, even within the constraints of the spacesuit. Neither enlightenment nor freedom, however, are toggle switches – either on or off – but, rather, slider switches that can adjust the degree of luminosity. Not all enlightened beings are equally advanced and not all freedoms are identical.

• B. The Debate

  Materialistic scientists would have us believe that free will is an illusion; that consciousness does not exist; and that our ‘apparent choices’ are simply the dictates of a ‘selfish gene’ using neurons and molecules to advance its agenda. Personally, I find this to be a pathetic contention. Quantum Mechanics tells us that atoms are 99.9999999% empty space. So, if we were to dump the empty space out of each atom in each molecule in each neuron of each brain of each human being who has ever lived since the advent of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (approximately 111 billion people), the total amount of actual matter harvested would be less than a single grain of sea sand. I choose to not believe that this one grain of sand is responsible for the Collected Works of Shakespeare, the art of Leonardo da Vinci, Relativity Theory or even my choice of breakfast cereal this morning.

  Confusing matter with free will is like confusing a hammer with the carpenter. To say free will does not exist is to claim that you had no choice in saying, “free will does not exist.”  You are then averring that it was the robot-you that made the claim. So, why would you believe yourself or trust your own pronouncement, oh robot? To quote Neils Bohr, one of the originator-geniuses of Quantum Mechanics, “The meaning of life is this, that it has no meaning to say, life has no meaning!”

  Here are some of the rational consequences of the denial of free will: there can be

  – no guilt for committing a crime

  – no blame for causing injury to another

  – no police force, court system or justice

  – no credit for achievement – academic, athletic or artistic

  – no ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’

  – no trust, fidelity, responsibility

  – no virtue or vice

  – no meaning

  In other words, no civilization.

  Why would you want to operate from a belief system that creates meaninglessness, depression and hopelessness when you can, instead, operate from a belief system that creates meaning, serenity and trust? By their fruits you shall know them. If, as I believe, we co-create our own reality – since the only things we can perceive are our perceptions – then a reality of which we are hopeless, depressed co-creators is going to, itself, be damn hopeless and depressing! If you’re happy to be hopeless, please don’t come to my  party.

• C. Instinct and Learning

  There’s a tradeoff between instinct and learning. Most critters start off with far more instinctual abilities than humans have; but humans have a much greater capacity to learn. So, if you graph performance, the critters are way ahead from birth and into early childhood but, thereafter, the human graph overtakes them. Hence, most critters hit the ground running – foals are up and frisking around the meadow within an hour of birth; cheetah cubs learn to hunt and are self-employed by age one; and little birds fly the nest within weeks.

  Eventually, we catch up and surpass them, though not in all areas – we’ll never learn to fly, run as fast as a cheetah, see better than a hawk, hear better than a bat or smell better than a dog (unless we shower regularly!)

  Part of the reason is that humans finish their embryology outside the womb. Over time, our brains have grown so big that, if we went full term ‘in utero’, we could never traverse the birth canal. So, we come with very few instincts intact: the ability to blink and burp and breathe – to name a few.

• D. The Evolution of Free Will

  Free will lies on a spectrum that runs from pre-programmed ‘robots’ to ‘if I can think it, I’m free to do it.’ There is some form of intelligence all through the system, yet there can also be stagnation or even regression at any stage. In evolutionary time, including the future, life goes through these stages: physical, biological, emotional, rational, soul-full, Spirit-identified and non-dual union-with-Source. So, we’ve seen reptiles whose response to stimuli is fight or flight; then mammals who added emotions to the mix; and humans who brought the neo-cortex with its ability to think abstractly and invent time.

  Each of these stages improves parenting and the education of the next generation e.g., unlike reptiles, who simply lay eggs and then leave them to their fate, mammals suckle and raise their young; and when it comes to human mammals,  even the dads get into the act. And, perhaps, most importantly for the present discussion, each new stage increases the range of possible responses and, hence, the degree of free will and freedom.

  Let’s walk more slowly through this journey. At the pre-programmed, ‘robotic’ level, are inorganic forms e.g., mountains which respond very predictably to sun, wind, rain, snow etc. They don’t have the fight or flight instinct, don’t have emotions or parenting skills. Two mountains don’t fall in love, get married and give birth to a family of hillocks.

  Plants, too, respond to environmental stimuli like sun, wind, rain, soil but they add a degree of mobility e.g., they can swivel and sway to face the sun or turn their backs to the wind; and they are masters of self-propagation, hijacking gravity, the wind, water, insects, animals and humans to become the unwitting mail carriers to deliver their love letters to other plants in an orgy of polyamory. They were the first to invent airmail and online dating.

  Animals extended this mobility by learning to crawl, walk, run, swim and fly in order to meet their heart throbs and dine in fine outdoor vegetarian and carnivorous restaurants.

  And then came humans with upgraded hardware and software. But, lest we think we’ve summited the pinnacle of evolution, there are, I believe, several new, significantly-upgraded versions in the works. For a quick preview, see the predictions of the great avatars.

• E. Limitations on Free Will

  There are, of course, several ways in which free will is limited. For example, brain damage either ‘in utero’ as in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or a post-partum injury. General health issues and physical disabilities can significantly limit our range of options. And we can all feel limited by being unable to realize imagined accomplishments e.g., win gold at the Olympics or an Oscar for starring in a movie.

  Political regimes, laws and education – both secular and religious – restrict our options, as do ignorance, fear and societal expectations. However, some of these are simply apparent  restrictions that, in fact, nudge us towards freedom at the expense of free will.

• F. The Future – Where Free Will Meets Freedom

  St. Paul famously wrote, in his letter to the Romans, “The good that I would, I do not; it is the evil I would not that I find myself doing…”  He is speaking here of the ego/soul dialectic. But, far from being a curse, this, in fact, is a blessing because incarnation is the gym in which we develop our spiritual muscle. This very struggle is what leads to enlightenment. It takes us from pre-rational to rational to post-rational; from pre-personal to personal to post-personal.

  Paul is talking about the docking of two forms of intelligence; firstly, that of the organism itself (the host or ‘spacesuit’) and, secondly, that of the soul (the heaven-sent guest.) The organism operates on two principles: survival and procreation; while the soul’s two principles are: achieving Unity Consciousness and Unconditional Love for all of God’s creatures.

  It’s a tenet of evolutionary biology that ontogeny (the progress of the individual) recapitulates (re-enacts) phylogeny (the progress of the species.) So, each human starts out as a single cell; becomes an aquatic animal, swimming in the amniotic fluid; becomes an amphibian at birth, eventually trading dry land for water; then operates as a little reptile (crawling) before developing emotions (becoming a mammal with an active limbic system); and, then, a hominid, mastering bi-pedalism and, finally, a member of Homo Sapiens Sapiens with language skills.

  From here we morph into soul-realization on the way to Spirit-identification. And, finally, to non-dual union with Source. And free will is a huge factor in this evolution.

  To fully grok this trajectory, we have to transcend mere reason, just as mammals needed to go trans-reptilian in order to experience emotions, and hominids needed to transcend the limbic system to experience mathematics and poetry. So, why would evolution stop with Homo Sapiens Sapiens? Such a belief is simply the latest evidence of human hubris which formerly claimed that (a) Earth is the center of the cosmos; (b) the sun and the stars rotate about the Earth; (c) God made humans in a special act of creation; (d) the Jews are God’s chosen people; and (e) outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation.

  By meeting each obstacle with confidence, courage and creativity, we are co-creating a cosmic family with the twin turbines of free will and karma. Absent either one of these, all meaningful evolution grinds to a halt. The universe is a well-appointed laboratory which is designed to produce not guilt and meaninglessness but ecstasy and divine union.

  We will know that we have co-created heaven on Earth when free will and freedom are merely synonyms.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — August 6, 2019:

• A. The Real Meaning of Thabor

  The purpose of the gospels in writing of the transfiguration was to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures. Traditionally, these scriptures were divided into three sections – the acronym ‘TaNaKh’ was used to represent them. “T” stood for Torah, the first five books of the bible, ascribed to Moses and known as “The Law.” “N” stood for Nebiim or “the prophetic books.” And “K” stood for Ketuviim or “writings” (the wisdom literature – psalms, Job, Ruth etc.) The Pharisees accepted all three parts as inspired, but the priestly caste, the Sadducees, only accepted Torah and Nebiim. Moses was the archetype of Torah; and Elijah stood for the prophets. So, the evangelists wanted to show that Jesus’ encounter with Moses and Elijah was the fulfillment of both streams of revelation. Moreover, God had traditionally appeared on mountain tops – Sinai in the case of Moses and Horeb in the case of Elijah (some scholars claim Sinai and Horeb were the same mountain), so the evangelists situate this event on Mount Thabor. In the transfiguration scene also, God appears and singles out Jesus as “my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”  So, whatever else is true, this was a literary device to make a strong case for the new covenant – the Jesus movement.

  But how did the three disciples – or Jesus for that matter – recognize Moses or Elijah? Photography was 1,800 years in the future and there were no graven or visual representations of either man available. Was it like an AA meeting where each one said, “Hi, my name is Moses; I’m an alcoholic…” “Hi, Moses!” “Hi, my name is Elijah; I’m an alcoholic.” “Hi, Elijah!” “Hi, my name is Jesus; I once turned water into wine.” “Hi, Jesus!”  There is another possibility. How often have you had a dream in which you’re visiting your childhood home, but in the dream it’s a totally different house? Yet, you know it’s the old homestead. The same thing happens with visions; there is a ‘knowing’ which is not based on sensory or historical information.

  So, then, what actually happened on Mount Thabor? Jesus’ encounter with Moses and Elijah was a vision created and projected by Jesus himself as he sought to finalize his Earth mission. I believe the following is what Thabor was really about. Firstly, Jesus was dipping into the Akashic Records in order to familiarize himself with the history and mythology of his Jewish heritage. Secondly, he did it with such intensity that the disciples also experienced it. It is the equivalent of what is now being recorded as ‘Shared Death Experiences (SDE’s) where people present at the bedside of a dying person, share in the experience of angelic beings, heavenly music, and already-deceased relatives coming to assist in the transition of the dying one. Thirdly, it was the final ‘pep talk’ to prepare Jesus for the horrific week that lay ahead – in which he would be sold for thirty pieces of silver, abandoned by his disciples, tried by the high priest for blasphemy and by the Romans for insurgency; then scourged and crucified. And, finally, it was the wedding of the mystical meaning of Moses, the challenge of the prophets and the radical upgrade of religion from its violently-sectarian origins to global union with the divine.

• B. Transfiguration for Our Times

  1. God as a Projection

  How often has religion showcased a God who blessed, nay mandated, genocide, prejudice and inquisition both within and between communities? In truth, God has no other face than ours; God has no other personality than the human masks we project on to him. We have largely scripted the drama of God’s relationship with planet Earth and fed him his lines. Mostly, we have assigned him the role of a cosmic psychopath, believed our own myth and then made it the basis of our relationships with other communities. Alongside real mystics and genuine prophets, every religion has produced dour theologians and false prophets who have steeped us in fear and encouraged us to wipe out the heretics/infidels/pagans/gentiles – choose your favorite dismissive term.

  2. God is a Verb

  Somebody famously said, “God is not a noun, he is a verb.” I would add that God is a verb not in the past or even present tense but in the future tense. You can only use the phrase, “God was…”  when speaking of the God of history. And you can only use the phrase, “God is…”  when speaking of our current misunderstanding. But we must use the phrase, “God will be…”  as we continue to grow towards enlightenment and co-create God’s future. When in Exodus 3:14 God introduced himself to Moses, the scripture has God saying, “Ehiye ashir ehiye”  which is NOT a present tense, rather it translates as, “I will be who I will be.”

  I believe that the true meaning of the Blessed Trinity is the God who was, who is and who will be. A prayer I learned as a child – which is known as the “Glory be to the Father” – ends with the phrase, “as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end.”  The problem is that we interpret this as a static God who never changes. It’s exactly the opposite: God is the One who constantly changes. I am speaking here of God’s immanence not his transcendence, about which we can say nothing.

  3. The God of the Past and the Present

  In each religion, theology has tried, and continues to try, to understand and invent its own history, its own destiny and its own relationship with God. Fundamentalism attempts to freeze-frame God at a time when our basic relationship with him was based on fear. For the most part, religions have invented a God who is a distant, demanding deity, a lawmaker, a law giver, a law enforcer and a vindictive punisher of each and any infraction; a God who is happy to hand out eternal damnation for momentary lapses. He has long since outlived his usefulness. I hope Nietzsche was correct when he wrote this God’s obituary; and I believe Meister Eckhart had said the same thing several hundred years before, “I pray daily to God to rid me of God.”

  4. The God of the Future

  Mythology is the archived wisdom of a culture. It is not meant to be factual or historical but, rather, inspirational and transformative. But, and this is vitally important, each myth has a shelf life, a ‘sell before’ date which warns us that consuming its outdated message can be injurious or even fatal. That is certainly true of the monotheistic myth at the core of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is a myth that continues to glorify a God who wiped out almost all of creation, in a rage-orchestrated global flood, who mandated genocide, blessed the enslavement of Africans, sanctioned crusades and inquisitions, is pleased by fundamentalist-fed sectarian violence and continues to damn most of the world’s population to the eternal flames of hell.

  How can we possibly love this psychopath or expect to create world peace as long as that is our myth? There is a real God,  an ultimate loving, forgiving, understanding Source whom we need to liberate from this violent, fear-based projection.

  Here are some considerations as we fashion this new myth. While God’s transcendence and ultimate nature is an ineffable mystery, God’s immanence continues to evolve, as we evolve, because we are how God experiences incarnation. Each one of us is God-incarnate; and not just us humans; each manifestation is a word of God made flesh. All of manifestation is God in drag. As an incarnation of God, none of us – not even the man Jesus – is omniscient.

  As Jesus radically revamped the old myth and co-created a new notion of God, so must we. Jesus was to Moses as Einstein was to Newton. We need a totally different mythology, one that will emerge from a world-wide dialogue among religious and spiritual people. And we are not just speaking of a better ethics – that is merely the foundation course – but must reach for a mystical connection. Only a relationship based on complete trust and love of God – as ineffable Source and as immanent manifestation – can allow us to evolve into the future.

  There are three ways of dealing with myths. Firstly, accept them as literal truth, and we’ve seen the horrific results of that. Secondly, interpret them symbolically; but this involves such mental and spiritual gymnastics that it exhausts both imagination and soul. Thirdly, park the old myth respectfully as the best we could do at an earlier stage of human development and invent a brand-new, love-based myth; one that allows us to offer a Namasté to all creatures and all situations. A myth that allows us to see God everywhere and in everyone.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — July 24, 2019:  “The devil finds work for idle hands,”  I was told as a child. And, presumably, he also finds thoughts for idle minds. Well, today, he took me off the dole by giving fodder to my idle hands and  my idle mind!

I was walking near the solar shed, where 24 large batteries and two inverters, fed by 24 photovoltaic panels, turn sunlight into electricity for my house. I spotted a snail crawling determinedly in a fairly straight line as judged by the silken, silver trail he left in his wake. I watched him for a few moments, which was when the devil struck. I could see that his trajectory would take him to the door of my solar shed, and at his present rate of progress, I estimated it would take him 22 minutes. I decided to intervene. I grabbed a segment of blue tarp, about ten feet long, puckered it like a concertina so that by making hills and valleys of it, I reduced its horizontal length to about two feet, with a 12-inch straight flap at one end. I placed this flap on the ground a few inches ahead of the snail. When he reached it, he kept going full steam ahead. Soon he arrived at the first hillock. He deftly moved from hillock to hillock without ever having to visit the intervening slopes and valleys. In three minutes, he had reached the final hillock, so I smoothed out the tarp and, bingo!, he was now ten feet nearer his destination than before. For him, space had shrunk and time had telescoped.

But the devil wasn’t finished with me yet – he had more ideas and work for my idle mind and hands. The snail was now clambering over a small, flat stone, still making a beeline for the shed door. Deftly I lifted the stone and carried it back 20 feet. Now the snail was having a series of déjá vu moments: “I could have sworn I passed that thistle before! Didn’t I crawl under that exact twig some time back?”

I decided he’d had enough frustration, so I picked up the next stone he clambered onto and moved it to within inches of the door. He climbed down off the stone and whistled, “Wow, I’ve made really good time!”

Then the devil got called away to a more pressing commitment and I fell to philosophizing. I know that it takes humans one twenty-fourth of a second to process visual information. So, if an image flashes on and off in less than that time, we can’t consciously process it, but the unconscious can and we call that, subliminal perception. Well, snails are about 72 times slower in their visual processing; it takes them about three seconds to do so. Therefore, I was very careful in my interventions to act so quickly that he was never aware of my presence.

I had messed with his reality in several ways. By folding the tarp, I was sending his future speeding back to his present, and increasing his ability to navigate space. By playing with the stones he was crawling upon, I sent him back in time and then accelerated him forward in time. All of this involved an intimate connection between time, space and minds (his and mine.)

With the tarp experiment, I moved his “future” space and time back to his “present” space and time; and with the stone experiments, I moved his “present” space and time into, firstly, a “past” space and time and, secondly, into a “future” space and time.

Thus, time, space and mind are all interwoven. So, then, what if space could be puckered or folded, so that it is much more tightly packed in some “locations”? It’s as if the destination is hurrying towards me, folding up the intervening distance, so that the travel-time shrinks. This would mean that, like the snail, I could travel greater distances faster, until I broke even the speed-of-light barrier. It would also mean that I could travel backwards in time. Imagine, for instance, your own birth. As it was happening, the sights and sounds of it sent out electromagnetic signals (video and audio) into the universe, travelling at the speed of light. But if time and space could be folded/shrunk, then you could travel much faster than light and overtake the audio-visual waves and then turn around and watch your own birth.

If you travelled far enough and fast enough, you could even buy a large coke and a bag of popcorn and view Jesus’  birth – or watch the Buddha under the bodhi tree, or listen to the deafening sound of the Big Bang.

And what if time could pucker up and be much more tightly packed in some “eras”? Then, you could live constantly in a much-expanded present-moment that enfolds vast tracts of the “future” and the “past.”

Folded space and folded time collapse all experiences into the Here and Now. And there are techniques for doing that, namely, learning to change your state of consciousness: one state carries the stone forward, another carries it backwards, and a third state crimps the tarp. Then all events become Now-experiences, and all destinations are Here-places.

Then the question becomes, “So if I can travel into the past, can I change the past and, therefore, the future of that past? For instance, if I go back years before my own birth and meet a man in a bar and we get in a fight and I kill him – only to discover that he is my grandfather before he met my grandmother, does that mean that I will never be born, so I am actually living in an illusion of being alive?” And the answer is, “No, it doesn’t mean that; it means that you will spin off parallel universes, in one of which (this one), you will be born of his lineage, and in another of which (not this one), your soul will find another grandfather to provide the incarnational lineage.”

Fear not, you are here now.

I think . . . . . .?

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — July 9, 2019:  I hope you’re not so foolish as to think that humans – or indeed animals – invented families? Families are much more ancient than that. I hope you’re not so foolish as to think that humans – or indeed birds – invented migration? Migration is much older than that. Flora migrated long before birds were ‘invented’; but when fauna finally arrived, flora was happy to coopt them in her own flight plans. The great oak forests of Europe marched back and forth across the alps several times over many millions of years, long before Hannibal made the trip with his elephants. These forests escaped the comings and goings of mini ice-ages by hitching lifts in the bellies of squirrels and wild pigs, in their slow, measured retreats from the cold.

And flora invented many kinds of families  and many modes of migration. For instance, the lordly redwoods and sequoias are great believers in the nuclear family. They utilize the oldest force in the universe – gravity – to plant their progeny around their own ankles, creating a circle of children deeply bonded to their mother, creating cathedrals that combine land-scapes with sky-scapes, in their visionary architecture. I’ve often watched as these families prayed together – sometimes gently swaying in a light breeze, adopting holy mudras (honoring their Hindu genes); at other times engaging in liturgical dances to the zephyrs’ Gregorian chant (honoring their Christian genes); and, occasionally, moving in the wild, ecstatic frenzy of the whirling dervishes (honoring their Sufi genes.)

Other plants and trees, however, are migrating and missionary by nature,  wanting to spread the Good News of their existence. And, here, they have made treaties with the wind, with birds, with animals and, once we humans finally arrived on the scene, with us. Corn and potatoes from the “new world” coopted Spanish galleons to establish their trans-Atlantic franchises; and tobacco used Sir Walter Raleigh to make a pitch for smoking in the “old world’ of Europe.

Maple trees attach their seeds – called, Samaras – to the twin rotors of proto-helicopter blades to carry their message. Flora tend to use the outside  of birds, animals and humans e.g. attaching to the feathers, fur or clothing, for the shorter trips; and the inside  of birds, animals and humans e.g. the gut, for the longer trips. Digested seeds can be pooped out e.g., courtesy of a bird – to plant themselves miles from home in the most unlikely of places – like the gutters of your roof or a cleft in a rock.

I’m going to say something very briefly and very profoundly so listen carefully because you might miss it. Life is an elephant’s belly.  If I were a Zen master I’d now bow to you and go away. I’m not that advanced and moreover I’m Irish. I have a captive audience and I will never say in one phrase what I can say in several. So, I’m going to tell you what I mean by the statement that life is an elephant’s belly.

The last mission where I lived in Kenya was a small village called Kipsaraman. It is in the highlands that sweep down into a large valley right on the equator with regular temperatures of 115- and 120-degrees Fahrenheit. Part of it was on forested slopes. Herds of elephants lived there. A particular kind of tree grew in the area with a fruit so hard that when the nut fell on the ground, even if it lay there for many years and even if you were to cover it over with fertile soil, it could never germinate. The shell was so hard it would never take root. So, these trees had made an agreement with the elephants. The elephants would eat this nut and the gastric juices in the belly of the elephant were so corrosive that they would crack open the shell and then the elephant would poop and bingo, you had a new tree. So, life is an elephant’s belly. We’re just waiting for the elephant to come along to crack us open.

Look and notice Nature’s auto-erotic love-life. She is both the impregnator and the womb, the inseminator and the birther, the stay-at-home mom and the missionary mother. The greatest achievement of us humans is merely to be able to write mathematical algorithms that chronicle Nature’s ancient inventions.

Hats off to you, Pacha Mama!

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — June 25, 2019:

• A. Creating Community

  ‘Back in the day’, community tended to be formed ‘accidentally’ based on geographical proximity which then evolved a common language, a shared culture and a fabricated foundation myth. Later, it became even more bonded by a combination of these three shared characteristics and by opposition from – and even warfare with – their neighboring tribes. Its future identity was molded by the paradoxical dance of assimilation and persecution.

  Nowadays, groups tend to form more consciously, leading to ‘intentional communities’ that cross over traditional tribal lines into freely chosen ‘families.’ Such communities need a framework, a skeleton, a scaffolding, a set of orienting principles around which the body, the building or the new model will coalesce.

  When I worked as a missionary in Kenya – and attempted to build intentional communities – I used three objectives: Kujitegemea (self-reliance), Kujitumikia (self-ministering) and Kujieneza (self-propagation.) Many years later, we used the same three principles when forming COJ (Companions on the Journey.) In the 22 years since our formation, we have successfully managed principles one and two i.e., we’ve never been reliant on outside financial support and, while we’ve regularly dipped into the red, by year’s end, an appeal by our board always managed to get us back in the black by January 1st. As for principle number two – self-ministering – all functions, from leading the liturgy to organizing lecture series, has been done by our own members.

  Number three – self-propagation – is more difficult to assess. For one thing, it does not mean or involve any kind of self-promotion or advertising. It simply means being an example of a community that works, so that others may borrow elements or even the template, as they form their own communities. And here COJ has added its two cents to a global effort.

  The scientific definition of life is anything that can both feed itself (kujitegemea and kujitumikia) and propagate itself (kujieneza.) By these criteria, COJ is definitely a vibrant, living entity. By 2012, we had begun to realize that our spiritual outreach is much bigger than the number of people in the pews on a Sunday morning or the size of our bank balance. This website, SpiritsInSpacesuits.com, contains inspiring material – homilies, lectures, blogs, musings, The Eucharistic Prayer of the Cosmos, Events, Book titles, etc. – now available and accessed, in ever growing numbers, by a global community.

  We’ve birthed COJ’s-in-diaspora with little groups in Ireland, England, Germany, Australia, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong and several parts of the USA using our Eucharistic Prayer of the Cosmos for liturgy and for private meditation. It’s generated an international conversation via phone, email and snail-mail with other spiritual pilgrims. The homilies have been viewed for 1.7 million minutes in some 153,000 views since they first went online; and our Patheos blogs have had over 75,000-page views in the last three years.

• B. Shasta on Safari

  From May 9 to May 13, 2019, a group of 17 pilgrims were on retreat near Mount Shasta – a spectacular and mystical place that rises majestically to a snow-capped height of 14,179 feet in Northern California. It has been regarded as a sacred ‘thin place’ since the original peoples first encountered it; and spiritual seekers of all kinds find themselves drawn there. Our group was a mixture of eight existing members of COJ and nine ‘newcomers.’ The retreat was the brainchild of Heather Watkins, ably supported by Jason. The retreat included three lectures (‘Developing A Personal Cosmology,’ ‘Innocence and Grace’ and ‘Embodying Sacred Geometry.’) It also included an hour in a pyramid-shaped sensory deprivation chamber, a visit to an ancient healing-waters site and its mesmerizing waterfall. Raw, vegan and vegetarian food was lovingly prepared by Shalomar and Marianna for all meals. Heather and Jason led very powerful ‘ascension ceremonies’ via music and guided visualization. In between, dyads, triads, quartets and small groups congregated spontaneously to share stories, experiences and hopes for the transformation of our times.

  By the end, it felt as if a new spiritual community had been born – a sibling for COJ. If ‘Irish twins’ are born 11 months apart, it seems as if these spiritual twins were born 22 years apart! I want to call this second-born twin, ‘Shasta on Safari.’

• C. Global Transformation

  When life began on Earth some 3.7 billion years ago, it consisted only of identical single-celled protozoa that propagated by simply cloning themselves. This was the only method of reproduction for many millions of years. And it is a good example of an early phase of human community – the isolated tribe in which individuals are standard replicas of the prototype. Even colonization adopted this cloning model, attempting to lick conquered peoples into the image and likeness of the victors; imposing their ‘superior’ versions of religion, politics, finances, education, agriculture etc. The pièce de résistance, however, was when they cloned gods in their own image and likeness.

  Everything changed when ‘sex’ was invented. For this huge evolutionary leap, we must thank the lowly Antiarch Placoderm (an armored prehistoric fish, now extinct) of 380 million years ago. By cross-fertilization, from two different cells, a huge variety of new life forms would emerge. This binary system produced a pluriformity of manifestation. It’s the same principle by which Boolean Algebra also allows all pixels on your computer screen to be either a ‘0’ or a ‘1’ an ‘On’ or an ‘Off.’ From this simple process, an infinite sequence can be created which accounts for all of the characters, symbols, colors and sounds you experience on your Mac or PC.

  In time, evolution began to rely not on two but on four building blocks – the nucleotides, A, C, G and T – which constitute the DNA code for all current life forms on the planet. Humans began to use this principle in their own pursuits; for example, all written works in the English language – from nursery rhymes to Shakespeare’s Hamlet – are simply permutations and combinations of 26 symbols which we call the alphabet, courtesy of the genius of the Phoenicians of 3,200 years ago.

  And this principle also applies sociologically. There is a big difference between crusaders (those who attempt to impose their ‘superior’ systems on the ‘primitive natives’) and true missionaries (those who set out to cross-fertilize their ‘stories’ with those of other cultures. Jung called the latter, ‘Gnostic intermediaries.’) Such shared stories lead to a rich meta-narrative that supersedes both of the original cultures. Once again, this is true of language, finances, religions…

  It’s an ‘emergent phenomenon’ (where the result is greater than the sum of the parts and can’t be inferred or predicted by considering the separate elements before they ‘married’ (e.g., hydrogen and oxygen leading to water.) In human cultural intercourse also, this is how emergent phenomena arise and their purpose is to overcome entropy, add complexity and radically increase the number of manifestations.

  I believe we now are at such a nexus on a global level – and such explosions of creativity are only possible when nature and humans are contending with global crises. Historians of religion refer to an Axial Age (800 BCE to 200 BCE) when the old gods collapsed under the ‘assault’ of apparently-atheistic avatars e.g., Lao Tzu and Confucius in China, the Buddha and Mahavira in India, Zoroaster in Persia, the prophets in Israel, and Socrates and Plato in Greece. Taken together and over a period of time, this led to a huge shift in how humans understood cosmology, theology and history.

  A second axial age may have begun with Jesus and Mohammed; and I am convinced that we are at the dawning of a third axial age. The hard clashes of exoteric, violently-proselytizing religions are giving way to the gentle, smiling dialog between their esoteric, mystical cores. It represents the end of both tribal and colonizing systems and the birth of what is being called ‘Interspirituality.’ It will be modelled on networking which is what the 100 billion brain cells do in creating trillions of connections among themselves. The World Wide Web is a sociological manifestation of this. It’s what Teilhard de Chardin predicted in his notion of the ‘Noosphere’ – a sheath of unity consciousness that surrounds the globe, encompassing its Physiosphere (our rocky planet), its Atmosphere (the womb which would later nurture life), its Biosphere (our life forms) and its Psycho-sphere (our self-reflective ability.) I believe that the Noosphere is simply the antechamber to an Atma-sphere (the soul sheath), the Pneuma-sphere (the Spirit layer of Gaia) and, finally, the Brahma-sphere (our Source sheath.)

• D. Change and Transformation

  Change is typically imposed from the top down but transformation happens from the bottom up. Change may originate from the mega-churches, politics, corporations or the military but it is little groups like COJ and SOS (Shasta on Safari) networking with millions of other small communities that will lead to transformation. And transformation needs, initially, to be slow and organic; whereas change tends to be swift, violent and transitory; and it, eventually, provokes reactionary revolution in which one dysfunctional system is replaced with another dysfunctional system. Transformation is slower, peaceful and permanent; and it transforms the individuals and society by evolution rather than revolution.

  Dysfunctional systems can corrupt even good people; and corrupt individuals can destroy even well-functioning systems. The ideal is individual people committed to personal transformation forming small, loving communities which network and create a gentle, global transformation.

  COJ welcomes it twin soul, Shasta on Safari to our shared worldwide mission.

  Namasté,

  Seán

Patheos.com — June 11, 2019:

• Act One – The Bubble

  How the little air bubble found itself to be at 50 feet under the surface of the ocean is a story for another day. But there it was, a tiny, fragile membrane tenaciously holding its interiority intact, like a pregnant woman protecting her unborn babe. The pressure of the green-blue water threatened to snuff her out, but she held her breath and struggled towards the surface. High above her she could see the sun, though she had no idea what it was. As she made her determined way towards it, the water pressure seemed to diminish and she expanded into this ever-increasing freedom. Finally, just when she felt she could no longer hold her breath, she breached the surface. There was a deafening “POP!” and she was free; she was home; and she was gone. She no longer existed. For she was, essentially, air – and now she was united with air-Source. The adventure and sometime-nightmare of being a discrete, separate, ontologically distinct entity was over. And it had been her ability to rise and to expand that was the key to now being no-thing.

• Act Two – The Water Droplet

  As waves go, it was a fairly lazy one. It wasn’t one that the surfers at Maverick’s would have paid any attention to. It practically meandered  up the gently sloping beach, paused for a moment and then retraced its steps, backing into and under another wave. The glistening beach made sucking sounds, like a baby eating jam off the back of his own hand.

  A single water droplet remained on the beach. She had managed to gather herself together in a tug of war with the thirsty sand. She invoked the principle of surface tension and haughtily pulled herself into a perfect sphere. She shimmered elegantly in the daylight, decorating her inner surface from the color palette of the sun. Like a ballet dancer holding a gravity-defying pose, she stood on tippy-toe, a skin-encapsulated ego, a self-contented narcissist with eyes for nobody else.

  She didn’t even hear the next furtive wave that slid fluently up the beach and gathered her in his embrace. “Get your hands off me, you slimy creature,”  she protested. And then she remembered. She dissolved in salty laughter, and her last fleeting thought was, “how could I have forgotten that I am water?”  The ocean listened and dispatched the next wave to recreate this drama, a drama that made its mighty soul smile. For the ocean is a child who, on finding something that pleases it, says, “More, More!”

• Act Three – Information Theory

  Scene One – The Introduction

  Information cannot be lost. It’s the law. Science says so. Oh yeah? Well Sonoma County Planning Department lost my entire application in 2004 and never even informed me. Months later when I asked them what was the delay in granting my building permit, they admitted to the loss. I had to restart the process from scratch.

  And what about Ollie North shredding vital evidence in the Iran-Contra scandal? Doesn’t shredding destroy data? When it comes to shredding, though, nobody does it better than a black-hole-in-space. Stars, planets, even light itself, get chewed up without a trace. Yet, science stubbornly refuses to agree. “No”,  it says, “even then information is not lost.”  Since scientists are the high priests of our times, I will accept their word and then build upon their infallibility.

  Scene Two – The Sandcastle

  An artist, with a fascinated audience of hundreds, created a masterpiece on a borrowed beach. The swim-suited spectators forgot to sunbathe and, instead, watched in admiration as he crafted the most elaborate sandcastle any one of them had ever seen. It covered 600 square feet of beach, with turrets and garrets, drawbridges and courtyards and windows – and even a flagpole. Cameras flashed and camcorders rolled. Somebody phoned a local TV station and the big guns came out with boom mikes and serious-looking equipment. It made the evening news.

  The artist might well have been a Buddhist monk teaching the doctrine of Impermanence, for he had consulted the tides and he knew that the rising moon would soon release her bailiffs to reclaim the beach for the ocean. The sun sank in the west, stretching the shadows of the turrets and painting the castle walls. Moments later a huge, full, yellow moon lifted herself from her eastern bed and gave the silent command. The first wave filled the moats; the second wave collapsed the drawbridges. The artist bowed deeply to Luna, gathered his tools and departed. A few little boys remained; one of the more rambunctious had to be restrained by his fellows from assisting in the demolition. They stood in awed respect, wave water washing at their calves, as one by one the great walls fell. Finally, the flag itself tilted and surrendered. It floated out, still managing to retain its dignity. One little boy said, “Maybe, it’ll float all the way to Africa!”

  It didn’t. The ocean had a plan for it. As each section of the castle was demolished, the waves collected all of its information, memorizing the precise blueprint and relaying it to the great octopus who lived seven miles offshore and two leagues under the surface. By midnight this mighty cephalopod had memorized each detail. He didn’t need any of the physical materials from the original, for he had adequate supplies of his own. He did, however, capture the flag. He felt it would be a salute to terra firma.

  Deep in the dark recesses, between rocky submarine ridges, he re-configured the castle. It took him three days to finish the artwork. It was a perfect, grain-for-grain replica of the Earthman’s effort. Mermaids came and giggled together. The old octopus looked sternly at them and they swished their graceful tails and swam away to tell their friends.

  Scene Three – The Black Hole

  Cats can’t cough. That’s why, occasionally, they have to heave up fur balls. Black holes can  cough. In fact, they are famous for their coughing. Perhaps the most famous cough of all is the one we call “the big bang.” For that is what it was. A big, black hole, that long predated our universe, had spent its life eating the contents of a previous universe. Finally, it was sated. It miniaturized all it had eaten, compressed it to a gazillionth of its original size and spat it out into the void. And like a crumpled plastic bag, the digested, regurgitated universe began to reassemble itself; for, remember, information is never lost. The Akashic records of our mother universe had gifted its baby with its entire DNA. We have spent the last 13.7 billion years expanding and unpacking this gift. And we’re not even halfway finished. Some of the best parts are still to come.

  We have merely reached the adolescence of this erstwhile baby universe of ours. Nubile and alive, we have discovered a black hole at the center of our local galaxy. It beckons us to the foreplay of lovemaking. We are invited to conceive the next universe, to risk entering the no-thing-ness of the mystical void that we may birth the love-child of enlightenment.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — June 4, 2019:  Sometimes I astrally travel at night. Everybody does. Often, I meet other souls who are also astrally travelling, and we get to talk. Early this morning I had such a chat. The other soul said, “I am currently occupying the body of a seven-year-old Irish boy. He’s sweet. Right now, he is dreaming.”  I said, “Please excuse me if this seems rude, but would you mind if I had a peek at his dream?”  The other soul said, “Not at all, be my guest.”  So, I dialed into the child’s frequency and watched his dream unfold. Here’s what it looked like:

“I’m writing this essay because our second-grade teacher, Miss Murphy, said we should write a true story about our family. Well, here’s the story I need to tell:

“One morning about four years ago, my dad said to me that my mom had to go away for a few days, but not to worry, she’d come back with a gift for me. I knew I was going to miss her but the promise of a gift made it all seem worthwhile. I asked him, “What kind of gift is she bringing back?” He said, “It’s a surprise!” Now, I like surprises, but I prefer surprises that I like; so, I said, “Could she bring me back a white swan?” I always wanted to have a white swan. My dad smiled and said, “We’ll see what we can do.”

“A few days later my mother came back with a bundle tightly wrapped in a pink blanket. This seemed like a strange way to carry a white swan but, hey, I’ll take a white swan no matter how strangely it’s gift-wrapped. I rushed out to meet her, jumping up and down excitedly to get my first peek. “Is that my white swan?” I asked. They both smiled and my mother said, “I’m afraid they were all out of white swans, so we got a baby instead.” “A baby?” I asked incredulously. “A baby? Gross! What am I going to do with a baby?” I thought about it for a few seconds and then asked, “Is it a boy baby or a girl baby?” “A girl baby.” “A girl baby? Oh, really  gross!!” It was bad enough not getting my white swan but at least I could have played football or cops and robbers with a boy baby. But a girl baby? What an absolutely useless gift. I said, “Maybe we could return her in a few days, when they get a new consignment of white swans?” My mother rocked the bundle gently and said, “Why don’t we see how the baby fits in first.”

“What were all of my classmates going to say when they heard that instead of my white swan, my parents had given me a gift of a baby – and a girl baby at that! I’d be the laughing stock of the whole school. It was really distressing to me, so I ran outside to tell my friend Patrick. We’d both been eagerly awaiting this white swan of mine. I was really embarrassed but I felt I must share my pain with somebody. He was deeply sympathetic. To make matters worse, he confided in me that a cousin of his had told him that his family had recently gotten a girl baby and she turned out to be absolutely useless. It was one of the toughest days of my life.

“A few days later my parents told me that they’d named her, “Bán” and said that it rhymed with my name, “Seán.” This was the final insult. “Bán,” in Irish means, “White.” White swans are white. Did they really think they could fool me into accepting her by simply calling her “Bán”? Sometimes I despair of ever educating my parents.

“Occasionally, I’d see her in her crib with her big, pink mouth wide open, screaming silently. She reminded me of the nest of baby robins I’d discovered last year. She couldn’t even talk, for God’s sake. As gifts go, this one was the pits!

“I had to take matters into my own hands. One afternoon as my mother was having a nap, I put the baby in my backpack, with her head sticking out the top and walked to the pet store. The man was very nice. He asked, “Well young fella what can I do for you?” I said, “My mother was supposed to get me a white swan, but you were all out of white swans, so you gave her this baby girl instead. I’m wondering if you got any white swans in yet. I’ll trade the baby for one.” The man tapped his bottom lip thoughtfully with his right index finger and said, “Hmmmm, the problem is you’d have to pay an extra 25 Euros as well as returning the baby. You see the price of white swans has gone through the roof in the last couple of months; everybody seems to want one.” This was devastating news; all I possessed was 40 cents. I had to think what my options were. I hated to compromise and I definitely was not prepared to totally relinquish my need to own a white swan, but anything would be an improvement on the baby girl. So, I said to the man, “How about a goldfish?” He said, “I’ve got a better idea, why don’t I give you a lollipop and we can walk back to your house, and chat about white swans on the way?” I reluctantly agreed to this arrangement. The lollipop tasted great and the man was so knowledgeable about white swans that I really enjoyed the walk home. He assured me that he would definitely keep a white swan for me as soon as I’d saved up 25 Euros. I thanked him and put the backpack on the floor in the kitchen. Sometime later I heard my mother screaming, “Who put the baby in the backpack!!!!!!??????”

It was coming up to Christmas, which gave me another idea. I decided to write to Santa Claus. So, I did. Here’s what I wrote:

Just then my companion soul realized that the young boy was about to wake up. My friend said, “Gotta fly!”

I was about to wake up, myself, so my soul said to some other souls, “He’s about to wake up; gotta fly!”

So, I woke up, went into my office and recorded what had happened. Here ‘tis.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — May 21, 2019:

• Story

  There are some songs, especially hymns, that tug us back instantly to the innocence of childhood when our spirituality was mystical, albeit largely founded on a literalist interpretation of the tribal myth. There are two hymns that still do that for me. One is dedicated to St. Patrick and it goes as follows:

  “Hail glorious Saint Patrick
  dear saint of our Isle,
  on us thy dear children
  bestow a sweet smile…”

  As a young child, I felt the overwhelming pride in being Irish. We were poor and persecuted only because we were specially chosen and beloved of God.

  The second hymn – to Mary – had an even more profound effect. It assured me that I was one of the elect – a Roman Catholic – securely wrapped in the blue mantle of the Virgin Mother. Some of its lines said:

  “Oh, Mary we crown thee with blossoms today,
  Queen of the angels, queen of the May…”

  These two hymn-beliefs were the twin bulwarks of my sense of security as a child, enabling me to surmount all obstacles on my heaven-bound journey.

  In today’s blog, I want to focus on Mary, the mother of Jesus.

• A. The Celtic Feast of Bealtaine

  In Gaelic, the first of May is called ‘Bealtaine’ (the bright fire.) It is an ancient ‘pagan’ feast, one of four cardinal points on the Celtic calendar. It marked the beginning of the Summer, when light was finally birthed by the mystically dark womb of Samhain (November 1st) and Imbolc (February 1^st.) This light would lead to the plentiful harvest of Lughnasa (August 1^st.)

  Of these four dates, Bealtaine and Samhain were especially filled with opportunities for crossing through the Caol Áiteanna (thin places) where the veil between the mystical and the mundane was particularly diaphanous. These were the times when the ‘wee people’, the “Sí”, the “faery folk” had full permission to ‘invade’ our world and get up to all kinds of mischief. Warlocks, witches and those with a score to settle were particularly active on those two days. Blessing and cursing were especially powerful as the cosmic struggle between good and evil was played out among neighbors all over Ireland.

  A discontented neighbor could bring ruin on your crops by hiding rotten eggs in your barn on May 1^st, so careful searches were conducted to preempt that possibility. Children were strictly forbidden to approach, let alone enter, any of the very numerous ‘faery forts’ that dotted the Irish countryside. And newborns were closely monitored to make sure they were not kidnapped and a ‘síofra’ (a faery changeling) put in its place. The only other time in the life cycle of a child when this could happen was when your sweet, amiable 12-year-old was replaced by a sullen, uncooperative teenager!

  In the Ireland of my childhood, many families had their own cow but, in the pre-grocery-store suburbs, milk was delivered by a milkman on his horse-drawn cart. He would have a 30-gallon churn and a pint-sized ladle with a long handle. The householders would proffer their jugs and he’d fill them to the brim with healthy, creamy, non-pasteurized milk. Our family’s milkman always placed freshly plucked apple blossoms in the harness of his horse on May 1^st to ward off faery intrusions.

  In Germanic Europe and medieval Britain, the Maypole – possibly signifying the Axis Mundi or Tree of Life – was the center of colorfully-clad dancers circumambulating the pole while holding streamers connecting them to the tree.

• B. Plagiarizing the Month of May

  By and large, May and December are probably the months that have been most borrowed, stolen and plagiarized by both sacred and secular sources.

  In 1923, ‘mayday’ became the internationally recognized SOS for aviators and mariners. It had to be called out three times: “mayday, mayday, mayday.” It was probably derived from the French “m’aider” (help me.)

  In 1904, to commemorate the slaughter of workers who had been killed years before for protesting cruel industrial conditions, May1 ^st was declared, “International Workers’ Day.” Later, Communist regimes hijacked it for displays of military might, as arsenals and soldiers paraded to demonstrate the ‘power of the people.’

  Not to be outdone, in 1955, the Catholic Church proclaimed May 1^st as the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, thus hoping to give both Communism and atheism a black eye.

  In fact, the Roman Catholic Church dedicated the entire month of May to Mary. Game, set and match to the Vatican! But – with a very different spin – I, too, want to focus on May as the month of Mary.

• C. Will the Real Mary Please Stand Up!

  How many paintings of Mary have you seen where, with eyes piously downcast and a lily held modestly to her breast, she obediently answers the Angel Gabriel’s mind-boggling announcement that she had been chosen to be the mother of God, with a simple ‘fiat’ (God’s will be done). I don’t for a moment believe that is an accurate portrayal of Mary.

  In truth, she must have been a very deep, strong, courageous young woman who was certainly not afraid to argue with God in the person of her son, Jesus. There are only two recorded arguments in the gospels between them and she wins both of them hands down. The first was when he went ‘walkabout’ at age 12 and was lost for three days. When she found him in the Temple debating the scholars, she scolded him roundly. Initially, he put up a good teenage defense but then we read, in Luke’s gospel, that he went home and was obedient to her and his dad, Joseph. For another 18 years, apparently!

  The next spat took place when she and he were both invited to a wedding in Cana. After three days of celebrating, the wine ran out and she brought it to his attention. He shrugged dismissively and retorted, “Woman, what business of mine is that!” She didn’t even dignify his defiance with an answer. She shot him a reprimand by the simple inflection of an eyebrow, then turned away and spoke to the steward of the feast, “Do whatever he tells you.” How do you counter that kind of self-confidence and power? You don’t. So, he kowtowed.

  I was eight years old before I understood just how powerful, aligned and committed Mary was. I found a magnifying glass – it was a lens that had fallen out of my grandmother’s reading glasses – and I proceeded to set fire to a whole bunch of stuff. I began with an old newspaper, graduated to igniting hay in the field beside our house and – the piece-de-resistance – culminated by setting fire to the plastic saddle on my father’s 250 cc BSA motorbike.

  After I had recovered from the wallop to the side of my head delivered by my irate dad, I figured out a very important thing. For the first time I understood what the “Magnificat” meant. It had never before made sense to me that Mary, though she was Jesus’ mother, could magnify/increase/enlarge God. After all, she was still only a human. That fateful day, I got it. The sun – this huge fiery orb that gives light and heat to an entire solar system – could not, on its own, set fire to my dad’s motorbike. It needed this tiny piece of glass to focus its energy. And that was Mary’s function!

  On thinking about it some more, I figured out that two things were vital. Firstly, the glass had to be clean. If it was smudged, it wouldn’t work. And what did ‘clean’ mean when it referred to Mary? I don’t believe it just had to do with chastity or the control of concupiscence. Rather, she prefigured what Jesus would later say in one of the Eight Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” This statement is actually tautologous because ‘purity of heart’ is precisely the ability to see God in everything. It is the realization that leads to ‘Namasté’ (the divine in me recognizes and honors the divine in you.)

  And the second thing I figured out was that, as I held the piece of glass, I needed to gauge its precise focal length. If I held it too close to the object I wanted to ignite, the sun’s rays would not yet have focused sufficiently; and if I held it too far away, the rays would have focused prematurely and would now be diffusing, thus drastically reducing its ability to inflame.

  And that was another of Mary’s gifts – the ability to find the precise focal length in each relationship and in each circumstance, whether it was with her son, the other family members, the disciples or the conductors of her son’s crucifixion. There are basically three ways of being in relationship: ‘smothering,’ in which one acts like a ‘helicopter parent’; ‘othering,’ in which one is distant and unavailable; and ‘mothering,’ in which one finds the ideal connection. Being the mother-of-God calls for great relational precision. And Mary’s primary mission was to teach each of us how to be a mother-of-God.

• D. Anam Cháirde – Soul Friends

  The English phrase, ‘soul mates’ fails to do justice to the ancient Gaelic idea of ‘anam chara’ (soul friend.) Anam Cháirde is the plural. It has a much more mystical sense than mere ‘soul mates’ which implies some kind of romantic attachment. The Gaelic phrase means twin souls dedicated to helping each other grow spiritually in the course of incarnation. It is like ‘peer counseling’ on steroids. Such a relationship could be enshrined as a parent-child or sibling or friend connection.

  I believe that all incarnated souls find themselves in a love-ocean of concentric circles – as a species, a nation, a tribe, a family – at the core of which is the central relationship of Anam Chara. This is the hub about which the wheel of incarnation spins. Souls in the bardo state choose very carefully before committing to such an arrangement, and the bond continues and becomes stronger, over subsequent lifetimes.

  And that, I believe, was the Jesus-Mary contract. Over many lifetimes, they have ‘Earthed’ in order to bring Christ/Christa consciousness to the planet – once in Galilee some 2,000 years ago as mother and child, and before and since in a variety of eras, cultures and kinds of interpersonal relationships.

  Imprinting the archetypes of both the ‘female’ and ‘male’ aspects of the divinity, Mary and Jesus were equally vital to the spiritual evolution of our race. It is time to set Jesus free from the clown costumes in which we have dressed him (end-times judge, anemic hermaphrodite, church founder, inquisitor, crusader, conquistador…); and to set Mary free from the demeaning characteristics of (submissive housewife, female second-class, pew-dwelling congregant in Peter’s church…)

• Conclusion

  In Irish mythology, the faery folk were the shape-shifted Tuatha Dé Danann, who had been overthrown by the invading Milesians, forced to dwell in the underworld and to make periodic sorties into our middle world through the portals we call, ‘Caol Áiteanna’ (thin places.) I have a feeling that, at a deeper level, the Milesians are really the theological tyrants who reduced mystical spirituality to exoteric, orthodox, rule-bound religion.

  If May be the month of Mary, we must risk passing through these ‘thin places’ ourselves in order to encounter the ‘faery folk.’ Jesus and Mary are mobile tabernacles of the sacred, itinerant time-travelers, using the portals of mysticism to finally shift Homo Sapiens Sapiens into Homo Spiritualis.

  Wanna join the pilgrimage?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — May 14, 2019:

• A. The Background

  Homo Sapiens (thinking humans) arrived on the evolutionary scene about 150,000 years ago. But they didn’t yet have language. That only came with Homo Sapiens Sapiens (self-reflective humans) some 80,000 years later. The intervening 70,000 years is merely the blink of an eye on the cosmic calendar.

  However, the transition into self-reflection didn’t happen in an instant; in fact, it quickly got derailed. Self-reflection was hijacked by the ego of Homo Sapiens which survived in Homo Sapiens Sapiens and was prostituted to the earlier agenda, namely survival-of-me-the-individual-at-all-costs; as well as the twin drives for control of the resources (food and mates) and self-propagation (via progeny and reputation).

  At a tribal level, this manifests as a sense of ‘chosen-ness’; and religions have been created with the purpose of claiming divine revelation for this special relationship with their god. The good news is that side by side with this, goes the mystical impulse, based on unity consciousness and unconditional love, which is the true mission of Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

  A concerted effort to unstick the clogged wheels of this evolutionary vehicle took place during the Axial Age (800 BCE to 200 BCE) when, right across the world, great teachers attempted to get us moving again: Lao Tzu and Confucius in China, Gautama Siddhartha and Mahavira in India, Zoroaster in Persia, Isaiah and Jeremiah in Israel and Socrates and Plato in Greece. Alas, we haven’t managed to maintain this momentum. Another great effort is needed.

  The two tectonic plates of Homo Sapiens and Homo Sapiens Sapiens are currently clashing and creating earthquakes that will eventually divide the globe into two new subspecies which I’ve dubbed Homo Sociopathicus and Homo Spiritualis. Homo Sociopathicus will continue to cling tenaciously to the agenda of the personal ego and the tribal god. It has a blind commitment to establishing planetary dominion and is willing to use genocide and risk ecological collapse as means to this end. Homo Spiritualis, which is the natural fulfillment of a truly reflective Homo Sapiens Sapiens, on the other hand, is fully committed to love and unity as both the means and the goal.

  If Homo Sociopathicus succeeds in destroying the physical spacesuit of the Earth and wiping out the human species in a nuclear holocaust or destruction of the biosphere from greenhouse gas emissions, then Homo Sociopathicus and Homo Spiritualis will part company and continue in disincarnate forms, which will be energetically appropriate to their different spiritual frequencies.

• B. Learning from Laraine

  My good friend – and the creator/maintainer of my website – Laraine Moore is, perhaps, the most psychic and mystical person I know. In a very powerful recent blog called, A Place Between Heaven and Earth,  she spoke of an out-of-body experience she had with an astral–being visitor from an Earth-like planet whose inhabitants destroyed its biosphere. The planet healed itself and its citizens now reside in a kind of ethereal form. She called them Pneuma Spiritualis and, for the more advanced members, Pneuma Spiritualis Spiritualis. These are the celestial-spiritual versions of Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Homo Spiritualis. As she suggested, this may well have happened countless times in the past, on other worlds, in other galaxies.

• C. The Kingdom is Now

  Perhaps, the great avatars – Jesus, Buddha etc. – are emissaries from those places (or time travelers from one of our own possible futures) to help us avoid the disasters or, if we refuse to change, to prepare us for the bifurcation. Because the true purpose of the prophet is not to predict the future but to prevent it; not to foretell the future but to forestall it.

  Of course, our own planet and its denizens do not have to be destroyed in order for that transition to occur. As Jesus famously said, “the kingdom of God is ‘en mesoi’  (among you and within you).” You don’t have to die in order to see God, you simply have to look differently and pierce the illusion of separation from Her, from Nature and from others. It only needs a shift in perspective. It can be accessed right now  through a change in perception, a shift of focal length, an alteration in consciousness, the ‘soft gaze’ of Buddhist teaching. St. Paul was right when he said, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”  (Romans 8:18-22)

  And when Jesus said, “look at the lilies…”  he was beseeching us to study how Nature itself, even lowly flora, is making the shift. There is a Flora Spiritualis or even a Pneuma Floriensis which is the etheric template that, year after year, manifests on the physical plane, playing ‘hide-and-go-seek’ with humans to invite us into the realization of our true nature and our incarnational calling.

  How many more lilies do we need before we wake up?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — April 29, 2019:

• Story

  In the Fall of 1987, I came to Palo Alto to begin my studies in Transpersonal Psychology. There was a Woolworth’s store on University Avenue then, and I stood outside looking at some items behind the large, glass storefront, trying to see if they had two-inch binders for sale. Because of the angle of the sun, however, all I could see was the sheen of sunlight on the window, and my own reflection in it. Eventually, I managed to adjust my focal length, adopt a ‘soft gaze’ and penetrate the glare. And bingo! there were the two-inch binders. It quickly became a metaphor for me in how we need to change perspectives in order to see into other realities; to shift our vision from the normal state of consciousness to altered states of consciousness and, hence, access new dimensions.

  And that is how dreams, visions and mystical meetings occur. When speaking of the kingdom of God to parishioners in Kenya, I would pun in Kiswahili and say, “Mbinguni si mahali, bali ni hali”  (heaven is not a place, rather it is a state of consciousness.) Unfortunately, the pun doesn’t survive translation!

  So, in this blog, I want to speak of dreams and visions, and how to harvest our sorties into altered states of consciousness.

• A. Some Definitions

  A vision is simply a dream you have while you are awake, and a dream is simply a vision you have while you are asleep. In Biblical Hebrew, ‘dream’ and ‘vision’ are synonyms. So, when, in his Pentecost homily, Peter quotes the prophet Joel, he is not guilty of ageism when he says, regarding the time of the Messiah, “your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams.”  It is obvious from the rest of Joel’s prophecy that the Spirit will not play favorites:

  “In the last days, God says,
  I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
  Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
  your young men will see visions,
  your old men will dream dreams.
  Even on my servants, both men and women,
  I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
  and they will prophesy.”

• B. Thin Places – Caol Áiteanna

  In Celtic thinking, liminal spaces (thresholds) are called, ‘thin places” (in Gaelic, ‘caol áiteanna’). They are the antechambers to other dimensions, conferring altered states of consciousness on the courageous pilgrim; and the promise of meeting with extra-dimensional entities and energies. It is highly recommended that the unprepared not blunder into those realms because one of two tragedies will occur – inflation (where the ego thinks it’s God) or madness (where the ego completely loses its moorings and crashes into the ‘normal-reality’ state, upon re-entry.) Hence, ancient societies made it taboo for the uninitiated to attempt access e.g. “it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”  (Hebrews 10:31) In fact, I believe that the first notion of sin was the breach of this taboo. From that new understanding, then, a ‘selfie’ is a photo taken by the ego in a normal state of consciousness, while a vision/dream is a photo taken by the soul in an altered state of consciousness.

  For the Celts, such liminality was not confined to physical locations – though wells, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains and groves of trees were often ‘thin places.’ Thus, certain people e.g., mystics, prophets, bards, ovates, druids and artists could be mobile thin places  – tabernacles of the sacred. And certain times  e.g. dawn, dusk, Imbolc (February 1^st.), Bealtaine (May 1^st.), Lughnasa (August 1^st.) and Samhain (November 1^st.) also had the power to temporarily render diaphanous the veil between the mystical and the mundane, between the sacred and the secular.

  Birth and puberty and death were also occasions of liminality and, thus, had to be negotiated with appropriate community-wide rituals.

  But even we ‘moderns’ experience ‘thin places’ at least twice daily – as we enter sleep and exit sleep. Psychology calls these states, ‘hypnagogic’ (as we enter sleep) and hypnopompic’ (as we exit sleep.) When properly navigated, these two transitions can yield rich, mystical harvests.

  One of the great advantages of being ‘semi-retired’ is that I seldom have to wake to an alarm clock. So, I’ve learned to milk these transitions. I can then turn the last dream of the night into a lucid  dream where the physical laws of time, space and causation are set aside and intuition, déjà vu, insight and out-of-the-box thinking become the coin of the realm. Most of my best, creative ideas come to me in these ‘caol áiteanna.’ I keep a pen and paper at my bedside and hastily scribble a few key phrases to be revisited later in order to reconstruct the entire edifice of the dream/vision.

• C. Eucharist and Resurrection

  In lieu of the above, I now want to say a few quick words about Eucharist and Resurrection, both of which can only be understood and experienced in an altered state of consciousness. It should now be obvious that Holy Communion does not involve chewing on the physical flesh of Jesus; that he did not clone himself 100 trillion times so that 1.2 billion Catholics could receive his body and blood, soul and divinity weekly – or even daily – for the last 2,000 years; rather, it means your soul-self dancing with his soul-self.

  And his resurrection did not involve re-assembling the molecules of his matter, which after three days in the burial cave, were being ecologically recycled back into the environment. Rather, he activated his own soul-self, his ‘pneuma spiritualis’, and then those of Magdalene, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and, finally, the eleven disciples in the Upper Room, all of whom were now ready to make the mystical, quantum shift. For there is no such thing as an after-life, only an also-life,  available even now through a shift in consciousness. Eucharist and Resurrection are about reaching Christ consciousness or the recognition of our Buddha nature, which incarnation had temporarily occluded.

  What about you, then, in this Easter season? Are you ready to really  receive Holy Communion? To meet the resurrected Jesus? Can you make the mystical leap that transcends your senses, and trust what your soul is telling you? If you can, then Eucharist is Real Presence  and Resurrection is Now.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — April 17, 2019:  “God the biologist, We honor you. You who whirl ecstatically around your own image, In the double helix of life making, We honor you.”

That is a verse from the Eucharistic Prayer of the Cosmos, which I composed in May 2007. Later, I had another vision about it. I saw the spiraling ladder of Watson and Crick’s double helix of DNA, whirling around itself. And I saw that the two curving, spiraling “shafts” of the ladder were God-love and God-light, and that the result was Earth-life. It is an alive ladder, not just an inert artifact fashioned once and then abandoned to lean against some cosmic wall, in an unvisited corner of God’s backyard, to rot slowly in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, together with a collection of God’s old bikes and several buckets of decaying paint from when He put the finishing touches to sunsets and flower petals. No, it is very much an alive  ladder. It is the Jacob’s ladder of Genesis, touching Earth at a “Caol Áit” (Thin Place) that acts as a portal between the mystical and the mundane. And Jacob understood the significance and it gave him the courage to go into combat with the divine. For his audacity he was rewarded with a new name – Israel, which literally means, “the man who wrestled with God.”

What does it mean to wrestle with God? It means to wrestle prejudices and theologies and tribalism to the ground, in order to discover the mysterious origin from which all forms come. It is to fight the spiritual battle of seeing beyond all separation, behind all ontological, discrete differences to the heart of the Oneness. It is the single cell realizing it is part of an organ which is part of an organism which is part of a family which is part of a species which part of all sentient beings which is only a single face of the Faceless Source.

This wrestling match is the mission of everyone on Earth who is coming awake. Like a consummate chess master, God is aching to play simultaneous matches with all of us – if you don’t mind me mixing my games’ metaphors. Getting thrown out of the Garden of Eden was the first round in that wrestling match. We were not banished because of a sin, we were liberated from the prison of mere instinct, because of our courage, to venture into the luxuriant forest of free will, onto the golden, wave-washed beach of moral capacity, and up the serene mountainside of self-reflection.

And now, in the next phase of that journey-back-into-our-divinity, we are ready to challenge God to another bout. The rungs on that ladder-of-life are myriad, but I will mention just a few major steps on a safari that began with the Physiosphere, the third rock from the sun, which a Great Soul agreed to animate in order to accelerate the return home. And the antepenultimate rung on the ladder-of-life is Christ Consciousness. When we stand on tippy toes on that rung we can see into the womb of no-Self, no-Thing and risk dissolving into the mystery, leaving not a trace behind. “Poor soul”  those who are on the lower rungs will say, “He’s gone!”  Instead, I who loved to watch sunsets and spiders, to listen to the wind and the waves, to stroke the velvet, mossy lichen on the oak trees and the shaggy red coat of my dog, Kayla – now, I who used to DO all that, AM all that. For now, once again, there is no me, there is only God, looking at and feeling into Her creation.

But I have gotten a little ahead of myself with the story. So, let me talk about these rungs that connect those spiraling arms, at once giving them stability and the freedom to dance. These rungs are not made uniformly to the same exact dimensions nor even of the same stuff. Each rung is a single-issue limited edition of a new masterpiece.

The ladder sits atop the Physiosphere, the allegedly inert stuff that physics likes to study and figure out. Already, this apparently simple “dead” matter is highly intelligent and extremely complex. While it is, indeed, the very ground that holds up the ladder, it is, simultaneously, the first rung of the ladder. For this is an organic  ladder; the two legs of it grow, and as they grow, they send out connectors to each other. With the precision of two space stations docking as they hurtle along at thousands of miles per hour, so, too, these spiraling arms never fail to connect with each other. Not a single rung dangles abandoned in mid-air, vainly searching to make contact with its partner. Rather, with unerring accuracy, the partners dance and connect and never miss a beat.

The next level to emerge is the Biosphere, the “Life Sheath.” On Earth this began with the lowly, long-lived bacteria, those selfless shareware seekers who first colonized the planet, learning to extract hydrogen (a very good choice since hydrogen is the most plentiful “food” in the cosmos) from sunlight, rocks and water. This sheath has been evolving for four billion years, and it has created ever more sophisticated rungs as it journeys from single-celled creatures to multi-celled organisms of extraordinary complexity, in which sub-communities, with billions of members, accept pivotal specialties like respiration, elimination, digestion, sensation, perception… This sphere, which contains very many rungs, embraces all life forms from the tiny trilobite, that invented the eye, to the jellyfish, that invented muscles, to the worm, that invented the brain, to reptiles, dinosaurs, mammals and hominids.

Teilhard de Chardin posited a new sheath surrounding the biosphere. He called it the “Noosphere”; “Noos” being another form of the Greek word for knowledge. So, it is a sheath of consciousness. The “world wide web” and the “global brain” are modern examples of what he was speaking about. It is a field of information and wisdom; it is the very ocean of data in which we swim; from which we download all of our ideas; and back into which we upload all of our personal musings and words. It is rather like a reservoir from which we draw all of our water. We have to be very careful that we do not, in turn, dump our waste and toxins into it, for then it will merely feed us back our own garbage. It treats us so well, but if we abuse it in return, it can only subsequently repay us with our own poison. It is environmental karma at the level of mind. And this dance of the noosphere’s rungs and legs will lead to either great evolutionary shifts or to horrible mind-boggling mutations.

The next sphere I call the “Animasphere”, the Soul Sheath. To remember this level and to attain it as a species, we have to discover, or more precisely, to re-discover the unity underlying all manifestation. This is a way-station beyond all war, a place without prejudice, a state of no separation. From this perspective violence is an autoimmune disease, selfishness is insanity, and greed is unfathomable.

Next comes what I call the “Pneumasphere” or Spirit Sheath. Here even the notion of separate souls drops away and there is simply, Unity – there are no more waves who regard themselves as anything except expressions of one ocean; there are no more drops desperately attempting to achieve independence from the wave. Now there is true Christ Consciousness.

But the spiral keeps dancing, all of the way into the Causal Void, the infinitively creative womb, the Formlessness of No-thing-ness which births all that is, all that has been, and all that will ever be.

And, finally, the Godhead Itself, the ultimate I AM, about which we can say nothing. It is that That that is That beyond any that That that is Who.

Namasté,
Seán

[I wrote this essay in October 2007.  Today, I rediscovered it.]

Patheos.com — April 3, 2019:  I’m not really  surprised, for it has happened many times before. I’ve long since learned to spot the telltale signs but it’s always a thrill to experience it again. To the untrained eye, at this time of the year, Pena Creek is a dried-up riverbed. It is a minor tributary of Dry Creek (whose valley is now world famous for its wines.) If the “lordly” Dry Creek was given that name for its annual propensity to shrink to a serpentine, meandering, desiccated gash, one might logically deduce that Pena Creek would be even drier.

But appearances are deceptive. In 13 years living here, I have never seen Dry Creek really dry. It always manages to co-opt enough water to put on a show as it passes beneath Lambert Bridge (which, itself, has given its name to a wine) and pay its daily tribute to the Russian River at a prearranged rendezvous in Healdsburg. Similarly, Pena Creek is never fully dry. Even at the end of the hottest years it still manages to string together a creative concatenation of pools, in various shapes and sizes. Sometimes the necklace that holds these pools together is a trickle on the surface, and sometimes it is an underground artery.

The pools shrink from May to October, some of them disappearing entirely, sacrificing, in the process, shoals of finger-sized steel-head trout to the fire god of the sun. I’ve come across them occasionally, flopping about helplessly in the barely-moist mud, and thought, “Do I let nature take its course? Is this about survival of the fittest? Natural selection? Ecological birth control?”  Mostly, I figure that since I, also, am a manifestation of nature, I can choose to relocate them to a nearby pool. How long that one will last is anybody’s guess. So, is it only humans who rail against their fate? This is both our Achilles heel and the necessity which equips us to be the mother of invention.

It is a tricky maneuver, one that calls for exquisite fine-tuning as we navigate the razor’s edge between, on the one hand, abandoning all hope of influencing our journey and, on the other hand, refusing to accept what presents itself. Where is the safe passage between the inactivity of despair and the frenetic activity of the attempts to subvert cosmic patterns. Paradoxically, we cry out in anger against the Law of Impermanence, while, at the same time, changing everything in a vain attempt to keep everything the same.

So, I save a very few fish for a very short time. When the mission is complete, a mission in which our exit strategies are carefully factored in, they and I will “give up the ghost.” But for the moment we are on stage together, in this particular dimension, during this particular scene, in this particular act, of this particular drama of God. We may or may not have parts in the next scene, so let’s attempt to give Oscar-winning performances in this one.

Now, all of the foregoing might be regarded as a diversion or even a distraction from the opening sentence of this essay. Not so. For an Irishman, any conversation is an invitation to embroider the dialog with stories, musings, allegory and proverb. Like the calligraphy in the Book of Kells, an Irish speaker will stitch and weave, spin and spiral until he intersects, once again, with his own words; he will decorate the basic discourse with a myriad of interesting parentheses.

So, if you remember, I had already said that I’m not really  surprised, for it has happened many times before. I’ve long since learned to spot the telltale signs but it’s always a thrill to experience it again. To the untrained eye, at this time of the year, Pena Creek is a dried-up riverbed.

Right now, there is a wall-to-wall carpet of leaves along the creek bed – mainly brown, with a sprinkling of red and orange and green. It’s a fun walk; the crunching of the crinkly leaves makes for an interactive flooring. And now for the surprise. I am slowly and meditatively stepping my way northwards when my right foot disappears through the carpet into the moist embrace of a nine-inch-deep pool. My left foot is already committed to following its partner’s lead and I do not attempt to restrain it. I’ve gone one better than Moses; he parted the sea and walked dry-shod, whereas I’ve parted the dry land and walked wet-shod.

A woodpecker marks the occasion by hammering furiously on the up-stretched arm of a Willow tree, which is swaying lazily in the breeze. What balance he has! What focus! It is the equivalent of a window washer perched in his cage outside the 95th story of a skyscraper calmly and attentively applying his sponge and his scraper, while the entire building rocks in a hurricane. The woodpecker didn’t miss a beat. I hope he is rewarded with a grub. For any grubs who may be reading this, I am not biased against you, nor do I unthinkingly support those who hunt you. I’m quite prepared to attend a meeting of Grub Survivors of Woodpecker Attacks and empathize with your list of grievances.

Up to now I have been a slowly-moving target for the culinary attention of the flies. I decide to speed up my walk and make them work harder for their lunch. Carpet creaking accompanies me.

Somewhere up there somebody is coordinating all of these noises. The Oscar for Sound Effects goes to him. In fact, he sweeps the awards: Best Movie, Best Director, Special Effects. Thanks for casting me.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — March 5, 2019:  What is your  favorite musical instrument? The organ? Guitar? Piano? Banjo? Violin? Mine is the baton – a special baton called, “The Wind”, because I have recently recognized that the wind is soundless. It makes as little noise as does the conductor’s baton. Yet, it draws forth music from every living thing – trees, grasses…; and even from non-living things – iron gates, pipe-scaffolding, concrete pillars… It is the silent, silver-tongued seductress that elicits sounds and songs from all of matter – from God’s Creation and from human creations.

You could say that the conductor is the only member of the orchestra who does not make music; or you could say that the conductor is the one producing all  of the music. The baton is no mere timekeeper, alerting the musicians as to when and how to play; rather, it is the awakener of the eyes, which are the soul’s sensors, inviting both the musician and the instrument to express their very being.

And that is what the wind is. It is no accident that in many languages a single word does triple duty, meaning wind, life and spirit. In Hebrew that word is Ruach; in Greek it is Pneuma; in Sanskrit it is Prana; and in Kiswahili it is Pepo. It even sneaks into English as “Inspiration” which means to take in spirit, to be alive and to breathe in.

The wind is  Spirit, it is breath and it is life. And life is music; the music that souls make as they celebrate incarnation. Misaligned incarnations result in cacophony, while aligned souls harmonize with the music of the Metaverse. You can tell the state of a soul’s incarnation by the music of its spacesuit.

And the secret of harmony is to listen  to the other sections. All  of the other sections, not just the human ones. What kind of music emerges when the percussion section is not listening to the string section; or the woodwind section to the brass section?

I regularly attend a local symphony orchestra called, Pena Creek. I can hear it from the cliff on which my home is perched five hundred feet above the river; but, mostly, I like to get a “theatre box” just overlooking the stage. So, here I am sitting on a little bluff some twenty feet above the creek. A gentle zephyr is ruffling the surface of a sleeping pool making it gurgle happily like a semi-awake, absentmindedly-suckling infant at the breast. Then the zephyr softly caresses the tall grasses which grow impossibly from a cleft in a soil-less rock in midstream, causing them to whistle like a chorus of concert flutes. On the opposite shore, a strong, deliberate wind is playing among the redwoods. They sway sensuously from their knees up, groaning with the pleasure of the touch. I’ve seen these redwoods perform break-dancing in the wild orgies of the winter weather, and do slow, intimate waltzes in the summer breezes.

And even my own unkempt tresses are being swept across my face, tickling my cheeks and causing individual strands to vibrate like the strings on my grandfather’s fiddle. I hear them whisper my secret, sacred name, which is known only to my soul. I am reminded of Jesus’ saying, “Every hair on your head is counted.”

When I turn my face into the wind and play with the shapes and sizes of my oral orifice, it produces all known human vowel sounds. I am a spirit practicing the languages of Gaia.

The wind knows how to pleasure all  of the senses. Though I live 17 miles from the ocean, I can sometimes smell and taste the salt air. And, after a satisfying noon meal, as I sit on the deck, the breeze will sing a lullaby, as it gently presses my eyelids shut for a post-prandial nap, so that I can dream of the other miracles it is creating.

In the beginning was the Wind

and the Wind was the Word of God

….zzzzzZZZZ.

Namasté,
Seán

[Note: This is the first of a two-part blog.]

Patheos.com — February 12, 2019:  Fr. John Garry, beside whom I had the privilege of working for some of my 14 years in Kenya, is the best missionary I have ever known. And missionary is really mission-ary, somebody on a mission, a person of purpose. John’s purpose was to love the people whom he served in very practical ways; attending not just to their spiritual needs but to their food, education and medical needs also.

On the day I took over from him in Kipsaraman Catholic Mission – high in the hills of Baringo in the Rift Valley of East Africa – the parishioners came in huge crowds to honor him and give him gifts of maize, eggs, hens and goats. The Parish Council had organized a great farewell celebration and even rented a microphone and loudspeakers for the occasion. Many ‘important’ people made speeches and then there was an ‘open mike.’ One young mother, tenderly clutching her baby, leaned in towards John and said, “If you had breasts, I’d want my infant to suckle from you.”  It was the greatest compliment I have ever heard a woman offer a man.

The reason John was leaving Kipsaraman – a mission he had built from scratch – was that our missionary order – The St. Patrick’s Fathers (also known as The Kiltegan Fathers) had been asked to open an apostolate in Southern Sudan which was then in the throes of a deadly civil war. In fact, John would subsequently be abducted by a rebel band and frog-marched over a period of several months before being set free. Gratefully, he is still hale and hearty as of this writing.

At a diocesan celebratory mass in Nakuru cathedral, to wish him God speed, I found myself in tears as the choir sang the mystical words of Isaiah, “Here I am, Lord, is it I Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me; I will hold your people in my heart.”

This was a promise made not just by Isaiah nor by Fr. John Garry, but by every soul currently incarnated. Each of us is here because our hearts are bursting with love for humanity. Alas, incarnation creates amnesia and most of us have forgotten our fervent promise and are either sleepwalking our way through life or even consciously cursing our lot.

In this two-part essay, I will suggest four questions that might allow us to dissolve the forgetting, reignite the promise and rekindle the love. And here are the questions: “Who is the God that sent me?”, “Who is the ‘me’ that volunteered?”, “Who is the ‘neighbor’ alongside whom I am meant to labor?”  and, finally, “What is the mission I signed up for?”  The answer to these four questions is the basis for the development of a personal cosmology, an ‘examined life’ without which incarnation is a waste of a ‘spacesuit’. Let’s examine these questions.

• Who is God?

  Firstly, I need to say who God is not. He is not the dysfunctional, rage-aholic parent who threw his pre-rational kids (Eve and Adam) out of the Garden of Eden for the childish act of eating forbidden fruit. Nor is he the cosmic psychopath who, in a fit of pique, wiped out all of creation in a flood. Neither is he the prototype for Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khan… displacing nations and mandating his followers to conduct organized, serial genocides. Hence, I do not believe that God is partisan – there is no ‘chosen race’, nor ‘one true religion’.

  Also, I do not believe he is a ‘creator’ – an artisan who daily visits his well-appointed workshop, deciding one day to fashion elephants, the next day, mountains, then daffodils, banana slugs, mosquitoes, boa constrictors, hippos, oak trees, man and, finally, woman. Rather, I believe that everything that exists is a Word of God Made Flesh. There is no ‘creatio ex nihilo’ but, as Plotinus said, ‘emanatio ab Deo.’ We are all the God-force flowing into manifestation.

  And God is neither a law-maker, a law-giver, a law-enforcer, nor a law-punisher. Humans infer principles from cosmic observations and social interactions thus creating ‘laws’ that science, ethics and religion then claim are absolute.

  If you need a human metaphor, God is more like a doting grandma, telling soothing stories to the grandchild on her lap as she keeps one eye on the oven where she’s baking brownies. Of course, even to call ‘Source’ a person – let alone three distinct persons in one Godhead – is also pure metaphor.

  There are no human categories capable of articulating the Isness of God, even though we regularly experience it. The best we can do is to separate the Transcendent, ineffable, mystical gnosis from the Immanent, incarnated expressions in Nature-writ-cosmically-large. Pantheism (the notion that God is the sum total of the manifest realms) is utterly inadequate. Perhaps, Panentheism (the notion that God is both the sum total of the manifest realms and infinitely more, about which we can say nothing; nor even experience) is less inadequate. If Nature is Hamlet, then God is Shakespeare, who was much more than all of his published works.

• Who Am I?

  It is really difficult to separate out from this splinter of consciousness I call ‘me’ which is merely the lens through which Divine Consciousness adopts a partial perspective. It’s as if Light – all of it in its very essence – were mistaken for the dot in the night sky we call ‘a star.’ Each star is like an eye peering into the mysterious darkness of intergalactic space, seeking to comprehend the cosmos; and each eye thinking it has cracked the mystery and fully recorded Truth in the twin revelations of religion and science.

  It is the gap – the vast separation in scale – between the ego and the soul that creates all of human suffering. The ego is a single star, utterly convinced that it is the All-Seeing Eye of God, and regarding all other stars as pretenders to the throne. The ego is necessary for the experience of incarnation just as long as it realizes it is the servant of the soul and not its master. It is the chauffeur in the limo of life not the VIP resting in the back seat.

  All human suffering – personal, interpersonal and even international – comes when separate, insecure but inflated egos battle for the top of the pyramid of power. History – personal, tribal and global – bears gruesome testimony to the results of this megalomania. The mystics have long sought to dissolve this delusion with mantras such as, “I have a body, but I am not my body; I have emotions, but I am not my emotions; I have an intellect, but I am not my intelligence; I have a personality, but I am not even my personality.” Jesus’ teaching on compassion (in Aramaic, ‘rahamim’ – literally, ‘becoming womblike’) is an injunction to serial re-birthing of the self; disidentifying with body, emotions, mind, relationships, professions, religion, race, nationality, in order to give birth to God; to incarnate Source. We must realize that each of us is a ‘Spirit-in-a-spacesuit’, a ‘soul on safari’, a ‘bitesize piece of God having a human experience.’

  [This blog will be continued in a second part.]

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — February 19, 2019: [Note: This is the second part of a two-part blog.]

• Who is My Neighbor?

  There is a hilarious scene in the movie, ‘The Frisco Kid’, where Gene Wilder, an orthodox rabbi is ‘imported’ from a yeshiva in Poland to minister to an American congregation in Philadelphia. He is totally lost until he spots of group of black-clad, grey-bearded, somber-looking Amish men in the distance. He rushes up to them shouting in Yiddish, “Lonsman!, lonsman!!” thinking that they were Ultraorthodox Jews like himself. Strictly speaking the term, ‘lonsman’ means ‘fellow countryman’ or ‘compatriot’ but when used in the Jewish ghettos of eastern Europe and Russia, it meant ‘neighbor’ or, really, ‘fellow Jew.’

  The word ‘neighbor’ has had a long, checkered history. It bespeaks a special relationship but, initially, one based on geographical proximity rather than quality of connection. According to the Pentateuch, the newly escaped Hebrews were anything but neighborly to the tribes they encountered on their way towards and into ‘the promised land.’ Joshua began the conquest of Canaan by crossing the Jordan at Jericho, and the 200-year campaign was completed by king David when he captured Jerusalem in 1010 BCE. Fast forward a millennium and Jesus, in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?”  tells his famous parable of ‘the Good Samaritan’ in which a new ‘conquest’ – a spiritual campaign of compassion and inclusivity – begins in Jerusalem and ends in Jericho. In this parable the hero is an ‘enemy’ figure – a compassionate citizen of Samaria.

  Interestingly, both of the names – Yeshua (Jesus) and Joshua – mean ‘God saves.’ But they are very different notions of ‘salvation.’ Jesus’ teaching, however, as exemplified by the ‘Christian’ churches, has been much more honored in the breach than in the observance. A history of persecution, crusades, inquisitions and excommunications has marked the ‘success’ of this religion. ‘Neighbor’ became those who swallowed the party line; others were then admissible ‘prey.’ In the USA today – an allegedly Christian nation – ‘neighbor’ for the Democrats means only fellow Democrats, for the Republicans means only fellow Republicans; for the Liberal Left it means only others on the Liberal Left; for the Conservative Right it means only others on the Conservative Right; For Trump supporters, it means only other Trump supporters; and for Clinton Supporters it means only other Clinton Supporters. The Good Samaritan must be turning in his tomb; Jesus, luckily, managed to resurrect before all of this ‘mishugas’ got underway.

  Until we rediscover that ‘neighbor’ is all sentient life forms with whom we share the planet, our personal cosmology and its mission are going to limp along badly.

• What is My Mission?

  Each soul is committed to two levels of mission. Firstly, to grow in love as an incarnated individual; and, secondly, to be part of the team that shifts the world into Christ Consciousness. Let me examine each part.

  We are born with two basic emotions: fear and love. When fear is inner-directed, it becomes anxiety/depression; when it is outer-directed, it becomes anger or even rage. When love is inner-directed, it becomes self-esteem; and when it is outer-directed, it becomes compassion. All of these then combine and permute to create all of the other vices and virtues. In effect, all vices are simply fear in different environments; and all virtues are simply love in different environments.

  The individual mission, then, is to work on developing a few forms of love e.g., courage, compassion, trust, patience, resilience… and to overcome some forms of fear e.g., anger, anxiety, unforgiveness, prejudice… Each soul volunteers to parachute into a life/incarnation which affords it the ideal circumstances (physical body, talents, family, era, culture…) to work on those tasks. The hand that you were born with is the hand that you pre-planned in the bardo before you incarnated.

  And you came bearing two kinds of gifts – talents, with which you are meant to serve the world, not hoard nor use to inflate your ego; and ‘problems’ which are your gift to yourself, to stretch you into virtue. Mostly, however, we preen ourselves on our talents until the ego begins to look like the Pillsbury Doughboy, and we project our problems onto others and then throw stones at them.

  Any vice, in reaction to the behavior of others, is a waste of the drama set up specifically to teach us to love. It’s like members of a team getting angry or dispirited because the opponents seem to be winning the game. You chose these very opponents for the expressed purpose of improving your own skill set. For some people, then, ‘virtue’ or ‘mission’ is about being a ‘good soldier’, learning obedience; for others, it is being a renegade or prophet or outlier to the culture. So, we are all learning different virtues. Getting angry at people who major in English Lit because you are majoring in Physics is to misunderstand the whole idea of a university.

• Conclusion

  If we could adopt a God’s-eye perspective, the world is exactly where it needs to be in order to afford each individual or group the ideal opportunity to fulfill its mission and learn the form of love that it signed up for.

  Bon voyage!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — January 15, 2019:  On a great canvas a master artist has painted a stunning panorama of a valley in Yosemite. To indicate the scale of this breath-taking vista, he has included the figure of a human standing beside an enormous tree. On viewing the finished work the human comments, “It is a portrait of me with some insignificant foliage as a backdrop.”

This is the hubris, the illusion, the ego-driven original sin that turns miracles into mere matter, and measures out eternity in train schedules.

And the foundation of all this misperception is the notion of “me”. There’s a reason that the first two letters of the word, “memory” spell “me”, because the essence of the sense of self is the archive that attracts all new experiences to the flypaper of past memories. It’s debilitating enough that the sense of self is built upon past memories, but we compound the illusion by selecting a non-representative sample  of these and then fashioning them into a permanent self-image, often impenetrable to contradictory new experiences. “I am who I am and don’t you try to change my self-image by either pointing out a host of past memories or a slew of current experiences that would cause me to shift my self-perception”.  That seems to be the defiant manifesto of most people. This should be an easily dismissed illusion but the fragile, paranoid ego is expert at creating a pastiche of real past events, distorted past events and fictitious past events.

And let me add a sidebar here to distinguish between sensations and perceptions. Sensation is to perception as a photo of a scene is to a painting of the same scene: one just gives “the facts, ma’am, just the facts”  while the other gives an interpretation  of the facts. In other words, perception is the interpretation of sensation; hence the Buddha’s famous insight that while pain is inevitable, suffering is optional; while pain (sickness, accidents, tsunamis, earthquakes, death…) is the price of incarnation, suffering is the result of our explanations of, our interpretations of, and our stories about these painful experiences.

To this pastiche of real, colored and fictitious past events, the ego adroitly adds memories of my job, my relationships, my bodily sensations, my emotional reactions, my perceptions and the ideas I’ve unconsciously borrowed from books, media, churches, politics and school. I’m a veritable walking compendium of other people’s programming, sitting atop an ego-constructed set of rules-for-reality.

The final puzzle piece is a mental ladle that constantly stirs up these memories into awareness in order to create and maintain the muddied soup I call, “me.”

When you think about it, each memory is limited to being merely a personal perspective  on a much wider experience that Life itself is having. So, each memory is but a tiny slice of a real event; which means that my identity is built entirely of faulty, partial and incomplete data. It’s as if a minor detail in a gigantic mural were to extrapolate its own view and generalize it to describe the entire mural as simply a fractal enlargement of that one tiny detail.

So, can we ever shift out of that very limited perspective? The good news is, “yes, and we do so regularly.”  At night, as we dream, physical sensations (seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling) are dropped and the “self” is now created from more subtle elements. The result is that we operate from a new physics in which time, causation, conservation of momentum, conservation of energy etc. are laid aside in favor of mind-created laws and experiences. Reality is then a dance between the mind and the astral body, a much subtler one than the physical spacesuit.

But we don’t even have to be asleep to experience that; daydreaming has many of the same qualities. Here, too, the physical senses are pretty much retired and, even if your eyes are open, you’re not looking outwards as much as inwards, at alluring possible vistas and beckoning scenarios. Once more, the self is much extended.

And, of course, that can activate the imagination which is the most creatively important artistic, scientific and mystical faculty we possess. Imagination is not the ability to make up stuff which is not real (I’d call that merely, ‘fantasy’) but rather the ability to volitionally shift your state of consciousness, surf different dimensions, encounter other (“alien”) entities and energies, observe and interact with them and then return, armed with these new experiences, to graft them onto your truth-tree, and thus become a less-limited cartographer of reality.

In this journey of the imagination, if we drop memory completely,  the soul is free to really explore and experience. Mostly, however, we travel with some  memories and, depending on the kind of new experiences we are having, these memories can trigger fear or anxiety. By dropping all  memories, we’re free to delight in each experience without pre-judgment. This is what Hinduism calls, Ananda (bliss).

Then, of course, there’s deep, dreamless sleep, in which not only are your senses turned off, but so too are your emotions, your mind and your memories. There is absolutely no sense of a separate self. There is neither a ‘you’ there nor even a ‘there’ there – except if you are an enlightened master. The mystical literature says that even in deep dreamless sleep, the enlightened ones have a sense of radical union with Awareness Itself – no separate self, no contents in the mind, only pure Consciousness.

Does that remind you a little of an infant? Infants don’t yet have a sense of a separate self; the ego won’t form until about age eight months. The infant’s sensory apparatus is still fairly rudimentary; apart from the “startle response” to loud noises, it’s not yet tracking well – visually or otherwise. And, most importantly, its memory bank (for this incarnation) is pretty much showing a zero balance. Moreover, its memory bank is leaky; new experiences don’t seem to get stored very efficiently. Sensations and emotions pass through, do their shtick and depart without trace. It hasn’t yet identified even with its spacesuit and is happy to chew on a pencil, its own big toe or mother’s nipple; all are foreign objects of immense gustatory interest. If you could engage an infant in conversation about its body and ask, “Is this your house? Do you live here?”  it would probably respond, “I’m not sure; I think I’m only a visitor; I found it empty, so I came in to have a look around.”

And, yet, it has flashbacks to a time before incarnation: A sudden, full-person smile says, “Heaven? Yes, I remember that!”  whereas an agonized, existential wail says, “I can’t believe I enthusiastically signed up for this!”  Which is not to confuse the pre-personal infant with the transpersonal or post-personal bodhisattva. Each child, for all its flashbacks, will have to encounter the long, arduous journey of incarnation; to be marinated in the crucible of life and so, learn to love no matter the circumstance. This is a task taking many, many lifetimes.

And what about the other bookend of that journey? What happens when memory fails; when the hippocampus (which records the “facts” of the past) and the amygdala (which records the emotional residue of each event) no longer function; when dementia sets in? Such people can still have new experiences, but lack the capacity to store them. Not only may they forget events, and the names of loved ones, but may even lack any personal information, including their own names. In a sense, there no longer is an “I”, but merely the innate intelligence of an organism that still “remembers” how to breathe, walk and eat.

Is that what enlightenment looks like? Is it merely a volitional, self-imposed, advanced form of dementia? There are subtle but important differences. The enlightened one will still have sensations (though the perceptions will always be loving, compassionate ones) and will experience both emotions and ideas, but will not identify with them. So, such a one will not act out in fear, anger, anxiety, greed…

Enlightenment allows the dust particles of memory to settle, so that an ego-less, soul-filled view of reality occupies the entire screen of awareness.

Pardon me while I attempt to get out of my own way!

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — January 1, 2019: I kid you not. Once, I really believed what I’m going to tell you in the next few lines: growing up I was utterly convinced that the three greatest blessings which could be conferred on any human were to be born (1) Catholic, (2) Irish and (3) in Cork. In ascending  order of importance! Later on, I would smile at a local comedian who very proudly confessed the he was “Irish by good luck”  and then, taking off his hat and holding it reverently over his heart, added, “and Corkonian by the grace of almighty God.”

A month before my 18^th birthday, I entered the seminary and was overawed at the heavenly aspects of it. Here, I was the obedient son of an infallible pope, verily the vicar of Christ himself. I was now part of a Missionary Society whose Superior General was an ethereal archangel; being educated by priests who were angelic beings who celebrated private Eucharists at small side altars where they whispered sacred Latin incantations which turned bread into God. I got to watch older seminarians whom I regarded as angels-in-training. And I myself was so lucky to have joined this assembly line of angel making!

The human journey, I believe, is a movement that begins in innocence and which, in the early teenage years, morphs either into naïveté (age-inappropriate innocence) or idealism (the ability to spot the shadow, coupled with the willingness to bring it to the light.) Later on, in our 40’s perhaps, idealism bifurcates either into greed and cynicism (soured idealism) or compassion and wisdom (matured idealism.)

In my early seminary days, I was equal parts naïve and idealistic. As the scales began to fall from my eyes, and as I began to study Church history and watch international politics, I was determined never to allow myself to be scandalized; surprised, yes; shocked even, but never scandalized. Because, whereas surprise and shock allow us to dismantle naïve models and birth less inadequate ones, allowing oneself to be scandalized puts the breakers on idealism, hope and creativity.

The last 54 years have shattered all of the naïve bubbles of my early seminary days, but have not dented my soul-deep belief in the innate goodness of humans. Courtesy of Carl Jung, I realize that the shadow is 80% gold – the unrealized potential of the individual and of the global family. Goodness is there for the harvesting.

My subsequent research has unearthed the 20% which is truly dark and which affects all of our major institutions: politics that lies pathologically; religion that muzzles spirituality; mass media that prostitute themselves in the service of the elite; a compulsory school system that dumbs kids down, while pretending to educate them; medicine that prolongs illness rather than cures it so as to fill the coffers of Big Pharma; agriculture that poisons the land and attempts to grab patents on Life itself; and a military-industrial-prison complex that kills or incarcerates in the interests, not of freedom and democracy, but of the corporatocracy.

At every stage of this unfolding drama, as each old naïve belief system went “Pop!” a deeper appreciation of the divine mystery unfolded; and the only worthwhile response has been to clap joyfully at the dissolution of one illusion after the other and get sucked deeper into the laughing, loving heart of God. In Kiswahili we say, “Ya Mungu ni mengi!”  (“From God are many things” i.e., She is full of surprises.)

Now, at age 72, I am a catholic, with a little “c” – meaning universal; I’m Irish, but part of the Celtic Diaspora; and, yes, I still speak with a Cork accent. I’m luckier than ever!

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — December 18, 2018:  Noah was constantly ridiculed by his neighbors who teased him about global warming, but on the day the flood waters lifted the Ark out of his backyard, he had to repel them with his Rothweilers as they attempted to climb aboard before he could batten down the hatches.

It must have been a trifle crowded on board; not to mention quite stinky. And it’s no wonder he was given 120 years to collect all of the animals and shepherd them to their quarters, because many of them lived in China and Brazil and Ireland, thousands of miles from the port of embarkation. I wonder did he fetch them in smaller vessels and ship them back to the Middle East?

The birds couldn’t all be kept in the same section; hawks and eagles and other raptors had to be separated from the doves and finches. Lions and tigers were totally frustrated because they could smell the antelope and wildebeest, but couldn’t get at them. And how, in God’s name, did he keep the creepy-crawlies from pinching, biting and stinging everybody? And, of course, he had to put the larger animals (elephants, rhinos, hippos, etc …) in the lowest level of the Ark, under the waterline to act as ballast. It was a logistical nightmare!

You’ll find two versions of this ancient tale thoroughly mixed together in the Book of Genesis, but today I figured out a third version; or, at least, a different ending to the story. So here ‘tis:

About 150 days into the flood, things began to get pretty rocky. Noah was still upset that he had been forced to abandon his grandfather, Methuselah, who had just turned 969 and whom he dearly loved, while being pressured to make space for hyenas, skunks and boa constrictors. He himself was 600 years of age and could get quite cranky after a nap. Mrs. Noah didn’t have any girls of her own and had never really liked any of her three daughters-in-law. For their part, they gossiped continually about her, behind her back, and once put a tarantula on her pillow.

Everybody was fed up with having to eat manna and muesli day after day. They got seasick; regularly. And there were constant squabbles about whose turn it was to do potty patrol. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Poop Deck.”

Meanwhile the three sons constantly got into arguments with each other; and Ham would get really cross when his brothers Shem and Japhet asked him, at meal times, if he felt like a sandwich. Occasionally, it came to fisticuffs.

But the biggest problem, by far, was the boredom. So, the boys invented cockfighting, dog-fighting, bull-fighting and even fights between the elephants and the rhinos. This terrified their mother and their wives, who threatened to tell Noah, but it was far too much fun, so they continued to have these great beasts do battle with each other.

One day it got particularly rowdy; the rhino, whose eyesight wasn’t great at the best of times, mistimed his charge and drove his horn out through the hull of the Ark. He pulled it back and returned to the fray; the boys cheered and a trickle of water began to seep into the ship. The rhino charged again; and missed again; he breached the wall a second time, shook his head free and returned, once more, to the battle. The boys cheered even louder; a torrent of water began to pour into the ship. By now the elephant was thoroughly annoyed; so, getting his two great tusks under the belly of the rhino, he flung him across the ship; and the hull shattered. The boys stopped cheering as seawater rushed in. A very surprised shark was sucked into the Ark and caught his first glimpse of a giraffe.

The boys looked at each other; they knew their dad would not be happy; he wasn’t. Luckily for them, before he could come below decks, to reprimand them, the Ark had sunk, with the loss of all lives. In ten terrifying minutes all the humans, animals, mammals, birds and insects of Planet Earth were gone. One hundred and twenty years of Noah’s preparation and 3.7 billion years of evolution went down the tubes.

The Elohim, who were watching from the heavens, tweaked their long grey beards and said, “You know what? It’s just as well! Making man in our own image and likeness was a harebrained idea to begin with.”

So now, my dear listener, you have two choices: you can stop reading at the end of Genesis chapter 8 or you can continue to read the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures and all of the New Testament right up through Revelation chapter 22; but the Bible version and my version are headed for the same ending.

Noah’s Ark – aka Planet Earth – has, once again, been fatally wounded; its ability to safely and lovingly carry its precious cargo of life has been seriously compromised. The Elohim (the “Lofty Ones”) decided to create the Biblical  flood of 13,000 years ago, since they were determined to wipe out all life on Planet Earth because of the sins and depravity of humans. This time, however, it is not the Elohim but humans  themselves who have created the flood.

This time, the rhino is the Military-Industrial Complex and the elephant is the National Security State. This time the “boys” are the bankster cabal for whom conflict, pain and the agony of the dying are merely a sport to ease the boredom of lives lived without soul.

Hello! Is there anybody awake out there?

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — December 11, 2018: How many thousands of actors have played the role of Hamlet since Shakespeare wrote that play? Even though it’s exactly the same script and identical plot, each has played it uniquely – from high school students to Hollywood stars. But what would happen if you were to strip away both the plot and the script and just put the original characters (the queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Hamlet, Horatio…) on stage to do ‘improv theater’? Each group would create a brand-new, totally different drama.

Psychodrama – a therapeutic technique done in a group format – does precisely that. The therapist puts a bunch of clients ‘on stage.’ They are given neither a script nor a plot but are simply assigned roles and an initial scenario on which they have to build a dialog and a drama. For example, four people might be assigned roles as a mother, a father and two teenaged kids. The father is an engineer, the mother a CFO of a multinational, the son a popular student and quarter back for his school and the daughter a sophomore who has just been suspended for smoking pot in the school yard.

And, now, the family is ‘on stage’ to deal with this situation. In the absence of a plot or a script, it is strictly ‘improv’ and very quickly the actors’ real personalities – strengths, weaknesses, communication styles and issues – are unearthed. It quickly becomes a very accurate psycho-diagnostic technique.

Let’s play with this notion using the full scope of human history and the one hundred and eleven billion people estimated to have lived since the arrival of Homo Sapiens Sapiens some 70,000 years ago. Each person is therefore embedded in a global drama that spans all of history and covers all corners of the Earth.

Now, let’s imagine a soul pod in the Bardo – the life between lives – reviewing this scene under the guidance of a team of mentors. What lesson does each member want to sign up for? By interweaving these lessons, the mentors then advise the soul pod about which era of history and into what part of the globe they are to be ‘dropped’ in order to accomplish these goals.

They get to play using only an initial scenario. Thereafter, there is neither pre-determined plot nor pre-programmed lines to be committed to memory. It’s a global ‘ad lib.’ It matters not that other souls had been previously dropped into these exact roles in that exact initial scenario. They had played it differently.

The overall tasks are two: (1) the evolution-into-enlightenment of each of the individual players and (2) the shift of Homo Sapiens Sapiens into a Christ conscious ‘Homo Spiritualis.’

To speed up this development, each of us is playing in parallel lives ‘at the same time’ because souls are really ‘out of time’ and operate in ‘an eternal now.’ Since they are out of time, when one incarnation ‘ends’ (e.g., as an American family in the 1900’s), the ‘next’ incarnation could be as a nomadic tribe in 800 BCE in central Africa.

What might this notion of parallel lives look like? Imagine a chess master who is playing twenty simultaneous matches (Bobby Fischer in 1964 at age 21, played 50 simultaneous matches, winning 47, drawing two and losing one!) Around this chess master, in a great circle, each seated at a separate table, are twenty chess players of varying abilities. The chess master walks from table #1 onwards responding to the moves of each contestant. Different opponents ‘stretch’ him differently. And the ‘first game to start’ (table #1) may not be the ‘first game to end.’ It depends on (1) the lessons that the chess master needs to learn and (2) the ability of the opponents.

Let me use one other metaphor. I remember the first time I ever got a music CD that I could play on my computer. I clicked on the icon and it showed that the disc contained 13 songs. It gave me the title, the singer and the duration of each piece. Initially, I simply hit the PLAY button and listened as it belted out the songs in the prearranged order. Then, I discovered the SHUFFLE button which played the 13 songs in a completely random order. Thirdly, I discovered that I could predetermine the order in which I wanted them to play so, for the fun of it, I chose the prime numbers first (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and 13) followed by the even-numbered integers (4, 6, 8, 10 and 12) finishing up with the ‘leftovers’ (1 and 9). I also wondered, but haven’t been able to do it, what would it sound like if I could play all 13 tunes simultaneously. Cacophony, I’m sure, but it might also stretch my ear and my brain – as well as my patience!

That metaphor, and its four iterations, just about sums up my thinking about incarnation, its purpose and how it works.

Though I had known about reincarnation, as taught by Hinduism and in some schools of Buddhism, as well as in Celtic and many other mythologies, and though I had lived among the Kalenjin peoples of East Africa for 14 years, who had a very strong belief that the ancestors were reborn within the family, I regarded all of these as interesting but unscientific and, therefore, unfounded.

Then in the Fall of 1987, at a Perinatal workshop led by Barbara Findeisen, I had my own, very powerful and life-changing experience of being a young Nepalese woman giving birth to her firstborn. Subsequently, after being trained in hypnosis and self-hypnosis, I have recalled a total of eleven other lifetimes in Ireland, England, Italy, Germany and Russia. The final experience was actually under the guidance of my friend and fellow clinical psychologist, Matt McKay, who led me in a four-hours-long regression that went from this life as Seán, to a previous life as a young Russian soldier killed while helping to liberate a concentration camp towards the end of WWII, to a vivid experience in the Bardo state, the life between lives.

In examining this entire series of lifetimes, it quickly became obvious that, if I treated them chronologically, I see-sawed between more aligned and less aligned lifetimes. This seemed counter intuitive so I quickly came up with two possible explanations. Firstly, that time is made up and, therefore, that chronology was a very poor template of evolution. So, I rearranged the lifetimes to reflect a gradual developmental alignment with Love. This made a lot more sense than being manacled by a chronological calendar. In other words, at the end of each lifetime and with the guidance of my mentors, having completed a life as a theologian in Germany in the 1700’s, I may then have chosen my ‘next’ life as a young English mother in the 1,300’s gazing ecstatically at her sleeping infant.

The other explanation is that – again, since time is made up – I may be playing all of these lifetimes  and possibly many others, simultaneously, like the chess master in the metaphor I used earlier. Thus, my wins, losses and draws may reflect the quality of my opponents i.e., the relative difficulty of the lives I consciously chose while still in the Bardo state.

And of all the dramas – from the ‘historical beginning’ to the ‘end of all incarnational time’, across all continents and involving all communities and all individuals – become the tapestry of the Akashic Records, serving not just as a museum of the doings of the long-since dead, but as living cells and neurons that can be consciously recycled, re-used and re-configured into ‘new’ growth opportunities, so that the Immanence of God can feed Her Transcendence with stories from Her creations. It’s like a hive of bees, each individual leaving the hive several times a day to gather pollen and stories to feed the colony (the other souls) and the queen (God.)

It is the way in which God, pretending not to know Herself, becomes ‘greater’. When the Word became flesh – and each of us is a Word of God made flesh – it was to harvest all manifestation in the service of the One Immutable Source.

Figure that one out!

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — November 20, 2018:  Important people love to mess with time – and I’m not just talking about Einstein and Relativity Theory. Even with a cursory knowledge of Latin or Spanish, you will recognize that ‘Sept’ means 7, that ‘Octo’ means 8, that ‘Nov’ means 9 and that ‘Dec’ means 10. So, why then is September, which is the ninth month in our calendar, called, ‘September’; why isn’t it called, ‘November’? The last four months of our calendar are out of synch by two! Whom shall we blame? It was the Romans who did it. Originally, their calendar had only ten months; and the year, appropriately enough, began in March – which contains the Spring Equinox – and ended, not with November and December but with January and February.

So, September through December were, originally, appropriately named. Then they realized that their calendar of ten months was at variance with astronomy and our solar year. Therefore, they invented two brand-new months and inserted them between June and September. They named the two new months after the emperors Julius Caesar (July) and Augustus Caesar (August.) They tightened up the orbit but sacrificed the language.

A millennium and a half later, another Roman changed the calendar again. Pope Gregory the Great, in October 1582, promulgated the eponymous calendar to really finetune the math, creating leap years in the process. In spite of great opposition from the ‘working class’, he sacrificed ten whole days. People went to bed on the night of October 4th and awoke ‘next day’ on October 15th. And they didn’t even have the excuse of a hangover.

• A. The Afterlife

  One of these months, November, was dedicated to remembering the veil and those on the other side of it. Attribute this to the Celts and their feast of Samhain (pronounced: “Sow–in” – and that’s ‘sow’ as in ‘now’, not ‘sow’ as in ‘sew’.) the Celtic day began at sunset on the ‘day before’ as did the Hebrew day; and the Celtic year began with Samhain because darkness gives birth to light and to life. For the Celts, day and night, light and dark, summer and winter are lovers not enemies. It’s akin to the Buddhist notion of “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.”

  The Catholic church borrowed this notion and grafted their own theology onto it. So, November begins with the feast of All Saints on November 1st, and All Souls on November 2nd. Not to be completely ignored, the Catholic church in Ireland, to honor its Celtic roots, proclaimed November 6th as the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland

  As a Celt and a catholic priest, I do not believe in an afterlife; not because I don’t believe that the soul survives death; I do; but because there is no after, there is only one life – one single life which is the energy that emanates from Source. This one energy manifests as life in all dimensions, including the physical. The same one life force takes a multitude of forms in flora and fauna. Humans are one form of fauna. And each human experiences this one life in several phases. Firstly, comes the pre-incarnational phase  of the soul which is a holographic fractal of God. Next comes the incarnational phase  where we realize we are ‘spirits in spacesuits.’ Then comes the post-incarnational phase  following upon what some call ‘death.’ Buddhism refers to this phase as ‘the bardo state.’ Then comes the re-incarnational phase.  And this game of God repeats until all souls remember, even while incarnated, that they are, at core, bite-sized bits of Source.

  Religion, of course, has attempted to predict, own and control this process. The Catholic church has a divided the ‘afterlife’ into four condos – heaven, hell, purgatory and limbo. Let’s take them in reverse order. Limbo came from the casuistry of balancing two theological principles (i) you can’t get to heaven unless you’re a baptized Catholic and (ii) ‘Catholic’ babies who die before they can be baptized can’t get to heaven – ever; but since they haven’t actually committed any personal sin, they don’t merit hell. So, God created a kind of a boarding school where angels attended to the needs of the infants – presumably bottle-feeding them and changing their diapers – being very careful to never mention the words, ‘God’ or ‘heaven’ lest it lead to some awkward questions.

  In the Ireland of my childhood, these babies were buried in special graveyards called, ‘Cillíní,’ since you couldn’t have them rubbing shoulders with corpses whose erstwhile occupants were now in heaven or hell. Some years ago, without any fanfare, the church silently closed limbo and bussed all of its residents to heaven.

  Then, there was purgatory – in my opinion, reincarnation by another name – a place in which souls could be purified of bad karma until they were fit for heaven. Even though it consisted of awful suffering, it had a shelf life and a guarantee of heaven eventually. As of this writing, it’s still extant and doing a roaring trade.

  Hell, of course, had the biggest population and consisted only of permanent, fulltime residents who, in God’s infinite compassion, were handed over to a cosmic psychopath called, Satan, and his merry band of sadists. We weren’t told who exactly provided the pitchforks.

  Ontologically speaking, there is no such place, though we have managed, during incarnation, to produce passable facsimiles of it psychologically and sociologically. It is no more possible for souls to be eternally separated from God than it is for sunbeams to be separated from the sun.

  And then, phew! There’s heaven for the very small band of the obedient elect. The problem is that different religions have radically different ‘rules of admission’ involving different beliefs and different ‘spiritual practices’ if you want to make the cut. Lest you think that you can cover all of your bases – ‘just to be sure to be sure’ – and not piss off any of the God-versions, many of the requirements are either orthogonal across religions or even diametrically opposed. Sorry dude, you gotta bet on only one horse.

  You can have 72 virgins if you choose the martyr route of Islam and it proves to be the one true religion; or you get a halo and a harp if you chose Christianity and it proves to be the ‘one and only.’ But, let’s face it, statistically speaking, what are the odds of getting it right, especially among the faith systems that deny reincarnation? You’ve a better chance to winning the Lotto.

  When I lived in Kenya and wanted to speak of heaven, I would pun in Swahili and say, “Mbinguni si mahali, bali ni hali.” (heaven is not a place, it’s a state of being.) And that is my thinking. The ‘afterlife’ begins where incarnation ends; we, initially, carry over the mindset we lived by; experiencing the heaven we expected or felt we deserved. But just as it did while incarnated, the soul continues to evolve ‘on the other side’ eventually transcending all of the perks and relationships until all vestiges of the separate self dissolve into the ocean of Unity Consciousness which is Love or God.

• B. Indulgences

  As a child, on November 2nd each year, I was one of a throng of compassionate Catholics on the frontlines of springing souls from purgatory. On that day, and on that day only, you could release as many souls as you were able by doing the following exercise. For each visit to a church, say one Pater Noster, one Ave Maria and one Glory-be-to-the-father for the pope’s intentions. You had to leave the church and re-enter after each purgatorial pardon in order for it to count, so on November 2nd you’d see breathless kids running in and out of church and praying at the rate of knots. Obviously, the guys in charge at the other side spoke all languages and understand all accents – even English with an Irish brogue.

  After each sortie, the gate-keepers in heaven and in purgatory signaled each other: “one soul, Social Security Number 123-45-6789, leaving here (purgatory); over and out” and Peter, at the pearly gates, would reply, “roger that; admitting one soul, Social Security Number 123-45-6789, granted permission to enter.”

  As I write these lines, it reminds me of two guys on a road repair project with two-sided signs that read, STOP/GO. If it’s a big distance between them, they use walkie-talkies, otherwise they just eye-ball each other. Maybe the guy in purgatory just used smoke signals and Peter replied with trumpet blasts.

  When I finished high school and entered the seminary on September 14th, 1964, I came up with a brainwave. I would start a Team Purgatory project, coopting my class mates, the priests-to-be, in order to empty out purgatory. The problem was that about 200,000 people die each day – 73 million each year. How, in God’s name could I rescue all of these! It would be like trying to mop up the kitchen floor while the sink was overflowing, the plug in place and the faucet fully open. But then I started to do the math. The world population then was 3.26 billion people and the Catholic population was half a billion. Incidentally, over the last two centuries the Catholic population has remained steady at about 16% of the world’s population. However, unfortunately, only baptized Catholics could escape hell, so that reduced my task enormously. Moreover, those in limbo could not be redeemed using indulgences; and, again very unfortunately, as I listened to the fire-and-brimstone preachers of the day, I understood that very few Catholics actually made it into purgatory, let alone heaven. Many fell at the twin hurdles of eating meat on Fridays or missing mass on Sundays, not to mention the seamier ways – I won’t besmirch your pious eyes by recording them here – by which Satan seduced the weakest among us. Finally, I calculated the average life expectancy for the Catholic countries of Europe and the Americas, and some of the converted countries of Africa. My algorithm told me that there were approximately two million newbies admitted to purgatory each year. Now that was a number I could handle with the help of seminarians, priests and nuns. I’d start a crusade to encourage all compassionate Catholics to take their daily quota end empty purgatory by December 24th each year as a birthday gift to the baby Jesus.

  I am sorry to report, however, that my organizational skills and self-discipline were both inadequate to the proposed task. Mea maxima culpa!

• C. The Communion of Saints

  One of the Church’s better ideas, in my opinion, is the notion of the ‘Communion of Saints’. It is the Catholic belief that souls on both sides of the veil remain in contact and can assist each other. It’s a trinity of relationships where those in heaven, in purgatory and on Earth can all be in communication with each other. It’s a beautiful idea, basically, but I have two problems with it. First, is the nomenclature: those in heaven are called, ‘the church triumphant’; those on Earth are called, ‘the church militant’; and those in purgatory are called, ‘the church suffering.’ My second objection is that membership is far too limited. Only Catholics are included. I far prefer the notion of the ‘bodhisattva’ where advanced souls keep volunteering to reincarnate until all sentient beings awaken to their Buddha nature.

  My own personal hit on the idea of ‘the communion of saints’ draws on the work of the famous Irish physicist, John Bell, who in the 1960’s postulated a theory of entanglement – known as Bell’s Theorem – which has since been experimentally proven. Simply stated, it means that all particles are connected and ‘share’ information and changes-of-state with each other, instantaneously.

  I believe that all souls – in all dimensions and all sides of all the veils – aren’t just ‘entangled’ via information or energy, but by intention and compassion.

  All sentient beings are neurons on God’s brain. Salvation or Christ Consciousness, Self-realization or Buddha nature happens when there is total coherence in the system.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — November 7, 2018: [Note: This is part one of a two-part essay on the topic of Christ Consciousness.]

• Introduction

  Quite frequently, in homilies, lectures and writings, I use the phrase, “Christ Consciousness.” Some weeks ago, a parishioner asked if I might deliver a full ‘sermon’ on the topic. So, I did; and this blog, in two parts, is the result.

  I don’t believe for a moment that Jesus of Nazareth was the only ‘avatar’ to exemplify and teach on this topic. Very similar ideas can be found in the terms, “Buddha nature” (in Buddhism) and “Self-realization” (in Hinduism). And I would claim that even the Christian term “Salvation”, properly understood, is really the same idea. Of course, all of these articulations of the great mystical traditions have been misinterpreted and even abused as control mechanisms. More about that anon.

  In this article, I will focus on the Jesus’ version, with occasional forays into other wisdom traditions. The core text and very powerful articulation of and injunction to “Christ Consciousness” can be found in the mystical poetry of St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians chapter 2. Here are two versions of the text. The first one is from the NIV (New International Version) and the second is my own free-flowing version of it.

• NIV Version

  Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

  Who, being in very nature God,
  did not consider equality with God
  something to be used to his own advantage;
  rather, he made himself nothing
  by taking the very nature of a servant,
  being made in human likeness.
  And being found in appearance as a man,
  he humbled himself
  by becoming obedient to death –
  even death on a cross!

  Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
  and gave him the name that is above every name,
  that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
  in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
  and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
  to the glory of God the Father.

• My “Interpretation”

  Have that consciousness in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
  who, although he was God, did not cling to his divinity
  but emptied himself and incarnated as a human;
  accepting his mortality even unto death.
  Because of this,
  God identified the characteristic
  which is above all other attributes,
  so that every sentient being
  in heaven and on Earth
  will bow the knee
  and proclaim, ‘Namaste,’
  – the recognition of God
  in all of Her children.

  So, to use parallel terms, Jesus is the exemplar par excellence of true Self-realization and of a fully-awakened buddha nature. I will parse the effects of Jesus’ teaching by viewing it through three basic lenses: “Religio-theology”, “Socio-morality” and Psycho-spirituality.”

• 1A. Religio-theology – the Gift

  If I were to collapse Jesus’ self-proclaimed job description to two phrases, they would be (i) to preach Good News and (ii) to Heal Sickness. ‘Good News’ has to be both good and new. In other words, it should raise the listeners’ spirits, and it should not be the ‘old hat’ of finger-waving preachers warning us about the temperature of hell.

  In one of his most passionate challenges to the religious teachers of his own tradition – a tradition which he deeply loved – he pointed out the ways in which they burden the ‘laity’ with heavy loads but not lift a finger to help them. Even more devastatingly, he upbraided them for closing off the doors beyond dogma into mysticism – not venturing in there themselves while forbidding others from entering. Alas, it is an accusation that is still valid, as we compare all three monotheistic religions and their treatment of their mystics.

  As competing theological movements attempted to identify where precisely the kingdom of heaven was located and how it could be attained, Jesus said simply, “the kingdom of God is ‘en mesoi’ (within you and among you.)” So, even mysticism is not about mastering arcane, esoteric practices, it is simply about changing focus. It’s how  you look, not where  you look. Faithful rabbi that he was, with a profound knowledge of Torah, he avowed that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Then, he went on to complete it, not by a slavish adherence to legal literalism but to radically transform it e.g., “you have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘an eye for an eye’… but I say to you, love your enemies…” He took some of the most important of Torah’s 613 precepts and significantly ‘upgraded’ them; for example, kosher foods and the Sabbath rest.

  And he wasn’t offering a one-size-fits-all-for-all-ages, he was demonstrating the fact that ‘good news’ must continue to evolve in order to be ‘good’ and ‘new’ in all eras. He wasn’t giving us a new law, he was advocating a new mindset – a ‘Christ Consciousness’ mindset.

  Like the Buddha, he preached a form of ‘anitya’ (impermanence). However, this too is a concept that is regularly misunderstood. Impermanence is not simply the lugubrious lamentation that everything that is born will die. That is only Act I of the drama. Act II is the knowledge that everything that dies will resurrect, transform or reincarnate. Only the present form  is impermanent, the essence is eternal. He not only taught that, he also demonstrated it. There is even an Act III – Ascension, the evolution of even the soul’s sense of separate self into the oceanic Unity Consciousness of Source.

  Like Prigogine’s ‘dissipative structures’ and Shiva’s role in the Hindu trinity, love continues to express itself in ever more complex Logos-directed ways.

• 1B. Religio-theology – Historical Aberrations

  As I mentioned earlier, even the word ‘salvation’, properly understood, could be a synonym for ‘Christ Consciousness’. Unfortunately, it got reduced to the notion of ‘redemption’ (from the Latin meaning to ‘buy back’). Now, the all-loving Source has been reduced to a cosmic monster who made a bargain with Satan to trade ‘his only-begotten son’ in order to buy back the sinful human race, dismiss the security detail (cherubim with fiery swords) outside of paradise and re-open the creaky, rusted gates to the Garden of Eden. Satan didn’t just get his pound of flesh, he got 150 pounds of it. What a weird waste of millennia of exegesis of the divine mystery of God’s unrelenting love for us!

  Now, salvation is an outcome that can be ‘gamed’ by a whole series of tricks e.g., circumcision, the Hajj, the Nine First Fridays and – the pièce de résistance – indulgences. The Vatican, in its infinite, infallible wisdom, created a kind of pay-to-pray and pray-to-play spiritual practice, where you could persuade God to commute (partial indulgence) or even cancel (plenary indulgence) a sinner’s stay in purgatory. These ran the gamut from 300 days off for good behavior to ‘papal pardons’ with an Uber escort to the pearly gates. All, of course, for a little fee to raise money for the pope’s pet projects – mainly self-glorifying construction enterprises.

  The latest version is that you can win indulgences by following Pope Francis’ Twitter account – and the Facebook page – of his papal journeys. What a combo, Zuckerberg, Dorsey and the Roman Curia! I hope that God’s computer never gets hacked or some ne’er-do-well could steal your identity and bilk you out of your hard-earned seat in heaven.

  In between redemption and indulgences, the church managed to turn a simple group of nomadic ‘good news’ spokespeople – men and women – into a patriarchal, hierarchical, dogma-inventing institution which was fear-based and law-centered. In the ultimate abuse of power, based on later-inserted ‘biblical’ teachings such as “whatever you bind on Earth will be considered bound in heaven…”, we then got theocracies which claimed jurisdiction of not only your mortal life but your eternal afterlife. You can run or even die, but you cannot hide. In a nice, neat ₂X₂ matrix, they created four living quarters for the deceased – heaven, hell, purgatory and limbo.

  In order to separate the family of God even further, they instigated wars on the pagans, infidels and ‘perfidious Jews’ through crusades, conquests and conversions. And, when they ran out of foreign enemies, they created, tortured and torched internal enemies in the inquisition of heretics.

• 2A Socio-morality – the Gift

  This is where the rubber meets the road. ‘Christ Consciousness’ proposes an extraordinarily elevated ethical system in which the cornerstone is forgiveness – even of the enemy. This is a one-two delivery because it is predicated on reframing ‘enemy’ as ‘neighbor’. This is beautifully articulated in the parable of the Good Samaritan where the enemy, the Samaritan (read: Palestinian Arab) is the one who responds with compassion for the injured Hebrew (read: Jewish Israeli). Moreover, the journey in which the story is embedded begins in Jerusalem and ends in Jericho – the exact reverse of the conquest of the ‘promised land’ 1200 years before. Now the hero is a Canaanite and the needy traveler is a ‘child of Moses’. In this power-packed parable, Jesus is showing that the priest and the Levite, who protected their ritual cleanliness by not touching a possibly-dead body, failed to realize that God values compassion much more highly than She values human rules.

  While allowing that they must ‘render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars’, Jesus proposes a moral code called, ‘The Beatitudes’ which, I believe has never been surpassed and which, unfortunately, has never really been tried.

• 2B Socio-morality – Historical Aberrations

  The two greatest aberrations to this ethical system were (i) our treatment of nature and (ii) our treatment of fellow humans. Nature had gotten off to a very rocky start once God gave us ‘Radah’ over nature. The Hebrew word, ‘Radah’, can mean, ‘to exploit’, ‘to control’ or ‘to be responsible for’ – as in loving stewardship. God, himself, didn’t help initially when he punished the sin of Adam and Eve by setting even nature against them, “Both thorns and thistles it will yield you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow will you eat your bread…”  He didn’t help much either with his own version of the Permian Extinction when he callously wiped out all of life except for a small, floating zoo. Jesus’ insistence that not even a sparrow falls from the sky without our heavenly father being concerned for it, and his injunction to “look at the lilies of the field…” was an attempt to heal the ancient rupture between ourselves and nature. It’s even absurd to try to differentiate between the two. It’s like the head speaking of everything south of the chin as a foreign body.

  Most of Jesus’ parables are drawn from his intimate connection with and deep appreciation of nature – its flora and fauna and lifeforce. The accelerating pace of technology, from nomadic to horticultural to agricultural to industrial to informational societies, has seen nature reduced from a partner to merely a resource to be sucked dry and then discarded.

  The second great aberration in this elegant moral code is the treatment of humans by humans. All manner of superficial differences – which are merely the tones on God’s palette – have been pressed into the service of creating pecking orders with accompanying privileges and punishments. Caste, creed, color, class, gender, race, socio-economic-standard, IQ and religious affiliation have all been deliberately magnified and used to justify everything from disparity of wages to outright slavery – often by people who pay pious lip service to the Carpenter from Galilee.

  Unscrupulous wannabe empires from ancient Akkadia to current corporatocracy have used fellow humans as pawns in their bloody wars. It’s almost as if compassion has been bred out of these oligarchical lineages.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — November 13, 2018: [Note: This is part two of a two-part essay on the topic of Christ Consciousness.] 

• 3A Psycho-spirituality – The Gift

  Jesus told many parables whose purpose, I believe, was to help the listeners differentiate between the ego and the soul. For example, he tells of a rich man who, before he went away on a long trip, set a manager in charge of his property and workers. The rich man delayed in coming back, so the manager figured he had gotten lost or had died. So, he began to regard the property and the workers as his own – and started to get drunk and abuse them. How to interpret this? I don’t think that the rich man was God and that the manager represented the typical sinful human, whom God would punish. Rather, I believe, that the rich man represents the soul and the manager represents the ego. Very often, we mistake our egos for our souls and neglect our incarnational missions.

  Two thousand years after Jesus, Carl Jung came to the same conclusion by showing that the ego was an archetype which governed a particular level of consciousness – the waking state 7am to 10pm. However, the center of the entire psyche (conscious, subconscious and unconscious) he called the archetype of the Self. And what he termed the process of ‘individuation’ was the placing of the ego in the service of this growth into the fulness of the Self/Soul/Psyche.

  The entire purpose of life, then, in Jesus’ teaching – and in Buddhism and Hinduism, was to come fully awake to (i) who we really are: holographic fractals of Source and (ii) why we incarnated – which was to help shift the psyche of the planet into Christ Consciousness. Alas, the vast bulk of us are asleep at the wheel, blindly following the dictates of the individual ego which, even more devastatingly, is bullied and reduced into following the mega-ego  of the ruling oligarchy and their fabricated memes.

  It is a terrible waste of an incarnation to live and to die in the service of these two egos. I think that this is what Jesus meant when he said, “Anyone who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy to be my disciple.” In other words, better to have never woken up at all than to temporarily awaken and then decide being awake was too hard and deciding to go back to sleep.

  Allow me for a few moments to dip into a brand-new articulation of this mystery of consciousness. Tom Campbell is a NASA physicist who has spent his working life reconciling science and spirituality. His work is based on two postulates (i) the primacy of consciousness (all matter arises from it) and (ii) the reality of evolution. Since the time of Einstein, science has been struggling to develop ‘a theory of everything’ (a TOE) – a simple elegant formula that could unify the four basic forces of nature – Strong nuclear force, Weak nuclear force, Gravity and Electro-magnetism – and thus explain the physical cosmos.

  So far, they’ve gotten nowhere and, to confuse matters further, they have to dismiss as poppycock all reports of the paranormal and the spiritual. Tom Campbell has written a huge tome called, “My Big Toe” in which he elegantly builds a consistent and complete model that can account for both ‘normal’ and ‘paranormal’ realities. To divest himself completely from the accumulated baggage of religious terminology he uses the following nomenclature (I will put my own terms side-by-side to make it easier to comprehend.) The Larger Consciousness System (LCS) – what I would call God/Source is the Awareness which lies outside of our ability to comprehend. An Individuated Unit of Consciousness (IUOC) – what I would call a Soul, especially the Atma element, or non-incarnated aspect of soul – is a fractal of the LCS. A Freewill Awareness Unit (FAU) – what I would call a Jiva – is the aspect of soul that incarnates. And an Avatar – what I would call human character/personality – is the role that an FAU plays in a particular incarnation.

  To take it in reverse, an Avatar is simply a role you play in this particular life; the FAU archives all of the experiences of the Avatar (who dissolves on death); the IUOC then builds upon the FAU’s archives and once more dips into a new incarnation creating a brand-new Avatar for the drama. Finally, all of the archived wisdom and experiences are fed back from all of these Avatars through the FAU’s and IUOC’s to the LCS. Ain’t that a mouthful! Hence, the LCS is constantly evolving. Christianity has a theory of this also. It’s called, ‘process theology’ which says that even God – at least in his immanence – is always growing.

  Hinduism’s version of this is the following. Every human being, incarnated in a physical body (they call it gross body) generates experiences which, upon individual death, are archived in the astral body. All of the experiences of all of the lifetimes (Jivas) of a particular soul (Atma) are stored in the causal body. All of the experiences of all of the lifetimes of all souls in all dimensions are stored in the Akashic Records. And, ultimately, they become part of Brahma (creator God).

  I love Tom Campbell’s work but I have one criticism of it. It feels a little pantheistic – that God (the LCS) is simply the sum total of all the experiences generated by all of the Avatars of all the FAU’s of all the IOUC’s. This feels like saying that Shakespeare is simply the sum total of his collected works. I believe that there was much more to Willie S. than the compilation of his sonnets and plays. And I believe there is much more to God than Her creations. So, I tend to be in the panentheistic  rather than the pantheistic camp. But I agree with Campbell that the LCS is utterly beyond human comprehension – or, in religious language, the Transcendence of God is utterly ineffable.

  Let’s move forward. There appears to be a significant clash between the Buddha and Jesus on the question of the Self/Soul. The buddha taught ‘anatma’ or no-soul. He said that the ‘apparent’ soul was merely the aggregation of five attributes (Skanda’s) of incarnation – form, sensations, perceptions, mental activity and consciousness – which dissolve at death. Imagine a child with a Lego set consisting of many parts in just five colors. Initially, the child builds a castle using all of the pieces. He soon tires of it, dismantles it and instead, using all of the same pieces, builds a submarine. So, what happened to the ‘castle-hood’ of the castle? It was simply an illusion created by the physical pieces in a particular formation. Similarly, the ‘submarine-hood’ is another temporary configuration of the exact same pieces.

  Confucius, a contemporary of the Buddha, agreed. He claimed that the self was an illusion created by the sum of our social roles what he called, ‘the five constant relationships’ – those of husband & wife, parents & children, elder brother & younger siblings, teacher & pupil and emperor & subjects.

  But here’s the thing, in his most mystical moments Jesus would agree with both Siddhartha and Confucius. At the last supper when Philip asked him, “show us the father and that will be enough for us”, his exasperated reply was, “Philip, have I been with you all this time, and still you do not know me? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”  Then he went on to say, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”

  In other words, at core there is only the Father or Source. Everything else is simply a manifestation. To put it in my own words, “life is a dream that the ego is having; the ego is a dream that the soul is having; the soul is a dream that Spirit is having; and Spirit is a dream that Source is having.

  When I look at the life of Jesus and wipe away both the cultural accretions and patriarchal redactions, I see a cohort of three great souls with a joint mission to move dogmatic religion into mystical spirituality. These souls incarnated as Jesus, his mother and his companion, Magdalene. The two women were the bringers of what I would call, ‘Christa Consciousness’; they were the revealers of the feminine face of God; what Judaism called, Shekinah, and what different schools of Buddhism called, Kwa Nyin or Tara.

  So, the Catholic church, unbeknownst to itself, would eventually blunder into this teaching without ever acknowledging or even realizing the full implications of its decrees. In 1854, Pius IX declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the teaching that because Mary had been chosen to be the mother of Jesus, by his merits she, too, was conceived without original sin. About a century later, Pius XII declared that she had never died but been assumed bodily into heaven. It’s called the doctrine of the Assumption. Incidentally, this was the only instance of an infallible decree since papal infallibility was decided at the first Vatican Council in 1870.

  The Protestant churches, in 1950, reacted by claiming that Rome had finally lost its marbles. Only Carl Jung applauded. He felt that the Trinity had finally been upgraded to a Quaternity – a mandala – the fullness of the Godhead. The Catholic church had not intended that at all. But like water and the Tao, truth has a way of penetrating even the most heavily-fortified fortresses!

• 3B Psycho-spirituality – Historical Aberrations

  In short order, the under-siege young Jesus movement figured out that in order to be taken seriously, in a patriarchal world, they’d have to quickly jettison the practice of women-as-leaders of Christian communities. The ‘Apostola Apostolorum’ – Mary of Magdala – had to be downgraded. The companion of Jesus, his closest confidant, the holder of the complementary ‘Christa Consciousness’ was conflated with two other biblical women and reduced to a repentant whore. Next please! Ah yes, the mother of Jesus. This Christ-carrier unfortunately because of her gender could never be ordained a priest let alone a bishop or, God forbid, a pope. So, she was reduced to a meek, mild-mannered, obedient handmaid, eyes modestly downcast while the man who had three times denied he even knew her son took control of the Jesus movement. Within 300 years, it would swap law for love, fear for wonder and dogma for gnosis. It swallowed Rome – the erstwhile great persecutor – only to be poisoned by the meal, becoming, in time, as draconian as had the hors d’oeuvre it had ingested. The gentle, forgiving, resilient Jesus movement, allegedly founded on the rock of Peter, now foundered on the rock of Rome. The temptation of secular power accomplished what three centuries of persecution could not.

  The wonderful Johannine phrase, “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh…” was taken as descriptive of Jesus alone when, in fact, it is a declaration of what each soul has done in volunteering for incarnation.

  At the other end of the spectrum, in the narcissism of some New Age thinkers, the ego is either inflated to divinity, identified with victimhood and entitlement or reduced to simply being an addicted consumer of baubles.

  In between these two historical eras, as Protestantism rightly challenged Vatican corruption, it also dumped Mariology – the popular Rome-resistant devotion to God’s female face as Mother Mary – and also monasticism. In the process it would birth a dry, joyless Puritanism shorn of feminine grace and mystical movements, as it enthusiastically embraced a doctrine of ‘sola Scriptura’ to be interpreted literally by ‘the man in the street.'

• Conclusion

  We need the courage and perspicacity to strip off (i) the literalism and fear-based theology of fundamentalist religion; (ii) the literalism and meaninglessness message of fundamentalist scientism; and (iii) the corporate-driven consumerism of secularism, in order to recover the eternal, mystical gem of pure spirituality revealed by the rishis of Hinduism, the bodhisattvas of Buddhism and the Christ/Christa Consciousness of the triumvirate. It is the next stage of human evolution and it has almost completed its millennia-long embryonic phase. It is ready to be born. Are you ready to midwife it?

  In the rural Ireland of my childhood, the fire was never allowed to go out. Each night, after the rest of the family had retired, the mother would gather the glowing embers and cover them with the ashes. In the morning, before anybody else had arisen, she would rake back the ashes, uncover the still-glowing embers and blow them into flame. There were houses in which the fire had not gone out in over 300 years. That is the job of the mystics vis-à-vis the flames of God’s love. The mystics are the keepers of the ancient wisdom fires (not a few of which were actually burned at the stake for daring to fan the embers of truth.)

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — October 31, 2018:  A young mother recently wrote me with grave concern about the environment and what kind of world her baby daughter, Julie, would inherit. Here was my reply.

• A. Fractals

  A fractal is a pattern that appears at an infinite number of levels. For instance, the pattern of smaller bodies rotating around a greater one is found in an atom (electrons rotate about the nucleus), in a planetary system (moons around planets – Jupiter has 63 of them!), in a solar system (planets orbiting around the sun), in a galaxy (suns orbiting around the great black hole at the center of the milky way galaxy) etc.

  Human problems tend to be fractal in nature. Therefore, identifying the underlying pattern is much more likely to lead to long-term solutions than simply dealing with any one specific manifestation of the problem.

  Life itself is fractal in nature – we see the same pattern appear at various scales. So, to understand any phenomenon (for example environmental degradation) we have to be able to infer the underlying algorithm from the individual instances. Therefore, we cannot separate the ecological problem from the greater pattern of the human adventure of incarnation. Trying to understand and solve the ecological crisis while separating it from all of our other relationships is like trying to be healthy by only focusing on not becoming diabetic. There is a lot more to health than simply monitoring our insulin levels and giving ourselves an injection.

• B. Symptoms versus Causes

  To focus on problems like fossil fuels or fracking – even though they are valid concerns – is like giving up sugar but continuing to smoke while spending all day sitting in front of a TV set. Business, banking, education, the mass media, the military-industrial complex, big Pharma, agribusiness, fake news, the Punch and Judy puppets we call politicians, fundamentalist religions, these are all both the causes and results of spiritual laziness. We want instant, simplistic solutions to complex, long-term problems. We don’t want to do the work and we don’t want to change but yet we want things to be different.

  We allow the narcissists among us, the most compromised and ego-centric to run for political office while we sleep our way through life satisfied by “bread and circuses” (as the ancient Romans said) to be roused occasionally from our soporific state into a ‘manipulated rage’ at the latest media-manufactured, contrived political debacle, so that as a divided nation we can scream for security at the ‘temporary’ loss of civil rights and the dismantling of our constitution.

  The ecological problem is simply what this pervasive, species-wide laziness looks like as it affects the physical planet and its flora and fauna. It is not enough to simply focus on one symptom, we must look at the entire syndrome and its root causes.

• C. Spirituality

  And, in my opinion, the taproot cause of all of these issues is the utter secularization of our cultures. We have thrown out the baby of mystical spirituality with the bath water of punitive, fear-based, fundamentalist religions. Into this vacuum has rushed a fundamentalist ‘scientism’ (not real science but a reductionistic, materialistic version) which promises utopia via nanotechnology, cloning and artificial intelligence but, instead, is delivering a dystopia of meaninglessness, aided and abetted by ‘banksters’ and a corporatocracy whose agenda is to control the frightened sheep who are willing to adopt a palliative consumerism rather than do the real work of figuring out who we are and why we volunteered for incarnation during this crucial and potentially-transformative era of human history.

  Unless we have a multidimensional, spiritual cosmology, we are just putting band-aids on a few of the more obvious symptoms. Socrates, the Buddha and Jesus constantly encouraged us to ‘wake up’ e.g., Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” That takes work; it means trying to be mindful and conscious and to think critically. It means devoting time to creating a ‘personal cosmology’ – a map that makes sense of your own unique life experiences and allows you to come fully awake yourself, help others to do likewise and together create a planet based on recognizing the divinity within all sentient beings. To do that we have to shake off the amnesia for who we really are and why we volunteered to be here, now. Mostly, we’re living somebody else’s cosmology without ever examining whether its working (it very obviously is not!) or how to upgrade it.

  There has never been a significant evolutionary shift – at planetary, national or even individual levels – which hasn’t been precipitated by a crisis. We don’t change unless we have to. We face, not so much a global crisis, as we do an opportunity for a powerful, spiritual awakening of humanity. Our job is to move our species from Homo Sapiens Sapiens to Homo Spiritualis.

  That’s why Julie volunteered to be here at this time. Your job is to give her the spiritual tools she needs for her mission. When we humans awaken to who we really are and why we’ve come, the ecological crisis – as well as all of the other problems – will resolve themselves. We’re coming to the end of our adolescence as a species. The future will either be a cynical senescence or compassionate wisdom.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — October 16, 2018:  Einstein spent the latter part of his life trying to create a TOE (Theory of Everything). Since then, many other scientists have attempted to succeed where he failed. I believe all such efforts are doomed to end up in the wastebasket, unless “the primacy of consciousness” becomes a basic postulate. To date, most scientific efforts to create a TOE haven’t even acknowledged the existence  of consciousness, let alone its primacy! The results are TOE’s which are so small that even a leprechaun’s shoe could easily accommodate ten of them.

Part of the problem is the measuring tools they employ. Ireland is quite a small island; its length is merely 300 miles, while its width is just 150 miles. So how long do you reckon its coastline is? Well it depends on your tape measure. If you were to use an inflexible steel rod of length ten miles and march around the coastline, you might find that it’s 1,500 miles total. If, however, you used an inflexible steel rod of one-mile length, you’d find, perhaps, that the coastline was 4,000 miles total. Shorter rods would allow you to visit inlets that longer rods couldn’t access. The shorter the rod, the longer the coastline. In fact, if you used a really flexible  rod that could visit all the tiny nooks and crannies and follow all the rivers and their tributaries to their sources, you’d find that the coastline was infinite!

And the same thing would be true if you attempted to measure the perimeter of a cross section of the human brain – provided your “tape” was small enough; for the brain, too, optimizes its intelligence by contorting itself into all kinds of crenulations and crevices. Clever brain.

However, lest we become big headed, the same would happen if we measured the perimeter of a cross section of a cauliflower!

In fact, everything in the physical world – not the world of Platonic forms, where the ideal  shapes exist – has an infinite perimeter, since it’s composed of atoms, which are more than 99.999% empty space. You’d need a lot of tape to connect all of the atoms of a Granny Smith apple. Each thing is infinite – only our senses, thinking and models make things appear finite. For example, if you were to measure them with an “ordinary tape”, an adult human has about 100,000 miles of blood vessels in his body – four times the circumference of the planet.

And the reason for this infinity is that all things are projections from the mind of God, which is uncountably infinite. And, because of the fractal, holographic nature of manifestation, any contiguous chunk of uncountable infinity is, itself, uncountably infinite.

So, if the perimeter of the cross section of a brain is, indeed, infinite, does that mean that it contains infinite intelligence and so is omniscient, like God? The problem here is that incarnation (and particularly the development of ego) introduces filters and firewalls to those cosmic Akashic Records. Cultural hypnosis and the laws of society radically constrict these channels. Seemingly, only avatars and autistic savants (or selective brain injury) can do an end run around some of these filters. The savants then gain access to mathematical, scientific and artistic genius, while the avatars swim in the unconditional love and all-encompassing compassion of Source. The price the savants pay for these gifts is a compromised sense of self and difficulties negotiating the rules of relationships. The price the avatars pay is often the cry of, “heretic!” or “traitor!” – both of which can be punishable by death.

Reductionistic, materialistic scientists and the sane, socialized citizenry are safely ensconced in prison pens of their own making.

If freedom means significantly reducing your ego, would you agree to the trade?

Namasté,
Seán

A. Introductory Remarks

Patheos.com — September 11, 2018:  Imagine yourself resting peacefully in your sitting-room when you notice a huge pool of water on the floor. You are shocked, jump up from your seat and rush to the kitchen to grab a roll of paper towels. But no matter how vigorously you work, you are making no progress; in fact, the pool continues to increase in size. Then you look up and see that the water is actually coming through the ceiling. So, you rush upstairs to the bathroom which is above the sitting-room to discover that the bathroom is swimming under four inches of water. You open the closet and take out all of the towels – face towels, hand towels and bath towels – and furiously begin a mop up operation. But, once again, no matter how diligently you work, you are getting nowhere.

Then you realize that both faucets in the wash-hand basin are open and that the plug is inserted in the drain. This is the cause of the whole problem. So, you pull out the plug and turn off the faucets. Now, at last, you can mop up the water on both floors. There may be damage to the floor boards, substructures and sheet rock but at least a solution finally seems possible.

That is the situation we find ourselves in as a nation and as a global community. Trying to find solutions by taking sides with particular politicians or following the advice of the mass media is the equivalent of only mopping the sitting-room floor. It is an utter waste of time and I have no intention in this two-part essay of wasting my time following or berating politicians or media on either side of this alleged ‘debate’.

It has solved nothing and will continue to solve nothing. Rather, I have seen it sunder families and friendships, the nation and the world. Instead, I want to examine the root causes and look at genuine, permanent solutions that involve actually listening to each other.

B. Fake News

• a. The Punch and Judy Show

  A favorite English beachside entertainment is the Punch and Judy Show. A puppet master, hidden in a small booth, engages two puppets – Punch and Judy – in a violent family feud. Punch is wielding a big stick with which he is bashing his wife Judy, while she is tearing strips off him with her barbed tongue. The puppeteer is speaking both voices in the ‘dialog’ and the crowd, who immediately take sides, shout out their commentary.

  In reality this is what our political system is like, once you add one further ingredient: confederates of the puppet masters are circulating among the mindless crowd picking their pockets in a system we call, ‘taxation’. This money is then used to finance foreign wars and to re-elect willing political puppets.

  There are several levels of puppet masters, with each level being puppets of those above and puppet masters of those below. I’m sure there must be a top level, an oligarchy of some kind who have control of the entire enterprise. Each stratum is told the appropriate level of the lie to keep them obediently involved.

• b. Fundamentalism

  Fundamentalism manifests in both religious and secular garb but it always involves four stages. First, the meme-makers reduce a complex situation to a few bumper sticker one-liners that even the dumbest of us can understand. Then, they identify – or if necessary create – an ‘enemy’. Third, they dehumanize the enemy; and, finally, they release the dogs of war.

  And every war in human history has been the final act in that four-part drama. The war is always preceded by a divide-and-conquer campaign. As a species we are pawns in the carefully managed ‘outrage’ at the enemy de jour.

  Reality, then, is a composite of all the “truths” to which we cling. So, there is a “personal reality”, the sum total of our own beliefs; then there is a “consensual reality” which is the intersection set of all the personal realities of the members of the culture.

  The truth shall set you free and lies will incarcerate, not just individuals but even the world community. From the beginning of religions, there have been false prophets, dedicated to ingratiating themselves with the king by “prophesies” that praised his wisdom and policies, at the expense of truth. The real prophets were often savagely attacked by these royal sycophants. From the beginning of empires, there have been “court historians” who only put on record the magnificent achievements of the blue bloods, while ignoring their ignominious failures or bloody reigns. From the beginning of warfare, there have been false-flag operations calculated to outrage the citizens and have them howl for battle.

  This was Hitler’s final puzzle piece prior to his invasion of Poland in September 1939. The USA got the Spanish-American War going in a similar fashion in 1898, with the very suspicious sinking of the USS Maine. And in 1964, the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident allowed the United States to escalate the Vietnam War. If the end justifies the means, then it seems that we are prepared to use increasingly nefarious means to justify increasingly nefarious – but secretive – ends. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!

  The willingness of the mainstream media to suppress the truth and promote the agenda of the oligarchs, coupled with modern communication technologies, means that the new “global storytellers” are empowered to create the narrative of fear, division and violence on an uneven playing field where the real prophets are spancelled and hobbled. The current American political chaos, to which Democrats and Republicans have contributed in equal measure, begs the Shakespearian riposte, “a plague o’both your houses!”

• c. Timelines

  A major plank in this construction is the manipulation of seven different timelines. There is an actual past  which has hugely influenced how we got to be where we are; but we are equally products of a fictitious past,  the ‘history’ we were fed by the winners. So, now we find ourselves in an actual present  which is the result of the first two timelines while, simultaneously, we are bombarded by a fictitious present  which is the result of propaganda and fake news. The future beckons in three guises. First, those who believe that salvation is impossible; that there is only a pre-determined, inevitable future –  so ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ Then there is the probable future – what is likely to happen if we don’t change how we are doing life on planet Earth. Finally, there is the possible future – what can happen if we do change our behavior. Hence, the function of the prophet is not to predict the inevitable future but to prevent the probable future; to forestall it, not to foretell it; and then give us the tools to create the possible future.

  I believe that the fictitious past of the court historians and the fictitious present of propaganda are just as influential in creating the future as are the real past  and the real present.  If it’s true in psychology that the individual mind often can’t distinguish between memories, sensations and imagination (e.g., false memory syndrome, optical illusions, the placebo effect and post-hypnotic suggestions), then it is much more powerfully true of the “mass mind” under the influence of “fake news.” It has never been more important to redefine truth as that which transforms and aligns with Love.

• d. Dark Forces

  Consciously or unconsciously there is a dark, demonic force whose agenda is to divide the nation into warring camps. Such a force feeds on the evil energy generated by the conflict. Like patrons who pay hundreds of dollars to watch boxers beat each other into pulp as they take sides and shout encouragement and vitriol; or who get off by forcing innocent animals – dogs and roosters – to fight each other to the death.

  By addiction to the daily ‘news’ you are voting with your remote control, saying ‘yes’ to having some talking head manipulate your reality. It’s time we looked up and saw the strings with which the puppet masters are moving our hands, our mouths and our minds. It’s time to cut the strings, unplug your TV and, instead, read Christ’s ‘Sermon on the mount’ – especially the Beatitudes; or the Buddha’s ‘Eightfold Path.’

  To be continued in part two of this essay.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — September 18, 2018:

• B. Fake News (continued from Part 1)

  e. Truth

  My definition of truth is as follows: something is true if it transforms me and aligns me with Source; and something is ultimate truth if it transforms me radically and aligns me permanently with Source. Thus, whatever creates fear, anger, anxiety is NOT truth. Truth and fact must not be confused. Something can be true but not factual e.g., the message of the Good Samaritan; while something can be factual but not true e.g., I’m writing this today at 9:02 PM with a black ballpoint pen – hardly a life-changing piece of information for you.

  In an oppressive  society, there are very few “truths” outside of the consensual reality. It then becomes very difficult to experience that which the culture tells you does not exist. On the other hand, in an evolving  society, people are free, even encouraged, to think and explore outside the box. One function of the prophet is to break open the boxes, the constricting reality models, the small “truths” and deficient cosmologies, in order to invite us to wonder and venture more deeply into the awesome mystery of God.

  The Ultimate Reality, of course, is the God-perspective. If Truth is transformation, then Reality is alignment with Love in one of its many manifestations. If, on the other hand, a reality model leads to me into fear, in one of its many manifestations, while it may be true and real, it most certainly is not True or Real.

  Where truth is in the judgment, and reality is in the composite amalgam of the truths, cosmology is the explanatory model that pulls it all together and offers a satisfactory, solid basis for life. However, for the vast majority of us, this entire process, especially the cosmology piece, is acquired unconsciously and, in any particular situation, is accessed unconsciously.  Ask somebody, “Why did you say that?” and they will likely reply, “Because it was the appropriate thing to say.” Or “Why did you do that?” will evoke, “Because it was the right thing to do.” What made it appropriate or right? The unconsciously acquired and unconsciously accessed cosmology. So, the sages would advise, “Know thyself”, “The unexamined life is not worth living”, “I am Buddha (awake)” or “If the householder knew when the thief was going to break in and steal, he would not have gone to sleep.”

  In synopsis, there are personal, consensual and ultimate (God-like) levels to truth, reality and cosmology. It’s up to us to choose consciously. And choose wisely.

  f. News Fast

  By your addiction to the daily ‘news’ you are voting with your remote control, saying ‘yes’ to having some talking head manipulate your reality. Watching the Main Stream Media is the equivalent of mainlining anxiety and anger. What passes for compassion is 90% addiction to turmoil and conflict.

  How can you dissolve your fear, quiet your anger and arrive at a solution while you allow the slurry pit of the nightly news into your sitting room and into your mind? It’s the equivalent of the city’s septic system backing up into your home. You don’t have to ignore what is happening – once you find out what that really  is – but you don’t have to marinate in it.

• C. The Art of Communication

  In working, as a psychologist, with couples, I’ve developed “Ten Tips for Good Communication”; and I designed a paper-and-pencil test in which each person grades themselves and their partners on the ten tips. This allows them to identify their individual weaknesses, so that we can create a plan to improve them. For the purposes of this essay, I will just focus on five of them; and my objective is to show how these can be applied as we engage with others in political discussions.

  Tip #1 is to “Show Up.” If people or parties are not willing to sit down together with the objective of having a respectful, intelligent dialog, then no situation can ever be resolved.

  Tip #2 is “Pay Attention” and this has four identifiers. When a couple comes to my office, I am initially paying attention to four qualities. First, their body language. Where and how do they sit in the chairs/couches: together, apart, facing towards each other or away from each other. Second, are they using what Buddhism calls ‘soft gaze’ (embracing each other with their eyes) or ‘harsh gaze’ (spearing each other with their eyes.) Third, do they interrupt each other or not. And, fourthly, when one has finished speaking, does the partner respond to everything the other one just said, or just to the part they disagree on.

  Tip #3 is “Speak your truth without judging, attacking or blaming the other.” To descend into anger or accusation is a surefire guarantee of a defended or equally-attacking partner.

  Tip #4 is “Detach from the outcome.” Be prepared to learn something new. The dialog will benefit much more if you are willing to walk in the other’s moccasins for a while. You don’t have to wear them for the rest of your life, but until you’ve tried them on, there is no way you can appreciate the other person’s perspective.

  Tip #5 is “Do not interpret what the other person is thinking or saying or doing.” Check it out. Ask real questions like, “Sorry, can you explain to me what you meant when you…?” And this must be a genuine request for clarification, not another form of accusation. Nobody has the right to ascribe motive or motivation to another in the absence of mutually-agreed, incontrovertible evidence.

  I am unaware of any of these tips being employed by the current crop of politicians or the ‘talking heads’ – make that ‘shouting heads’ – of TV.

• D. Are You Willing to be Disturbed?

  If you find that you are waking up to a new way of seeing and being, know that it will be difficult. In the Gospel of Thomas, the teaching “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened” is widened significantly to “Those who seek will find, and when they find they will be disturbed, and when they are disturbed they will marvel, and when they marvel they will rule and when they rule they will rest.”  So, there are six stages, and the third one is “being disturbed.” But here’s the clincher. Thomas does not mean that you’ll be disturbed by the situation or by the behavior of the other party,  but by the realization that you, too, have been living in an illusion.

  If your work on your cosmology doesn’t disturb you, you are most probably not growing but, rather,are settling for the security of old sectarian thinking. The temptation, on first becoming disturbed is to go right back to sleep. Please don’t. The world needs you to be awake and responsive to the Spirit. So how do you know whether you are awake or asleep? You are asleep to the extent that you operate in fear, despair, anger, or unforgiveness. You are awake to the extent that you

  recognize the divine in yourself, in others, and in the “enemy”

  are willing to listen to the perspectives, beliefs, fears of the opposition

  can stretch beyond the confines of both positions to synthesis

  realize that there are no longer good/bad guys but only God’s guys trying to make sense of incarnation

  are ready to laugh at the illusion of reality fed you by society.

• E. Want Another Chance?

  Imagine you have just died, shuffled off this mortal coil and even let go of the etheric body. You’re with the heavenly mentors who prepared you for the incarnation just ended, and they begin your life review in which every event and relationship of your life is immediately and simultaneously available to you in 360-degree wrap-around Dolby sound, vision and emotion. This is not a judgment, they simply want you to evaluate how closely aligned were your performance and your pre-incarnated game plan.

  Realizing that you had chosen the era, the family and even the body you were born with, and that you had fervently planned to respond to all situations with love, compassion and forgiveness in an effort to shift the very planet into Christ Consciousness, you thump the heel of your fist against your (astral) forehead and exclaim, “Oi vey! I can’t believe I forgot! Damn, I was so convinced that this time I would stay awake and remember while I was still alive. Damn, damn, damn. I wish I had another chance.”

  And the mentors, with infinite compassion, smiled and said, “OK, we’ll give you another chance. You can go back.”  And you did. That’s why you’re here now.

  What are you waiting for?!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — September 4, 2018:

• A. Imagine What Would Have Happened If…

  …Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary the companion of Jesus had adopted the tools of modern political pundits to intervene on Jesus’ behalf over the last 24 hours of his Earthly life. Here’s the scenario:

  News arrives that he had been arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, betrayed for 30 pieces of silver by one of his closest disciples and abandoned by ten of the other eleven. The two Mary’s rush to the courtyard of the High Priest where, they’ve learned, Jesus has been taken. They arrive just in time to hear Peter swear that he is not a follower of the Galilean preacher and, in fact, never even heard of him. The Mary’s are shocked; Peter sees them and blanches but they don’t have time to deal with him.  They find the apostle John and he, through personal contacts, manages to get them into the ‘trial room’ where Jesus is being interrogated and even slapped about. The Magdalene freaks out and stridently berates the High Priest and his minions. Mary joins in, loudly chastising the group for their disgraceful behavior. The High Priest says, “get these stupid women out of here!”  and they are bustled back into the courtyard. There is no sign of Peter.

  They later learn that Jesus is to be transferred to the home of Pilate. They arrive there only to hear the excited chatter of the crowds and the false accusations as Pilate deigns to entertain the Jewish ‘mob’ for whom he has utter disdain. The Mary’s shout out, “He is innocent of these crimes; for God’s sake, can’t you figure that out!?”  Pilate is startled and surprised that two women had the courage but also the disrespect to shout at him in public. His legalistic mind finds a way out when he learns that the accused is from Galilee which is in king Herod’s jurisdiction. So, he washes his hands of the affair and sends him off to Herod whom he knows to be in town for the Passover Festival.

  The two Mary’s follow the sick procession of soldiers and crowd, calling out to Jesus who turns and sees them but is yanked forward by the security detail. Herod is surprised and delighted to finally meet this wonder worker but utterly disappointed at his refusal to do any magic or even respond to his questions. “Dumb asshole”  Herod thinks, “Doesn’t he realize that I could throw him a life line?”  So, he now resorts to mockery and ridicule. This is too much for the Mary’s who shout out, “Leave him alone, you drunken lout! He’s twice the man you’ll ever be.” Herod is startled and then has them ejected. Tiring of this taciturn, disappointing moron, he decides – as a gesture of goodwill – to return Jesus to Pilate with the comment that, far from being a dangerous revolutionary, this Jesus character is a feckless, tongue-tied country bumpkin.

  Pilate is gratified at this gesture of reconciliation because he and Herod had been at loggerheads; but he is also annoyed at having to deal with this situation for the second time. He has Jesus stripped and whipped and, once more, made fun of by the bored soldiery; and then brought out to be viewed by the priests and the crowd: “Ecce homo”  (behold the man). This was too much for the Mary’s who wept and then screamed, “You criminal. Have you no pity in you, or sense of justice!”  Pilate has had enough of these crazy females. He turns aside to the centurion on duty and curtly orders him to crucify this trouble-maker with the two bandits who were already on today’s extermination roster. He darts one final look of disdain at the sobbing women and goes indoors to have a well-earned siesta.

  It took a while for a third cross to be located and the now-greatly-swollen procession set out for Golgotha. The Mary’s only manage once to get close to him and soothe him with their eyes. But, basically, the journey was a blur. Arriving at the hilltop, they are pushed aside as the bawdy soldiers set about their well-practiced tasks of stripping, nailing and elevating the victims.

  The priests take this opportunity to justify their part in this execution and the crowd looks on at this bloody, regular form of entertainment. In their hearts, the two Mary’s curse this volatile mob which, over the course of three years, had benefitted from his love, teachings and healings. They wish all kinds of evil on them, hoping that each of them might one day also experience that level of heartbreak.

  When it was all over and the body had been plucked from the cross and laid in the dark tomb, they sought out the ‘inner circle’ whom they found cowering in the ‘upper room.’ The Mary’s gave full vent to their anger, “You shower of cowards; you who preened yourselves and promised yourselves high offices in his future kingdom. You’re not fit to wipe the dust off his sandals!”  They noticed that Judas was missing, so they set out to find him. They ran him to earth in an ale house, slaking his thirst after a busy day. The Magdalene dug her nails into his shocked face and raked his left cheek. She screamed, “You spawn of Satan; may you rot in hell!”  Judas ran and as he did, the awful weight of the betrayal unhinged him. Three hours later, the Mary’s came upon his body hanging from a tree. The Magdalene had the last laugh; she stood in front of his lifeless, dangling form and heaved a huge, venom-filled spit towards his purple, blood-bloated face.

• B. Imagine What Would NOT Have Happened if…

  This is very simple. What would NOT have happened if the two Mary’s had acted in that fashion is that there would never have been:

  1) A Resurrection

  2) An Ascension

  3) A Pentecost

  Nor

  4) A Jesus Movement

• C. Imagine What DID Happen Because…

  But the two Mary’s and Jesus were part of a team who agreed, in a pre-conception contract, to come into the world together to radically shift our understanding of God, of the Self, of the Neighbor and of the Mission of individual incarnation – yours and mine. They represented the Yin and Yang of divinity; the ‘female’ and ‘male’ faces of God; to exemplify for us the only way out of the endless cycle of fear, anxiety, prejudice, xenophobia, vendetta, violence and warfare.

  It was the compassionate, forgiving, understanding responses of Jesus and the two Mary’s that created the energy for his resurrection and ascension; and for Pentecost and the ‘Jesus Movement.’ Without the two Mary’s there wouldn’t have been a resurrection, an ascension, a Pentecost or a ‘Jesus Movement.’ It was the Magdalene’s ‘search’ for the body on Easter Sunday that enabled Jesus to overcome death. And it was the presence of his mother, Mary, in the same upper room, that managed to hold the newborn, shivering Jesus Movement to her bosom as they awaited Pentecost. In a throw-away line, grossly redacted by the patriarchal re-working of history, we read in Acts 1:13-14, that after the Ascension they went back to the city: “When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”

  Magdalene got deleted and Mary the mother of Jesus is included almost as an afterthought, being part of the ‘some women’ subgroup. Is it any wonder that our Yang-lopsided history – as a world and as a Christian Church – has continued to produce all of the qualities that Jesus, Magdalene and Mary came to dissolve?

  When will our churches and our ‘Christian’ politicians, bankers, soldiers and media wake up?

  In time, Mary the mother would be reduced to simply an obedient handmaid not even deserving of priesthood because of her gender; and Magdalene would wind up being depicted as a repentant whore. And Jesus would be deified by the same Christian churches that eviscerated his teachings on love, compassion and forgiveness – even of the enemy.

  And, so, this ‘incarnated trinity’ of avatars is reduced to a docile mother, a reformed harlot and ‘the only son of God’.

  Isn’t it time for a community-wide “Mea maxima culpa!”?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — August 28, 2018:

• A. Why Stories?

  What does an infant do as it begins to master the intricacies of its voice box and speech centers? Why, it begins to tell stories! Initially, these are a kind of pre-linguistic vocalizations but, soon, it constructs more elaborate messages. Don’t be fooled into thinking that when she says, ‘dada’ or ‘mama’, the baby is simply saying, “I recognize who you are.” It’s much more wonderful than that. It’s more like, “Dada, I’ve just had this wonderful, transpersonal experience. It’s beyond words; but soon I’ll try to help you to understand my world – the real world – not the one you adults have been deluding into believing is ‘reality.’” But, like a ‘sophisticated’ tourist listening to the speech of the ‘primitive natives’, you smile patronizingly and say, “Yes. Of course. I understand!” The truth is, you probably believe that the natives’ tongue is some antediluvian animal-speak. Eventually, they will become ‘civilized’ and learn a real  language – like English for example.

  So, you and your spouse smile proudly at each other and at the baby and say, “Soon, she’ll learn to talk!”

  Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny; and so, each infant is re-enacting the journey of Homo Sapiens Sapiens who also immediately pressed their newfound linguistic skills into story-telling. And the stories of our forebears fulfilled four functions. First, it was a way for the storyteller to remember  an experience he’d just had. Second, it was to share  the information he’d gleaned with the 15-20 members of the clan around the fire. Third, it was to archive this in the long-term future memories of the group. And, fourth, it was the primary method of entertainment.

  When your baby babbles, she is trying to fulfill the same four functions. It’s a pity that the parents simply reduce this complex contribution to just the entertainment piece. There are very good reasons why Jesus said, “Unless you become as little children you will not even enter the kingdom of heaven.”  What a pity, then, that God’s little messengers – generation by generation – simply draw an “Aw! How cute!” response from the adults.

  Something of the same frustration is why he also said, in response to the audiences who complained that he always spoke in parables, “I speak in parables so that seeing you may see and not understand; hearing you may hear and not comprehend… I speak in parables so that I may reveal things that have been hidden since the foundation of the world.”

  The problem lies not in the stories but in the listeners’ perceptual mechanisms. A literal mind, founded on fear, will hear one message; while a mystical heart, founded on love, will hear a radically different message.

  Moreover, stories, like dreams, are multilayered, speaking simultaneously at psychological, sociological, global and heavenly levels. So, you can hear the same story – or a parable of Jesus – at different stages of your life and gain significantly different messages. When my baby sister – Dearbhla who is 22 years younger than me – would ask me to tell her stories when I came home from Kenya every three years, I would do so. She was 18 years old and attending College in 1986, when I left Kenya for the last time. She was studying psychology and sociology and we now revisited the old stories, unpacking them in a very different fashion.

  So, today, I’m going to take a story that you all know very well and unpack it for three distinct messages. It’s the parable of the Good Samaritan from the gospel of Luke.

• B. Truth Versus Fact

  There is a big difference between truth and fact. Something can be true but not factual; while something can be factual but not true! To explain this, I need to provide you with my own definition of truth. I believe that something is true only if it transforms me and aligns me with Love; and something is ultimate truth if it transforms me radically and aligns me permanently with Love.

  Any belief that results in creating fear, anger, prejudice or violence in thoughts, words or actions, cannot be true. If you are holding everybody (even your “enemies”, as Jesus enjoined on his followers) in a heart of love, you have found truth. If, because of your beliefs, anybody becomes the target of your anger, then your belief doesn’t square with the core message of Jesus’ example and teaching.

  Suppose, now, you were a reporter for the Jerusalem Post  and you heard Jesus telling this story. You found it hard to believe, so you spent the next three days interviewing the priests, the Levites and the innkeepers of Jericho. None of them could verify Jesus’s story. In other words, it wasn’t factual. Agreed! It was not based on an actual event. However, by my definition it is indeed true, because, for those who understood the message, it was radically transformative.

• C. Love Versus Law

  The second great message embedded in this perennial gem is that of ritual human cleanliness versus the overarching Cosmic Law of love. Part of the reason why the priest ignored his mugged countryman, was that it was verboten for a priest to touch a dead or dying person. Such contact would render him ritually defiled and it was a ‘ganza megillah’ to get cleansed and be allowed, once more, to participate in Temple activities. Here is what Leviticus says,

  “The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: ‘A priest must not make himself ceremonially unclean for any of his people who die, except for a close relative, such as his mother or father, his son or daughter, his brother, or an unmarried sister who is dependent on him since she has no husband — for her he may make himself unclean. He must not make himself unclean for people related to him by marriage, and so defile himself… The high priest, the one among his brothers who has had the anointing oil poured on his head and who has been ordained to wear the priestly garments … must not enter a place where there is a dead body. He must not make himself unclean, even for his father or mother.”

  And, of course, the Levites had similar, though not as stringent, restrictions. The Levites, who came from the same tribe (Levi son of Jacob) as did the priests, had lesser functions. They acted as – to use a Roman Catholic term – ‘sacristans’, who looked after all of the sacred vessels and vestments and furnishings to be employed by the priests during services. A hugely important part of their functions was to regularly inspect both the moral character and physical health of the priests before the latter were allowed to preside over Temple worship. Leviticus 21 contained a long list of conditions that disbarred a man from serving as a priest:

  The Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God.”

  Therefore, it was clear to Jesus’ audience that the priest and the Levite, who ignored their fallen ‘lonsman’, were justified. It was even a display of their holiness. But Jesus would have none of it. The core of his being and the essence of his teaching was the primacy of love. It trumped all other considerations

  In a double demolition, he showed, firstly, the radical inadequacy of the legalistic mindset of the religious leaders; and, secondly, the compassionate heart of the ‘accursed’ Samaritan. The Samaritans were ‘half-breeds’ who were the hybrid progeny of the foreign soldiers and the unimportant ‘little people’ left behind when Assyrians conquered Israel in 721 BCE and when the Babylonians exiled the inhabitants of Jerusalem and its kingdom in 586 BCE.

  In one fell swoop, Jesus showed, firstly, that love is a Divine Law  before which mere human laws  must bow the knee; and, secondly, that love dissolves all religious, national and cultural boundaries.

• D. Joshua Versus Jesus

  According to Torah, the Israelites, after escaping from Egypt and spending 40 years in the desert, entered the ‘promised land’ at Jericho. They crossed the Jordan river and God collapsed the walls of the city on their behalf. In a sick piece of religious polemic, we read that the Israelites, “devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it — men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.”  [Joshua 6:21] This is how one devotes a city to God?! And if you are to believe the Book of Joshua, they then set out on a 200-year-long genocidal rampage that only ended when David captured Jerusalem in 1010 BCE. So, the slaughter began in Jericho and ended in Jerusalem.

  In the parable of Jesus, we find exactly the opposite. The new ‘conquest’ begins in Jerusalem with mugging of an innocent traveler and ends in Jericho, where the wayside victim is nursed back to health by a ‘foreigner.’ And the conquest (love over law; and neighbor as everybody) leads to a new promised land – the kingdom of God.

  It would be a new kind of pilgrimage; not the voyeuristic tracing of the brutal battles of an invading horde but the compassionate Camino of a fully-awakened Spirit-in-a-spacesuit. It’s the kind of journey that a Francis of Assisi might make.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — August 21, 2018:  Compassion, I believe, is born when love meets fear. But compassion unfolds, in four stages, in an epigenetic fashion – each subsequent stage incorporates but transcends the previous stage, just as tree leaves continue to keep alive their relationships with the twigs, branches, limbs, trunk and roots, even as they reach for the sky. The stages are as follows: first, a physiological response, followed by a psychological response, leading to a sociological response, culminating in a spiritual response. And each stage has its own beauty – and its own downsides. In fact, stages one through three, in the absence of stage four, can deplete the person who is emanating compassion.

• The Physiological Response

  This involves taking on – consciously or unconsciously – the physical pain, illness or symptoms of another. Have you ever attempted to clear your throat on behalf of a speaker who has a ‘frog in her throat’? It’s the body (yours) literally trying to heal the other by temporarily assuming their condition. There is actually a neurological basis for this. By attaching electrodes to the crania of two volunteers, one of whom will then be subjected to a painful stimulus, the corresponding areas of the brain of the witness light up, as the victim is being hurt.

  In “helping situations”, this is the equivalent of seeing somebody fall into a pit and, instead of throwing him a rope, you jump in beside him to show solidarity. It involves trying to be the source  of healing rather than a channel  for it.

• The Psychological Response

  A surefire indication that you’re in stage two is that you become psychologically ‘disabled’ by your empathy. Once more, it’s trying to be the source not the channel, the pit-mate rather than the rope-thrower. It’s a classic example of codependency in which the other person’s anxiety and dysfunction rubs off on you. Contrary to popular belief, at this stage, a problem shared is a problem doubled.

  It gets worse; you can become infected not just by the pain of an individual but even by global pain. The present political turmoil in our country has led to anxiety, anger and even rage at a national level like an infection that has gone viral (pun intended).

  There’s a condition which the DSM (the Bible of the psychological community) calls, “Borderline Personality Disorder” whose etiology is believed to come from the failure, on the part of the caregivers, to honor a young child’s appropriate boundaries. I once read a fascinating article in a journal of the Institute of Noetic Sciences that spoke of “Borderland  Personality Disorder.” It’s when sensitive individuals become symptomatic of Gaia’s own distress. They are the prophets or early-warning-system of the stressed-out planet. And the picture may be confused with or amplified by the prophet’s personal issues.

  While it may be useful, even admirable, to be the voice of the muted Pacha Mama, it’s rarely helpful to take on another’s personal pain.

• The Sociological Response

  Now, the ‘caretaker’ is going to make interventions  e.g., drive the patient to the hospital, cook their meals, help out financially, persuade their bosses not to fire them for poor performances or no-shows… Often, within a family, there is a ‘go-to’ member that has been anointed by fiat or precedent to be the rescuer. On the side of the ‘savior’, this can be a combination of genuine compassion and a defense mechanism to protect against the turmoil of a dysfunctional family.

  Whatever its origin, left unchecked it can lead to burnout. Often, it is not appreciated or even recognized; and, occasionally, it is resented, especially by those who most ‘demand’ the help. Initially, it can be easier to do the job yourself than train, encourage or insist that the ‘victim’ do it. And it’s partially based on misunderstanding the meaning of ‘responsibility’. The loving, compassionate rescuers often see themselves as somehow the cause of the other’s pain; or, at very least, that “it’s up to me to solve the problem”. In fact, responsibility simply means, ‘the ability to make responses’. And sometimes the appropriate response is to say, “you need to do this yourself”.

• The Spiritual Response

  This occurs when you can elevate above the details of a situation. Like an artist working on a large mural, you have to take several steps back in order to be able to grok the entire scope of your masterpiece, prior to re-engaging. This allows you to realize that you and all of the people whom you are trying to help are eternal beings, children of God whom She loves unconditionally; and all of whom will eventually find their way home. Allied to that, each soul, prior to incarnation, has crafted a life plan and underlined the lessons it hopes to master during the coming lifetime.

  Sometimes, in our efforts to prevent people from experiencing the consequences of their own actions, we delay their progress. There’s a story I once heard, of a young boy who saw a monarch butterfly’s efforts to extricate herself from her cocoon. After a ten-minute struggle, she was still only halfway out and appeared to be in distress. So, the compassionate child broke open the remainder of the cocoon and set her free. The only problem was she was now crippled for life. She would never fly because it is precisely the struggle of emerging from the cocoon that releases the lactic acid into the muscles of her wings.

• What Would Jesus Do?

  Even better, what did  Jesus do? There’s a wonderful story in all three Synoptic Gospels where Jesus is en route to heal the synagogue leader’s little daughter. A great throng is pressing in upon him as he hurries along, his mind fixed on what he must do when he gets there. A woman in the crowd who’s been hemorrhaging for twelve years and has spent all of her resources on doctors who failed to heal her, reaches down to touch the hem of Jesus’s robe, convinced that even that connection will cure her. And, indeed, it does.

  However, Jesus is startled and swings around asking, “who touched me?” The disciples are bemused by the question and point out that there is a big, tightly-packed crowd about him. But he won’t be diverted. He says, “No, somebody touched me; power went out from me!” Shamefacedly, the woman came forward and explained the situation. Not only was this extremely embarrassing but, according to Jewish law, this bleeding woman was ritually unclean and should have sequestered herself. Anybody she touched was, ipso facto, also rendered unclean and would not be allowed to attend religious services until they had undergone a purification ceremony. Most of all, she had contaminated Jesus by intentionally touching his garments.

  I’m sure she was expecting the crowd – and especially Jesus – to read her the riot act. For years, I couldn’t understand why he embarrassed her like that. Then, I finally got it. In one fell swoop, he was demonstrating that she was not  unclean; she was a beloved daughter of God. Moreover, Jesus wanted her to realize that what she had just experienced was self-healing.  In other words, he was telling her, ‘It was not I who healed you; it was your faith  that did it. In future, you don’t need to project your own unrecognized ability onto any expert. You are a child of God, a divine being; own your power!” So, he wasn’t embarrassing her, he was empowering  her, even as he taught the bystanders about the meshugas of uncleanness. He showed her that the healer’s job is not to be the benevolent master but, rather, to empower the patients so that they cease to regard themselves as helpless victims.

  But there is another important lesson here. Why did Jesus say, ‘power has gone out of me’? My own theory is that when Jesus healed anybody, he acted as a channel to the Father.  He was never claiming to be the source. So, his healings were always done by the conscious channeling of God-energy. In this incident, however, his focus was elsewhere and when the woman touched him, it caused a sudden and startling discharge which rocked him.

  The lessons, then, are two-fold. First, realize that you are a channel, not the source. Otherwise, all compassionate outreach is going to drain your life force. And, second, when engaged in any healing exercise, public or private, be prepared for and fully aware of the flow of power.

• Conclusion

  I live off the grid and depend on solar power. I had to carefully plan what my total wattage needs would be at peak usage e.g., the microwave uses about 1,500 watts, an average light bulb 60-150 watts, as well as my computer, printer, washing and drying machines, fridge etc. Only then, could I determine how many solar panels, inverters and batteries I needed.

  You have to calibrate how much ‘solar power’ you have available so you don’t overload your system by overextending the wattage of your compassionate outreach. Compassion must not be confused with taking over the incarnational mission of another. When you’ve done what you can do, then you must – as they say in AA – ‘let go and let God.’ She who gave birth to the cosmos is probably in a far better place than you to determine the ideal timing and method of the healing.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — August 14, 2018:

Dear God,

It’s me, Seán. I’m sure you’re crazy busy with all the planets and maybe even some parallel universes you’ve created and must look after. Remember me? I was born in Cork, Ireland but now I’m living in northern California where the wildfires are currently raging.

I just finished reading the book you wrote, you know the one called, “The Bible”. It’s a great book, lots of miracles an’ stuff, but kinda scary at the same time. Luckily, I’m one of the fortunate ones, ‘cos I was born a Roman Catholic and I know that you told the pope to warn everybody that, “extra ecclesiam nulla est salus.” I’m kinda sad that the Jews blew it. I know that you originally chose them but they continually tested your patience and when, finally, they rejected your only-begotten son, Jesus, you’d had it with them. Lucky for us Christians!

Is it OK if I ask you a few questions? You seem kinda moody – do you sometimes go off your ‘happy pills’? Instead of throwing Adam and Eve outta the garden, couldn’t you have done some family therapy, or put them on Ritalin?

When I read about the flood and the ark and the animals an’ all, I’m like, “Wow! Way to go!” But did you have to save mosquitoes and snakes? Wasn’t that asking for trouble?

The stories about Abraham were totally cool, too. He must have been a camel-whisperer ‘cos nobody else was able to ride them for nearly 1,000 years after him. Do you remember if he rode bareback?

And then there was Moses’ mother floating him off down the Nile. Was she crazy, putting a baby in a straw basket in that crocodile-infested river? Probably she was imitating Sargon the Great’s mum, but, far as I know, there weren’t any alligators in the Tigris or Euphrates. How d’ya do the ‘burning bush’ thing? Was it an optical illusion or were you growing the branches back as quickly as you were burning them off? Left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing kinda thing?

I felt kinda sad when I read about the angel of death killing all the Egyptian first-born’s – being as how I’m a first-born myself. But then I remembered that you even killed your own  first-born. I know it’s hard to watch your own child die. I remember what my parents went through when my sister, Eithne, died of a brain aneurysm.

And the 40 years in the desert were amazing; you gave two million people manna and quail and water and 613 laws while, at the same time, keeping 200 billion galaxies spinning and orbiting! Did you practice juggling as a child? Wait a minute! Were you ever a child? No?! What does it feel like to have no beginning? For one thing, you never got to celebrate a birthday. Bummer dude! (Sorry, is OK to say ‘bummer dude’ to God?)

I sometimes feel sorry for the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites who got in the way of the Israelites but then, from what I read in your book, it seemed like they were an immoral lot and needed to go. Did you know they were going to turn out badly when you created them? Or were you surprised and disappointed? I suppose it must have been their mothers’ fault.

It’s cool how you stopped the sun and the moon for almost a full day so that Joshua could finish slaughtering the Amorites before it got too dark; and you must have been grinning from ear to ear when you reminded him that you  had killed more Amorites with hailstones, as they were trying to escape, than he’d killed with the sword! I bet that put him  in his place. Didn’t you do the same thing in Egypt, a few years before, to the people and cattle, and call it a ‘plague’? Must be one of your favorite party tricks, huh?

I love the story you told about David and Goliath. I remember once throwing a stone at another kid – a nemesis of mine – but I was only five years old and missed my target. Instead, I broke the front window of his house. Then, I ran home in terror and hid in the ‘coal hole’ under the stairs of my grandparents’ house, waiting for the knock on the front door. It was the longest 45 seconds of my life. I’m lucky I don’t have PTSD from that one!

And then there was Solomon – the wisest man who ever lived; with his 300 wives and 700 concubines; or was it 700 wives and 300 concubines? What’s a concubine? It’s sad that the Israelites got murdered by the Assyrians and the Babylonians for not following your laws but it was masterful the way you used other gods to punish your own people and then persuaded still other gods to kill the other gods that you’d used to punish your own people for ignoring what you told them about not following other gods.

I didn’t find the New Testament as interesting. Apart from some good stories that Jesus told, and his miracles, not a lot happened. And it’s a pity that he had to die in the end. I wish you’d said more about the resurrection – that piece was really cool. But, honestly, I found the letters – Paul and Peter and Jude etc. – a bit boring. I wish you’d had a better editor.

Are you planning on writing another book? Will it be available on Kindle? Or just on stone tablets like the one you wrote the ten commandments on? Could you include a few pictures this time?

I love you; please don’t forget to take your meds!

Yours Truly,

Seán ÓLaoire

Patheos.com — July 24, 2018:  In reading a passage from Luke’s gospel (15:17) about ‘The Lost Sheep’, a few days ago, I was intrigued to see the very tiny but, in my opinion, very important difference between two translations.

Here they are, firstly from the New International Version,  “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

And then from the Good News Translation,  “In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine respectable people who do not need to repent.”

The backstory, as you well know, concerns a shepherd who has lost one of his 100 sheep. He leaves the 99 in the desert and goes in search of the stray. When he finds it, he places it on his shoulders and carries it home. Then comes the statement in Luke 15:17 quoted above.

There have been many interpretations of it over the last two millennia. I want to visit a few of them and then add two interpretations of my own.

• The ‘Original’ Interpretation?

  God is watchful and goes in search of those who stray from the kingdom. He is not angry or punitive but forgiving and loving and actually carries  them home. He doesn’t drive them or threaten them, “if you don’t come home, I will…” but is delighted that He’s saved them from the predators.

• The Church’s Interpretation

  Best Case Scenario:

  The pastors of holy mother church are committed to returning the strays to the safety of being penned in and controlled through confession and penance and purgatory.

  Worst Case Scenario:

  They use threats, excommunication, inquisition, burning at the stake and hell as a means of keeping the flock in line – all in the name of a loving Jesus. By now – the Middle Ages – they are not so much interested in saving  these sinners as in roasting  them – here and hereafter.

• Two Interpretations of my Own

  First:

  The ‘stray’ is not a ‘sinner’ but a ‘seeker’, the one who is prepared to expand beyond orthodoxy and risk exploring the esoteric. That is the one who brings a smile to God’s face and joy to Her heart. It is the soul who is prepared to leave the safety of law for the pursuit of unconditional love; the one who is brave enough to leave the security of being controlled by the self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy in order to embrace Self-empowerment. At the other side of fear lies freedom.

  The great archetype of this kind of soul is Mary Magdalene. Compared to the ‘Pharisee’ in all religions, she embodies the following distinctions:

  Love vs Law

  Passion vs Safety

  The Courage to be Different vs the Shackles of Respectability

  Fire in the Belly vs Mediocrity in the Mind

  Freedom of Spirit vs Obedience to Dogma

  Here, I see the complementary male and female archetypes of enlightenment: Christ consciousness (as typified by Jesus) and Christa (or Magdalen) consciousness (as typified by Mary).

  Second:

  The ‘lost sheep’ is the soul with the courage to risk incarnation. The other souls prefer the safety of a pre-incarnate or dis-incarnate heaven. But then God is denied experiences that only incarnation can bring. They are the bees who refuse to leave the hive and so eventually starve in the absence of honey, pollen and nectar. And what does God do? She goes out – not in search of  the lost soul but to search with the brave incarnate-er. And then He carries it on His shoulders. In other words, God plays both parts and experiences fully the treasure hunt of incarnation through the brave soul.

  In parallel universes God signs up to play the part of each soul who’s willing to risk incarnation. An old British proverb says, “He knows not England who only England knows.”  You cannot appreciate home / heaven / Source unless you are willing to leave it and engage with the ultimate Hero’s Journey – incarnation.

  But no great story is devoid of fear, even existential angst, and so we plan the experience of our ‘daytime nightmares’ on a personal and even on a global level, in order to more fully appreciate love, forgiveness, patience… All of the virtues are simply what love looks like as it encounters different forms of fear.

• God’s Role

  So, what precisely is God’s role in this unfolding drama? Imagine you buy a two-way ticket for a journey that starts with us humans and travels back through the Big Bang into God’s mind; then the return leg starts with God and ends with enlightenment. Here’s what the journey might look like.

  Outward Bound

  We can trace our ‘ancestry’ from homo sapiens sapiens, to homo sapiens, to the hominids, to the first animals, to the original protozoa of the planet, to the Big Bang and ultimately to the Mind of God. There are bifurcation points all along this road. The take away, for me, is that life is a dream which the ego is having; the ego is a dream which soul is having; the soul is a dream which Spirit is having; and Spirit is a dream which Source is having. We live at the core of nested dreams and the journey involves disidentifying with less important levels of the dream in order to re-identify with more important levels.

  The Return Journey

  As we reverse that process, we move from Source to us. We realize then that all of creation is simply God in drag. She is playing all of the parts. In a sense, God is the first ‘zygote’ and the first division was that of transcendence / immanence. All subsequent articulations of duality are born of this trajectory; and all other phenomena are simply fractals of that initial Self-sundering.

  In the story of evolution, as it throws up brand new forms that could not be predicted by its constituent elements (e.g., oxygen and hydrogen become water), science tells us that the total is greater than the sum of the parts. I believe that it is even more true that Source is greater than the sum of the totals.

  This is the difference between pantheism (God is simply the sum total of all phenomena) and panentheism (God is both the sum total of all phenomena and a lot more besides.) Just as Shakespeare is much greater than his collected works.

  Creation, then, is God’s imagination enfleshed.

  [I will continue this essay in part two, “ How Ya Doin’ in Yer Parallel Universes?”.]

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — July 31, 2018:  In the first essay of this blog, Who is “The Lost Sheep”?, I spoke of God’s role in the adventure of incarnation. Now, I want to turn my attention to the human role in this journey.

• Fractals

  A fractal is a pattern that repeats at an infinite number of scales. We find them in mathematics (Mandelbrot series), in time cycles both natural (day, month, year, yuga) and invented (second, minute, hour, week), in biology (heart-beat, breath, circadian rhythms), in space (from atoms to galaxies) and in taxonomies of various kinds (physical and metaphysical realities; Hinduism’s seven levels of body.)

  As fractals of the divine, then, souls can also play all of the parts, just as Source does.

• What If…?

  What if the cosmos is willing and able to spin off as many parallel universes as are necessary in order to afford each soul the opportunity to ‘fill the spacesuit’ of any historical or current character? Think of any person whom you admire, know about or are critical of – from ancient history to the present – in entertainment, sports, politics, science, the arts, literature, law, the military, psychology – and your soul gets parachuted into that body in your new, tailor-made universe.

  All of the other characters are playing their ‘original selves’ and all of the external circumstances, background and opportunities are identical to the originals. Now, you get to be the character who can change the dialog and hence the future. Once you arrive and begin to think, speak and act, all of the other characters will respond according to their own personalities and agendas. You were the catalyst for change but once begun you too are subject to the influences of each of the others.

  A new universe has begun its journey like a river that flows towards the ocean of the cosmic community; sometimes it tumbles over rocky rapids and sometimes it meanders through mild-mannered meadows.

  You have two missions: one lasting a single lifetime in this new cosmos, and the other spanning as many universes as are necessary for you to become an enlightened avatar who operates only out of love.

  Ultimately, each soul will spin off a multitude of universes until it has learned how to love in all circumstances. This will involve having the courage and the humility to operate in a multiplicity of forms – from rocks, sea anemones, daffodils, snails and tigers to hominids, ET’s and angels. “For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.”  (Romans 8:19). How then will winning five superbowls or six Oscars, being POTUS or Pope John XXIII, being Hitler or Gandhi affect your progress? Will it teach you compassion and forgiveness or arrogance and anger?

  Even as importantly, how are you doing in your present configuration? Because in answer to your soul’s search for awakening fully, you specifically crafted this present cosmos with this cast of characters – all the way from your parents to your politicians, and from your soul-mate to your fiercest foe? So, how are you really doing? Have you been blindsided by the game and are taking it too literally so that you don’t remember you planned this lesson and chose these other actors to play supporting roles? Do you have occasional déjà vu experiences where you are flooded with serenity and you realize that your life is on track to rendezvous with love?

  What would happen to your mind if you remembered your mission? What would happen to your Self if you remembered your soul? What would happen to our world if you remembered either?

• You Play Others

  a. Ordinary Folks

  Under the tutelage of our heavenly mentors, we don’t just hanker to play the roles of famous people but also that of a fisherman in Connemara, a grandmother in the African bush or a taxi driver in NY. All of these afford us excellent opportunities to hone our skills at loving unconditionally. When you play ‘somebody else’ you may learn to be less judgmental and more forgiving.

  b. Dream Life

  In your nightly dreaming, your soul already plays all of the roles; that’s why you’re not always nice in your dreams. And, so, it becomes a practice for living in parallel universes. When you’re dreaming lucidly enough to be moral and compassionate in your dream life, you’re well on your way to being able to parachute into the role of any other being – and still acting in love.

  Then there will be a universe in which Hitler is a loving being – played by you!

• Others Play You

  And there’s a flip side of the coin; many people fantasize about being a famous person of the past or of the present; but there are cases of famous people – as well as ordinary folk – wanting, willing and succeeding in playing you!

  So, there is a universe in which Christ, the soul who played Jesus the carpenter from Nazareth, is also playing you – as you understand yourself in this present spacesuit of yours.

  Wouldn’t you love to know just how  he is playing you? And if you knew, how would it change the way you  are playing you? How many famous actors have played the role of Hamlet over the years? I wonder how many famous souls have played you? Wouldn’t it be fun to know what kind of a fist they made of it? Well there are the Akashic Records where all of the videos are stored and there are Altered States of Consciousness which are the PIN code to gain access.

• The Conundrum of Time

  a. No Time

  It doesn’t take lots of time to play all of these roles; what it takes is, ‘no time’ because eternity is not eons of time, not even endless time, but rather timelessness – the radical absence of time. Because time is a human construct since our tiny brains cannot grok the entire span of the incarnation project and so we chop it up into chunks and process it sequentially, thus giving rise to the twin illusions of time and change.

  b. The Book of Life

  In reality, all the twists and turns of evolution are already present in the Book of Life. It is only the mind’s limitations that cause us to plod where the heart’s limitless ability to love allows us to soar. The Akashic Records are not so much a journal of past times as they are a blueprint for realizing our divine nature in present timelessness. When we know how to look there is nothing that is not present everywhere, now.

  Every single episode, chapter, page, paragraph, sentence, phrase, word and letter of the multi-paged novel that you will take weeks to read is already present before you ever crack open the cover. It doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the unfolding storyline but it does mean that it’s a story you yourself wrote and for which you adopted amnesia as a way to surprise yourself in the game of hide-and-go-seek that is known as evolution.

• Conclusion

  Look around you! This is probably the only universe of which you are fully aware. Does it fill you with hope or despair? What do you think of the other players? Are you compassionate or critical of them? Pick any one of them – could you do a better job if you switched places?

  Here’s the bottom line: this is the only universe in which you are aware of playing you! How ya doin’? Do you need to bring in an understudy or can you tweak your own performance? Is this the incarnation in which you will achieve Christ consciousness or do you want to wait for another? This is precisely the question that John the Baptist, through his disciples, while he was in prison, asked of Jesus.

  And Jesus answer? He didn’t say ‘yea’ or ‘nay’, he said, “go back and tell John what you witness: the blind see, the cripples are healed; and the poor have the Good News preached to them.” Are you  helping the blind to see? Healing the crippled? Being the bearer of Good News?

  Or is it time for you to spin off a brand-new parallel universe?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — July 10, 2018:  One of the great archetypes of incarnation is that of life as a drama, a play. And, if you’ve ever done any acting, occasional screwups are part and parcel of life as a thespian.

Perhaps, many of you have done some acting either in High School or College. I did quite a bit of it in school and in the seminary. In all, I probably had a part in over 20 plays, but easily the most memorable ones were plays in which we majorly screwed up.

In 1961 my Christian Brothers high school put on a huge production of the life of Christ. The climax was the crucifixion scene with a real cross, perhaps ten feet tall on stage. Jesus was impaled by two huge nails which he was actually gripping between his index and middle fingers as he rested his feet on a tiny wedge-shaped platform which was about four feet off the ground. I was the centurion and my job, once Jesus had breathed his last, was to jab my spear into his side where a bag of tomato juice was taped to produce the requisite blood. For the first few nights, I was content to dispatch him in this fashion, but by night four it was getting kinda boring, so while he was still communing with his heavenly daddy, I started tickling his underarm with the tip of my spear. He began wriggling, lost his footing and tumbled onto the stage. There was a gasp from the crowd and immediately, the curtain came down and one of the Christian Brothers rushed on stage and beat the crap outta me. Jesus suffered a bunch of bruises and sprained his ankle. So much for the Thespian blessing, “Break a leg!”

One of the plays we did in the seminary was “Hadrian IV”. It was the story of the only Englishman – Nicholas Breakspeare – to be elected pope. He ruled from 1154 to 1159. The lead role was being played by Billy Kennefick, a late vocation who had been, for many years, a member of Cork’s Shakespearean Company. He was a first-rate actor. The local community was always invited to these productions which typically ran for a week.

In the seminary we had to make all of the props ourselves including the “flats” – the angled sidepieces that allow actors to enter and exit the stage without the audience being able to see what is backstage.

The climax of the whole play is the funeral procession of the deceased pontiff. Four of us – cardinals – are shouldering the stretcher bearing the dead pope with great solemnity across the stage. The problem was that the flats hadn’t been ready during the dress rehearsal, so we are encountering them now for the first time. As we attempt to exit stage left, it quickly becomes obvious that the stretcher, with two guys on each side, won’t be able to pass through. There’s only one solution, the two of us at the rear of the stage tilt our side up while the two at the front of the stage tilt their side down. That does the trick; we are now able to squeeze through. Only one problem, Billy Kennefick rolls off the stretcher, hits the ground with an almighty thump, his false teeth get ejected and land in the lap of a lady in the front row!

So, in this essay, I want to use drama and screw ups as a metaphor of incarnation.

• Incarnational Actors

  My three favorite psychologists of all time are the Buddha, Jesus and William Shakespeare. These guys really grokked the human psyche. And Shakespeare, the master playwright, said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages…”

  I believe we are like a Shakespearean troupe. We enter incarnation in cohort groups dedicated to creating a play which affords each of us the opportunity to develop our acting skills. By that I mean the opportunity to learn that the only thing that works is love. We make Pre-conception contracts with other souls to provide the plays that can stretch us into enlightened beings.

  From incarnation to incarnation, we travel with the same group of players; though, in response to very different dramas, we may change genders, ethnicity, socio-economic status etc. And, before we incarnate, we know the track record of each of the other players. At the soul level, we fully appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of all the players.

  But there is one huge difference, life is Improv – there is no script and no plot, just players parachuted into a pre-existing world and tasked with moving it towards Christ Consciousness. And there are two rules to Improv Theatre. Number one, you can’t reject a line your partner offers you. Ever! If you do, the whole play will fall on its face. And the second rule is, it’s your job to offer your partners lines that make them look good – and vice-versa. If you try to strut and impress by diminishing the others, once more the drama will collapse.

  However, there is another huge caveat. You must never identify with the role or even with the play. You are not the role you are playing; and the drama itself is not ultimate reality. You are a spirit in a spacesuit – the spacesuit is not you; the spirit is. Play your role brilliantly but realize that your human body and its mind and emotions are simply costumes you put on in the Green Room just for the play of incarnation.

  Actors who can’t leave the role at the final curtain call are destined to carry these pseudo-ID’s into their home relationships and into the world. They are the ones who get fooled by maya – and think that fame or wealth or power are the object of the exercise.

  Things get compounded when the directors and producers of these life dramas – religious and political leaders – insist that you play your part in a closely-circumscribed fashion. They want to hand you a script and force you to follow a pre-determined plot. So, I would add a third great rule to Improv Theatre: when you and your fellow actors have learned how to play to each other’s strengths, then stretch yourself and them. Otherwise the way you play Hamlet becomes indistinguishable from the way you played Macbeth.

  Ultimately, you must be able to say, as Jesus did, “When you see me, Philip, you see the father.” In other words, if I really know how to act, you should be able to see beyond my costume into my soul; beyond my spacesuit into my spirit; beyond my lines into my love. For all of us are simply God-in-drag.

• Feedback from Screwups

  The essential features of learning are repetition (e.g., riding a bike or typing) and feedback. So, we can learn as much, or even more, from the ‘mistakes’ we make as from our successes. In the New Testament, the Greek word for ‘sin’ is taken from the sport of archery. Sin is merely missing the mark, which gives you instant feedback on how to adjust your aim. So, it is intimately connected to karma – which is not a punitive mechanism but simply cause and effect. You do A and B happens; if B is good, keep doing A; if B is not good, do something else instead of A.

  And ‘perfection’ (‘telos’ in Greek, from which we get teleology) is not about a stainless-steel sinlessness but is the commitment to the purpose for which you incarnated, no matter how many times you miss the bull’s eye.

  Next are some thoughts on feedback:

• Consciousness Examen

  Different from the old practice of ‘examination of conscience’ is the practice of a ‘consciousness examen.’ The objective of this is to live as mindfully as possible. I used this technique very successfully in my psychology practice. I would ask the client – as a kind of ‘morning offering’ – to pick one issue for a full week, set the intention about being really mindful around that issue all day and, then before going to bed that night, grade – on a scale of 1 to 10 – their performance. I found that, if they were faithful to the exercise, any issue or habit could be healed.

• The Feedback Loop

  As I said, the essential features of learning, are repetition and feedback. Repetition builds both cellular and mental memory; and feedback allows us to adjust our aim. Firing arrows at a target which you cannot see is unlikely to result in hitting the bull’s eye with any regularity. And there are several kinds of feedback. The first one, I’ve just mentioned above; it’s feedback from the consciousness examen or even the examination of conscience. It is self-generated feedback. Next comes solicited  feedback. It can be from a friend, a spiritual director, a therapist, a coach – somebody who’s in your corner and agrees to be a collaborator in your development. Finally, there is unsolicited  feedback which can come from many quarters – family, friends, or ‘enemies’. Even this is valuable, if you can separate the gold nuggets from the coating of anger, schadenfreude and exaggeration. Weeding – the cruel plucking by others of your faults – can be even more valuable than fertilizing – the loyal love you get from the gentle appreciation of your gifts.

• Conclusion

  Here are two other things I learned during my acting career. First, never try something on the performance night that you haven’t practiced during the rehearsals. It may blow up on you, and it’s not fair to the other actors who have crafted their own performances to dovetail with yours. Such changes typically come from self-glorification, an effort to stand out. If the drama implodes, that’s all the critics will remember – not that you gave a stunning performance but that you punctured the play for the other actors.

  And, second, make sure that all the props have been completed and tested by dress-rehearsal night. Don’t roll the pontiff off the stretcher.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — June 6, 2018:  This essay is the first of a two part series on Kosmic Laws.  I remember one very interesting seminar we did during my seminary training. Since we were being readied for missionary work in ‘foreign’ countries with ‘foreign’ cultures speaking ‘foreign’ languages, it was important to have some kind of a ‘game plan’ so as to not offend local custom and to get a head start on learning, aligning with and loving the cultures and languages into which we would be ‘parachuted.’

For the first class, we were divided into two groups that met in separate rooms, and each ‘tribe’ was given a made-up language and taught a made-up culture. Once each member of the tribe was conversant with the language and culture, it then had to send an ambassador/missionary/anthropologist to the other tribe. The results were hilarious. The two languages and cultures were devised in such a way as to be radically opposite from ‘typical.’ No matter what the emissary tried – and each tribe got the opportunity to send several subsequent emissaries – it didn’t work. They either provoked laughter, derision, anger or even incarceration for trying things as innocuous as attempting a handshake, a smile or even just talking. It took a lot of time and a lot of jailed emissaries before we began to figure out the system.

Something similar pertains to being parachuted into incarnation. There are rules of engagement, and it may take many lifetimes to infer them. In the mean time we can be, at best, ineffective and insensitive, and, at worst, belligerent and domineering. Gratefully, human evolution can benefit from trial and error, from science, from philosophy, from religion, but, particularly, from spirituality in getting the game right.

An important part, then, of the science of spirituality, is figuring out some Kosmic laws. A brief note here – by Cosmos the Greeks meant the physical universe, while Kosmos meant its metaphysical origins and foundation. The following, I believe, are some of the most important Kosmic laws.

• Preamble

  Whether or not you have ever studied Newton’s or Einstein’s ideas on gravity, or even if you don’t believe  in gravity, if you fall off the roof of a ten-story building, you’re gonna die. And whether or not you saw the 30-mph sign when you drove into a new part of town, you’re gonna get busted by the cops if they find you doing 50 mph. It’s the same with Kosmic laws. Ignorance of them is neither an excuse nor a bypass. But here, I’d add two caveats. First, is to beware of promoting human precepts as divine decrees e.g., pre-Vatican II Catholics merited hell by intentionally eating meat on a Friday. Jesus inveighed against this kind of law when he said, “Man was not made for the Sabbath; the Sabbath was made for man; therefore, the son of man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

  And the second caveat is in thinking that science has discovered or even can discover all of the laws that guide our existence or control our destiny.

• The Law of Love

  Given that, in my opinion, the universe is a manifestation of a loving Source, then laws that create fear or that privilege our species, are ‘bad’ laws – they’re not accurate. God does not give with the hand of religion and take with the hand of science – or vice versa. The right and left ‘hands of God’ are directed by the same divine heart. The entire purpose of incarnation is to remember the Kosmic rules while we are still ‘away from home.’

• The Law of Unity

  There is only one Source; nothing exists except God; all that is, is a manifestation of that One. Discrete, separate self-hood is an illusion of incarnation and to identify with it, is to bind the blindfold even tighter. Your true ID is your God-self; and the true ID of all whom you meet is that One; you acknowledge that with a namasté. I am THAT, you are THAT, all is THAT. Whatever you meet is a Word-of-God-made-flesh. That was Jesus’ teaching, not his claim to uniqueness. Therefore, all war is civil war, and all violence is an auto-immune disease.

• The Law of Manifestation

  In the game of Lila, Source, in order to experience the paradox of separation-from-Self, fractured into souls, bite-sized pieces, fractals containing the All-in-miniature. The Buddha put it beautifully, “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese mystic, explicated one wing of that when he said that a flower consists completely of non-flower elements; remove the rain, the sun, the wind, insects, earth minerals – and there is no flower. Celtic spirituality explicated the other wing of it, in the realization that darkness – the fecund soil of the womb – is the conceiver, carrier and birther of light. For the Celts, light and darkness, form and emptiness, nature and culture, goddesses and gods are lovers who dance and mate, not enemies who war.

• The Law of Impermanence

  Everything that is born will die. And it is important to also realize that everything that dies will resurrect. Impermanence is not a curse on life, it is the blessing of variety, of shifting states of consciousness and forms of incarnation. It is the Dissipative Structures of Ilya Prigogine which bring increased complexity out of the apparent death of entropy. It is Shiva dismantling the old in order to recombine its elements into something even more exciting. It is the painful exit from mother’s womb into the light of another life-filled incarnation. It is Shakespeare rearranging the 26 symbols of the English alphabet into his Complete Works. It is the four nucleotides – A, G, C and T – recombining into all the forms that have ever flown, run, crawled, or swum on Gaia.

  The permanence of impermanence is the guarantee of evolution – physiological, psychological and spiritual.

• The Law of Entanglement

  Not only are all the particles of the cosmos ‘talking’ to each other but communities of particles  also engage in mega-conversations. It is a Kosmic brain in which every single neuron is in dialog with every other one. Some of these ‘brain cells’ are on the other side of the veil. We may call them ‘our dearly departed’, ‘angels’, ‘avatars’ or ‘saints’ – it matters not. We are all the way God talks to Herself and guides Herself through incarnation.

  Moreover, even ‘individual souls’ have two aspects – Atma, who never leaves the presence of God, and Jiva, who dips regularly into a spacesuit; which leads me to the next law.

• The Law of Inter-Dimensional Communication

  All of the neurons are in dialog, but we are, perhaps, most aware of the Atma-Jiva conversation. They are like two birds sitting atop a very tall tree; Atma never leaves the perch but Jiva often swoops to the forest floor examining the underbrush, feeding on worms and singing to other multi-colored Jivas engaged in similar pursuits. Atma watches from afar. When Jiva returns, they compare perspectives in order to create a total picture.

  They are very creative in their ‘communication’ technology. Here is a partial list of ‘devices’ they use: intuition, inspiration, déjà vu, synchronicities, moments of awe, memorable dreams, visions, meditation, time spent in nature, ‘psychic’ moments, brushes with death and significant illnesses.

  In the next essay, we will examine the other five Kosmic Laws.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — June 6, 2018:  This essay is the second of a two part series examining Kosmic Laws. Let’s begin where we left off in Kosmic Laws – Ground Rules of the Kosmic Game, Part 1.

• The Law of Attraction

  Since, as Einstein’s famous formula showed, everything ultimately reduces to energy, then energies of various frequencies interact differently with each other. If you overlay two sine waves, you get a whole spectrum of effects by moving them closer or further from alignment with each other. Trough on crest (or crest on trough) will annihilate the amplitude of both waves and cause them to ‘flatline’; crest on crest (or trough on trough) will double the amplitude. There is an art to pushing a child on a swing set, as she screams, “higher, I wanna go higher!” The art is to match frequencies.

  Similar frequencies attract and amplify each other; dissimilar frequencies repel and negate each other. Fear, anger and despair attract further reasons for fear, anger and despair. Misery loves company. Nothing satisfies the victim mentality like another negative incident. They are the hardest people of all to work with in therapy because they resist all efforts at healing or solutions to their problems. It’s as if you were trying to take their livelihood away from them. Maybe they regard such efforts as the oldest form of ‘identity theft.”

  In the same way, love, peace and compassion attract and amplify love, peace and compassion. There is a long history of prayer, ritual and ‘magic’ that builds upon that realization. Jesus called it the faith that can move mountains. In my own prayer research, the single most intriguing result was that the improvement in psychological, physical and mental health of the ‘agents’ (the people who were praying for others) was even more spectacular than that of the ‘subjects’ (the people being prayed for).

• The Law of Deliberate Intention

  Whether we realize it or not, the ‘future’ hinges largely on our own choices – even when they are done unconsciously. Gravity is equally effective when a person jumps off a building or ‘falls off’ it because of an unconscious death wish. Fate lies in our own decision-making. We are creators of our own destiny. When decisions are made consciously we are masters of our destiny; when decisions are made mindlessly we are its victims.

  When Gautama Siddhartha spoke of being ‘buddha’ (awake), and advocated mindful living, he was talking not just about accelerated enlightenment, but about doing an end run around suffering. Attention and intention coupled with Self-belief and belief in a benevolent universe, are the key elements of conflating nirvana and samsara; of realizing that the kingdom of heaven is ‘en mesoi.’

• The Law of Allowing

  If you really believe in ‘creating your own destiny’ and in the unity of all life, then, ipso facto, you must accord others the right to make their own choices. ‘Restrictions may apply’ as advertisements warn us in the fine print, tucked away from the headline promotion of the item they want you to buy. Obviously, in some cases, ‘authorities’ – parents, teachers, police etc. – may be mandated to intervene when decisions that negatively affect the life or wellbeing of self, other or property ar involved. Barring these situations, however, we do not have the right to control the lives or decisions of others. This is a lesson, unfortunately, that has been frequently ignored in personal relationships both on a one-to-one basis and as oligarchies of various kinds manage the lives of the masses. But, like charity, the law of allowing begins at home.

• The Law of Karma

  Karma is not a system whereby I am punished in this or future situations for mistakes I made in past or present situations. Karma, within a single lifetime, is a law that pertains both in the cosmos and in the kosmos. In fact, it is probably the single most important law of science – cause and effect. Between lifetimes, karma is the planning of the next lifetime’s hand, based on the lessons the soul wants to learn there.

  Essentially, it is very simple: you do A and B happens. Did you like B? If yes, keep doing A; if not, stop doing A. It’s so simple a rule that it is mostly ignored; and we spend years repeating the same choices that got us the results we keep complaining about. To put it in Einstein’s words, ‘you can’t solve a problem from the same mindset that created it.”

• The Law of Deferred Outcome

  Children are fascinated by speed. “Go faster, daddy!” a typical eight-year-old strapped into the back seat will encourage his father, at the wheel of a car. Fast forward ten years and the same kid, on his own 800 cc motorbike, will open up the throttle and take off down the road, once released from an intersection’s red light, often with his front wheel feet above the ground.

  Chuck Yaeger broke the sound barrier (750 miles per hour) in 1947. Einstein told us we can never break the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) but, in actual fact, we do it all the time. The speed of thought is almost instantaneous. If I say to you, ‘think of Neptune’, which is 2.7 billion miles from Earth, you’ll ‘get there’ in nanoseconds.

  Only one thing is faster; the speed of love, because it doesn’t depend on the electro-chemical firing of neurons, synapses and dendrites. Love is the God-stuff always present everywhere and everywhen in all creatures. For fully-enlightened beings – angels and avatars – every thought has immediate manifestation; but for the rest of us, we need a time buffer. Otherwise, the freeways would be littered with the corpses of those ‘asshole’ drivers who cut us off and drew, “I’ll kill you!” reactions from us.

  Eventually, every thought, word and deed does have manifestation, but the time buffer gives us a reprieve so that we may reconsider or cool down before it indulges our wishes. Even thoughts create energy-forms which, if they are subsequently reinforced, will acquire physicality – almost like a tulpa. “Count to ten before you respond!” is sage advice. The Kosmos may count even to a thousand before it obeys our commands. In the meantime, we get ample opportunity to cancel the assassin.

  This is part of the importance of our dream life, where we do have the magical ability to instantly ‘incarnate’ a thought. It’s the training wheels for the real thing. There may be three stages to the process. First, learn to dream lucidly;  second, learn to dream not just lucidly but lovingly – to be moral and compassionate even in the dream state; and, third, to live lucidly  – with unconditional love for all sentient beings.

• Results

  All of these laws interact; they provide the ground rules of the Kosmic game; the laws of Lila. And, as is said before, they apply whether or not we are conscious of them. Being awake, then, means knowing these laws and getting into alignment with them.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — May 29, 2018:  I believe that laughter is the first sign of awakening. But it’s a special kind of laughter. It has its origins in the smile of the neonate. Wordsworth put it beautifully in his “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”  in the passage, “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!”

It morphs into the laughter of little children who continue to surf their imagination on the waves of the ocean of God’s own laughter. Alas, ‘life’ and school soon suppress this in favor of the inculcation of factoids.

There is an interesting passage in the Gnostic gospel of Philip, “Jesus revealed himself at the Jordan. It was the fullness of the kingdom of heaven. He who was begotten before everything else, was begotten anew. He who was anointed, was anointed anew. He who was redeemed, in turn redeemed others. As soon as Jesus went down into the water, he came out laughing at everything of the world. Not because he considers it a trifle, but because he is full of contempt for it…”

Christ’s laughter is not at the people who are trapped in the illusion but, rather, for the mechanism itself and its fabricators. Let me give an analogy. The very first ‘moving pictures’ were created in 1895 by the Lumiere brothers in Paris. Initially, they were merely 50- to 60-seconds ‘epics’ showing workers coming out of their dad’s factory. Then, they place a ‘movie camera’ between the tracks in the path of an oncoming locomotive ‘hurtling’ towards them at 15 m.p.h., and showed it to a packed audience in a theater. There was immediate bedlam as people ran for the aisles and jammed the exits to avoid being run over by the train.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a time-traveler from 2018 seated in the balcony watching this chaotic panic beneath you. Your first reaction would be laughter – not because you are enjoying their discomfort but because you realize that they are caught in an illusion, though they are absolutely safe. That’s what it must be like to be fully enlightened. It is not about enjoying the fears of others but realizing that they are trapped in maya, though they are continually held in God’s loving embrace. And that is the sense of Jesus’ laughter.

Laughter, at its core, comes from the deepest wisdom, the innermost conviction that only God exists and only love is real. Armed with that knowledge, you can strap yourself into the roller-coaster of life and enjoy the ride, even as your stomach does somersaults and your companions scream in delighted terror.

The first laugh of enlightenment, then, is to liberate the self; and all subsequent laughter is to liberate others. It is the reason that the Spirit of evolution gives us imagination and intuition as well as rational thinking; and sends us children, storytellers, artists, dreamers and prophets. A hug is physicalized laughter – a life-raft thrown to a swimmer floundering in the choppy waters of incarnation. Laughter, then, is dreaming lucidly, realizing that you are immortal, indestructible and, if you wish, can even fly.

There is, of course, both healthy, loving laughter and unhealthy, unloving, ego-based laughter. Healthy laughter is spotting the incongruities in a situation. It should be a clue that you’ve touched the boundaries of the matrix and, therefore, is an invitation to break out of it into true freedom. It is to laugh, not in mockery, not as a sadist but in realization of the fact that all of your own fears and all the fears of others are based on a fictional reality. Since it is from fear that all human vices spring, and from awakening arise compassion and all other virtues, this laughter is true awakening to your core, divine nature. It’s the soul-smile of a parent watching his two-year-old child, on Santa’s lap, gaze in wonder. It has even been built into hierarchical systems to hold the ego’s of the leaders in check – the court jester, who was the only one allowed to criticize the king. The jester’s role was not merely for amusement or entertainment but to check the inflated self-image of the ruler – and invite him to pierce the veil of maya and recognize the divine equality of all God’s children.

But, of course, like all human achievements, laughter, too, can be weaponized. It can be deformed into mockery or schadenfreude. It is Judas betraying the master with a kiss; or the soldiers as dressing Jesus in royal purple, placing a crown of thorns on his head and bowing before him.

It is the tool by which all hidebound ‘authorities’ control those who think outside the box: parents and teachers who use it to control children; scientists who mock the mavericks and their breakthrough ideas (Max Planck once said that science evolves one funeral at a time); religions’ treatment of the prophets; and the status quo reaction to great social movements like women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery. It is swearing allegiance, once more, to the matrix and the vilification of those who want to take the red pill.

It seems to me that life evolves in three stages, each with its own kind of laughter. Stage one, where we are sunk deeply in the illusion, and fear is the dominant reality. We oscillate between depression and rage; and laughter, from here, is filled with mockery, schadenfreude and humiliating others. In stage two, fear is still the dominant reality but now it oscillates between shame/guilt and eat/drink/be merry: between religiosity (as a fire escape) and addiction to sex/drugs/rock’n’roll (as a tranquilizer.) Its laughter is either escapism/entertainment and self-humiliation. In stage three, love is the dominant reality: it brings serenity in oneself and compassion for others; it responds to all life forms with Namasté; and its laughter is liberty and Truth.

I believe, then, that you can measure the level of your own enlightenment by the quantity and quality of your laughter. It is a measure of your compassion or cynicism; of your inner wisdom or your disenchantment. In brief, the very first sign of waking up, I believe, is laughter; quickly followed by compassion – a compassion that starts with forgiveness for myself, and ripples out to embrace others, then my ‘enemies’ and, finally, all sentient beings. And laughter is the difference between fanaticism and commitment. Any God at whom or with whom I cannot laugh is far too small a God for me. And the laughter is birthed by piercing the illusion that I am separate from God, separate from others and separate from nature. It is the sense of playfulness created by the realization that I had been seduced by mere appearances.

It unfolds in three stages: to look deeply beyond the veil; to laugh loudly at the illusions; and, then, silently to offer Namasté to all whom we encounter – from incarnated bodhisattvas to slowly-sliding banana slugs. Then we can begin to create less and less inaccurate maps of reality and allow unconditional love to lead us home. We will notice that the ever-patient ocean of God’s immanence has washed clean the pock-marked beach of yesterday’s feverish foot traffic, so that we may imprint new hieroglyphics – cosmically-inspired sacred writings – on the newly-rearranged sands of an awakened lifetime.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — May 15, 2018:  In early 1995, I was invited to give a series of seven lectures at the Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto. I titled the series, “Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?”  During the preparation period for the series, while I was meditating one day, I had a very powerful vision of Jesus.

Before the meditation began, I had been reading the famous passage in John’s Gospel where Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the father except through me.”  So, now that I had him “in person”, I asked him, “Did you really say that?”  He replied, “Yes, I did. Because the only way is love; the deepest truth is love; and the whole point of life is love. Anybody who wants to find the father needs to walk only in love.”  And then, without any prompting from me, he went on to say, “And the Buddha is the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the father except through the Buddha. Because the only way is compassion; the deepest truth is compassion; and the whole point of life is compassion. Anybody who wants to find the father needs to walk only in compassion.”

It was Last Supper time. Jesus, having lived for about 12,000 days, now had less than 24 hours left – no time to fiddle about with literalists, in spite of the Apostles’ best attempts to “ground” his flights of fantasy. There is a hint of impatience as he attempts to elevate the thinking of both Thomas and Philip in the following exchanges. Thomas: “Lord we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way!”  This prompted the rejoinder I’ve spoken about above, “I am the way…”  Then literalist Philip asks, “Lord, show us the father and that will be enough for us.”  An exasperated Jesus replies, “Philip, have I been with you all this time and you still don’t know who I am? When you see me, you see the father.”

He’s at his deepest, most profound and most mystical at this stage. Why? Oh why, did his disciples, then and now, oafishly try to reduce these enlightened teachings to membership in the human clubs called, “churches”?

Throughout his private life, beginning at age twelve, when he debated the scholars while “lost” in the temple, and, especially, during his public ministry, Jesus was answering the four great questions – namely, “Who is God?”, “Who am I?”, “Who is my neighbor?” and “What is my mission?” The enlightened answers to the first three questions can actually be given in the same, single word – LOVE. And the answer to question #4 – what is my mission? – is, “to come awake!”

On the road to Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And then “Who do you say that I am?”  The Gospels don’t record the third, even more important, question that I believe he also asked, “Who do you [my disciple] think that you are?”  Jesus knew who he was, who the father was, who his neighbor was and what his mission was. And his mission was to awaken, first his disciples and then, through them, all humans to the same conclusions to which Jesus himself had come. Alas, we still have a long way to go; and the very leaders who should be opening themselves and their “flocks” to the true answers, have retreated into fundamentalist fear and demonized the mystics who took Jesus at his word.

Let me revisit the notion that the mission is “to come awake.” Real love is actually very difficult to attain unless one has first awakened. What passes for love, in a pre-awakened person, is either mawkish sentimentality or else just favoring one’s family and friends.

When Gautama Siddhartha – who was not a priest and had no business in the preaching trade – was challenged by the “real priests” (the Brahmin caste) to say what gave him the right to speak on spiritual matters, he simply said, “I am buddha” – literally, “I am awake.” It became his nickname just as Jesus was given the nickname, “Christ.” The Buddha’s right to preach came precisely from the fact that he was awake; he had pierced the fog of maya. This immediately resulted in unconditional compassion which is simply unconditional love-in-action.

Jesus himself would tell many parables about being awake e.g., “If the householder knew at what stage the thief would break in and steal, he wouldn’t go to sleep.”

Another word for “being awake” is the Hindu notion of “Self-Realization.” The Christian equivalent is “Salvation.” But salvation is grossly misunderstood by church teachers who see it as an action of redemption (literally “buying back”) from the grip of Satan, occasioned by the mythical story of Adam and Eve disobeying Yahweh in the Garden of Eden. The solution? Get baptized, profess Jesus as your personal savior and bingo! you’re saved.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus did not come because an irascible divinity demanded innocent blood to satisfy his anger at being disobeyed. Jesus came as an avatar, accepting incarnation with all its limitations, temptations and vicissitudes, and yet never forgetting his divine nature. He was awake as he came in, awake as he lived in his human spacesuit, and awake as he committed his soul, on the cross, into the hugging embrace of his father. This is why he could say, “It is completed; mission accomplished; I never went to sleep; I never forgot who I am, and why I came.”

There is only one sin – and it has nothing to do with the ten commandments of Moses – it is to never attempt to awaken to one’s true, divine nature. If I opt to stay asleep, then I have two choices. If I am a “Religious” person, I will only believe in a transcendent, punitive deity and I will serve him in fear, so that I may dodge the fires of hell. If I am an atheist or an agnostic, then I don’t really care about this Superman-in-the-sky, and I will live my life by the world’s values. But if I awaken at any stage of incarnation, I will immediately recognize that only God exists. I will smile and offer Namasté (“the God in me recognizes and honors the God in you”)  to everything that I encounter, from a wave breaking on the beach, to an acorn full of the promise of growing up to be an oak tree, to the wrinkled old lady, in the back seat of the church, fingering her rosary beads.

The truly liberating message of Jesus is that life is a dream which the ego is having, the ego is a dream that the soul is having, the soul is a dream which the Spirit is having, and Spirit is a dream which Source is having. Everything that exists is simply God-in-drag.

That was the message Jesus urgently tried to deliver on the last night of his life to his motley crew of fishermen, housewives and tax collectors. And some of them got it. Later, however, subsequent generations of church leaders would try to domesticate this outrageous heresy, rein Jesus in, and present us with a sensible theology of fear, obedience and the security of being “saved.”

Namasté,
Seán

Excellence Reporter.com — May 7, 2018:  Life is a dream that the ego is having; the ego is a dream that the soul is having; the soul is a dream that Spirit is having; and Spirit is a dream that Source is having. So, everything that exists in the phenomenal realms is simply God in drag.

We live in a concatenation of interconnected dreams, all of which are real. The trick is to dream lucidly and to realize that, though all levels of the dream are real, some are more pristine than others. The more we hang out in those levels, the less we can be thrown by “events.”

Since there is nothing but Source, She decided to play a game of hide-and-go-seek with Herself by spinning off fractals who are blindfolded by the limitations of incarnation, namely: (a) having a space-less body condensed into a human frame; (b) having a cosmic consciousness compelled to operate with the little laptop we carry between our ears; (c) being burdened with the illusion of time, so we can break up the now-overwhelming gestalt into bite-sized pieces to be grokked chronologically; and (d) amnesia for our true nature.

The objective of the game is to overcome all of these obstacles and still remember we are God; to creep up behind Her and shout, “gotcha!”, only to realize that we have grabbed our own shoulder.

We come in cohort groups, with a pre-conception contract to create improv theatre in which each player gets to work on the virtues and issues of their choice. We are equipped with two main pieces of information: first, a thorough knowledge of the track records of each member of the troupe; and, second, our purpose or mission each time round.

Apart from the unique, individual mission, we are all meant to move from freewill (the ability to do as I please) to freedom (the ability to do as pleases God); to move from narcissism to compassion; and from Self-Engrossment to Self-Realization. Karma, then, is seen for what it really is – not punishment for previous errors but, rather, the realization that the hand I was born with is precisely the hand I planned before I came in. Fate is seen for what it truly is – not an unavoidable outcome, but simply the life that logically and consistently unfolds depending on how I play that hand. And destiny is the opportunity to continue the lessons in the Bardo state, which then prompts me to plan the karma for the next incarnation.

And the very first sign of waking up, I believe, is laughter; quickly followed by compassion – a compassion that starts with forgiveness for myself, and ripples out to embrace others, then my “enemies” and, finally, all sentient beings. And laughter is the difference between fanaticism and commitment. Any God at whom or with whom I cannot laugh is far too small a God for me. And the laughter is birthed by piercing the illusion that I am separate from God, separate from others and separate from nature. It is the sense of playfulness created by the realization that I had been seduced by mere appearances.

It unfolds in three stages: to look deeply beyond the veil; to laugh loudly at the illusions; and, then, silently to offer Namasté to all whom we encounter – from incarnated bodhisattvas to slowly-sliding banana slugs.

Then we can begin to create less and less inaccurate maps of reality and allow unconditional love to lead us home. We will notice that the ever-patient ocean of God’s immanence has washed clean the pock-marked beach of yesterday’s feverish foot traffic, so that we may imprint new hieroglyphics – cosmically-inspired sacred writings – on the newly-rearranged sands of an awakened lifetime.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — May 1, 2018: On whom shall we call, as we watch Gaia slip off into the darkness? To whom shall we appeal as we see Pacha Mama pummeled into extinction? Who will awaken us from this nightmare, pull back the veil that creates the myth of separation, and allow us to laugh uproariously at the illusion that we are innately sinners, rather than God’s precious children, surrounded by the miracle of Her other offspring, dressed in different spacesuits? Can we awaken from the nightmare, laugh at the illusion and give ourselves over to our true nature, which is love?

History is a bedroom littered with the children’s toy soldiers, which the mother tidies away once the war games are ended. It is the beach pockmarked with the day’s foot traffic, now being washed clean by the gentle waves of the infinitely patient ocean. Evolution beckons us to become storytellers tasked with the privilege of creating tomorrow’s fables.

And the journey calls for the kind of mindfulness that carefully negotiates the minefields of yesterday, into the promised land of the about-to-be-conceived future. Only our Buddha nature can prevent us from stumbling to the right into the clutches of fundamentalist religion which threatens us with a distant demanding deity, dressed severely in somber black and utterly mirthless; and on whose kitchen wall hangs a plaque that stridently states, “I am not a happy camper!”

Only a Christ consciousness can save us from tilting to the left into the embrace of a fundamentalist scientism which preaches a purposeless cosmos that noisily broke wind in an event called the Big Bang, and which now meanders meaninglessly at the whim of an Alzheimer’s-demented algorithm.

So, who will write the story of tomorrow? The fear-filled fundamentalists with a rabid, rage-filled God-caricature, or the puffed-up prophets-of-doom seeking Nobel Prizes for inventing weapons of mass destruction? Will it be the political puppets dancing on the dexterous digits of a global corporatocracy or the Jihadists with AK-47’s and suicide belts, leading the 21 st century’s version of the crusades – as they fanatically defend the besmirched honor of their humorless god who, in his infinite mercy, has simultaneously unleashed the dogs of war and the four horsemen of the apocalypse?

Isn’t there a different dream, a new story, a clean canvas to be filled with color and laughter? But who will volunteer the womb in which that dream can be conceived? And where are the eloquent tongues to spin the new stories? Who, indeed, if not you; and where, indeed, if not in your eternal Now? Can you risk awakening from the nightmare? Are you willing to turn off TV’s talking heads and, instead, stretch an unspoiled canvas over a frame constructed of love, and eager to feel the strokes of a brush dipped in laughter and applied compassionately like a mother’s fingertips on the face of her newborn baby?

Make your life your canvas; re-tool your tongue for telling love stories; walk lucidly along the beach of your dreamlife which the ocean has thoughtfully prepared for you. Become a wandering storyteller, writing hieroglyphics with your footprints on the sands of time, in response to the dictates of the God who is your True Self.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — March 24, 2018:  I’ve got some bad news for you cat lovers. How many times do you think cats are mentioned in the Bible? Only twice! It may well be because the Israelites eschewed everything Egyptian – after 430 years of slavery there – and the Egyptians worshipped cats. So, the mouser of choice in ancient Israel was the house weasel. You dog lovers are in better shape; dogs get 40 mentions in the Bible. But, if you own a donkey, you should be really happy; they are mentioned 444 times!

• A. Some Donkey Stories

  • 1. Balaam’s Ass

    In several of the great bible stories, the best supporting actor award, in my opinion, should go to the donkey; and in one story, she – for it says specifically that it was a she – gets best actress award. Let me begin with that one, though it is not the earliest. It can be found in the Book of Numbers 22:21-38.

    She is a talking donkey. And not just a talking donkey who can say, “mama” and “dada” and “fetch me a carrot” but an educated ass well versed in religious debate. Here’s the backstory. The Israelites have reached Moab, which is northeast of the Dead Sea, on their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. The king of Moab – Balak – was scared by the size of the Israelite horde and decided to engage some divine help. So, he sent messengers, promising great rewards, to Balaam, an Ammonite renowned for his divination skills, to come and curse the Israelites. Balaam consults his divination paraphernalia and, initially, is told by God not to accompany these men back to Moab. So, he sends them away. Getting more and more concerned about the Israelites, Balak sends a second delegation with promises of even bigger rewards. Balaam goes back to his “Ouija board.” Now, God changes His mind, “That night God came to Balaam and said to him: If these men have come to summon you, go back with them; yet only on the condition that you do exactly as I tell you. So the next morning when Balaam arose, he saddled his donkey, and went off with the princes of Moab.”  So, he sets off on his Don Quixote donkey, only for God to have another re-think and get mad with him, “But now God’s anger flared up at him for going.”

    God stations an angel in the road to block his way but only the donkey can see the angel. Three times the donkey takes evasive action in order to circumvent the sword-carrying angel, squeezing Balaam’s leg against a stone wall in the process. Balaam applies the stick to the willful ass. Finally, with absolutely no space to maneuver around the winged heavenly hitman, the donkey lies down on the road with Balaam still aboard. The following lively debate then takes place, initiated by the donkey, “’What have I done to you that you beat me these three times?’ ‘You have acted so willfully against me,’ said Balaam to the donkey, ‘that if I only had a sword at hand, I would kill you here and now.’ But the donkey said to Balaam, ‘Am I not your donkey, on which you have always ridden until now? Have I been in the habit of treating you this way before?’ ‘No,’ he replied. Then the LORD opened Balaam’s eyes, so that he saw the angel of the LORD standing on the road with sword drawn; and he knelt and bowed down to the ground.”  (One hopes that Balaam’s ass went on to have a very successful career in the Roman Circus.)

  • 2. Abraham

    An earlier story speaks of Abraham setting out on a three-day journey to sacrifice his 12-year-old son, Isaac, at Yahweh’s insistence. Abraham takes two servants, a knife, fire and firewood for an altar which he will make from stones at the site of the sacrifice. Isaac, unknowingly, will be the victim. And, in the supporting role, is the donkey. Presumably the donkey’s function is to carry the firewood. The sure-footed beast is a great match for hilly terrain. They are still the transport of choice when trekking up and down the Grand Canyon.

    3. Jesus

    About 2,000 years later, on the self-same hilltop, another human sacrifice would take place. It, too, is going to need a victim and wood and a donkey. This time the wood will be in the form of a cross and the victim and the donkey will be the same person – Jesus. He will be his own donkey, carrying the wood of the sacrifice; and he will also be the sacrifice.

    Being willing to become a donkey – to make an ass of himself – is part of the sacrifice. St. Paul got it right when he said in his letter to the Philippians, “Although he was God, he did not cling to his divinity but humbled himself…”  Indeed he did; from God to human to donkey.

    Just five days earlier, another donkey won the award for best supporting actor during the Palm Sunday ragtag procession into Jerusalem. As Pilate was making his magnificent, intimidating entrance through the Western gate of the city on his own war-horse, dressed in military uniform, Jesus was seated on a borrowed donkey picking its way delicately in through the Eastern gate of the city. From the sublime to the ridiculous.

    Jesus and the donkey were no strangers to each other. This was to be his last journey on donkey-back. He probably didn’t remember his first one, which had taken place some 30 years earlier. As a newborn, he was being hurried into exile by his terrified parents seeking to escape an earlier, politically-planned child sacrifice. Herod or Pilate? One of them was sure to get him.

  • 3. Jesus

    About 2,000 years later, on the self-same hilltop, another human sacrifice would take place. It, too, is going to need a victim and wood and a donkey. This time the wood will be in the form of a cross and the victim and the donkey will be the same person – Jesus. He will be his own donkey, carrying the wood of the sacrifice; and he will also be the sacrifice.

    Being willing to become a donkey – to make an ass of himself – is part of the sacrifice. St. Paul got it right when he said in his letter to the Philippians, “Although he was God, he did not cling to his divinity but humbled himself…”  Indeed he did; from God to human to donkey.

    Just five days earlier, another donkey won the award for best supporting actor during the Palm Sunday ragtag procession into Jerusalem. As Pilate was making his magnificent, intimidating entrance through the Western gate of the city on his own war-horse, dressed in military uniform, Jesus was seated on a borrowed donkey picking its way delicately in through the Eastern gate of the city. From the sublime to the ridiculous.

    Jesus and the donkey were no strangers to each other. This was to be his last journey on donkey-back. He probably didn’t remember his first one, which had taken place some 30 years earlier. As a newborn, he was being hurried into exile by his terrified parents seeking to escape an earlier, politically-planned child sacrifice. Herod or Pilate? One of them was sure to get him.

  • 4. Samson

    In the Book of Judges, Samson, in one of his ubiquitous vendettas against the Philistines, used the jawbone of an ass to kill 1,000 of them. Then he joked, “I have made donkeys of them.”  Mission accomplished, he discarded the jawbone and, thereafter, the place was known as “Ramath Lehi” (Jawbone Hill.)

  • 5. Francis of Assisi

    We read in the Book of Deuteronomy 22:10, “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.”  I wonder if St. Francis was in breach of this commandment when, on Christmas 1223 CE, he invented the crèche and set a real live ox and donkey side by side at the manger of the Infant Jesus?

  • 6. The Greeks

    The Greeks have a teaching story about a beloved king who, once a month, paraded through the streets of his capital to afford his worshipful subjects the opportunity to gaze upon his splendor. For many years, his trusted steed was a donkey but, eventually, the donkey died and was replaced by a younger one. On his first trip, the young donkey is thrilled at the adulation being accorded him and begins to blush. The applause grows in volume and the donkey reckons he is obliged to acknowledge this, so he stands up on his back legs to wave at the crowd, whereupon the king is thrown to the ground and breaks his leg. The enraged crowd quickly beats the donkey to death. It’s the Greek version of “The ego thinking it’s the soul.”

  • 7. My Great-Grandmother

    In Ireland, all of the donkeys have a thick black line running down the center of their backs from the neck to the tail; and another black line running down the outside of both front legs. Maybe these markings are peculiar to a particular breed favored by Irish farmers? In any case, my great-grandmother told me that this was a special mark, a cross of gratitude, bestowed by God on this gentle beast for carrying His only son into exile in Egypt to escape the “slaughter of the innocents.”

• B. Palm Sunday – Jesus Makes an Ass of Himself

  The Palm Sunday (Passion Sunday) scene described in the gospels is a very powerful juxtapositioning of secular and spiritual powers. Each Passover, the Roman Governor would lead his troops from Caesarea Philippi through the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem to take up occupation of the Fortress Antonia that directly overlooked the Temple Courtyard, to keep an eye on the restive Jews. For the duration of the feast the population of Jerusalem would swell from 40,000 to one-and-a-half million people – a huge tented “slum” surrounding the Holy City. This, as you can well imagine, made the Romans very nervous, so they made a great display of showcasing their military might.

  And here comes Jesus, riding on a borrowed donkey, in a simple, seamless tunic woven by his mother, through the Eastern Gate, accompanied by a disorganized noisy crowd. The only weapons on display? Palm branches.

  Looking upon these two characters – Pilate and Jesus – which of them would the casual observer have imagined would be lovingly remembered two thousand years later?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — February 6, 2018:

• Introduction

  This is the first of three essays. Number one is entitled: “The infallibility of the Mass Media”; number two is entitled:“The Infallibility of Science”; and Number three is entitled: “The Iinfallibility of the Bible”.

  I’ve had to outgrow a belief in the infallibility of human claims and human systems four times in my life. The first time was as an eight-year-old boy. My father had a 250-cc motorbike, and as I was reading the newspaper one day (the Cork Evening Echo), I came across a huge advertisement that screamed, “Use only BP, it’s the world’s best petrol.” I turned to my father and asked, “Dad what kind of petrol do you use in your motorbike?” He said, “Texaco” I said, “Texaco? Why not BP?” He responded, “Why would I use BP?” I said, “because it’s the world’s best petrol.” So he asked, “why do you think that?” And I confidently and helpfully replied, “Because it says so in the ‘Echo’” He smiled a trifle sadly and told me, “you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.” I was shocked. Shocked that people would be allowed to tell lies in the newspapers.

  So, in this series of three essays, I want to treat of the topic of infallibility. Being raised Roman Catholic, I “knew” without a shadow of a doubt, that the pope was infallible. I was convinced that he communed daily with God and was given nuggets of knowledge to guide his one-billion-plus globally-scattered flock. It was sobering to learn that he was infallible only under very specific circumstances i.e., when he spoke “ex cathedra” on matters of faith and morals to be held by all the faithful. This circumscribed his omniscience significantly but he was still infallible under those constrained limitations.

  [In actual fact, the only example of an ex cathedra decree took place in 1950, when Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary as an article of faith.] Then I began to read church history and discovered the unbridled skullduggery including assassinations by wannabe popes of sitting popes whom they then succeeded to “the throne of Peter.” Throw into the mix sexual misconduct and all manners of Machiavellian intrigue. To make matters worse, I discovered that the doctrine of infallibility had only been decreed in 1870 at the First Vatican Council, in order to compensate a petulant Pius IX for the loss of his temporal power – the Papal States.

  But I’ve realized it is not just Catholics who have this quaint notion but that most people have a belief in – even a need for – some form of infallibility even if it is at a subconscious level.

• The Infallibility of the Mass Media: Fake News

  Propaganda is as old as storytelling, and its modern costume is “fake news.” The problem is that most of the fake news is coming from the mainstream media who are accusing the prophets of being the ones propagating the fake news. This deception is as old as the book of Jeremiah of 600 BCE, where the “court prophets”, who were aligned with the ruling class, accuse Jeremiah of promoting lies that could lead to the overthrow of the kingdom of Judea. As it turned out, of course, he was correct and within a few short years the royal family, “court prophets”, and the bulk of the populace were taken into exile in Babylon and the first temple (the one Solomon had built in 950 BCE) was destroyed.

  In our times, the fourth estate (the current crop of court prophets) has become a willing partner to the oligarchy and used by them to distract, mis-inform and dis-inform us. And there are myriad pieces on their chessboard of “divide and conquer,” – ethnicity, racism, sexism, ageism, denominational affiliation, political parties and class (lower, working, middle, upper, elite, aristocratic, and royal.) These strident, finger-pointing “presstitutes” in the employ of the powerbrokers have abandoned their sacred mission as guardians of the truth and promoters of revelation. It is a well-known fact that if you want to succeed in a coup, you must first capture the mass media.

  I well remember August 1st 1982, when I was still living in Kenya, that a wannabe dictator (senior private grade I – the second lowest rank in the Kenya military hierarchy), Hezekiah Ochuka, attempted to overthrow President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi and his government. The first act was to take over the headquarters of the VOK (Voice of Kenya radio/TV system) and announce that there was a regime change. The coup lasted all of six hours, but the idea behind the takeover of the VOK was a classic effort to take control of the narrative. It’s classic because those who control the past (the official “history”) create and control the present, and those who own the present (“news media”) create and control the future.

  By their fruits you shall know them. Look at the fruits of Jesus’s “good news” – which was both good (e.g., God is a loving Abba, not a punitive rage-aholic) and new (a far cry from the business-as-usual of famine, disease, and war – he fed them, he healed them and he responded to the “enemy” with love and forgiveness.) Now compare that with the fruits of fake news e.g., a divided nation which manages to savage itself even as it conducts foreign wars. Why would we continue to believe in a “news machine” that told us lies about weapons of mass destruction, quickly followed by the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, causing the deaths of millions of real, innocent human beings and creating a tsunami of refugees? Fake news tells us that we are always the heroes and good guys,  even as we steal, lie, invade, and murder people at the other side of the globe.

  These are the same folks who told us that the Patriot Act  was patriotic; and that the National Defense Authorization Act  (NDAA) was actually defending us. In reality, these pieces of legislation are dissolving our constitution and causing the outside world to both fear and despise us. Fake news and bought airtime have sold us Citizens United  to ensure that we get the best “representatives” corporate money can buy and convinced us to reject state propositions that would have halted the race to the top of GMO foods. Perhaps it’s time to do a “news fast” — to put your TV and radio to bed and to save a tree by cancelling your subscription to your morning newspaper.

  If you set out on a hike without a map, you may  get lost; if you take an inaccurate map, you’ll probably  get lost; but if you take an intentionally-drawn wrong map, you will certainly  get lost. If you’re a cook and decide to be creative by not following a recipe, the results may taste foul; if you follow a bad recipe, it will probably  taste foul; but if you follow a bad and poisonous recipe, not only will it definitely  taste foul, it will also kill you.

  Whether you’re hiking or cooking, examining your cosmology or pursuing a PhD in astrophysics, it is vital that you exercise critical thinking and not simply swallow what you are fed. We have to be very careful who the meme-makers and story-tellers are. St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, emphasized that skill in spiritual direction was dependent on “de discretione spirituum” (the discernment among spirits).

  Even a cursory review of history and a week’s exposure, currently, to the mass media, should quickly convince the critical thinker that most memes and many stories have been either composed or corrupted by, at best, the bean counters and bureaucrats who steer the ship of state on a daily basis or, at worst, by dictators and oligarchs who chart the long-term trajectory.

  Caveat emptor!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — February 20, 2018: Note: This is the second of three essays. Number one was entitled: “The infallibility of the Mass Media”. Number two — this one — is entitled: “The infallibility of Science”; and Number three will be entitled: The infallibility of the Bible.”

• The Infallibility of Science

  The third shock to my naïve credulity – after I had survived the shattering of my innocent belief in both papal infallibility and the infallibility of the mass media – came as I walked the hallowed halls of science, majoring in Mathematical Physics and Pure Mathematics (the queen of all the sciences) at The National University of Ireland at its University College Cork campus. Even in my great love of science and admiration for the scientific method, I quickly learned that science, too, is a story investigated and told by very fallible humans. So, I embrace all of its contributions even as I reserve the right to sometimes say, “Naw, I don’t think so.”

• Science as Revelation

  Science has become the new religion; its discoveries the most trusted form of revelation. The scientific method has, indeed, given us many great benefits – with some serious side effects. But, like all revelation, science is far from infallible and needs to be constantly evaluated using Aquinas’s criterion (truth is found only in the judgment) and, I humbly suggest, using my own definition of “truth” – something is true if it transforms me and aligns me with God/Love.

  The scientific method itself, though it does, indeed, deliver significant practical benefits, is based on probabilities,  typically at “p-values” at less than 5% - which means there’s only a 5% chance that the results happened randomly. Thus, “probable” is conflated with “proven.” So, in fact, experimental science can never prove anything but merely establish probabilities based on an acceptance of its postulates and methodology. And it’s a very recent and young story. Other stories have been just as satisfying to the populace and lasted much longer. Since it’s another kind of storytelling, then, like all stories and storytelling cultures, it is only consistent within its own parameters and methodology. Once you accept the postulates and parameters and methodology of any storytelling culture, then its “findings/truths” are consistent.

• Science – When Theories Become Laws

  The brilliant biologist Rupert Sheldrake has written a book called Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery, in which he points out how ten major “tenets” of science are, in fact, just theories that have been iterated so often that they have morphed into “laws.” He has been censured by some in the scientific community and accused of blasphemy. His 2013 TED talk, The Science Delusion, was taken down until popular protest got it reinstated. Here is a quick synopsis of these theories-become-laws:

  (1) Nature is simply a machine and all its parts are machine parts – the cosmos itself, plants, humans…So brains are merely programmed computers.

  (2) Nature had no consciousness until it “emerged” in some animal/human brain.

  (3) The laws of nature were fixed at the moment of the Big Bang and can never change.

  (4) The total amount of both matter and energy in the cosmos has been unchanged since the Big Bang.

  (5) Nature is purposeless – there is no teleology to it. Evolution is blindly going nowhere.

  (6) Biological inheritance is purely material via DNA.

  (7) Memories are stored materially in the brain.

  (8) Mind is nothing but the activity of the brain.

  (9) Psychic phenomena are an illusion – a mind confined inside the head can’t possibly have effects at a distance.

  (10) Mechanistic medicine (i.e. surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy) is the only kind that works.

  Taken together, Sheldrake’s criticisms assemble powerful evidence for the way in which our notions of reality are often constructed upon hypotheses  rather than upon proven facts. And the scientific community’s response to Sheldrake, and many other brave scientific souls before him, shows us that power corrupts, and that questioning authority is frequently seen as anti-social, unscientific or irreligious. No prophet is accepted in his own household.

• Fundamentalism in Science

  For all its braggadocio, militant atheism has a much more difficult time trying to prove that God does not exist  than timorous, doubt-filled theists/believers have in proving She does exist.  This is true, firstly, since absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; and, secondly, even a single black swan, however long it takes us to discover it, immediately negates the proclamation that “all swans are white.” Moreover, when you get down to the individual arguments, the application of Occam’s Razor heavily favors the existence of some kind of mastermind behind project cosmos. Parsimony and elegance favor God’s existence.

  Of course, it is very healthy to exercise discernment in dealing with the issue. I find that the spectrum of reactions to any proposition can be divided into five basic stances. First, come the Innocent  who have no boundaries to their credulity. They are totally open and simply swallow any thesis without objection. In group two are the Naïve.  These, while not being quite as gullible as the Innocent, have very permeable boundaries and, after a few tentative objections or questions, succumb completely to the arguments of the proponent. In group number three are the Critical Thinkers  who examine all of the evidence with an open but very discerning mind, and are prepared to abandon even fervently held prior positions in the light of powerful new evidence. This, I believe, is the optimal stance when dealing with any topic including religion, revelation and science.

  In group number four are the Skeptics,  who are partially closed, and who only open up to “extraordinary” evidence. I find myself, here, in opposition to Carl Sagan’s statement that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I have great regard for Sagan, but this is one of those statements which sound very profound but which, I believe, are actually pretty dumb. Why would any  claim need to be subjected to test criteria or protocols which we would also not apply to the “hard sciences”? For example, the standards which mainstream science demands of parapsychological research are way in excess of what it demands of its own research. And even when top class research in parapsychology uses these “ultra-protocols”, the skeptics (and especially the debunkers) are still not convinced.

  Finally, comes the Debunker  group. These are people who are totally closed and whose modus operandi is to arrogantly act as if they already have the full truth, and any claim that might make a dent in that infallible edifice must ipso facto be false. Without ever examining the evidence, they “know” that the new claim cannot be true. All that remains to be done is to find the best way to discredit the research or, failing that, the good ol’ “argumentum ad hominem” is frequently summoned to the fray. This group cleaves to its positions with a religious fervor that would put even the most fanatical God-fearers to shame.

  I’ve never heard anybody describe himself as “a close-minded scientist.” Each of us thinks we are in the correct place, all others are (too far) to the right or left of us in their opinions. Self-perception is a very fallible science. Latin warns us: “nemo iudex in causa sua” (nobody can be the judge in their own case.) As an example of that, 90% of Americans consider themselves “above average drivers”!

  In the search for truth, in any discipline, we must allow the data to construct the theory, not the pre-conceived theory to decide which data are admissible. Again, I want to emphasize, this must be true in all forms of revelation – science, religion, “news”, or scriptures.

• Major Faux Pas by Prominent Scientists

  In 1807, Thomas Jefferson who was then President of the American Philosophical Society (the equivalent of today’s American Association for the Advancement of Science) reacted to a report of a discovery of a meteorite by two Connecticut astronomers with the statement, “I could more easily believe that two Yankee professors would lie than stones fall from heaven.”

  In the nineteenth century, much of what is now twentieth-century science was laughed at. The renowned physicist and former President of the British Royal Society, Lord Kelvin, stated in 1900, “X-rays are a hoax!” Kelvin had a reputation for hubris and a sense of his own infallibility. Here are some more of his decrees: in 1895, he opined, to the Australian Institute of Physics, “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” And in an address to an assembly of physicists at the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900 he stated, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”

  “The theory of germs is a ridiculous fiction,” said Pierre Pochet, professor of physiology in Toulouse, France, when he learned of the germ theory of disease developed by Louis Pasteur, who was a crystallographer, not a doctor. Others even refused to look at his data.

  “The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will be forever shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon,” said Sir John Eric Erichsen in 1837; he was later to become Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria.

  Perhaps the most famous “expert statement” of all came from Charles H. Cuell, Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents, who urged President William McKinley to abolish the Patent Office in 1899 with the assertion, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”

  Even Albert Einstein, the face of science for the 20th century, spent the latter half of his life trying to disprove the findings of Quantum Mechanics.

  Even when these grievous errors have been acknowledged, a smug scientific attitude will then say that, though individual scientific claims have been subsequently discredited, the scientific method per se, is infallible, since it always, eventually, corrects its own errors. This is a very handy “blank check” that absolves it from all previous sins and promises that even present hidden sins, once they are discovered, will be remedied. Nice piece of self-exculpation! So, we are expected to still trust science since its present “truths” will be abandoned once contradictory truths have been established. Thus, not only does it forgive itself for past sins, it prophylactically forgives itself for its current crop of errors because someday they, too, will simply be past  mistakes. How can you lose with that kind of deft footwork?

  Of course, there are two kinds of ignorance: first, stuff we don’t know but we know that we don’t know it (e.g., how to define “consciousness”); and, second, stuff we don’t know, and we don’t know that we don’t know it (e.g., an undiagnosed and therefore untreated cancerous tumor).

  Like all of the storytelling cultures that preceded it, science is very fond of patting itself on the back. But it, too, will prove to be a temporary story, and will give way to a much greater future story. I believe that that future story will be some form of deeper mysticism whose adherents I’ve called, “mysticists” – people for whom the mind, heart, and soul are a trinity of antennae, receiving, deciphering, and acting upon unconditional love, pure awareness, and unity consciousness.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — March 13, 2018: Note: This is the third of three essays. Number one was entitled: “The Infallibility of the Mass Media”; number two was entitled: “The Infallibility of Science”; and this final one is entitled: “The Infallibility of the Bible”.

• The infallibility of the Bible

  And the fourth shock to my hopes for some bastion of infallibility came as I studied the Bible. It, too, for all its wisdom and insights, has been filtered, edited, redacted and massaged by hundreds of generations of priests, translators and, yes, even emperors.

  I have learned lots from newspapers, from theology, from science and from the Bible, but I am duty bound to separate truth from tactic, and fact from fiction; to recognize metaphor and allegory and distinguish those from historical data.

• A. Levels of Revelation

  Christians, who consider the Bible to be the revealed word of God, actually span a very wide spectrum. At one end, are those who claim that it is inspired  by God whose Holy Spirit influenced the words, message and collation of the Bible. Then comes the position that it is also infallible  when it comes to matters of faith and practice but not necessarily in scientific or historical matters. Position number three is occupied by those who claim that its inerrancy  extends to all matters – no exception. Then comes biblical literalism  whose adherents further claim that not only is it inerrant on all topics but that its meaning is clear to the average reader.

  It gets even more confusing. Most evangelical Bible scholars claim that only the original texts in the original languages  were inspired; while other groups – like the followers of the King-James-only Movement – are convinced that only the KJV is inerrant. In 1546, the Council of Trent decreed St. Jerome’s translation into Latin of the original Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek language versions (called The Vulgate) – done around 380 CE – to be the only authentic and official Bible of the Latin Church.

  As you can see it is far from clear what the ideas of “revelation” and “divine inspiration” of the Bible actually mean. There is lots of wiggle room. Many scholars point out that the biblical texts come from a creative dialog between ancient oral traditions and different faith communities over an extended period of time. So, there were political, cultural, theological, economic and even hygienic issues involved.

• Major Redactions

  Modern scholarship employs three main techniques in understanding the time-of-composition of various parts of the Bible. Historical Analysis  seeks to establish the “intent” of each writer, so as to be able to translate accurately. Materialist Analysis  looks at the social, economic and political environments at the time of composition. And Structural Analysis,  especially using the 20th century discipline of Semiotics, tries to identify internal consistencies and inconsistencies within the texts. Semiotics is the science of understanding the grammar, not just of individual sentences (e.g., subject, predicate, object…), but of an entire text. Texts have a natural flow and when edits or redactions are done they leave footprints in the text.

  Each organization, from tennis clubs to nations, needs a variety of documents to establish itself. In the case of a culture, it needs “stories” of the ancestors to bind them as “family”; epics to celebrate (and exaggerate) their past heroes and heroines; laws to establish the ground rules, poetry/prayers to focus their spirituality; oracles/prophets to align them with God’s precepts; teachings to steer them on the journey; and “wisdom” writings to reflect on the great existential issues.

  The Bible employs all of these kinds of document and, using the three kinds of analysis just mentioned, scholars can identify when and where various parts of the Bible come from. In summary, they’ve discovered four great origins/redactions which are known as J, E, P and D – for reasons which will shortly become obvious.

  J (or Y in Hebrew) gets its name from how God is called in this group of writings i.e., Yahweh. It represents the oldest writings beginning around 950 BCE. It is the sacred history of the southern kingdom of Judah and centered on a promised land, a chosen king and a temple-of-the-divine; and it treats of the beginnings (Adam and Eve), the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and the core story of Exodus and Moses. The author of J is a great storyteller and God is presented as very “human” – he is a gardener, potter, surgeon and tailor. He bargains with Abraham, is quite forgiving and always ready to bless.

  E gets its name from how God is called in this group of writings i.e., Elohim. It begins to produce its writings around 750 BCE. The E tradition speaks of a very different kind of God than is presented in J. He is accessible mainly through dreams or in spectacular manifestations or theophanies. No images allowed! E is very interested in moral questions and quite focused on sin. Real worship is about obeying God, keeping the covenant and rejecting false gods.

  P gets its name from the “Priestly” documents of the Bible which were written during the Babylonian captivity – 587 to 538 BCE – and later; especially under the influence of Ezekiel. P has a very dry style; it loves figures and lists. The vocabulary is very technical, having to do with liturgy/cult/worship. Genealogies appear often because it is written during the Babylonian captivity and it is vital that the exiles retain a sense of history and belonging. The huge emphasis on worship covers pilgrimages, festivals and the importance of priests. The priests replace the role of the king in J and of the prophets in E. Because of its unique style it is the easiest of the four traditions to identify when reading the Torah.

  D gets its name from the book of Deuteronomy. It is a collection of laws that was begun in the northern kingdom but, after the Assyrian conquest, in 721 BCE, was taken south and hidden in the Temple. During renovations there in 612 BCE it was rediscovered, completed and offered as a rededication of the people to God. It became the Book of Deuteronomy and also influenced other books of the Bible. The style is very emotional and put into the mouth of Moses – though it was composed over 600 years after the time of Moses.

  JE Around 700 BCE, scholars in Jerusalem under the direction of king Hezekiah, began to amalgamate J and E – the sacred histories of the southern kingdom of Judah and the (fallen) northern kingdom of Israel. It was an effort to heal the results of the civil war of 933 BCE. It is known to scholars as JE.

  JEPD Over a period of some 500 years, the religious leaders had gone over their history several times in order to find meaning in their experiences as a culture. Now – around 520 BCE, under Ezra the priest-scribe – they began to bring the four main attempts together into a single work. It was completed around 400 BCE and is known as “the Pentateuch” in Greek or “Torah” in Hebrew. It consists of the five first books of the modern Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The books of Genesis, Exodus and Numbers contain input from J, E and P; Leviticus is a pure P document and Deuteronomy is a pure D document.

  A simple example will illustrate this weaving of sources. The story of the escape from slavery in Egypt – contained in chapters 13 and 14 of the book of Exodus – has J, E and P interwoven into a single narrative, but it oscillates between them throughout the two chapters drawing upon J eleven times, E eight times and P eight times.

  The Bible is a work of love and dedication that spanned many generations of priests, prophets and scribes. Each redaction was an attempt to make sense of their relationship with their God and express it in a way that the people of each era could comprehend.

• C. A Synopsis of the Development of Torah

  Once David had established himself as king of the twelve tribes and his son Solomon had built the first temple, the scribes, using the orthography borrowed from the Phoenicians, began to record the sacred history of Judea. The king (“son of God” according to the installation rite), the temple, its priests and ritual became the focus of this record. They went on to invent “creation stories”, “how stories” and “why stories” (like all cultures). This began around 950 BCE and is the J (Yahwist) stream.

  Very shortly however, on the death of Solomon in 933 BCE, the kingdom split into Israel (with ten tribes) in the north of the country and Judah (with two tribes) in the south. However, none of the kings of the north were descended from David and so were not “sons of God” and there was constant juggling for the throne. In fact, between 933 and 721 BCE, of the 19 kings of Israel, eight were assassinated. Because they did not want their people going to Jerusalem to worship, instead of unity built around the king, temple or priesthood, it was the prophets e.g., Elijah, Amos, Hosea who held the spiritual authority. Beginning around 750 BCE they began to record the sacred history of the north (Israel) which scholars call E. They also began to collect the laws, but in 721 BCE the northern kingdom was overrun by the Assyrians and most of the people deported. A few of the leaders escaped to Judah bringing with them both E and the collection of laws.

  In an effort to heal the 212-year rift, both sets of scholars got together to stitch J and E into a single work (which modern Bible scholars call JE). Compromises were made and the editing was far from seamless, with two or more versions of some events included. The collection of laws was deposited in the temple library and forgotten until 612 BCE when major temple renovations re-discovered it. The king at this time, Josiah, was a very pious man and had the scholars complete this book-of-laws and, in a grand ceremony, had it read to the assembled multitudes who renewed their covenant with God. This document is what we now know as Deuteronomy (D). To give it extra traction, it was written as a series of injunctions from Moses; but, in fact, it was compiled 600 years after the time of Moses.

  Soon after (597 BCE), however, Judah was overthrown by the Babylonians and the people deported. The priests in exile, under the leadership of Ezekiel, created a new stream of writing to remind the people of their origins and commitment to God. This work was done around 550 BCE and led to the P (priestly) document.

  When they returned from exile in 538 BCE and rebuilt the temple, the scribes united all four sources, now known as JEDP. The original name for it is Torah  in Hebrew and Pentateuch  in Greek. It consists of the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

  Around 400 BCE, in a major redaction, under the guidance of Ezra, the writings of the prophets (Nevi’im) and the wisdom literature (Ketuvim) were added to the canon; hence the total work is known as TaNaKh or The Hebrew Bible.

  One final comment. Much later, when the final decision was to be made about which books to include or exclude, the Jewish scholars used two criteria. To qualify for admission, a book had to have been written (i) in Hebrew and (ii) before 400 BCE. Both criteria were misapplied. Some books, whose originals were written in Hebrew but were lost and which “now” existed only in translation, were excluded, only for the originals to surface when it was “too late.” And some books which purported (according to internal claims) to have been written before 400 BCE were discovered, through modern scholarship, to actually have been written much later. You win some, you lose some.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — January 23, 2018: It happened during recess, on the playground of Rathpeacon National School sometime in 1953. I was a first grader in a tiny rural academy with a total student population of about 80 boys and girls, among whom was my younger brother, Séamus. He had managed to incur my wrath and I had spoken some not very brotherly words, when all of a sudden, a low, threatening growl began to emanate from the heavens. I looked up, alarmed, in time to see a perfectly straight, thin, white line spreading across the sky.

I was watching my first jet plane, except that neither I nor any of the other children on the playground had ever heard  of jet planes, let alone seen  one. So, I immediately figured out what it was. It was nothing less than a very upset God taking a razor blade and slitting open the blue of the vault. I waited in fear and trembling for the divine digits to grab hold of both sides of this cut and pull the sky apart. I knew that he would then stick his head through and demand of me an accounting of my unchristian behavior towards Séamus. Fortunately, he changed his mind and let me off merely with the realization  of what he could really do if I repeated the offence.

And today, I had a similar experience, though without Séamus or the harsh words. I was sitting on the glider on the edge of the cliff outside my home in Healdsburg, looking westwards over Pena Creek. A glorious sunset was leeching red and pink and orange tinges into the turquoise colored sky. And just then a jet plane bisected the heavens. It was far enough to the west that it made an utterly soundless safari and its trail was blood red as it caught the hues of the setting sun.

I immediately understood what God was doing. He was delivering the Earth by caesarian section. His scalpel had slit open the delicate membrane that housed the embryonic Earth and he was about to re-birth it. For the Earth, like its human denizens, needs to be re-birthed many times. Jesus said as much – twice. In John’s gospel while educating the Pharisee truth-seeker, Nicodemus, he said enigmatically, “Unless a man is born again, he will never enter the kingdom of God.” This, of course, has been constantly misunderstood as a non-negotiable decree that baptism is the only path to salvation: confess your faith in the lordship of Jesus and be baptized or perish – eternally. This is a not uncommon, fear-filled response to a mystical proclamation. But the fact is that Christ’s statement has nothing to do with either H2O or a sectarian induction into some Christian denomination, but is rather the truth that entry into the kingdom means a shift into Christ consciousness.

Luke’s gospel gives us another angle on the re-birth metaphor. He tells how Jesus enjoins on us the following, “you must be compassionate as your heavenly father is compassionate.” Now, Jesus would have been speaking in Aramaic and the Aramaic word, Abwon,  doesn’t just mean “father”, it can mean, “birthing principle of the cosmos” or “that which is the origin of all that is.” Also, the Aramaic word for compassion, rahamim,  is the plural of the word for a womb. So here might be a better rendition of his statement, “you must be womblike just as the birthing principle of the universe is a womb.” Thus, entry into the kingdom, is about sequentially birthing greater and greater versions of the self, until penultimately we birth Christ consciousness and then, ultimately, we birth God.

Earth has bent to this task with all due diligence during its 4.6 billion years. Only an impoverished model of evolution would see this trajectory as a sequence of random mutations which somehow manage to throw up increasingly sophisticated species. The journey is not just about increasingly sophisticated physical attributes,  but of quantum shifts from denser to more subtle dimensions of reality. The physical rock, the third one from the sun, which Gaia ensouled, was merely first base.

Gaia jumped dimensions, that is it re-birthed itself, with the advent of biological  entities – living beings like bacteria and reptiles. The next re-birth saw the emergence of emotional life  with the arrival of the mammals and their limbic systems. Then Gaia re-birthed herself via intellectual life,  throwing up homo sapiens (thinking man) and homo sapiens sapiens (self-reflective man.) Then, a mere 2,500 years ago, she went into labor again, pushing out the first prototypes of what I would call, homo spiritualis (spirit man.) Gautama Siddharta and Jesus of Nazareth are among the most famous of these. But, having produced the prototypes, Gaia is straining with the contractions of birthing an entire species  which will be God-conscious; aware of its own divinity and the divinity of all manifestation.

Some years ago, I had a vision of a lattice of lightworkers surrounding the Earth, one of them at the intersection of each line of latitude and longitude and the two poles; a total of 64,442 of them. They are the midwives assisting at this most important birth, the greatly reinforced Lamed Vavnik of Hebrew mysticism.

While it is true that ontology recapitulates phylogeny, it is not yet understood that phylogeny itself recapitulates cosmology. The development of lifeforms on Gaia follows closely on the dimension-jumping blueprint of the cosmic choreography which is evolutionary panentheism.

We stand today on the playground of a Grade School fearing a razorblade-wielding divinity, when we should, instead, be seated on a glider watching the mystical sunset and the thin blood line of the first cut, the saving surgery that will liberate the planet from the confinement of a womb that served us well but which is now far too small for us.

Can you cry out in celebration of your own re-birth?  Are you ready to suck in the first gulp of Spirit? Would you be free?

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — November 28, 2017:

• Introduction

  This is the first of four essays under the above title. This first one will ask, “Who’s counting the sacraments?” In essay #2, I want to talk about “The Sacraments of Birth and Before.” The third one will deal with “The Sacraments of the Breathing Body.” And the fourth one will examine “The Sacraments of Death and Thereafter.”

• Who’s Counting the Sacraments?

  Today I am 71 years and three weeks old; which means that I have lived for 25,922 days; and each one of them seems like it’s a different incarnation. And, in a sense, it is. In every 24-hour period, every single one of us has a time, in between dreaming and waking, when we are in a deep, dreamless sleep; there is no notion of the self, there are no memories and the senses aren’t operating. I don’t think, I don’t feel, I don’t know who I am, or where I am, or even if  I am. And, then, the dreams pick back up, and we go online; and, then, we wake up in the morning and our senses go online, and our memories come back to us, and our sense of separate self is there and we continue the journey.

  But each day, in some sense, marks a separation point; each day represents an incarnation; each day represents some kind of a sacrament where you re-initiate the journey of your evolution into Christ Consciousness or Buddha Nature.

  So, in fact, each day is a milestone, a way station on the road from God’s womb – where we got conceived – to God’s heart – where we wind up. They are sacraments. Sacraments are the sacred understandings and celebrations of the milestones and the way stations on the road. How do you count the sacraments? It depends who you are. If you are a materialistic scientist, there are no sacraments, because there is no such thing even as consciousness. Free will is an illusion. And, basically, we are just taxis for neurons that fire indiscriminately and randomly; there is no purpose to life; and there certainly isn’t any sacredness  to life. So, there are no sacraments whatsoever, if you are a materialistic scientist.

  If you are a strict Protestant, you have been taught that there are two sacraments in life, both instituted by Jesus, and they are Baptism and Communion. Now, that is not to say  that there aren’t any other sacred moments in the Protestant thinking. There are, but as Protestants define “sacrament” there are only two.

  Catholicism believes that there are seven.  They are Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Eucharist, Matrimony, Ordination and Extreme Unction (or the Anointing of the Sick.) And Shakespeare had the same notion, that life proceeds in seven stages. There’s the infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, the judge, the retiree and, finally, the person who is preparing to die.

  The great developmental psychologist, Erik Erikson, claimed that there are eight  great stages to the human trajectory. So, in his thinking that would be like eight sacraments.

  But, perhaps, every single day  is a new incarnation and, therefore, a new sacrament. And, so, today, I’ve celebrated 25,922 sacraments in this journey. But, when I think about it even more deeply, every breath  is a new beginning. Every time you take a breath in and out, you are literally exchanging millions of molecules of matter with every living thing around you. Typically, when we’re busy, we breathe about 18 times a minute. When we are meditating we can get it right down to about three, or even two, times a minute. So, if you are a fairly easy-going person, let’s say you breathe 10 times a minute. That’s 600 times an hour, 24 hours a day. So, by now, I have breathed 373,276,800 times. Is each one of these a sacrament, a new beginning?

  So, it just depends on who’s counting. But, I want to compromise, today, somewhere between 373,276,800 and zero, I’m going to pick the number 27. I have been thinking a lot about this. I believe there are 27 great milestones in the journey from God’s womb, where we start, to God’s heart, where we finish up.

  There are four great hinge sacraments  in these 27. The first hinge is when we emanate from Source,  when God self-fractures. The last great hinge is when we re-unite,  when we get re-absorbed into the Unconditional ALL. They are the two great hinges and they have to do with Spirit. Spirit is the force that allows us to come into being, as souls, and to merge with God finally. And then, at the other end of the scale, you have the hinge of breath.  The first breath you take, when you’re born, signifies incarnational life; and the last breath you take, as you die is, the end of the incarnational phase.

  But, it’s interesting that all four of these hinges have to do with Spirit because, in many languages, the notion of breath and spirit and life are a single word. In Hebrew, the word is ruach,  which means the breath of God, it means the spirit of God, it means to be alive. In Greek, we use the word pneuma.  In Kiswahili, we have the word pepo.  And, in English, we use the word inspiration;  to inspire, means to take Spirit in, or to be alive, or to be creative or to breathe in; and to expire means to die, or to let go of Spirit. So, the Breath or Spirit is the key to these four great hinges of the entire journey. Over the next three essays, I will follow this trajectory from Source to incarnation and back.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — December 12, 2017 :

• Introduction

  This is the second of four essays under the above title. The first one asked, “Who’s counting the sacraments?” In this second essay, I want to talk about “The Sacraments of Birth and Before.” The third one will deal with “The Sacraments of the Breathing Body.” And the fourth one will examine “The Sacraments of Death and Thereafter.”

• Sacrament number one

  I claim that there are seven sacraments in this section. The first one is when a soul emanates from Source. God is, God knows Herself to be, and God totally loves whom She finds Herself to be. In Hinduism we call this Sat, Chit, Ananda – being, knowing self, and bliss. In a sense – and, of course, this is cataphatic not apophatic language – that is the essence of the Divine: being, knowing self, and loving self. But it is very difficult for the “all that is” to have experiences, because there is nothing except the Self. So, at, some stage God self-fractures; He emanates, He plays a game of hide and go seek with Himself to try to pretend there are parts that aren’t Him, to see if those parts can remember who they really, really are.

  So, visualize a sunrise. When the sun comes up in the morning, it sends shoots of light out into the morning sky, but these rays cannot actually be separated from the sun. Therefore, in some senses, sunbeams are an illusion. There is only the sun and its emanations, but these emanations appear to be distinct from each other and from the sun. That’s what souls are; and that’s the first sacrament – the emanations from God. Many different spiritual traditions hold this notion of self-fracturing, holographic, fractals of God.

• Sacrament number two

  The second sacrament is when these souls organize themselves into what you could call “soul pods,” or soul families. Groups of souls get together and they make a commitment to help each other remember who they really are, because that is the whole object of the exercise. We will continue to put more and more limits on ourselves as souls, to plumb the depths of separation from Source, to see if, even in the darkest places, we can remember that we are God, and that there is only God. So, we make these contracts with groups of souls: that we will grow together; that we will challenge each other; that we will support each other in this journey.

• Sacrament number three

  At some stage, we volunteer for incarnation in various dimensions. That is the third sacrament. All souls don’t just come to planet Earth. There are many dimensions for which souls volunteer. And each dimension has a different form of limitation, of separation from Source, in order to give the souls the opportunity of remembering anyway; of overcoming our limitations, in order to dig more deeply, into the love that is at the Source of each one of us.

• Sacrament number four

  The fourth sacrament is when we make what I’ve called “pre-conception contracts” with each other. As these souls get ready to incarnate, they are not going to come in at exactly the same time, because some of these souls will volunteer to be our parents, or our grandparents in a lifetime. Some of these souls will volunteer to be our children in a lifetime; some will volunteer to be our siblings in a lifetime; some will volunteer to be our friends. And another group, a very important group, will volunteer to be our “enemies”, because we learn as much from our enemies, as we do from our friends. There are two kinds of people we tend to experience in our lives. There are fertilizers in our lives, people who love us unconditionally and they are very good for our self-image and our confidence. But, if there were only the fertilizers in our lives, we would all become narcissists. So, we arrange to have enemy figures in our lives. And, this is true not just as individuals, it is true as cultures and it’s true as nations, that there are enemy figures; and their job is to be “weeders” in our lives; to point out to us our inadequacies, even if we don’t want to see it.

  And so, we make these “pre-conception contracts” as a soul pod to come in and to play a particular drama. And we set up the dramas in such a way that we apportion roles that give each person the ideal opportunity to develop whatever virtue they want to work on in an incarnation. Maybe this time we focus on courage, maybe next time on compassion, another time on forgiveness, another time on patience, another time on a sense of humor. And so, we come in and we create this drama; but the problem is we forget when we  come in, why we  came in.

  We are like a Shakespearean troupe, and every year we put on a different drama. This one was “As You Like It,’ and next year it will be “Hamlet,” and the year after that it would be “Macbeth.” It’s the same people, but we’re playing different roles; we may change genders, races even, but that’s not important. The object of the exercise is to develop our acting skills. By acting skills, I mean, learning how to love more and more unconditionally. That’s the entire objective of every incarnation. We’ve chosen – very carefully – the people whom we encounter, whether they’re family, friends or enemies. We are here by pre-conception contract in order to provide the ideal circumstance in which every single one of us can do the kind of growing that we want to do. That’s the pre-conception contract. That’s sacrament number four.

• Sacrament number five

  Sacrament number five I call, “the launching pad.” Several years ago, I had a really powerful experience where a friend of mine, who is also a clinical psychologist, hypnotically regressed me, and I found myself in a life between lifetimes –  what Hinduism or Buddhism would call the “bardo state.” At the end of that period I found myself on a “launching pad”, where the souls were making final preparations for incarnation in various different dimensions. And we were all together in an “aula maxima,” some great hall. A great angelic being was orchestrating our departure. The experience was such that any thought that any member had was immediately communicated, through this angelic being, to everybody else. So, each one of us was privy to the thoughts, and hopes, and expectations of everybody else. We were encouraging each other. There was, as you can imagine, trepidation, anxiety, hope, and joy about this new adventure, because we had forgotten what it was like the last time we were down here.

• Sacrament number six

  Sacrament number six is the docking of the soul with the developing fetus or embryo. At some stage, after a woman – one of the pre-conception contract group who agreed to be the mother in this instance – conceives from the soul who agreed to be the father. The soul is going to dock with this developing embryo/fetus.

  In fact, I believe that the baby is baptized in the amniotic fluid of the mother’s womb. That is the real Baptism because it is the commitment to incarnation and to mission. That is what the baby is saying in the docking. Now, not all pregnancies are successful in the sense that sometimes there’s a miscarriage. And that may be part of the contract; or sometimes, I believe, it’s that the soul gets cold feet. And having been used, in the bardo state, to space-lessness and time-lessness and Christ Consciousness, to find itself now confined to this tiny, little embryonic self, can be very frightening. Sometimes it gets really cold feet and says, I’m outta here. It’s like Christ at Gethsemane, “Let this chalice pass from me.” Except, Christ went on and said, No I’m going to see it through. Sometimes souls that leave say, Let this chalice pass from me. I’m serious. I don’t want to do it right now. And so, they go back and the fetus is miscarried.

• Sacrament number seven

  Sacrament number seven is the actual birth and the first breath. And there you’ve got Spirit again – ruach, pepo, pneuma, inspiration –  there’s the life of Spirit, the first breath the child takes. I would call this, in Catholic terminology, the sacrament of Confirmation. Because while the Baptism took place in utero,  when the baby signed up for a mission, now it is confirming its decision. I’m going to stay with this process, I’m going to become a land animal, I’m going to see it through to the next phase of my mission.

  So, that for me is the sacrament of Confirmation – the actual first breath; it literally is the personal Pentecost. At the original Pentecost according to John’s gospel, Jesus breathed upon the apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” So, the breath was the reception of the Holy Spirit; the breath was the first Pentecost. And, thus, every one of us had our individual, personal Pentecost, when we took our very first breath on Planet Earth.

  These seven, then, would be the first group of sacraments I’ve called, “The Sacraments of Birth and Before.”

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — December 26, 2017 :

• Introduction

  Patheos.com — December 26, 2017:  This is the third of four essays under the above title. The first one asked, “Who’s counting the sacraments?” In the second essay, I talked about “The Sacraments of Birth and Before.” This third one will deal with “The Sacraments of the Breathing Body.” And the fourth one will examine “The Sacraments of Death and Thereafter.”

• The Sacraments of the Breathing Body

  This second group of sacraments is what I am calling, “The Sacraments of the Breathing Body.” Now that you’ve taken your first breath and fully inhabited your “spacesuit” – this vehicle that you need for mission – what sacraments will mark your incarnational journey? In order to provide continuity among the four essays on this topic, I will number these beginning at number eight.

• Sacrament number eight

  This sacrament, I believe, is the development of an ego. A sense of personal self is beginning to emerge and it takes about eight months for that to happen, because, initially, the little child cannot differentiate between self and mother. There is just one organism – it’s the mother-child complex – and the child is totally convinced that it is in charge of this organism. Around the age of eight months, however, a horrible realization begins to dawn: that we are actually separate beings, and all the power resides in the other side. That’s really, really frightening. Still, the emergence of an ego is a huge step forward. It’s a part of the journey where we agreed that we will separate ourselves more and more fully from God in order to experience limitation and still try to figure out, “Can I love anyway? Can I remember anyway? Can I know that I’m God stuff anyway?”

  Thus, the ego is the next step in that separation process. And every one of us as little children, then have to develop all kinds of defense mechanisms to compensate for this horrible realization, that there are two, not one. There’s a mother and a child and she’s in the driving seat. Moreover, she might abandon me – “Am I good enough? Will I be loved enough?”

• Sacrament number nine

  Then a little bit later on, the baby joins the hominid group. It stands upright around 10 months or a year of age, and begins to wander around. This is self-empowerment, but it’s also the next phase of separation. Now, for the first time ever, the child can choose  to go away from the mother. It’s exploring, but it’s leaving the mother. It’s also part of the distancing from Source. Can I separate from mother and still remember that she exists? Initially, it’s easy because every time the child looks around to make sure that mother can be seen, she’s visible. But if she can’t be seen, he’s going to freak out and start running to find her.

• Sacrament number ten

  Around 16-18 months, depending on the child, we then become homo sapiens. We develop language skills. And even if the first words we speak are “Dada” or “Mama”, very quickly every one of us is going to learn “me” and “mine”.  And those two words become really important in the child’s vocabulary. That’s a further part of the separation. The child is now very definitely separating even from Mammy and Daddy. That’s a sacrament and it’s part of the journey away from God. It’s a test to see if I can still remember who I am? And can I remember that there is only God?

• Sacrament number eleven

  At that stage as well, comes the sacrament which I will call, “egocentricity.” There is the need for the child to self-empower or to be self-concerned. You cannot develop compassion until you first operate from a sense of separate self. So, egocentricity becomes a very important sacrament in that process. It’s the ego on steroids. My needs and desires are paramount.

• Sacrament number twelve

  Around the age of seven comes the next sacrament and it’s achieving the use of reason. Now the child is homo sapiens sapiens.  And, for the first time, a child can become moral. A four-year-old child is neither moral, nor immoral, but simply amoral. He still does not have the neuronal wiring in place to be able to differentiate and have the ability to take another person’s perspective.

  Here’s a very simple illustration of that. I take a four-year-old child who knows her colors and I show her a book whose front cover is white and whose back cover is green. I show her the front cover and ask, “What color is that?” She will correctly say, “white.” If I show her the back cover and ask, “what color is that?” she will correctly respond, “green.” But if, while showing her the front cover, I ask her, “what color am I looking at?” she will, incorrectly, say, “white”, because she is looking at white and she can’t mentally put herself in my shoes. She can only see things from her own perspective. Even though she knows both colors, she cannot say, “you are looking at green, while I am looking at white.” Until we can adopt another person’s perspective, we cannot become moral creatures. And only then can we really learn compassion.

• Sacrament number thirteen

  Very shortly after that we get inducted into ethnocentricity, which is the next sacrament. We are told that our group is especially chosen by God, whether it’s our nation, or our religion, or our tribe; whatever it is, we are always special. So, you are forced to think tribal. It’s an invitation, nay an injunction, to move from egocentricity to ethnocentricity. There are the bad guys out there who are always trying to get us; or there are the people who are damned because they don’t know Jesus or because they’re not Muslims like us, or whatever the theology tells them.

• Sacrament number fourteen

  The next one happens around puberty, 12-14, earlier in some places. Now, for the first time ever, the boy or the girl, literally, can become the conduit for new souls to enter into the planet. For the first time ever they are physiologically capable of being channels, because it’s part of their pre-conception contract: that there will be other souls who have agreed to come into incarnation through them.

• Sacrament number fifteen

  A great sacrament, that goes along with this, is the realization, on the part of teenagers, that they want to go beyond ethnocentricity. They want to ask questions like, “Why are we bombing people in Iraq?” “Why is it that people in other nations are bad?” or, if you’re raised Catholic, “Why is it that Protestants can’t go to heaven?” At this stage, society tries to shut them up. Society is not very happy with this new development. Society wants us to stop growing at the age when we become ethnocentric, and believe our nation right or wrong, our tribe right or wrong, our religion right or wrong. And so, teenagers are problematic for us because they begin to think outside the box. They begin to think what I would call eco-centrically; they begin to think about the whole system, the entire planet, all the species on the planet.

• Sacrament number sixteen

  The next sacrament, I believe, would be the first serious romantic relationship, the first great stirrings in the human heart of wanting to complement your own gender; because when we decide to incarnate, souls don’t have gender, they don’t have race, they don’t have socio-economic status, they don’t have IQ levels, they don’t have educational attainment. All souls are precious, bite-sized pieces of God. But when we decide to incarnate, we have to put extraordinary limits on ourselves; and one of these limitations is the adoption of gender. We must be born into a female body or a male body. And so, in some senses, psychically or physiologically, there is a complementary part of us that we always seek. The first great love affair, the first great romantic relationship, is an effort on behalf of the soul to try to reach its fullness. It‘s not just about sexual attraction, that’s only a means to an end. It’s the soul’s innate need to regain unity consciousness.

• Sacrament number seventeen

  The next one would be one’s adoption of a profession. What am I going to offer to the world? How will I train? The world needs many different kinds of people. We need carpenters, we need mechanics, we need psychologists, we need farmers, we need artists. So, how am I going to prepare myself in order to offer something to the world? But even more important than the profession I adopt, is the mission  I undertake, because there is a difference between mission and profession. We didn’t come here to be farmers, or psychologists, or mechanics; in each incarnation, we came here to develop a particular virtue. And we choose the profession in the service of developing that virtue. So, I choose a particular profession because it will afford me the opportunity of developing the particular virtue that I really came to work on this lifetime. Thus, mission and profession go side by side.

• Sacrament number eighteen

  The next sacrament, then, would be the making of a lifelong commitment to a relationship, whether it’s a marriage contract or a contract for ordination. It’s your way of saying, “I am in this for the long haul. I’m going to learn how to grow, how to listen, how to communicate, how to give in sometimes, how to pare back my ego; and I’ll do this in a committed relationship of some kind.”

• Sacrament number nineteen

  The next one, I believe, is becoming a parent. You’ve now channeled a new life into the world, and you fall head-over-heels in love. Any of you who are fathers or mothers, know that no matter how much you loved your spouse, once you saw your child for the first time, there was nothing like it you’d ever experienced before. You know,  and it’s not just the remembrance of the pre-conception contract; it’s the realization that this child has come to teach you and you have come to protect it. Every child is a prophet sent to remind us of where we’ve really come from, before we get too lost in the journey. And every parent’s commitment is to protect the child, so that that innocence, that ability to remain on course, is protected, as much as the mother or the father can do that.

• Sacrament number twenty

  Maybe 20 or 25 years after that is the next great sacrament; the sacrament of becoming a grandparent. And those of you who are grandparents know this extraordinary joy. You don’t have the practical responsibility of educating the child, or looking after the child. It’s a kind of relationship which is very different from the relationship you have with your own kids. There is a special word in Kiswahili for this; it translates as “a joking relationship.” In Kiswahili cultures, you can have a joking relationship with somebody who’s two generations above you or two generations below you. You cannot have a joking relationship with somebody who’s one generation above you – a parent – or one generation below you, a child of yours. But there is a special name for the relationship you can have with a grandfather, or a grandmother or a grandchild. On becoming a grandparent, I believe, you have literally become the “wisdom carrier of the family.” That is your sacramental duty. You are the wisdom carrier for the entire family.

• Sacrament number twenty-one

  The final sacrament in this incarnational phase, I would call the sacrament of retirement. At some stage, you decide to wind down your professional career. At this time, I believe, you’re meant to go beyond family. Where the child was egocentric, then was invited to be ethnocentric, and finally became eco-centric, you, though you are fascinated by your own grandchildren, are now, as a retiree, aware of the fact that all  the children of the world are precious, no matter what their skin color is or no matter what their language is. So, as a retiree, your sacramental duty is to become the wisdom carrier and mentor for the world’s children, all of the world’s children, not just your own grandkids.

  And that would be, for me, the block of what I call the sacraments of the body as it breathes.

  I will wind up my thesis in the next essay.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — January 9, 2018 :

• Introduction

  This is the last of four essays under the above title. The first one asked, “Who’s counting the sacraments?” In the second essay, I talked about “The Sacraments of Birth and Before.” Number three dealt with “The Sacraments of the Breathing Body.” And this fourth one will examine “The Sacraments of Death and Thereafter.”

• The Sacraments of Death and Thereafter

  Your earth mission has drawn to a close, but the sacraments of your evolution continue. What are the way stations and celebrations at this stage of the journey? In order to provide continuity among the four essays on this topic, I will number these beginning at number twenty-two.

• Sacrament number twenty-two

  This is the sacrament of physical death. It’s a hugely, important sacrament. And it’s especially poignant for me today as I “celebrate” with my dearest friend, Arlen Brownstein, who lost her 97-year-old mother Saturday last week on the 21st of October and this morning lost her father at age 100. There comes a time, for each of us when we shuffle off this mortal coil and take a last breath – give back the Spirit. Isaac Brownstein took his final breath at 2:30 this morning, witnessed by his daughter, Arlen. That was his transition. That’s the first sacrament on the next stage of his journey.

• Sacrament number twenty-three

  However, I believe that the etheric body – the energy template of which the physical body was a carbon copy or a printout – remains around, for several days. You know, if you’ve ever had out-of-body experiences yourself, that when you inhabit a different level of consciousness, you can actually see your physical body lying on the bed, but you  somehow are floating on the ceiling or elsewhere. And you further realize that the part of you that is floating is a look alike. It’s very, very similar to the one that’s actually lying in the bed. Not exactly a doppelganger, but similar. And the danger is that people can get stuck at that stage; they don’t realize that they can’t re-join the physical body that’s on the bed. They’re still identifying with this kind of etheric body. And so there comes the second sacrament of this stage whereby you let go of the etheric body – realizing that that was just a template.

• Sacrament number twenty-four

  And then, you experience yourself in your astral form. The astral body, according to Hinduism, is the place in which all of the experiences of the physical incarnation just ended are archived for future reference. So that when you come back in your next incarnation, all of those experiences, all that growing, is available to you. It gets hard-wired into your psyche. You don’t have to remember the details of it; it’s embedded in the core of the next iteration of yourself. And so, the astral body is the library of all those experiences. But you have to die from that as well. That’s the third sacrament on the other side. You have to realize, “Yes, that was the learning, those were the experiences, that is the archive of the incarnation just ended, but that is not who I am either. I am not just my astral body.”

• Sacrament number twenty-five

  Now you are invited into another sacrament. This one is the re-identification with the Soul. You now realize fully, “Ah! I thought I was a physical body for seventy-one years and three weeks; and then for three days I thought I was the etheric body; and then for forty-nine more days I thought I was the astral body; but now I realize that I am not. This is who I truly am – I am a Soul.”

• Sacrament number twenty-six

  The second to last would be the re-unification with the soul group. Now comes lots of cheering. It’s like you walk into the afterlife and everyone starts singing “Happy Birthday to you!” You realize they planned a surprise party for you; that all of those who got back before you have been waiting anxiously for your return. And, now the entire soul pod is re-united. And there’s hijinks, absolute hijinks! And you begin comparing notes. “What was it like for you  in this lifetime?” “What do you think you learned ?” “When you go back down, what task  are you going to set for yourself now?” “What kind of a drama  should we plan the next time?” “Will it be in a totally different culture ?” “Will we change genders ?” “What will be the plot,  so that we learn whatever it is we want to learn the next time?”

• Sacrament number twenty-seven

  And, then, of course, the very last one again hinges on Spirit. At some stage God folds up the game of Lila.  Having culled all of these billions of experiences, through the self-fractured, holograms of Herself that She created as souls, we are like bees coming back with their pollen and their stories to the hive at the end of the harvesting day, where we are united; and, once more, there is only God. The sense of separate self dissolves completely and, as was true before there was a beginning, there is only God once more.

• Conclusion

  In this entire trajectory, the sense of separate self is like the center of gravity of the identity. But this center has to move constantly. If it gets stuck, we are in trouble. And it can get stuck at any stage.  It can get stuck during the incarnational phase, and it can get stuck in the post-incarnational phase. We can get stuck in life and never grow up, become the puer aeternus,  the kind of Peter Pan that doesn’t want any responsibility. Or, we can get stuck thinking we are our bodies; or we can get fixated on the idea that we are our thoughts; or we can get fixated on a particular relationship we’re in, or a particular job we do. The center of gravity of the Self has to keep moving and moving and moving. Even after the physical death, it can still get stuck. I can still think I am the etheric body or I can still think that I am the astral body. We have to learn to keep the center of gravity moving.

  And so, if there is one navigating tool, one orienting principle that I think can guide that entire process, in order for the center of gravity to keep moving from God’s womb, where it started, to God’s heart, where it finishes, it’s to be able to say with Jesus, “The Father and I are one.”

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — November 16, 2017: In 2011, life expectancy at birth was almost double what it was in 1841. So, isn’t it strange that, even as we live longer and longer, we have less and less time? We rush about complaining, “I’m running out of time!” or “I don’t have time.” So, what’s the scoop on time?

• (A) Time as a Limitation

  Time is a fabrication, a limit, a condition for membership in particular species in a particular dimension. Outside of those species and such dimensions, it does not exist even if members of those species in those dimensions attempt to impose it as a “sine qua non” of life itself for all species in all dimensions.

  Time is just one “ground rule” for a particular game. As an example, an NFL player is allowed to grab another player violently and haul him to the ground; if a soccer player were to do that, he’d immediately be shown a red card and sent off the field.

  So, a limited brain with the inability to grok the entirety of the reality gestalt is standard issue for the game of human life on planet Earth.

• (B) The Chinks in the Armor of Time

  But the solidity of time begins to waver as we pick up speed. The algorithm is a fairly simple one, but the bottom line is that for somebody traveling at the speed of light, time shrinks to zero. But there is also a more prosaic and quite common circumstance in which time can’t seem to make up its mind. Here, the subjective experience of time changes, but not the objective experience. Imagine a young child engrossed with a Play-station; time flies by for him – indeed, it ceases to exist subjectively; but for his older sibling, charged with baby-sitting him while their parents are having their weekly date night, time drags its sorry ass; meanwhile, the clock on the mantelpiece chugs along at its pedantic, plodding measured pace, with ne’er a nod to either child.

• (C) Time’s Purpose

  Like any constraint in any game, time has a purpose; it teaches something. In particular, it creates a buffer between the thought, word or deed, on the one hand and, on the other hand, the consequences. It does this to protect us against the immediacy of behaviors that have negative consequences – until we become more evolved and can risk more immediate outcomes. Imagine the freeway carnage if each bad, murderous thought of the harassed drivers immediately translated into curses comes true.

  In other dimensions – e.g., the dream state – the thoughts create the whole experience immediately with no buffer. Lucid dreaming is a way of controlling and utilizing that ability for good or ill. Lucid living is the ability to behave only in love.

• (D) Imposing Time on Things

  Humans want to impose time on everything including the notion of the afterlife. I remember, as a small boy in first grade, hearing a very zealous nun, committed to keeping us all out of hell, by using the following image to impress upon our young, malleable minds, just how long hell would last. Imagine, she said, a very high mountain (Everest at 29,029 feet will do); and every one thousand years a bird flies over the top of it with a long silk scarf trailing from its beak. The scarf lightly brushes the mountain top. Imagine, she repeated, how long it would take for these millennial visits to wear the mountain down to its toes; and now for the punch line: when the mountain had finally become a plain, eternity would still be in its infancy. Now that is a decent chunk of time, befitting the zeal of a nun and the sins of a six-year-old.

  But it is not only religion that creates weird scenarios; science is equally culpable. The following, in my opinion, are two scientific howlers. Firstly, the Big Bang is an attempt to explain how the cosmos and time began, and the high priests of that particular cult insist it is futile, unscientific and even philosophically meaningless to protest, “Yes, but what happened before the big bang?!” The big bang is actually a pathetic attempt at a “scientific” explanation to circumvent the notion of a superconsciousness e.g., God, who plays in a dimension without either the constraints of time or space.

  Secondly comes relativity theory, a relatively dumb explanation for the greater reality of games that don’t have time or space constraints.

• (E) Altered States of Consciousness and Time-Warping

  ASC’s that happen spontaneously or are induced by practices such as meditation, entheogens, fasting, dancing, drumming… can deliver a version of the game without those two limits. The problem begins (see, I had to use a time-locked word!) when we attempt to import that experience into the “normal” game. Hence the mystics aver that such experiences are ineffable e.g., “Neti, neti”, and “those who know don’t say and those who say don’t know.” NDE’ers constantly report that frustration in trying to convey the wondrous nature of their journey out of the body and out of the brain.

  Jesus, in his own inimitable fashion, went straight to the core truth – and infuriated his audience in the process – by saying, “before Abraham came to be, I Am!” An old adage says, “time and tide wait for no man.” It may be true for this species in this dimension, but it is even more true that, for a fully-awakened soul, time and tide are pieces that belong in some incarnational puzzles, but cease to exist when that particular game has delivered its lessons.

  Let’s call a timeout!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — October 31, 2017:

• (A) Who’s Driving the Truck?

  For the longest time, evolution proceeded via a gradual increase in consciousness, from single celled protozoa to “complex” sea anemones who could retract upon touch, to agile fish, adventurous amphibians, gigantic reptiles and nurturing mammals. Then hominids and, eventually, Homo Sapiens Sapiens arrived on the scene. The very newest advance, but definitely not the final one, came when evolution became conscious. The evolution of consciousness morphed into conscious evolution. Now, a species capable of retarding or accelerating evolution has arrived. It is an awesome gift fraught with deadly power if used recklessly. There’s nothing more dangerous than the unconscious use of consciousness.

  In the early stages, intention was only present in the form of unconscious instinct. That is how the journey of the cosmos ambled along. Then somebody got a bright idea, “Let us make man in our own image and likeness!” According to many wisdom traditions, the gods frequently regretted that decision and tried to undo it on several occasions – a little like parents giving their reckless son a gift of a car on his 16th birthday. However, for better or worse we are now driving the car and often, it seems, we do so “under the influence.” It sometimes even appears as if Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a bunch of suicide bombers with the accelerator floored in a truck filled with explosives.

• (B) The Rock

  Many years ago, I had a vision in which I saw planet Earth as a rock sitting on a sheet of ice in the emptiness of space. There were seven billion ropes attached to this rock, with a human being pulling vigorously on each one. Using simple vector mathematics, I could calculate the exact speed and direction in which the rock would move. It was being pulled towards a cliff and was in danger of being catapulted into the void.

  Later, I came to realize that there aren’t actually seven billion ropes but, rather, that humans have clustered into camps. Originally, these were small clans, then tribes, then global religions and, finally, economic and ideological mega communities. Each group’s instincts were honed into intention by the stories they told, especially the historical, theological and cosmological tales.

  The meme makers (storytellers) learned to harness the masses. Sometimes this was done for purposes of transformation, for instance the work of Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha and Jesus; other times, it was used for nefarious purposes, like greed and warfare.

  In our times, courtesy of the political-military-economic hegemony, loyally served by the mass media, a few mega groups have formed around the cleverly disguised intentions of the oligarchs. Currently, less than 60 persons own 50% of the world’s resources. And this is why xenophobia, avarice and genocide are endemic to our times. The intentions of the masses have been carefully harnessed by the oligarchs, in the service of global domination. Meanwhile, we have been lulled into sleep by the old Roman technique of “panes et circenses” (bread and circuses), as they pollute the planet and collect the loot.

  Like the great avatars we, too, can use small group energy by empowering us in a world where “little people” have been made to feel helpless.

• (C) The Rope of Hope

  Like never before, there is a need to get behind the rope of hope, of love and of unity consciousness, before our precious rock is pulled over the cliff into the chaos of the abyss.

  There is a simple formula that calculates the force of attraction between two heavenly bodies:

  F = M₁xM₂/r²

  where F is the force, M₁ and M₂ are the masses of the two objects and r is the distance between them. If either of the masses were bigger, or if the distance between them were smaller, the force would increase.

  Dreams are like that; but mostly we dream from the tiny planet Ego, about a tiny, personal dream, like a bigger house or a higher salary and – to shrivel our chances even further – we don’t really believe we can have them, or even deserve them; thus, increasing the distance between the dreamer and the dream because of our lack of faith.

  Wonders happen, as Jesus said they would, when we have the wisdom to dream as a species, about a dream that is love-impregnated and with a faith that shrinks distances between subject and object.

  When instinct becomes intention, and intention is energized by desire, and desire is motivated by love, all things are possible. It only takes two or three to begin; or, in Lynne McTaggart’s most recent book, simply “The Power of Eight.” With each increase in numbers, you get not just arithmetic progression but an exponential one.

  If you want to grab a strand of this new rope, how about joining or starting a little 8-12-person regular prayer/intention group? The networking of such groups will, I believe, be the key to not merely the survival of our “Rock” but its ascension. Maybe, this is what Jesus really meant by, “thou art Peter and upon this rock, I will build my church.” Just like Francis of Assisi, after his vision misunderstood it as an injunction to re-erect the broken shell of his local chapel, until he realized he was being asked to reform the a very corrupt Vatican-dominated Christian Church. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a next stage to this statement of Jesus; it was not about erecting stone structures nor even about creating human institutions but about aligning with the community of incarnated souls as they attempt to move planetary consciousness into the next stage of global ascension?

• (D) Lord, Teach Us to Pray

  For my Ph.D. dissertation, I conducted what was then (1992) the largest double-blind, controlled, randomized experiment of the effects of prayer-at-a-distance on humans. I wanted to measure its effects on self-esteem, anxiety and depression. Altogether, 507 people took part – 90 as “agents” (who did the praying for 15 minutes daily for 12 weeks) and 417 as “subjects” (who were willing to be the “targets” of the prayer.)

  To synopsize the answer to the question that I asked in the 393-pages dissertation: “does prayer work?”, I can say: “You betcha!” And the biggest surprise? It was that the agents (the archers) benefitted even more spectacularly than their targets.

  Prayer does not work by bending God’s arm to adjust Her will to our agenda but, rather, it creates a laserized intention of coherent human love-beams that can move mountains.

  I suggest that there are six simple steps to effective prayer. First, it is necessary to do some “house cleaning.” It’s counterproductive to offer water from a contaminated faucet to a thirsty traveler. So, as Jesus said, “If you go to offer your gift at the altar, and there remember you have anger against your sister or brother, leave your gift at the altar, go and be reconciled with your sister or brother and then come back and offer your gift.” It is very important, before I begin to pray for any target, that I purge my mind of all gunk – anger, fear, anxiety and, especially, unforgiveness.

  Stage two is to then fill myself with compassion, which is, basically, the realization that all beings are manifestations of the same Source; we are all sunbeams from the same star. There is no such thing as an “enemy” once we realize that. Compassion, then, is not so much Mary feeling empathy for John but, rather, one finger feeling love for another finger on the same hand.

  Stage three is to send out a laserized beam of love at the target. This cannot merely be formulaic; it must have the cutting edge of the archer’s focus on the target. It demands the energy of total awareness in a concentrated moment.

  Stage four is to take whatever disciplined action is required in a situation ala the dictum, “pray as if everything depended upon God; live as if everything depended upon yourself.” This may mean social justice work or simply smiling at everyone you meet. It should become “a way of being” – not a party piece to check off a box on the prayer protocol.

  Stage five is a belief, a faith in some superpower (God? Combined Intention? Love?) to translate intention into outcome.

  And stage six is detachment. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s not. Once we have done our part, we surrender to a much higher intelligence – that which designed an entire cosmos – to figure out the optimal route and the perfect timing for the intended outcome.

  Let us pray!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — October 17, 2017:

• (A) The Story of Stories

  When Homo Sapiens Sapiens developed language around 70,000 years ago, I believe that the very first use to which they put it was storytelling. There was a sequence and a protocol to the process. Arap Chito had just encountered a leopard in the bush of East Africa. Luckily, he escaped, but even as the cortisol was rushing through his system, he was rehearsing the encounter with his internal language skills – what de Saussure would call, the signified (internal image) and the referent (the real live leopard), so as not to forget its significance. That night, around a campfire of his 25-person tribe, he would share with them his encounter using signifiers (words.) He will thus accomplish four objectives: firstly, he will transfer this new knowledge to the other 24 minds; secondly, he will archive this knowledge in the tribal memory for future generations; thirdly, it will be a bonding exercise; and, fourthly, it will be entertaining.

  Indeed, stories are the archived wisdom of any culture, and pithy proverbs its distillation – the “cheat sheet” to be accessed when time is of the essence.

  In the summer of 1963 between my junior and senior years in high school, I spent three months in a Gaeltacht (places where the working language is still Gaelic) called, Cúil Aodh, collecting proverbs – seanfhocail (ancient words) is what we call them in Irish. I systematically visited all of the elders asking, “Can you give me some proverbs and tell me the context in which each one would be used?” At the end of the summer I had collected 432 of them.

  One old man said to me, “If Christianity had never come to Ireland, we could live according to the seanfhocail.” He was probably correct because I came to realize that there was a proverb for every situation.

  I learned something else as well about proverbs: they frequently contradict each other, because for every situation A demanding proverb X, there is an opposite situation B, demanding proverb Y. The following are some examples.

  In Irish: “Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin” (there’s no fireside like your own fireside) is contradicted by, “Bíonn blas ar chuid an chomhairsin” (there’s a special taste to the neighbor’s food.)

  In English: “Look before you leap.” But “He who hesitates is lost.”

  In Kiswahili: “Haraka, haraka haina baraka.” (hurry, hurry has no blessing) but “Chelewa, chelewa mtoto si wako.” (delay, delay and the baby will not be yours.) – go on, figure that one out!

  In Latin: “Festina lente” (hasten slowly”) but “Carpe diem” (seize the day).

• Disparate Cultures in Support of Each Other

  All popular “wisdom” to the contrary, scientific studies in psychology show that multitasking is NOT an efficient use of time. Irish agrees: ”I ndhiadh a chéile a thógtar na caisleáin” (one after the other are the castles built). Kiswahili concurs: “Upole ndiyo mwendo” (slowness is sureness). And the Greek story of the hare and the tortoise says it elegantly.

  Or take the notion of family and elders. The Hebrew scriptures tell us: “Honor your father and your mother that you may live long in the land.” Confucius claimed that the notion of the separate self was an illusion created by the sum of our social roles; hence his teaching is about the “five constant relationships” i.e. That of husband and wife; that of parents and children; that of elder brother to younger siblings; that of teacher and student; and, finally, that of emperor to subjects.

  Mammals, who arose about 200 million years ago, introduced sustained parenting into the equation of evolution; and the sciences of psychology, sociology and anthropology managed to codify it – with a few notable blunders like B. F. Skinner (the great behaviorist) raising his daughter in a stimulus-response “Skinner Box”; or the campaign to end breastfeeding in favor of a pharmaceutical formula.

  As an aside, in the Baringo desert, I once encountered a young Tugen mother with a very sick two-year-old child. She had sold a dozen eggs from her own chickens in order to buy and feed her baby a bottle of Coke because of a tin poster nailed to a duka (little shop) that proclaimed, “Coca-Cola huleta nguvu na afya!” (Coca-Cola always brings energy and health!)

  Kalenjin has an interesting proverb, “Nda samis muryat, ko bo go nebo (even though the rat is dirty he is part of the household.) It’s their version of loving even the “black sheep” – if you don’t mind me mixing my metaphors!

  And what about the Howard Loomis story? Back in 1918, Howard was abandoned by his mother at Fr. Flanagan’s Home for Boys. Howard had polio, wore leg braces and found it very difficult to manage stairs. Older boys sometimes carried him up and down the steps. One day Fr. Flanagan asked one of these boys – Reuben Granger – if it was difficult. Rueben replied, “He ain’t heavy, Father, he’s my brother.”

• (C) De-Mythologizing Life

  Remember the famous detective, Joe Friday from Dragnet, who regularly insisted, “just give me the facts ma’am, just the facts.” Joe had no time for stories. But when you nix storytelling, you demythologize life, thus reducing the person to merely a set of numbers e.g., Social Security Number, bank codes, a ticket that allocates your place in line in the supermarket, car registration, phone number, postal address… even your jail identity!

  A Maasai herdsman knows all his – very many – cattle by name; while your modern European Union farmer has a number stapled on to the ear of all of his nameless cows.

  For the last 20 years of his life my father lived in a house with a red door in a remote area of West Cork. His actual postal address was:

  Teach Dearg

  [The Red House]

  Scairtínacillín

  [near the little bush by the children’s graveyard]

  Béal an Dhá Chab

  [at the mouth of the two river fords]

  Contae Chorchaigh

  [in the county of the marshy lands]

  while my address is merely a 3-digit PO Box in Healdsburg CA 95448. I live in the forest where they don’t deliver mail.

  I suspect that they could actually drop both the city’s name and the name of the state, and it wouldn’t make a difference to the USPS.

  So, dear reader, tell me this and tell me no more (to use an Irish idiom), which of these two addresses tells you more about where my father lived and where I live? It’s like we have taken a vibrantly alive, high definition, color video, reduced it to a still photo and drained it of all but gray tones.

  Is it any wonder that, today, more people die of suicide than die of warfare? When you drain life of stories, you drain it of meaning; and when you drain it of meaning you create a nightmare out of God’s dream – the miracle of the cosmos.

  What pseudo-scientific sicko thought this up?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — October 3, 2017:

• (A) The Origin of Religion

  I’ve never found a satisfactory definition of religion, though I’m certain of its origin, which I take to be the Impulse of Spirit. However, humans have a penchant for screwing up all great ideas. The least deadly screw up, perhaps, is to allow the impulse to stagnate theologically; and the deadliest is to weaponize it.

  Religion has many aspects and serves many purposes, e.g., it creates community, formulates ethics, and devises rituals. All of these are vital to the life of the “tribe” (no matter the size of the tribe). Community should both support and challenge the theological thinking of its members; but, frequently, community deteriorates into mere institution which, inevitably, is taken over by an oligarchy. Soon, orthodoxy becomes the ultimate criterion of holiness; and heterodoxy (as defined by the oligarchy) is punished by shunning. If heterodoxy, God forbid, should stray into heresy or, horribile dictu, into blasphemy (again as defined by the oligarchy), then shunning is upgraded to inquisition, torture and execution – all to protect the thin-skinned sanctity of the bent-out-of-shape divinity. If the institution has enough clout – and if it has become a theocracy, then it already has the necessary clout – then, having dealt with internal dissidents, it now turns its face and weapons to converting or exterminating the pagans/infidels/barbarians/gentiles who live outside its hallowed gates.

  Eventually, some new prophet will arise from within its ranks to call the group back to its founder’s intentions. And the time-honored template for dealing with the prophet is to first slander, then imprison, then execute and, finally, call a street after him (e.g., Martin Luther King Jnr. Highway) or create a feast day in his honor. Under no circumstances, however, can his unexpurgated teachings be allowed to flourish. Rather, a sanitized, defanged version is packaged as sanctimonious pablum to anesthetize the masses to the prophet’s real message.

  And while the original religious community is becoming a vigilante group, the ethical primacy of love (do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you) has given way to the canonization of law (in Maggie Thatcher’s strident words, “the law is the law is the law!”) The enactment, imposition and punishment-for-infractions of a legal code become the primary moral tools.

  And rituals which, initially, were the practices (e.g., sound/music, dance/processions, art/stain glass windows, scent/incense, taste/communion, meditation etc.) intended to create altered states of consciousness, so as to encourage encounters with extra-dimensional energies and entities, have now become dead rites that choke off mysticism and replace it with dogma.

  By then, religion, instead of being a stage of the evolution of humanity, has disintegrated into the “revealed” concretized, unchangeable will of an irascible God. To make this stagnation stick, however, history must be either ignored or rewritten.

  An Indian mystic once said that should you happen upon the tracks of a religion in the wilderness, they should be followed; but not to where they lead but, rather, whence they’ve come.

• (B) The eras of the journey

  Religion should be the training wheels for spirituality – to be discarded once the practitioner has developed the skill to go it alone. This is not to say that community is no longer important. It is. But its function is no longer to herd and censor; it is to provide encouragement and challenge for the individual, mystical journeys of its members. The “school marm” approach must give way to the Socratic method; mother must allow the kids to cut the social/religious umbilical cords and fly.

  When homo sapiens sapiens first developed language around 70,000 years ago, and learned to manipulate symbols intra-cranially, one of the first uses to which it put this newly emerged skill was to ponder the existential questions, e.g., Who “made” all this? What happens after death? Is there purpose or pattern to our world and our lives? I believe the process undergoes four main stages.

  First was the era of the theologians, where we began to talk ABOUT God (or gods.) This is rather like moderns who are fascinated by the lives of movie stars, whom they will never actually meet. Next came the era of the priests; “experts” who, having figured out what these gods are, set about contacting them. This is the era of talking TO the gods. It gave birth to prayer, sacrifice and rituals.

  Era three is the epoch of the prophets; those who claim to speak ON BEHALF OF the god. Their function is to establish covenants with their god of choice. This involved monolatry (the worship of a particular god) but not yet monotheism (the belief that there is only one God.) Having established the covenant, the prophet’s task is to continue to call the errant populace back into alignment with it. His function is not so much to predict the future as to prevent it; not to foretell it but to forestall it. Because the future is almost always a dire, punitive situation created by the sinful ways of humans, and the jealous, impatient ways of the god.

  The final era is that of the mystic, who speaks not about, not to and not on behalf of but, rather, AS God. It is the stage of the realization that only God exists and we are holographic fractals spun off into incarnation, so that God may temporarily experience alienation from Self. Mystics are no longer interested in being discrete, permanent waves on the beach but, rather, see themselves as temporary manifestations of the ocean.

• (C) The Languages of the journey

  There are several kinds of God-language. Theologians debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They spent years in the great councils of the Church defining, in exquisite detail, the one nature but three persons of the Christian God. The Great Schism of 1054 and the resultant bi-lateral slaughter, was triggered by a disagreement over a single Latin word, “Filioque” (rendered in English as “and from the son.”) This dispute in a creedal formulation, lasted almost 1,000 years! The kind of theological language employed to explain God is called cataphatic.

  On the other hand, the language of the mystics, if they choose to speak at all (Lao Tzu once averred, “those who know, don’t say; and those who say, don’t know”) is apophatic language. Rather than claiming God is X or Y or Z – as do the theologians – mystics use “Neti! Neti!” (Not this! Not that!) Since God is utterly beyond human comprehension, and the experience of God ineffable, we can only back ourselves into the realization by going trans-rational and cutting all anthropomorphic links. Hence, the enigma of the Zen koan e.g., “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”; of meister Eckhart’s “I pray daily to God to rid me of God”; and of Buddhism’s “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

  Teachers, however, have a problem. In spite of Lao Tzu’s statement, they are tasked with trying to inspire. To avoid the cataphatic trap and to temporarily eschew taking refuge in the apophatic, they must resort to symbol – stories, parables, proverbs, aphorisms, metaphors, analogies… The trick of the listener is to engage the symbols at the level of the soul not of the mind. Above all it is to avoid the pitfall of literalism. But we have a very spotty record in this respect. When Jesus is spoken of as “the lamb of God”, nobody thinks he’s walking about on two legs of mutton, but when he’s spoken of as a judge or a king, we take these as literal descriptions. So, Christianity has managed, at times, to convert a compassionate avatar into a despotic psychopath.

  Jesus chose to speak only in parables (rather than theological, philosophical or scientific language) precisely because he did not want his message to be a one-size-fits-all-people-in-all-eras, but as Socratic seeds to be weeded and watered in the pristine womb of the human soul.

• (D) The tug-o-war

  The journey home should be from religion to spirituality and, finally, to mystical union with Source. Unfortunately, the process frequently goes backwards; instead of reaching for spirituality, religion may disintegrate into fundamentalism. When a religion is hijacked by the ego of a leader or an oligarchy, it veers off into fundamentalism and stagnates. Fear and craven obedience become the basis of its relationship with God; law and dogma the basis of its relationship with its own members; and prejudice and xenophobia the basis of its relationship with the “others.”

  Fundamentalism then becomes the antithesis of mysticism. In four quick steps, it first reduces complex ideas, like God or nationalism (the secular version), to a few bumper sticker one-liners that even the dumbest among us can comprehend. Secondly, it identifies or fabricates an “enemy” who is a threat to decent living, democracy or “truth.” Thirdly, the enemy is dehumanized so that exterminating them is actually pleasing to God. And the final step is to set about the slaughter.

  Mysticism does exactly the opposite. Its first step is to move from cataphatic to apophatic language; to realize that God cannot be spoken of in human terms, and that to ascribe any characteristics to Him is human hubris writ large. Awe at the mystery, not reducing Him to an effigy, is the only response to the mystical experience. The second phase is to realize that all people are my neighbor; to recognize that all sentient beings are sister and brother to me. Thirdly, instead of dehumanizing the “other”, we divinize them. We offer them “namasté” (the divine in me recognizes and honors the divine in you.) And, finally, we reach out, not in war but in unconditional love.

  The temptation of religion is to jam the gear stick of the mass transit vehicle into neutral, glide to a halt and huddle safely in the bus; the insight of mysticism is to get out and walk.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — September 26, 2017:

• (A) The Question

  Patheos.com — September 26, 2017: In April of 2016, the well–known astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, hosted a panel discussion to debate the theory — now gaining scientific traction — that we live within a simulated reality, a real live Matrix, if you will. The idea that we are simply characters in some ET–kid’s game is humbling, to say the least, and frightening, to say the most. Are we simply actors on stage, mouthing our lines and unconsciously following a pre–ordained plot? Is that really very much different from Calvin’s idea of predestination, except that the ET kid, in his version, is a sadistic god who plays favorites? Not only has he got scant regard for those whom he created specifically to be damned but, in fact, takes gleeful delight in their eternal suffering.

  The scientific discussion is predicated on the following data: when you send a photo to a friend via email, the process involves two kinds of code. Firstly, a transmission code that sends the bits and bytes in discrete quanta (packets.) Sometimes a few of these packets get lost or corrupted in transit, so a second kind of code is also embedded, whose function is to auto–correct or infer and insert the missing or corrupted data. Thus, you manage to get a “perfect” photo at the other end.

  Now, when physicists wrestle with the mathematics of our universe, they find the same two kinds of code. Hence, the theory that our “reality” itself is the result of a transmission. We are characters in a novel, whose author is so talented that he has made us believe we are real! That’s the theory.

• (B) Incarnation or Incarceration?

  So, are we real? Is the universe real? What is real? I believe there is nothing which is not real, but that there are levels of reality. A greater perspective will immediately diminish or relativize the importance of any phenomenon which had been previously experienced from a lesser perspective — just like a bird’s–eye view will re–perspective a flower or a stone that previously had been seen only from a worm’s–eye perspective.

  Hence, whatever can be sensed, remembered, dreamed, imagined, felt, thought up or thought about exists in some dimension — and is, therefore, real. Even what is experienced in a psychotic break is no less real than your daily breakfast; it is — hopefully — just a less frequent experience and, therefore, outside the narrow, culturally–created bounds of “consensus reality.”

  Let’s not conflate consensus reality with the real thing. The former is simply a subset of the latter. All experiences are grist for the mill of the awakening of the divine in the odyssey of incarnation. The important questions, then, are:

  1. Do my personal experiences — in any dimension — move me into greater alignment with love?

  2. Does the culturally–sanctioned consensus reality move the group into greater alignment with love?

  3. And some common dimensions authenticated by most cultures, for most of human history, are physical, emotional, mental, psychic, spiritual, social, transrational and transpersonal.

• (C) Thinking outside the boxes – all of them!

  Do we live in a simulated universe? Yes, I believe we do. But the simulator–engineer–creator behind the enterprise is not a geek in a different dimension; and we are not the hapless, helpless, hopeless robots who naively believe that we are real. Rather the “mind” behind this reality is the soul pod of all sentient beings who designed an experiment to grow — through the experience of separate self‐awareness and the exercise of free will — from discrete chunks of Source i.e. individual souls, into the realization that only God exists, and that we are all God–probes into the adventure of Lila — the divine game of hide—and–go–seek.

  Our journey is from free will (the ability to do as we please) into freedom (the ability to do as pleases God); from narcissism into compassion; from service–to–self into service–to–others; and from sleepwalking into Self–realization.

  What a pity that fundamentalist, close–minded, materialistic scientism collapses all of the above to the neuronal firings of a three–pound blob of wetware that humans carry between their ears. What a pity that self–appointed, orthodoxy–protecting devotees have created a jealous, violent God, in their own image and likeness; and attempted to bludgeon the rest of us into submitting to this idol, under threat of physical inquisition and eternal perdition. We are left with a caricature of God — created by the latter — battling a joyless, barren, depressing God–shaped hole — created by the former.

  If we were to believe in that final scenario then, indeed, we do live in a simulated reality, but it is a reality simulated by the human shadow. I prefer to believe that there is a great light — the light of unconditional love — from which fear hides, behind the obstacles created by our illusions. With enough lamps, there is no place left for the shadows to hide.

  Have you enough oil in your lamp?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — September 13, 2017 :

• Introduction

  A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog entitled, “What Is Alive?” Today, I want to write a complementary essay called, “What Is Intelligent?” It will basically be a set of questions perambulating about the perimeter of possibilities.

• A. Mountains

  Are mountains intelligent? Or do they simply exist and, subsequently, age by impersonal, chemical processes like erosion? When a mountain meets the wind or the rain or the sun, is it simply a passive rock being pounded by random forces? Would it be anthropomorphism to claim that it is actually intelligently orchestrating carefully choreographed responses to these ancient dance partners? Or is it, in fact, a greater anthropomorphism to deny such intelligence?

  Just because mountains do not win Nobel Prizes or write poetry — at least not in an orthography comprehensible to humans — does this mean they are simply part of “dumb nature”? Who’s dumber, you who can’t express yourself in my language, or I who never made the effort, or didn’t have enough brain power to learn your language?

• B. Musical Plates

  When two great tectonic plates interact with each other, which one of the following answers would you pick as being correct?

  1. It is merely inorganic lumps of matter blindly blundering into each other in the dark subterranean regions.

  2. It is the random clash of impersonal forces.

  3. It is geology’s way of illustrating “chaos theory.”

  4. It is a game being played by an extra–dimensional entity who is bored with matters on his own plane.

  5. It is following a carefully pre–programed code from which no deviation is allowed.

  6. It is an enjoyable “conscious” dance of two communities of atoms, in order to erase old mountains and continents and build new ones, under the baton of Shiva — the god who dismantles old configurations but uses the same pieces to create a new, more complex world.

  Geologically speaking, are we dealing with “gradualism” (also known as ”uniformitarianism”) — the belief that Earth changes happen at a glacial pace (no pun intended) over millions of years? Or are we dealing with “catastrophism” — the belief that huge changes occur in the blink of an eye, courtesy of comets, meteors, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis? Or, is it a combination; what evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, called, “punctuated equilibrium”?

• C. Mother Earth

  Gaia, are you simply the third rock from the sun; mere debris pulled into planethood by gravity, and lassoed by the local star? Were you the first victim of the slave trade; or, are you a child who recognized her mother and are dancing around her with your seven siblings and their stuffed animal–moons?

  Pacha Mama, are you truly she who gave birth to our bodies; and who continues to nurture us even as we ignore or even abuse you? Or, are you simply an accidental, fortuitous resource — ours to tame, to mine and to discard? When we’re done with you, will you be kicked off the plane of the ecliptic, to be picked up by a galactic garbage gantry, or ground into gravel to pave a section of the asteroid belt?

• D. Spiritual I.Q.

  It takes intelligence to recognize intelligence; it takes even greater intelligence to recognize subtler levels of intelligence; and it takes really advanced intelligence to recognize the subtlest level of all which is the intelligence of compassionate love.

  Mostly, we human beings are not very intelligent, because there is a great lack of love in our living.

  Who will inherit the Earth?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — September 5, 2017 :

• (A.) Holy Cow!

  Imagine, if you will, that you – and everybody you’ve ever met – have had to spend your entire lives in a (very) large room, which has neither ingress nor egress. On one wall is a large machine from which, by pushing a button, you can extract mincemeat. None of you has any idea what lies on the other side of the wall which, in actual fact, contains a cow factory. But none of you has ever seen nor even heard of such a thing as a “cow.” Every so often the owner of the cow factory simply herds a living, breathing cow up to the other side of the large machine which then mangles it into meat, to be delivered, at the push of the button, to your side.

  There is no way you could possibly infer the reality or description of a cow from merely observing the mince. Your presumption would be that at the other side of the machine is simply an inexhaustible mound of squiggly meat.

  Our senses are the instruments that allow us to experience the mincemeat but never actually enable us to see the cow. Perception is the stove that then cooks the mince into the meal that we call, “reality.” And our scientific instruments are basically extensions of our sensorium.

  The cosmos is a giant room with a cow mangle set in the wall. We can never see the other side, so we presume its reality is identical to our own. Neither the sensorium nor science will ever be able to deliver primary, un-mangled reality to us.

  And that is what philosophy calls, “the myth of the given;” the fallacy of presuming that our senses give us an accurate one-to-one map of “what’s out there.” If that were the case, the dragon fly with 2,700 facets in each of its two eyes, the snake who sees into the infrared range, the bat who hears up to 100,000 cycles per second or the bloodhound who can detect odors in one part in trillions, would have much more complete maps of the cosmos.

• (B.) Falling Trees

  If a tree falls in the forest and there is no human present, does it still make noise? And the correct answer is, “No! It doesn’t make noise.” What does happen is that the falling tree sets up shock waves that cause air vibrations which, if they reach the human ear in a particular, narrow band of frequencies, will be translated/interpreted/represented by the ear as sound. Air vibrations outside of that very narrow band will NOT be experienced as sound.

  Even if other animals still hear them, two things are true; firstly, the air vibrations must be within the specific range of each animal, otherwise it won’t be “heard”; and, secondly, the “sound” is still an interpretation/translation/representation.

  The same thing is true of all of the other senses; they are valves that reduce a deeper reality into a secondary “image.” According to science, this deeper reality is some form of wave e.g. acoustical or electro-magnetic, that can be fully expressed in Boolean zero’s and one’s. But what if these, too, are merely other reducing valves of a still more pristine level of reality? What if there are an infinite number of such reducers between us and ultimate reality?

• (C.) Hints of the levels?

  The chakra system with its concomitant seven levels of body – gross, etheric, astral, mental, causal, atman and brahma – may been an effort to wrestle with this issue. Each higher level revealing a more pristine and powerful order of reality; and the chakras acting as transducers between levels.

  And what of Christ’s famous saying, “in my father’s house, there are many mansions.”? Maybe this does not refer merely to separate heavenly living quarters to segregate Hindus from Buddhists and Catholics from Protestants but, perhaps, refers to different abilities in exploring the levels of reality.

• (D.) The ultimate level?

  I suspect that the core, ultimate level is pure unconditional love, which is so overpowering that it dissolves not just all fears, violence, anxieties and prejudices but all sense of personal identity and separation from Source.

  “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the human heart, what things God has prepared for those who love him,” said St. Paul. What if this actually means that “heaven” is beyond the reducers of the sensorium and even of the heart?

  What if heaven offers Unity Consciousness, where there is no separation between observers nor even between observer and the observed? What if there is merely pure observing and full awareness?

  Pure awareness and unconditional love may well be the pre-reduction state, the original and only reality before the game of Lila began; a game in which God plays hide–and–go–seek with Herself, creating all forms of illusions, distractions and detours to make it an exciting adventure. Lucky us that we get to be the characters in this dream of God’s. Like children at a campfire fearfully encouraging each other to tell ghost stories, this dream occasionally feels like a nightmare.

  The trick is to become lucid; and the sequence is to first dream lucidly and then live lucidly. When we do that, the nightmares dissolve and laughter begins. Then we creep up on God, grab him from behind and cry, “Gotcha!” — only to realize that we’ve grabbed our own shoulders.

• (E.) Or maybe…?

  Then, again, what if the senses are not really “reducers” but “enhancers”? What if the senses are the most basic form of imagination, with the extraordinary ability to transform the dull series of science’s 0’s and 1’s into the image of a daffodil or the sound of children laughing? What if the myth of the given is a PlayStation devised by God to turn boring electromagnetic data into sensual symphonies of sound and awe-inspiring visions of a sunset?

  If only we could keep the lenses of perception clear and not corrupt imagination by inventing greed and wars, would we then experience heaven on Earth? Would we then know what Jesus meant when he said that the kingdom of heaven is “en mesoi” (within you and among you)?

• (F.) Then again, maybe…?

  A final thought. What if the entire process is actually a circle that begins and ends with God, who is both the origin and the destination of the journey? And what if the “scientific interval” is actually the lowest point of all, the result of the greatest, most limiting reducer of the lot; one that mangles the original mystery and spits it out as waves and bits, formulas and bytes?

  What if the “imagination of the sensorium” is the first stage of restoration, reconstructing the miracles of music and the wonder of a waterfall, from the dull, gray, repetitive sequence of mere numbers? And what if pure love — in all its many manifestations: compassion, courage, forgiveness, patience… — is the final transformer, resurrecting the separated souls into the bliss of full awareness and unity consciousness?

  How many circuits do we have to make on the Ferris Wheel of incarnation before we grok the game? In this wee essay, I have posited and examined firstly, Apparent (Sensory) Reality, secondly, Scientific Reality and, thirdly, Ultimate (Spiritual) Reality. Perhaps, Apparent (Sensory) Reality is actually closer to Ultimate (Spiritual) Reality than is Scientific Reality! It is certainly more awe–inspiring.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — August 22, 2017:  It is 1:30 AM and I’ve been asleep for a few hours, but for the last 20 minutes, in a hypnogogic state, I have been trying to arrange the pieces of a powerful dream, so that I can record it tomorrow. As more and more of the pieces emerge, I am finding it harder and harder to hold them all in place. An urgent voice pleads, “Get up and write it down!” “No”, I reply, “I’ll easily remember it; it’s really powerful.”

But the voice is quite insistent, “Get up now and write it down!” Eventually I submit and turn on the blinding light, stagger to my desk and grab a pen. It was a hard delivery, but here is the dream I uncovered.

A Socratic voice asked, “What is alive?” I found this to be a strange question, so I asked one of my own, “What do you mean, ‘what is alive?’?” The voice responded, “We can agree, probably, that humans and dogs are alive; perhaps, even daffodils. But what about rivers? And rocks? Are they alive?” I said, “Yes, I think everything is alive!” This made me feel both intelligent and inclusive until the next question came, prefaced by a graphic image. I was shown a discarded, pink, plastic parasol, with its gaudy head sticking out of a garbage can. The question was, “What about this gaudy, pink, plastic parasol; is it alive?” I baulked at this one. I thought, “Could a denatured plastic artifact be a living thing?” I didn’t answer, so Socrates answered, “Yes, it is alive; every atom of its being is singing to its creator and harmonizing with its fellows. Even denatured plastic artifacts (he had read my mind!) are making music from the prison cages of their forced, misshapen, mutant isolation. They are like jailed inmates who use spoons and plates and heating pipes to talk and sing together from their separated cells.”

I thought about this for a while, but he interrupted my contemplation with another startling observation, “Even a disintegrating cadaver is alive, as it intelligently and compassionately re–distributes its molecular makeup to the neighboring ecosystem. It is like a person about to emigrate from Europe to America, who calls his friends together to give them all of his possessions before he leaves. Because the soul is not a hoarder; it only uses what it needs for incarnation; and when it is finished, it recycles meticulously. There is nothing more alive than love!”

Socrates remained silent for a few moments as we pondered this idea. Then he said, “Do you think scientists are finally backing themselves away from their pathetic little materialistic models and into real truth?” I said, “Explain that to me.” “Well”, he said, “string theory is a start; a pretty feeble one, but one that’s headed in the right direction.” Then he said, “Listen to this sound for a few moments” and he played an audio–visual of four strings “talking” to each other. They looked and sounded like four sets of fingernails scraping along a chalkboard — real sounds, but utterly discordant. I had to cover my ears and swallow my sound–soured saliva. The noise was more pathetic than a beginner’s first violin lesson. “That”, he said, “is what string theory sounds like when you leave the conductor and the musical score out of the equation. God is the conductor of life, and cosmic consciousness is the musical score. Take those out and all you’ve got is cacophony. Without the conductor and the score, you only have the chaos of hope–less musicians screaming their existential angst into the unheeding void. How could they have gotten it so wrong!”

We both took time out to consider this. Once more, he was the one to break the silence. “Imagine,” he invited me, “Rembrandt’s son finding his father’s paints and daubing the walls of his nursery with his little pudgy fingers. Such ‘art’ is to his dad’s ‘The Nightwatch’, as is science’s string theory in comparison with the description of creation in the prologue to John’s gospel!” I know that passage very well, so I mentally rehearsed it before he spoke again: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God….and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” Socrates allowed me to finish my mental rehearsal and then he continued, “The Big Bang and the word ‘Om’ are two different explanations for creation. One says it was merely an explosion, the other says it was a Song of God.”

I chewed over this for a while before he once more took up his thesis, “The ‘Om’ of Hinduism, the ‘Logos’ of John’s gospel and the ‘dream time’ of the Aborigines, all got it right: creation happens through sound; and then light dances this creation into particular forms. Sound is the blueprint for the house; light is the materials needed and incarnation is the work force. Matter is simply densified light which sound (intelligence) uses to fashion different kinds of ‘stuff’ — rivers and rocks, dogs and dinosaurs, daffodils and, with a little help from humans, gaudy, pink, plastic parasols.”

Socrates concluded his nighttime, dreamtime lesson by answering his own initial question ‘What is alive?’ He said, “Souls know how to sing at each level of their experience, from the timeless hymn of their essence to the incarnated harmonies of family and friends, right down to the ever–changing cells that make up their bodies and organs. All is alive, even the dancing atoms and their inner, pirouetting electrons and their quirky quarks.

“Consciousness is the inner composer that organizes all of matter into the cosmic symphony. It is Brahma (creator of life), Vishnu (sustainer of life) and Shiva (re–organizer of life) working seamlessly as a Blessed Trinity under the baton of Source. Without consciousness, science is legless and humanity is hope–less. It is Nero (mindless science) fiddling as Rome (planet Earth) burns under the assault of a karma–denying hubris.”

So I wrote it all down and then, at 2:02 AM I crawled back under the covers, breathing Ruah into the darkness to warm my frozen toes.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — August 8, 2017 :

• Introduction

  “Taking God’s name in vain” is not the prerogative of monotheists alone; other gods, too, have been misunderstood and maligned. Take the Hindu trinity, for example. Brahma, basically, is the creator aspect of the divine; Vishnu is the preserver aspect; while Shiva is the destructive aspect. In iconography and imagery, he is sometimes depicted as a fearful “lay–waster”, dealing death and destruction — the master of mayhem. The truth, however, is quite different. Where Brahma is creator, Shiva is re–creator. Where Brahma is the expert at “creation ex nihilo”, bringing into being that which previously did not exist, Shiva is the genius who disassembles old configurations and recombines the constituent elements into new, exciting manifestations.

  Let me play around with a few analogies — some scientific, some artistic and some more prosaic.

• (A) Dissipative Structures

  Ilya Prigogine, a Belgian, Russian–born scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977 for solving an old problem in science, namely: if the second law of thermodynamics is true — “all systems, left to their own devices, eventually run themselves down into chaos” (e.g., bikes left out in the rain, rust; a steaming cup of coffee left on the kitchen table soon becomes tepid) — then how come more and more complex life forms evolve?

  He discovered that systems can reorganize their interior elements, dissipating chaos in the process, and leap–frogging into new and improved versions of themselves. He called this process, Dissipative Structures. That is Shiva energy at work!

• (B) Lego

  Imagine a little boy with his first box of Lego. Initially, he arranges all of the pieces in a one–dimensional “straight” line that starts in the sitting room and stretches all the way through the kitchen, hallway and into his bedroom. He claps his hands in glee at his wonderful achievement! Some days later, he kicks his masterpiece into heaps which his mother gathers and puts back in the box.

  Next week he tumbles them back onto the floor and now he is ready to try his hand at creating — from the very same pieces — a two–dimensional art piece. Perhaps he even manages to spell his name: DANE. That survives for a while and, once more, is taken apart.

  Very soon he will discover the third dimension and, from the original pieces, start creating exotic feats of engineering. He is on his way to winning a Young Scientist of The Year award.

  This ability to use pre–existing, simple elements to solve significant issues is precisely what allowed the engineers of NASA and the crew of Apollo 13 to survive a near–fatal flaw during their 1970 mission.

  Shiva wins again.

• (C) Butterflies

  Bruce Lipton, a paradigm–busting cell biologist and Steve Bhaerman, a witty political philosopher, combined their talents in a book called, Spontaneous Evolution. Very succinctly they tell the story of the caterpillar–into–butterfly odyssey; using it as an allegory for human survival and evolution in our times.

  When the caterpillar somehow realizes that he has gone as far as he can go as a caterpillar, he becomes a recluse, building a house about himself that disconnects him completely from the external environment — including food sources. So, he begins to devour his own body, reducing it to goo in the process.

  Somehow — an embedded Higher Consciousness? — he releases or fashions “imaginal cells” which begin to promote a new program of transmutation. The old cells, however, fight desperately to keep the previous code intact. (Remind you of anything in our corporatocracy–owned, military/industrial–driven 21st century?) But this fight actually strengthens the imaginal warriors, who eventually win the day. The new program is fully installed and operational, and the result is “unimaginable”: a delicate, angel–like, multicolored aeronaut. Nothing is added or taken away; the cells are simply reorganized by a different algorithm.

• (D) Your humble TV

  About 50 years ago I saw a black–and–white portrait of a young woman. On closer inspection, I realized that it had not been done with pencil or charcoal or paint; it had been typed on an old–fashioned Imperial typewriter using the single letter, “x”! Simply clustering the “x’s” at different densities created the perfect image.

  That’s, basically, what your TV screen does, except the “x’s” are pixels. If your screen were divided up into tiny boxes of 600 rows by 420 columns, you’d get over a quarter of a million spaces or pixels, each of which can either be on/live/occupied (a “1”) or off/dead/unoccupied (a “0”). The almost infinite number of resulting combinations can be coded to represent letters, numbers, colors, sounds, symbols etc. Thus, everything you read or hear or see on your screen is simply a sequence of filled or empty pixels. This is based on Boolean algebra — a system devised in the 1850’s by the professor of mathematics — George Boole — at my Alma Mater, University College Cork, part of the National University of Ireland.

• (E) Express your DNA

  You — or, at least, your “spacesuit” — and, indeed, all life forms, are simply the hardcopy of an online program that, instead of “0’s” and “1’s”, uses four nucleotides — A, C, T and G. Change the sequence and you get the blueprint for anything on the planet, from hermit crabs in the ocean to hermit mystics in the Himalayas. No need to add or subtract; simply rearrange.

• (F) Learning to write

  When the Phoenicians invented the alphabet — around 1200 BCE — they managed to reduce the unwieldly (and very difficult to master) cuneiform of Sumeria and hieroglyphics of Egypt to 22 simple characters representing the basic phonemes of which all 7,000 spoken human languages are formed. The Greeks, Romans and Hebrews quickly jumped aboard. The ancient Celts reduced it further to 20 characters in their written language called, Ogham (pronounced Om), while English bumped it up to 26 characters.

  All Western and middle–Eastern written texts, from Shakespeare to “How to assemble a sofa from IKEA” are just combinations of these 20–plus symbols.

• (G) Pacha Mama and her children

  Shiva has been really busy in our times; the changes are coming fast and furious; somebody once quipped, “things are getting better and better, and worse and worse, faster and faster.” Shiva is committed to evolution. But here’s the thing: if Shiva has favorites, it most certainly is not those immersed in greed, violence and hoarding. Human hubris is exactly the opposite of what he rewards. His favorites are the life forms that are sensitive and responsive to the feedback loop of their own footprint on the belly of Pacha Mama. Those life forms that walk with humility and grace will ultimately thrive; those who grab and despoil will wind up in evolutionary cul–de–sacs.

  All of us 7.5 billion humans are currently filling in our Boolean “0’s” (fear) and “1’s” (love) on the screen of our Reality TV. The question is, will there be enough love pixels to put us on the road less travelled? Will there be enough imaginal cells to release the angel–like aeronaut in us?

  Shiva really doesn’t mind which species “wins” — as long as Love is the victor.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — July 18, 2017:  All mammals habituate to pleasure. No matter how much I love Rum Raisin ice–cream, after two tubs, the thought of it makes me want to throw up. In subsequent, time–spaced, binges, addicts need more and more of their drug–of–choice to reach the same level of a “high.” It’s literally wired into our neurotransmitters. The only two counter examples that I can think of are, dogs who want to play throw–and–fetch, and two–year–old humans who cry, “Do it again! Do it again!!”

Even the dictator basking in the adulation of the sycophants needs to raise the accolade–bar higher and higher. There is a story told about Stalin that, after he had finished speeches to his inner circle, he expected longer and longer standing ovations; and each “clapper” was afraid to be the first person to sit down lest he be executed for disrespecting the leader.

Closely related to the pleasure principle is the almost ecstatic relief we feel when a painful situation has finally ended: the toothache that almost drove me crazy is fixed; or the war that ravaged nations and led to horrific loss of life finally culminates in V-day celebrations.

And yet, on the other side of the coin, we have very short memories when it comes to personal or societal pain. Otherwise how could a mother look forward eagerly to getting pregnant again? Or how could we vote for a party that we had dumped, for corruption and ineptitude, two elections ago? Or how can we be persuaded to enthusiastically embrace the next “war to end all wars.”?

Which brings me to heaven — the idea, I mean, not the state/place. After some 1,000 years of waking up daily to blue skies, a warm shower, Rice Crispies and half–and–half, how does it feel to have to, once again, grab your harp or harmonica or banjo and music sheets, rush to the Aula Maxima, find your assigned spot amongst the infinite number of concentric circles of plush seats, ringed around the long–bearded old man in the center, seated between a good–looking 33–year–old with holes in his wrists and feet, on one side, and, on the other side, a large white dove?

Isn’t it beginning to get a little bit boring? Just a tad? But you can’t mention it to anybody because it seems sinful. So, boring and all as it may be, you try desperately not to think about the long, long, interminably–eternal future that stretches out ahead, because the alternative is worse: getting kicked out for ingratitude; and being sent down below where the sun don’t never shine, you get blistering hot showers, you feed on lumpy porridge and sour milk, the musical instruments are all out of tune and, in place of the conductor and his baton, are ushers with pitchforks. So, you grin and bear it.

If heaven, then, is about Love, it can’t be about routine. Perhaps the subtlest form of love is creativity, the ability to bring into being that which is not — the talent to imagine, with such focus, that your dreams get enfleshed. Maybe we get better and better at this over “time.” So, good, in fact, that advanced souls create entire universes “peopled” with heretofore non–existent life forms and events. Was St. Paul onto this when he said, “Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the human heart, what things God has prepared for those who love Him.”?

What if this doesn’t just mean that God is saying to each and every soul upon death, “Come on up here; look what I’ve created for you!” and then gives you a grand tour of all of His pre–existing wonders for you to play with? What if the greatest gift of God’s Love is to bestow on us the very ability to create, in Love?

So, now, newly–arrived soul, what are you going to create? Will your world look like planet Earth? Or your cosmos be similar to this universe? Will you be content with simply re–creating what you remember from here? Or will you break out and birth that which has never before been imagined?

Will there be creatures in your dream? And how will they resemble or differ from Gaia’s children? Will they be automatons, pre–programmed to act as the code dictates? Or will you risk giving them free will? Horribile visu, would you allow them to disobey you? What if disobedience and “evil” were part of the training wheels needed in order for these “children” of yours to, finally, become like you — an unconditionally–loving creator? Would you have the patience or perspicacity to allow for that?

Oh, one final question: is it possible that this here cosmos of ours is the work of such a student–soul, lovingly working elsewhere, under God’s serene gaze?

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — July 5, 2017 :

• (A) Your Inner Child

  You’ve witnessed it many times; perhaps, you’ve been the victim yourself; or even been the perpetrator of the crime: a two-year-old throwing a temper tantrum in a supermarket after his mother had said, “No! You may not have another candy bar!” and the enraged reaction, “I hate you!!!” — accompanied by stomping feet, bitter tears and lashing out at her.

  So, what, then, is your greatest strength, or your ultimate defense mechanism? Your ability to hate those who love you or your ability to love those who hate you? Are you most frequently like the two–year–old in the supermarket or the Galilean carpenter on the cross?

  This is not just a question that individuals need to ask of themselves; it is an even more important question when asked by communities or by nations. I’m hard pressed to find any “Christian countries” or “Christian” political leaders who, in their international policies, have acted according to the “love those who hate you” principle. In fact, only two such “Christian” leaders spring to mind: Mahatma Gandhi — a Hindu; and the Dalai Lama — a Buddhist.

• (B) From Pebbles to Earthquakes

  All stones — from pebbles to rocks — cast into a still pond, will cause ripples even to the furthest shores. The amplitude of the ripple will diminish with distance but the wave itself won’t give up until it reaches terra firma. Even the water-probing proboscis of a thirsty butterfly will send shock waves, in perfectly concentric circles, over the whole lake.

  When you scale that up, the results are enormous. The Andaman Islands tsunami of December 26, 2004 left 230,000 dead and another half a million people injured, as it spread its devastation east and west, north and south to the coasts of East Africa, India and Indonesia.

• (C) The Human Tsunami

  And that is how much power human energy can also have; whether it is conceived and nurtured in our thoughts, in our words or in our actions — all of which are simply different–sized stones. And the dropped stone always first affects those closest to the “drop site”; but, eventually, it will have consequences for everybody. Our dropped stones ripple out in space and in time; finally affecting every human being on the planet; and through them to countless generations yet to be born. Is it any wonder that Jesus warned, “you will be held accountable for every idle word?” He was not saying that God is some kind of a cosmic CPA but, rather, that we must exercise full awareness as we send our energy out into the cosmos.

  And there are two kinds of “dropping the stone.” One is from outside and above. This is what happens through a colonizing force, whether that be a military occupation, economic enslavement or cultural conquest. Here, the serenity of the pond is shattered by “outsiders.” The second kind of “stone drop” is from inside and below — as was the 2004 tsunami. This is the result of corrupt corporations, bought–governments and a captured press. Here, the serenity of the pond is shattered by “insiders.”

• (D) Developing a Personal Cosmology

  Each one of us organizes our responses to life according to an internal philosophy. Unfortunately, this philosophy is acquired, mostly, unconsciously through the osmosis of family, friends, education, religion and the mass media. Were we to be raised in a different culture or family, our philosophy might sound significantly different; because the sad thing is that, while love comes instinctively to a child, prejudice and hatred have to be taught.

  A second problem, apart from the fact that one’s philosophy is acquired unconsciously, is that — when we find ourselves in any situation — it is also accessed unconsciously. Most of us could not intelligently or comprehensively articulate what the elements and organization of our personal cosmology is; but each of us will think, say and do precisely what our (unconsciously acquired and unconsciously accessed) philosophy dictates. We always follow the program.

  This is why the first steps towards enlightenment — according to the Masters — is to “come awake,” to stretch into awareness, to open our eyes to our innate super–consciousness — the divine program imprinted on each soul. And this program is simply, and complexly, the many faces of Love as it interfaces with the many facets of incarnation. Every virtue is the appropriate form of Love demanded by a different need. Plato said that virtue is “excellence at being human.” I would tweak that a little and say, “virtue is excellence at being divine in human form.” By contrast, every vice is the absence of the form of Love appropriate to the circumstances being encountered; or, to complement my Plato–expanded definition above, “every vice is a failure to act divinely whilst in human form.”

• (E) Adaptogens

  An adaptogen is any commodity that can configure its elements to address the needs of a situation. In medicine, the term is used to refer to a substance e.g., Ginseng, that can rearrange itself to identify, target and treat a disease. For example, anything that boosts the immune system — the body’s own healing cornucopia — will ipso facto act as an adaptogen.

  In nature, water is, perhaps, the ultimate adaptogen. Not only will water find its way under, over, around or through any obstacle, but when it is “domesticated” and placed in a container, it will organize its shape to conform precisely to the inner contours, no matter how complex or irregular those contours may be.

  In human relationships, the two greatest adaptogens are fear and love; they’ve never met a container to which they cannot conform, nor a situation which they are not able to conquer. Which brings me back to my original question: What is your greatest strength, or your ultimate defense mechanism? Your ability to hate those who love you or your ability to love those who hate you?

  What happens, then, when love and fear confront each other? What happens when an irresistible force (love) meets an immoveable object (fear)? This battle of the Titans is the entire point, the raison d’être, the mission, the purpose of incarnation! Mostly, it looks as if fear (aka anger, greed, violence, war…) is winning the contest hands down. But that is a misreading of the data, because fear — intrinsically — is simply a misplaced form of love. Fear involves two missteps. Firstly, it is a succumbing to the illusion of separate identity: believing we are separate from God, separate from each other and separate from nature. And, secondly, then attempting to love, desperately, passionately and protectively this isolated, vulnerable, little self. Scaled up, xenophobic nationalism or fanatical fundamentalism is simply a group version of this lonely, fragile self.

  Since, then, fear’s primary energy is that of love — albeit a deformed version of love — ultimately Love is the victor. Eventually, all forms of Love return to their Source, erasing any and all deformations in the process. Absence makes the heart grow fond, hence Jesus will famously say, “there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety–nine who do not need repentance.” A victory wrested from the jaws of death is the most satisfying win of all.

• (F) The Secret

  If bringing to super-conscious awareness our heretofore sub–conscious personal cosmology is part of the task of incarnation, how can we choose among the very many popularly–peddled philosophies clamoring for our attention? “Here is the kingdom!” “No!! Over here is the kingdom.” If, as each claims, we can only win heaven by adhering to its unique scriptural tradition; if we can only avoid eternal damnation by eschewing the “false” teachings of all the other “fake” scriptural traditions, are we then destined to stand immobilized or to drown in the cacophony of these competing “revelations?”

  Gratefully, there are a few simple yet elegant orienting principles which can help us navigate these shark-infested ideological waters: Any system that depends on fear to win and hold adherents is not true revelation; any system whose members are cemented together by prejudice or xenophobia is not true revelation. When you meet a system with pithy mantras such as, “We are God’s chosen people”, “Outside the Catholic Church there is no redemption”, “You cannot be saved unless you accept Jesus as your personal savior”, “Mohammed is the Seal of the prophets,” smile compassionately and continue your search.

  When you find a grandmother God, who is so enamored of Her offspring — all of them, from bodhisattvas to banana slugs — that She videotapes all of their escapades and stores them in Her Akashic Records, the better to educate them in the twists and turns of awakening to their own inner divinity, tarry there, weary traveler. You’re home!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — June 13, 2017:

• A. Honest to God!

  A story doesn’t have to be true in order to be inspirational. In fact, the greatest stories of all never even happened and, yet, have been the foundational myths of great nations and powerful religions. Take the Passover-Pentecost-Promised Land legend for instance. There is not a serious bible scholar alive today, who believes that the Exodus ever happened or that Moses ever existed. And, yet, the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt after 430 years of slavery, became the rallying mantra for the survival of the remnant of the Judeans who returned from the historically-factual exile in Babylon in the 6th century BCE, some 700 years after Moses’ fictitious exodus.

  Pentecost was act two in the Moses drama. He received a new constitution of 613 articles from Yahweh on Mount Sinai, fifty days after the great escape. Hence the name, Pentecost (50 days in Greek) from the Hebrew, Shavuot (a week of weeks). This constitution would lick a ragtag bunch of disparate tribes into a united people and give birth to a powerful new religion – Judaism. The third act in the story would be the conquest of the Promised Land.

  And piggybacking on this three-part story, Christianity will rework the Passover, Pentecost and Promised Land tale and spin it into Easter, the Descent of the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of Heaven – the backbone of the most successful religious organization in history.

  Great ideas and great stories inspire great transformations; they don’t have to be “real” to effect these changes. That is why oligarchies create their own “real stories” (fake news) and eliminate the dissenting storytellers (the prophets).

• B. The Story of Numbers

  And storytellers have a fascination with special numbers. So, the numbers 7 and 40 keep appearing in the Passover-Pentecost tale: seven times seven days after the great escape, Moses ascends Mount Sinai and communes with God for 40 days. Thereafter the Hebrews will wander in the desert for 40 years before they enter the promised land.

  The fourth book of Torah (allegedly written by Moses) is called, “Numbers” because it contains the first census, by tribe, of the warriors of Israel. And in the most esoteric book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, the numbers 3^1/2, 7, 12, and 144 play a central role. In his version of the Good News, Luke places the Ascension of Jesus 40 days after his resurrection; Jesus had previously spent 40 days fasting in the desert before he began his public ministry; and Luke places Pentecost 50 days after the resurrection.

  Whereas the original Pentecost resulted in a 613-item code, written on stone, and called, “The Law”, the Christian Pentecost would be a single-item system, written on the heart (just like the prophet Jeremiah had predicted 600 years before Jesus) and based on love-of-God-with-one’s-whole-being. What a pity this version of Christianity was not practiced by the leadership of the post-Constantine church.

  And whereas the third part of the original story – the possession of the promised land – started with the Hebrew’s bloody conquest of Jericho in 1210 BCE, and ended with the bloody capture of Jerusalem in 1010 BCE, the third part of the Jesus version – according to the parable of the Good Samaritan – started in Jerusalem when a Hebrew traveler got mugged, left for dead and ignored by both Jewish priests and Jewish Levites, and ended up when he was rescued by “an enemy” who took him to Jericho and saved his life. A conquest by violence gives way to a conquest by love. The surest way – in the long haul – to overcome an enemy, is to respond with love. For 5,000 years we’ve tried to solve human problems by killing each other. Couldn’t we try love for even one century?

• C. Mystical Self-empowerment or Centralized Control

  The essence of John’s account of Pentecost is, I believe, the injunction to self-empowerment based on forgiveness. Let me explain what I mean. According to John, Pentecost and Resurrection happened on the same day. The resurrected Jesus materializes inside a fear-packed, locked room; he first offers forgiveness to the cowards who, when he had been arrested, had run and even denied they knew him. Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit [Pentecost], whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them and whose sins you shall retain they are retained.” The church latched onto this statement and made it a centerpiece of its own power-play, claiming that only the hierarchy, and its delegated representatives (priests) were empowered to pronounce the awesome phrase, “Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis” (I forgive you from your sins.)

  What Jesus was actually enjoining, on all his disciples, was the responsibility to forgive, not the privilege conferred on a few to be able to sacramentally bind or loose. The very first gift of the Holy Spirit was the loving insight that when we respond to the sins of other with compassion, understanding and forgiveness, everybody — victim and perpetrator alike — is set free spiritually, psychologically and, eventually, sociologically. On the other hand, when we respond to insult by hardening our hearts, everybody – victim and perpetrator alike — is chained, spiritually, psychologically and sociologically by fear and anger.

  What a travesty that this extraordinary insight was hijacked and turned into a weapon of control. Eventually, all the “great” institutions and organizations learn that centralization of authority, pyramidization of power and control of the story are the keys to bureaucratic longevity. The Roman empire learned this lesson well: again, and again, the wild, independent Celtic chieftains defeated Rome in individual battles, but Rome always won the war by organizing itself according to those three principles.

  Once Constantine shifted the seat of his empire to Constantinople, and had set the very resilient Christian church to be the guardian of his western flank, the church quickly adopted these three principles; and still operates according to them 1,700 years later.

• D. The Real Meaning of Pentecost

  The real message of John’s Pentecost, then, is the antithesis of centralization, pyramids and power plays. And Luke’s account of Pentecost spells it out in even more detail. In his version, Peter — the erstwhile bumbling fisherman — charismatically delivers a tour-de-force homily in which he quotes the prophet Joel. He tells his multinational audience — gathered from the Jewish diaspora for their own Pentecost:

  “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
  Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
  your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
  Even on my servants, both men and women,
  I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”

  St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, expands on this democratization of Spirit: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

  By those criteria, neither the Christian nations nor the Christian Churches are really “in Christ Jesus.” If there is neither Jew nor Gentile, how do we account for 2,000 years of Christian persecution of the Jews (Jesus’ own people and the founders of the Jesus movement)? If there is neither slave nor free, how do we account for the situation that led to the civil war in our country? A war which saw Christian Americans kill one million Christian Americans. If there is neither male nor female, how do we account for the Catholic Church’s refusal to ordain women as priests?

  To truly be “in Christ” is to recognize that all apparent differences among us — socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, nationality… are merely colors on God’s palette as She creates the masterpiece called, “Incarnation.” It’s a form of hide-and-go-seek: to see if we can penetrate the illusion of separation, and realize that God is playing all the parts? If not, we will continue to make war as we attempt to impale our own shadows with the weapons given us by the masters of deceit.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — May 30, 2017: [Introduction: This is a follow-on essay, as a response to an important comment on my essay of last week, which was titled, “Pray, What Do You Mean?” The comment from “Soter Phile” is, I believe, well deserving of a more-than-a-paragraph response. Hence, I have written this new essay.]

• The Paradox of Prayer

  As I intimated in the previous essay, prayer of petition involves a radical paradox because while it is true that this type of prayer has absolutely nothing to do with God, it is equally true that this type of prayer has everything to do with God. Hence Meister Eckhart, arguably the greatest Christian mystic of all time, said, “I pray daily to God to rid me of God.” This God, of whom we need to be rid, is the partisan, micromanager who created, interprets, enforces and punishes “the law”, and who doubles up as a cosmic bellhop, ever attentive to our egoic clamorings. He is ready to intervene at the drop of a hat – whether that hat be a yarmulke, a miter or a turban.

• The Experience of God

  The experience of God is, essentially, ineffable. In fact, while we may say that we had an experience of the ineffable, it is more precise to say that the experience had us. Once the experience has faded, and we are back again in this space-time, 3-D reality, we are left, simply, with some residual symbol of the Spirit’s passing. Inevitably, we try to make rational sense of it, and clothe it in concepts. Eventually a bunch of these concepts are joined into a map, which we may call, “theology”. But theology is three stages removed from the actual experience, and each stage filters the experience through the multiple distortions of individual and group fears, hopes and prejudices. A mystical experience can, then, be the basis for actions that span the entire spectrum from behaving like a Mother Teresa to becoming a suicide bomber. Meister Eckhart warned us about praying to or following this God.

• The Dance of God

  The problem, for us, is our failure to make two kinds of differentiation: firstly, between the Transcendence of God and the Immanence of God; and, secondly, between prayer of petition and all other forms of prayer. Let me pick up on those two vital distinctions.

  Firstly the differentiation between the Transcendence of God and Her Immanence. Of God’s transcendence, truly, we can say nothing. To ascribe any quality to this “God” (love, justice, jealousy — even the ontological category of “being”) is human hubris. Hence Lao Tzu will aver, “those who say, don’t know; and those who know, don’t say.” If we must speak of it at all, it must be in the language of parable, proverb, poetry, story or art. If we choose to speak, we must use Zen Buddhist koans (that force the rational intellect to give up e.g., “what is the sound of one hand clapping?); or Hindu’s “neti, neti”; or Christian apophatic mysticism e.g., “X? God is not X; Y? God is not Y.” In these great insights, we are invited to go trans-rational and trans-personal.

  We humans can experience the transcendent but it cannot be reduced to philosophical, theological or scientific data bytes. Immanence is how THE ALL THAT IS (the Transcendent), paradoxically, experiences the “other.” In meditation, the transcendent initiates the connection with the immanent, while in prayer, it is the immanent that initiates the connection with the transcendent. Our job, as an expression of the immanence, is to give birth to God. Again, Meister Eckhart said, “each one of us is meant to be the mother of God.”

  This game of God, what Hinduism calls, “Lila”, ends only when creation itself becomes both fully self-aware and filled with compassion. Then the immanent also becomes transcendent; as Buddhism says, then “nirvana IS samsara.” While this dance is in progress, however, and before the game is complete, it is important not to reduce the transcendent to the immanent. Just as the man Shakespeare is much more than his Collected Works, so too is the transcendent far greater than the totality of manifestation or creation (Her immanence.)

  And, now, the second distinction: between prayer of petition and all other forms of prayer.

• The Many Forms of Prayer

  I want to emphasize that, as I pointed out at the beginning of the previous essay, I have been speaking throughout of petitionary or intercessory prayer. There are, of course, many other types of prayer: praise, adoration, gratitude, thanksgiving, Eucharist etc. All of these are, indeed, focused on the Transcendent, in the humble realization that, while we are representative of the Immanence of God, Her Transcendence is much greater than the sum of Her manifestations.

• God’s Perfection

  One of Christ’s most provocative teachings was, “you must be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The English word, perfection, is a translation of the Greek New Testament word, “telos.” Perfection is constantly misunderstood; it does NOT mean living a stainless, sin-free life. Perfection means being committed to the purpose for which one incarnated. Hence the word, “teleology” — to strive to become the inner ideal. So, a little acorn is perfect, because it contains within itself everything that’s necessary in order for it to become an oak tree.

  Jesus seems to be saying that even “the Father” is perfect in that sense. So, the Father, too, is a work in progress, because the Father is NOT the ineffable, transcendent One (if he were, there would be no name or even words to express it.) Rather, the Father is the immanence, Source’s resolve to manifest a creation tasked with the journey from inorganic matter all the way through to complete SELF–awareness and radical compassion.

• Anthropocentrism

  Am I guilty of anthropocentrism, then, when I say that prayer has nothing to do with God? Am I advocating a narcissistic infatuation with the ego? On the contrary, I am advocating not an anthropo–centric focus but a cosmo–centric one. When we have, in the past, portrayed petitionary prayer as an appeal to an ineffable, transcendent Source, that was the real anthropocentrism, in which God was reduced to a ready–on–demand “pizza” delivery man; to be summoned and controlled through a tool kit of tricks (Moses’ raised hands to force God to grant victory over the Amalekites; or the Nine First Fridays winning eternal salvation for Catholics); or arm—twisting (Abraham haggling with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah); or pilgrimages (Mecca, Lourdes, Rome, Jerusalem, Sedona…)

  Indeed, there are “thin places” which have been impregnated with the fervent longing-for-God of countless pilgrims; and, hence, these shrines exude a transformative energy. But the Ineffable Transcendent One is just as much “at home” in a trailer park or homeless shelter, to any soul whose GPS is tuned to Source.

  If prayer of petition were really a successful technique to persuade the Transcendent Source to intervene in human affairs, then holocausts, genocides and pedophilia would be evidence of either His culpable disinterest or His pathetic powerlessness. Of course, it is neither, because it is the souls themselves who make the pre–conception contracts with each other to evolve human society by activating the immanent divinity, while the transcendent honors a Prime Directive, previously agreed to by all the parties. We have been given all of the resources to pass the exam, and the “teacher” is not going to retard our learning by feeding us the answers to the test items, or doing parts of the exam on our behalf.

• Self–realization

  In talking about the dangers of anthropocentrism, it is important to distinguish between self–realization and SELF–realization; the former being a tendency to inflate the ego, while the latter is the recognition and development of our true divine nature. We are, at core, bite–sized pieces of God; what Kabbalah calls, Netzotzim (sparks of the divine light.) “Realize” has two aspects: firstly, to intellectually appreciate and, secondly, to make it real by walking the talk.

  So, when Hinduism speaks of self–realization, it is not a New Age mantra to promote narcissism, but a deep, mystical understanding of our own core nature. And, of course, once I recognize the divine in myself, ipso facto, I recognize the divine in everybody and everything else. Hence, the greeting, Namasté, which means, “the divine in me recognizes and honors the divine in you.”

  Full self-awareness leads to the realization that, ultimately, only God exists; and that immanence is how transcendence experiences for Itself. Then the following “procession” is obvious: Life is a dream that the ego is having; the ego is a dream that the soul is having; the soul is a dream that Spirit is having; and Spirit is a dream that Source is having.

• The Purpose of Prayer

  I agree fully with Soter Phile that “the primary purpose of prayer [is] relationship with the living God.” I would add, however, that God is living inside every one of us, as well as being manifested in the totality of creation. This is not a relationship calculated to create beggars (us) and a benefactor (God) but, rather, to accelerate our dawning SELF-realization, and compassion (which is awareness of the divine in others.)

  It is important to realize that the transcendent is not a partisan, micro-managing, lawyer who constantly intervenes in human affairs to decide the outcome of boxing matches or who does and does not survive cancer. Prayer of petition is, then, accessing our inner divinity, even if particular prayer techniques or sacraments temporarily encourage us to project our needs onto an “external” God; or place our trust in an “outside” divinity.

  “You are my son; today I have begotten you” is all the soul needs to remember. The incarnation you volunteered for, and the life which is your mission, is like a jigsaw puzzle freshly spilled out of the box onto the table. The soul must trust that every piece that’s there is necessary, and every piece that’s necessary is there. The colors of the pieces and their contours, plus the image on the box cover, are all you need in order to reveal the face of God – which is the completed puzzle.

  The greatest prayer of all, then, is Christ’s “the Father and I are one; to see me is to see the Father.” This was not a narcissistic, megalomaniacal, unique claim, on Jesus’ part. It was a declaration of what each soul is meant to achieve. Hence, in the same teaching (the Last Supper in John’s Gospel), he also said, “the same things I have done you will do, and even greater.”

• Conclusion

  So, I repeat my assertion, that prayer of petition, paradoxically, has nothing to do with God (the ineffable Transcendent One), and prayer of petition has everything to do with God (the immanent, entropy-dissolving, evolving one.)

  So, pray always!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — May 23, 2017:  Prayer means many things. For one thing, there are lots of different kinds of prayer. Most people only think of intercessory prayer;  but that’s only one kind of prayer. There’s also prayer of praise, prayer of thanksgiving, prayer of adoration, prayer through meditation, liturgical prayer. But since most people think mainly about prayer of petition, let me focus this essay on that aspect.

Prayer of petition is where you want a specific outcome and you appeal to some God to effect that outcome. And what might be the explanation for “successful” prayer of petition? Some people think it’s merely chatting about the inevitable. Their argument goes like this: if God exists and is omniscient, then presumably he has factored all pieces into the equation – including the prayer that is to come ten years down the line. There is not going to be any change because God had factored in all the pieces and had come up with the final outcome. So, then, prayer of petition is just wasting your time or chatting about the inevitable, for God is going to do what God is going to do. I obviously don’t believe in that model.

A second notion is that prayer of petition operates like a satellite dish. Suppose I want to pray for my brother Séamus, who lives in Ireland, but because of the curvature of the Earth I can’t pray for him directly, so I have to bounce my prayer off God like a satellite dish in the sky and God directs my prayer down to Séamus. God is some kind of intermediary bouncing my requests onto their targets. I don’t believe that is true either, but a lot of people operate with that model.

A third explanation is what I call the Abrahamic model. It claims that you can argue with God. There’s a great story of Abraham bargaining over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and saying to God, “If there are 50 good people in these cities are you still going to destroy them?” And God says, “Well, if there are 50, I’ll save them.” “What if there are only 45?” “Okay.” “Suppose there are only 40?” “You got a deal.” “Suppose there are only 30, 20?” And he goes right down to 10. So, is prayer about arguing with God, bending his arm to get what you want? I don’t think that is how prayer works.

A fourth notion is what I call the Mosaic model. There’s a story of Moses in the desert where the Israelites are doing battle with the Amalekites. Moses goes up on a hilltop to pray; he’s got his hands raised and he’s appealing to God to help his side; as long as he can keep his hands in the air, the Israelites are winning. But his arms get tired and they begin to droop and then the Amalekites begin to win; so two helpers come to his aid, one on the left side and one on the right side and they prop up Moses’ hands; then the Israelites win. So, some people think there is a kind of trick to prayer. If you can figure out what the trick is you get what you want; it may be a pilgrimage to Mecca or doing the Nine First Fridays or going to Lourdes or whatever. I don’t believe there’s a trick to it at all.

I think of prayer like a sprinkler system in a lawn; you have all these underground pipes connected to one faucet, which is the source: God’s love for us. By this love, the water flows through the entire system and sprinkles the lawn that is human life. But there are nexus points where the pipes join and when they get clogged up, an area of the lawn gets no water. The sprinkler in that area isn’t going to work because it’s all clogged up.

What clogs it up is prejudice, unwillingness to forgive, and bad theology. The object of prayer, then, is to free up the blockages within the pipe system so that the water, which is within the system already, is free to reach the entire lawn.

I don’t think God is involved in prayer at all. I don’t think prayer is about asking God to make any change in the outcome. I think prayer is about human beings freeing the blockages in the water system so that others can benefit from our compassion. Prayer is about our consciousness and our mindfulness which allow the blockages within the system to be dissolved so the water can flow freely to its targets; I call it laserized intentionality.

We are not appealing for a transcendent entity to intervene in human affairs and change an outcome. But since we ourselves are bite-sized bits of God, we are, in a sense, praying to God; we’re trying to access our own inner divinity.  Except that for most of us it is really difficult to believe and so we create symbols outside of ourselves in order to try to focus what’s actually within; we project this image outside in order to see it more clearly, but then think the action is really out there.

It’s as if you are watching a movie screen and you think that John Wayne is actually riding across the stage from left to right and you take out your gun and start shooting at him; when, in fact, the action is happening in the projection box. But it is very boring to go into the projectionist’s box and finger the celluloid roll watching the movie one frame at a time! By projecting it onto a screen, we get the illusion of change, of time, of speed and of size. It allows us to see very clearly what is happening on the celluloid frames. But if we think it is actually happening on the screen we are deluding ourselves.

When we pray to God, it’s to help us focus on an image of something that’s within ourselves. But if we think it is outside and we are praying to an entity that is going to intervene from the outside, we get it wrong. Prayer is an aid to self-realization,  it’s an aid to becoming fully aware, it’s an aid to laserizing my internationality. It’s being driven from the God within me, and my target is the God within you or the God within whomsoever I’m praying for.

And it has five important components: Firstly, it’s only effective if it comes from a heart free of anger and fear. Secondly, the heart must then be filled with compassion (“to understand all, is to forgive all” – as the French proverb says). Thirdly, comes a laserised, radically-focused intention. Fourthly, complete trust in the universe/source to deliver the most benevolent outcome. And, fifthly, the detachment that flows from that trust.

Prayer never fails. If it is real prayer it moves the whole system into a deeper alignment with love.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — May 16, 2017:  The litany is depressing: violence, war, genocide, greed, crusades, inquisitions…pollution of our air, water, land, food…But these, in fact, are merely the collateral damage. The real  culprit is the unconscious, uncaring creating of “bad” karma. I believe that the only sin is being and staying asleep to our true nature, our origin, our mission and our home. Anything that is negative flows inexorably from that sleep.

Are we destined then to keep on creating negative karma? Can a single slipup sully an otherwise perfect scorecard and send the world into another spiral of darkness? Is there any way out? To these three questions the answers, in sequence, are: No, No and Yes.

There are now and there always have been Karma Gobblers amongst us. Buddhism calls them, bodhisattvas, Hinduism calls them, avatars, and Christianity has called them, saints. They practice the healthiest diet on the planet: they eat up and transform negative karma. It’s called Tonglen in Buddhism and consists of a conscious breathing technique where one takes on the suffering of others with the in-breath, transforms it in the loving furnace of the heart, and, on the out-breath, gives it back as happiness to all sentient beings.

Jesus taught it as forgiveness and praying for one’s enemies; as returning love for insult; and as answering persecution with compassion. He taught it by inhaling a history of intertribal warfare and exhaling the “Good News” that we are all equally beloved children of the same Abba (daddy).

As surely as Turkey Buzzards pick up carrion from the roads – thus cleansing our freeways – and convert it into tissue for their own bodies, these karma gobblers sanitize our psyches and convert our tragedies into love affairs.

Would you like to be a card-carrying karma gobbler? If so, I suggest five simple practices. Practice number one: forgive – not from your lips but from your heart. Forgive personal, familial, tribal and national insults. Practice number two: tell yourself better stories. And stories come in four basic flavors. The first flavor is your identity,  which is the story you fashion from a very tiny sample of the trillions of experiences you’ve had in this life. Simply pick a different sample;  no need to make them up; just choose more carefully, more lovingly. It’s never too late to have a happy past.

The second flavor of story is history,  the selective memories of the tribe or the nation. Mostly these are a non-representative sample that portrays us as victims of others’ aggression or as reluctant executioners in our “just wars.”

The third flavor is cosmology – the stories we tell of the origin, evolution and purpose of the cosmos. Since the scientific and industrial revolutions these have been wholly anthropocentric tales, which are becoming more and more godless, meaningless and hopeless. They speak of Nature as a brute, which we are entitled to conquer and pillage, until some future generation starves in the ecological desert we create and choke on the toxins we produce. Isn’t there a happier cosmology lurking somewhere?

And the fourth flavor is called, theology,  which is the account of our relationships with the gods. By and large these accounts have resulted in dogmas that promoted the narcissistic agenda of the aristocracy by invoking totally invented divine decrees to back up bloodlines and dominion. It really is pathetic; court historians and prophets-of-the-status-quo together with a priesthood designed to deliver a large, docile base for the pyramid of power, privilege and prestige. This was the very system against which Jesus railed so courageously and eloquently – and which crucified him so viciously and mercilessly. Surely, we can come up with a better theology than this.

Have I confused you with my sub-points? I’ve just completed practice number two – storytelling.

So here is practice number three: try to make as many people as possible smile today; fellow motorists, people in line at the Post Office; your spouse, children, friends and colleagues. Physiologically speaking, it takes far fewer facial muscles to smile than it does to scowl. Moreover, it feels  good and does  good.

Practice number four: be as curious as a child. Aren’t you jaded from being jaded? Open your eyes a little wider; then your ears; and, finally, your heart. Try to emulate the land-speed record of recognizing a million miracles in a minute. This creates a paradoxical “rush” that leads to a still, silent serenity.

A few nights ago, I was awakened by the sound of the full moon. I have no idea what time it was. I got out of bed and went to the window. My home is on the edge of a 500 feet high cliff. One hundred feet below me a long fluffy cloud was settled comfortably into the valley of Pena Creek. The moon had painted it silvery white and had projected the silhouette of my house onto the lawn next to the labyrinth. Then it airbrushed some of the colors back into the dark shoulder of Bald Mountain across the valley.

How many miracles do we need in order to wake up? How many hints do we need in order to remember? How many “Aha’s” do we need before we become enlightened?

Practice number five: talk to a tree; better yet, listen  to a tree! You can do this vibrationally through your hands or telepathically by softening your gaze and your heart. You will find that it is quite easy to become fluent.

The future belongs to karma gobblers because they are the ones creating  the future. They are the new species that will inherit the planet, just as Jesus promised. Sign up today.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — May 2, 2017:   When a soul volunteers for incarnation, it encounters many forms of limitation. Firstly, its cosmic spaciousness must now be cramped into a 3-D fetus-about-to-become-a-body; secondly, its cosmic intelligence is forced to operate in a tiny, 3-pounds piece of “wetware” that we carry between our ears; thirdly, time has to be invented in order to break up the gestalt of Unity Consciousness that the tiny brain can no longer comprehend (this allows for the chronological apprehension of the pieces, in an effort to re-constitute the original whole); and, fourthly, amnesia is created for who I really am and why I volunteered to come here.

Now the newly emerging ego begins to believe its own illusion e.g., “I (ego) am ME” leading to, “I need to fight to survive!” Then a very strange thing happens: upon meeting pure, unconditional love, the ego experiences fear. At a deep, primitive level, it realizes its days are numbered. Eventually, the ego will dissolve under the warmth of love. This subconscious realization creates panic – even terror.

To complicate things – and to shore up its own defenses – the ego quickly attracts all of the old fears generated, but not dissolved, in previous incarnations. Gratefully, these are modified by all of the love encountered and built up in those former lifetimes. Thus, the personality of the newborn is the mixture and balance of these previous experiences.

I used to believe that love and compassion were synonyms; now I realize that they are not. Rather, compassion only comes into being when love encounters fear. The all-encompassing, unconditional love begets compassion as it encounters egos that are imprisoned in fear. Compassion is love’s attempt to vicariously experience the pain of the fragile, suffering, separate self. At the other end of the meeting, upon encountering love, fear becomes terror, which then leads to anger, because it realizes its very existence is threatened. But no matter how long, how vigorously or how many lifetimes it resists, eventually it will succumb totally, and its own discrete, skin-encapsulated sense of isolated self will be drawn back into the seamless ocean of Source, on the ultimately irresistible waves of love.

The fear that held the ego in the prison of solitary confinement, appears at very many different levels – like a fractal. It arises in all relationships, in illnesses, in competitions and, finally, when the time comes to “shuffle off this mortal coil”. At a mega level, groups also have an ego. When this national, religious or racial ego is threatened, it falls easy prey to the memes and propaganda of fundamentalism, in any of its many guises; and then even “ordinary” people can be lead into the enthusiastic embrace of becoming agents of genocide.

Only love is real – everything you encounter is either an experience of love or a reaction to love. Love responds to all situations only with love. When the ego thinks angry thoughts, love responds only with loving thoughts; when the ego speaks angry words, love responds only with loving words; when the ego does angry deeds, love responds only with loving deeds.

Love is infinitely patient and will wait out countless incarnations, and eons of Earth time, until Her children – individually and as a species – melt their egos and return to Source.

Congealed fear – at individual and species-wide levels – is the origin of all violence; and unconditional love is the antidote. Within the 70 trillion cells in the average human body – each cell containing about 10 trillion atoms – are enough photons to light up a baseball stadium at one million watts for three hours. And there is enough love in one liberated human heart to light up planet Earth. Jesus did it, so did the Buddha and mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

How ‘bout you?

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — April 20, 2017:  We are all bite-sized pieces of God, small scale fractals of Source; but like little children who insist, “I wanna do it myself!”, we take the newly emergent pieces – self-awareness, free will and freedom – and attempt to develop our budding divinity.

Free will is the sticky part; it necessitates there being choices among which to decide. But the choice, originally, was NOT between good and a pre-existing evil but, rather, where to land on the spectrum of Service-to-self, at one end (let’s call it A-street) and Service-to-other at the other end (let’s call it the B-street).

It’s necessary, at the start of one’s life, to make many choices at the A-end (food, air, warmth, attention…), otherwise the little infant would not survive childhood. But if we camp out  there, survival morphs into selfishness, which morphs into greed, which morphs into fear, anger and, eventually, violence. Evil has arrived! We did not make a choice for a pre-existing evil – and God certainly did not create it.

Evil, then, is an emergent phenomenon, an energy that comes into being, and coagulates into a solid state, from living at the A-end of the spectrum. Like all energies, it is contagious, and others are quickly lured into its embrace. Eventually even entire communities and future generations are affected. Babies are then born into a world in which evil is a major player. It spreads quickly and reaps both global and even cosmic harvests. That is the real meaning of “original sin.”

And, suddenly, creation which was birthed only through love,  has its elements rearranged into a configuration that breeds odiferous evil. Let me illustrate that with a few metaphors.

• 1. A Jigsaw Puzzle

  Each soul is a fractal of God, a scaled down model with all of the same pieces and features of which Source Herself is composed. But each soul insists on being presented with the final image separated into all its constituent parts, so that “I can do it myself!”  However, if I make poor decisions while I attempt to assemble the pieces, I will wind up with a buckled puzzle that has lots of gaps and many pieces left over. It won’t look anything like the original. If I work the puzzle correctly, then I will reproduce exactly  the image of God.

  It’s important to note that the buckled version with the gaps and extra pieces did not exist before  my attempts. I wasn’t choosing to do it like that because God had previously made that version available as a possible outcome.

• 2. Water

  Two animals drink from a lake in East Africa; one a cow and the other a snake. They drink the same water, but the cow turns it into milk to nurture its calf, while the snake turns it into venom to kill its adversary. Likewise, it’s the way humans process their experience  that will wind up nourishing others or killing them. But the experience itself (the water) is pure love. Evil was not a pre-existing creation of God but, rather, a wrong re-working of the elements.

• 3. The Violin

  One of my grandfather’s favorite poems was, “The Touch of the Master’s Hand”  in which an old, discarded violin is being auctioned off for a pittance, until an old man approaches the auctioneer and asks if he may play a tune on it. The old man – the Master – plays it so beautifully that it brings tears to the eyes of the entire attendance. When the auctioneer re-starts the bidding, he is now getting offers in the thousands of dollars.

  Another person, without any musical talent, might have produced utter cacophony had he attempted a tune. The violin was made to midwife great music, but in the grip of the amateur, only discord emerges. Good music is what the violin was made to produce, cacophony did not exist until the amateur got involved.

• 4. The Artist

  I’m sure that many of Fra Angelico’s contemporaries had access to the self-same palette of colors that he had. But I’ll warrant a guess that for every one of his masterpieces, other painters produced visually blah or even repugnant canvasses. It’s the person holding the brush that determines what will emerge.

• 5. Emergence

  So, finally, a word about emergence. Emergence is what happens when the total is greater than the sum of the parts. It is never predictable from examining the separate pieces. For example, for the longest time, in cosmic evolution, both hydrogen and oxygen existed separately. However, when molecules of hydrogen and oxygen began to date, suddenly a brand-new substance, that had never existed before, emerged. We call it Water! That’s what happens when you get the jigsaw right.

  When Timothy McVeigh orchestrated the Oklahoma City Bombing on April 19, 1995, he simply combined two commercially available products – Ammonium Nitrate and Nitromethane fertilizer – to produce an emergent substance that killed 168 people. That’s what happens when you get the jigsaw wrong!

  Evil is not a piece created by God and tossed into the crucible of incarnation to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is a brand new emergent phenomenon created by those who live permanently on A-street.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — April 11, 2017:   He WAS UTTERLY incorrigible. They couldn’t bribe, threaten or cajole him. He was a very bright fifth-grade child who refused to work at school and was failing in every subject, especially mathematics. This little Jewish boy was very much loved by his parents. They tried their best to persuade him in every way they could to apply himself at school, but he wouldn’t. He was put in several different schools. He went to public, private and remedial schools and continued to fail. They sent him to the East Coast Academy for Young Gentlemen and he failed there too. Finally, in desperation, although they were Jewish, they put him in a Catholic school run by nuns.

He returned home the first day from school, went straight into his room studied furiously for three hours, came out at dinner time took some food and went back and studied for four more hours. This went on for the entire first week of school. Finally, on Friday, at the Shabbat meal his father said to him, “I’m really impressed and very happy with what you are doing, but what is so different about this school? Why are you applying yourself in this school when you didn’t apply yourself in the other schools? The boy said, “Are you serious? The people in charge of this school, they’re called, “nuns”, are ferocious. They don’t make idle threats. Every classroom has this huge color photo of another Jewish kid who was nailed to a plus sign

Did Jesus say that unless you get nailed to a plus sign you can’t be my disciple? What does the cross mean in Christian cosmology? What is the connection between wisdom and the cross?

When Jesus said, “Unless you are prepared to carry your cross, you cannot be my disciple,” what do you think he had in mind? Two thousand years later it is very difficult for us to figure out what he meant when he said; you have to carry your cross. Crucifixion is probably the single most vicious execution method every devised by human beings. It was devised by the Persians but reached its zenith under the Romans and it was in widespread use at the time of Jesus. There were two forms of crucifixion. One form had a seat on the cross for the criminal to sit on as he hung on the cross and this allowed him to die slowly from dehydration and exhaustion over a period of about seven days. There was another form, without the seat, so the person would hang with pressure on his hands or on his feet. When the pressure on the feet got to be too much, then he would try to shift his weight onto his hands and then his chest would get constricted and he couldn’t breathe. That is a very cruel way of killing someone.

Is Jesus advocating this kind of death for all of us? Is he so pessimistic about life that he is suggesting that this is what life involves? Is two thousand years of Christian misrepresentation telling us Jesus was advocating that everyone has to take this cross on his/her shoulder, proceed to Golgotha and get crucified? Of course, it has nothing to do with that.

He was not enjoining a masochistic addiction to pain and suffering. Rather, the cross means the embrace of the total human experience. It is only tangentially related to suffering. Of course, life sometimes involves suffering as it also involves successes and joys of various kinds. In any human life time there will be good experiences and tough experiences. Jesus is not advocating that we zoom in and embrace only the suffering. The cross represents the total embrace of being a human being on planet Earth and experiencing everything that incarnation brings with it. He is not just focusing on the negative or on persecution. He said at one stage, “I have come that you may have life and have it to the fullest.”

The horizontal beam of the cross represents our relationship to all living things and reminds me that I am connected to all sentient life forms; not just on planet Earth, but in the entire cosmos. It is my relationship to all that is.

The vertical arm of the cross represents my relationship with the transcendent; the ultimate ground of my being. The horizontal element connects me to all other beings and it connects me to the feminine face of God – as evidenced in creation. The vertical arm of the cross connects me to the transcendent aspect of God or His masculine. The intersection of these two pieces, where the vertical and the horizontal meet, is my connection to myself. I cannot be meaningfully in connection with myself unless I am in connection with God and in connection with all of my brothers and sisters. To attempt only one of these is to miss the point. People who attempt only a connection with each other and do not create a relationship with God are merely secular humanists; and humanism is fine, but it is not the whole picture. People who only have a relationship with God are on an esoteric ego trip unless it is balanced by the connection to everything else. Unless I am prepared to walk my talk in my relationship with my brothers and sisters, I have not understood what the cross is about.

When I bring these two meaningfully together, then and only then can I meaningfully believe in my relationship to my own core identity. We constantly misunderstand what these are about. We constantly focus on one or other element and forget that the two must come together. We then continue to reinforce this mistake by insisting that the cross means persecution or suffering. It has nothing to do with that. It is only tangentially related to the fact that every person will experience all the facets of what it means to be a human, including pain.

The cross is the ultimate illusion buster. The cross is the place that grounds me firmly in my physicality and my humanity and, simultaneously, allows me to reach for the transcendence of my inner divinity. It breaks through the illusion of a separate identity – that my brothers and sisters are ontologically discrete entities totally different from me. The cross is the ultimate breaker of all of these illusions because when I put the two pieces in place and I am truly in contact with my core essence, I find that the core essence with which I am in contact is the same core essence that manifested as you or the daffodils or the butterflies. When I am in contact with that there are no separations anymore and the illusions go.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — March 7, 2017:  Essay Number 1 of 4

• A Story

  A tribe in West Africa has an interesting protocol for a woman about to give birth. The elders sequester her, put her in a hypnotic trance and then ask the baby-in-utero two questions. The baby, they believe, will use the mother’s voice to respond. The two questions are, “What is your name?” and “What is your mission?” During the labor, the women of the village dance around the mother-to-be, chanting the baby’s name and reminding it of its mission.

  Years later, if the child – now a young man – engages in significant anti-social behavior, once more the villagers encircle him, chanting his name and reminding him of his mission. Inevitably the youth breaks down, throws himself to the ground in a fetal position and is re-birthed by the village in greater alignment with his name and his mission.

  A tribe in North America has an interesting protocol for a woman about to give birth. The elders insist that she leave her home daily and go to work as usual; and if she misses a day or is late, they ask her two questions, “Why were you late this morning?” and “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” During the labor, masked strangers surround her, grab her newborn and separate it from the mother.

  Years later, if the child – now a young man – engages in significant anti-social behavior, once more a group of strangers gathers round him chanting his prison number and locks him away from society. They are interested in neither his name nor his mission but merely in his sentence.

• (A) Some Definitions

  I need to tell you how I use key words, before I begin my thesis. Firstly, Karma is not a punitive mechanism whereby one is punished in later stages of life (or in a subsequent incarnation) for sins committed in a previous stage (or life) but, rather, an opportunity to learn and grow from past experiences, both positive and negative. Karma means coming awake to the realization that the hand life dealt you is precisely the hand you planned  before you incarnated. Fate is the hand itself and destiny is the result of how you play  that hand. Neither fate nor destiny means a predetermined, unavoidable outcome. Both are utterly malleable.

  Judgment is the ascribing of ontological value to a person or an event e.g., “he is a bad man” or “that was an unfortunate happening.” As many avatars, including Shakespeare averred, “there is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” Another of the avatars, Jesus, cautioned, “Do not judge and you will not be judged.” Are we then to approach life with a blank, bland mind? No. Whereas judging is not helpful, evaluating is vital.

  Evaluation is determining the appropriate response to a person or event. It is creative and life promoting, whereas judgment is stifling and shuts down the possibilities for growth.

  Justice is not merely the application of logic to a human legal code, whether it be that of Hammurabi in 1776 BCE, the Brehon Laws of the Celts or the Constitution of the USA. Justice is not about judging human behavior but about nudging human behavior into alignment with love.

• (B) The Stages of Culpability

  I’ve traced for myself over the years what I consider to be the development of the notion of culpability throughout the Judeo/Christian scriptures. I see it evolving in seven great stages. The first stage is what I call, “passing the apple.” It is Adam and Eve sinning and neither of them taking responsibility. Adam, when he’s caught blames his wife. His wife blames the serpent. The serpent blames God for creating him. So, nobody is taking responsibility. That’s stage one in the evolution of a notion of culpability.

  Stage two is that God then punishes everybody. Augustine will articulate this as follows: “Because of that first sin, our will is weakened, our intellect is darkened and our bodies are subjected to sickness and ultimately to death.” So, for this one sin, God is going to punish everybody.

  Stage three is the notion of the scapegoat. When the people of Israel were in exile in the desert, once a year all of the people would come individually to Aaron, who was the high priest, and confess their individual sins. Then Aaron would take a goat from the herd and impose hands upon it while passing the sins of the entire group on to the goat. Then he would hunt it off into the desert. Hence the origin of the word scapegoat.

  Stage four was when God repented of the vastness and viciousness of his vengeance and decided to scale it back some. Henceforth, he was only going to punish the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation. What a benign and compassionate God! He was only going to punish the great-grandchildren not the great-great-grandchildren.

  Stage five came about 600 years before Jesus with two great Hebrew prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel who were practically contemporaries of each other. They quoted an old Hebrew proverb that said: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Both prophets now declared: “No longer will this proverb be true. No longer will the children’s teeth be set on edge because the parents had eaten sour grapes. Henceforth, everybody is responsible for his own sin.” It may feel that that was the culmination and that it couldn’t get any better. But there are two stages beyond that and they are articulated by Jesus – the first one in his teaching and the second one in his life.

  So here is stage six: Jesus pointed out to the religious, self-righteous of his time, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees; you bind heavy loads and place them on people’s shoulders, but you won’t lift a single finger to help them!” Therefore, authorities who make burdensome, unjust or unnecessary laws are partially responsible for ordinary people’s inability to keep them.

  The final stage was not so much what Jesus had to say  about things as what he did  about things. Here was a man without personal sin, and lived his life in total alignment with God, but made a vow to dedicate himself to being responsible to, not responsible for, but being responsible to the sins of the world. He would take every situation he encountered and respond to it with love. That’s as moral, as compassionate and as courageous as it gets.

  See you next week!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — March 15, 2017:  Essay Number 2 of 4

• (C) Order – Natural or Created?

  Yuval Noah Harari, in his brilliant book, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, talks about two kinds of order: Natural Order is how the universe behaves, no exceptions e.g., gravity doesn’t play favorites; but all civilizations are built on what he calls, “Imaginary Orders” e.g., money, religions, empires. Imaginary orders differ from culture to culture and from era to era but belief in them and allegiance to them is so strong that it can unite vast throngs of otherwise disparate peoples. I love his thesis but I would prefer the phrase, “Creative Orders” to “Imaginary Orders” because we human beings are also an expression of nature, so whatever we invent is also a form of natural order. It is a very powerful order created by a branch of nature called, “humans.”

  These two kinds of order are the foundations on which the moral development of the planet can be gauged and built. Christ consciousness and Buddha nature weave these plaits together. These two, and other great teachers, were way ahead of their times.

  The trick is to embrace a long term – even an eternal – timeline. The really important evolutionary trends and the truly significant shifts can only be perceived from that lofty perspective. And this shift in perspective is vitally important when we come to tackle the issue of justice and compassion.

• (D) A Brief History of Justice

  Justice is one of those creative/imaginary orders, because it has varied widely and swung violently like a pendulum under the hand of a playful child. Here is a very brief look at some of the forms it has taken: crusades, inquisitions, torture, witch trials, executions – in a bewildering variety of really sick and grotesque forms – and honor killings in which the males of a family murdered their own daughters and sisters for shaming the family by being raped. Each “order” was formulated and administered by teachers who managed to convince the populace that the order was revealed by divine decree.

  Within those larger, “revealed” orders, individuals and groups fashioned their own sub-orders to bless vigilante justice, revenge and vendettas – where they took the law into their own hands.

  Wiser heads enacted the “innocent until proven guilty” principle and afforded the defendant the resources to prove his innocence. Of course, any system can be corrupted, so even this form can and has descended into “the best justice money can buy.” If justice is meant to be blind, it appears to be a very selective blindness. I will quote here from a previous blog of mine published on February 23, 2016:

  According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, by the end of 2013, the USA had the highest incarceration rate in the world – 716 per 100,000 of its citizens – or 2.3 million people. We are only 4.4% of the world’s population but account for 22% of the world’s prisoners. By 2007, it was already a $74 billion industry – and I do mean industry.

  From the 1920’s to 1980 the figure was less than half a million, but that number had doubled by 1990 and redoubled by 2000. Between prison, probation and parole there are now 7.5 million Americans under some kind of criminal justice control. And, of course, Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately represented in this rise. If you’re Latino, you’re almost three times more likely to be imprisoned than if you’re White; and if you’re Black, you’re almost seven times more likely.

  Three factors have led to this meteoric increase. The first was Nixon’s “war on drugs” beginning in 1970. The second was Reagan’s Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1980 which led to mandated longer sentences. And the third salvo was the emergence of the Prison-Industrial complex. In 1980, private prisons did not exist in the USA; now, as an example, Louisiana – which has the highest incarceration rates in the world – “houses” most of its prisoners in private, for-profit facilities. A 2013 Bloomberg Report states that in the previous decade the number of inmates in the for-profit prisons had grown by 44%. These corporations – such as the Correction Corporation of America – negotiate deals whereby the states guarantee to fill at least 90% of the prison beds or else reimburse the companies for the short fall.

  The final indignity is that these corporations then use their profits to lobby at state and federal level to introduce legislation such as “three strikes”, longer sentences and expanded definitions of “crime” to ensure a steady supply of client-inmates. For the lawbreaker crime may not pay but for the jail masters it pays handsomely.

• (E) True Justice

  If you believe that Laws are a revelation form a superhuman source, entrusted to a chosen elite, then justice is one kind of animal. When, however, you review the history and consequences of these competing and sometimes mutually exclusive systems, you realize that no taxonomy can explain their differences.

  But what if true justice is not about assuaging the bruised ego of either a person or a tribe but rather the effort to align behavior with soul’s purpose? What if it’s about adding a piece of the jigsaw puzzle so as to unveil the deepest order of all – Unity Consciousness? What if its true destination is choreographing human interactions under the baton of “the better angels of our nature”?

  Ipso facto, justice can never be midwifed by anger, rather it is equal parts protection of  society and compassion by  society.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — March 21, 2017:  Essay Number 3 of 4

• (F) Lawyering Up

  Both society, as an entity, and the person, as an individual, are entitled to protect themselves. But the balance between taking that into one’s own hands versus depending on law enforcement officers is a tenuous one. Even the term “law enforcement officer” rather than “peace officer” alerts us to how easy it is to toggle between radically different emphases.

  Mostly, justice has been a system whereby powerful elites have controlled and exploited the masses by:

  1. Creating the laws – legislators
  2. Interpreting the laws – judges
  3. Enforcing the laws – police officers and military; and
  4. Punishing infractions of the laws – “correctional” officers.

  Inevitably these elites have appealed to some superhuman order as the origin and justification for their “laws.” In the case of theocracies, or even scripture-quoting regimes, superhuman means supernatural – some god, through some prophet revealed the code. In the case of secular or atheistic regimes (e.g., communism), superhuman means that the “natural order” itself is the origin. And they have their own prophets e.g., Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao Tse Tung in the case of Communism.

  The revealed code is passed from the superhuman to the prophets, to the culture, to the teachers, to the parents and, finally, to the children. Born, indoctrinated and cued continually into the “rightness” of this code, people can be trained to embrace even the most ludicrous of beliefs e.g., the correctness of prejudices, wars and even genocide.

  The American philosopher, Ken Wilber, came up with a very neat way to analyze all sides of an issue. It’s basically a 2X2 matrix (a four-paned window) whose vertical columns are the Inside and the Outside of a phenomenon; and whose horizontal rows are the Individual and the Group. The top left-hand quadrant is the inside of the individual e.g., thoughts, emotions…; the top right-hand quadrant is the outside of the individual e.g., biochemistry, neuronal firing, behavior…; the bottom left-hand quadrant is the inside of the group e.g., shared beliefs, culture…; and the bottom right-hand quadrant is the outside of the group e.g., laws, infrastructure, school system, money …

  In this model, any attempt to understand the justice of a response must first factor in all four quadrants. Typically, conservatives emphasize the top row, and so the lawbreaker is 100% responsible for his own actions; there are no extenuating circumstance such as low IQ, abuse as a child, growing up in an educationally and vocationally impoverished neighborhood. And liberals emphasize the bottom row; so that criminals are always made by society and the individual lawbreaker is actually the real victim.

• (G) Forgiveness

  I learned the Pater Noster originally in Gaelic and English, but didn’t really get Christ’s teaching on forgiveness. For that matter, I don’t think the Christian churches themselves fully understood it either; and they definitely did not practice it, either in their dealings with insiders (inquisitions) or outsiders (crusades). When I learned it in Swahili and Kipsigis, I finally got it. The Swahili version says, “Utusamehe makosa yetu kama vile tunavyowasamehe na wale wanaotukosea.” The phrase, “kama vile tunavyowasamehe” means, “in exactly the same fashion that we forgive.” The little words “as” (in English – forgive us our sins as  we forgive) and “mar” (in Gaelic – maith dhúinn ár bhfiacha mar  a mhaithimidne) fail utterly to do justice to the concept of reciprocal and equal forgiveness. It’s not that God is playing quid pro quo or advocating a tit for tat mentality but, rather, that a heart holding hatred in is commensurately incapable of letting love live. The grace of God, like sunlight, is ever present but the moody clouds of our inner darkness and the outer umbrellas of our discordant behavior interfere with its effects.

  In the market places of Kenya, the traders use the debe as a measuring device. The debe is a discarded, tin container that once held petrol. It measures about 12”x12”x18”; and the traders used two different versions of it. The “whole debe” was the debe in pristine condition – sans petrol – and was used to measure grains (millet, wheat, maize kernels…) It would be heaped up in a pyramid, so that if you were to add another single grain, you would start a landslide. It’s interesting that Jesus used the same image when speaking of the reciprocal nature of giving, “full measure, pressed down, heaped up and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.”

  The other version of the debe was called, “a crushed debe” and this one was beaten in on all four sides and at the bottom, thus radically reducing its carrying capacity. It was used to measure potatoes; and if a large spud got wedged in the “waistline”, the entire bottom could be empty, while the debe appeared to be overflowing up top.

  Many of these women merchants – and they were always women – were members of my parish, so when it came to explaining Christ’s teaching on forgiveness, I would say to them, “When you approach God and ask him for a whole-debe filled with compassion and forgiveness, he will do so; but if your sister approaches making the same request of you and, instead of a whole-debe, you only give her a crushed-debe of compassion and forgiveness, then don’t expect God, to ever again offer you a whole-debe when you ask for it.” The image made complete sense to them.

  And I would emphasize to them, “it’s not that God is ever unwilling to use whole-debes but, rather, when you insist on using crushed-debes for you sisters, those are the only debes subsequently available to you.”

  There is actually no such thing as a half-hearted gesture. The heart cannot divide up its love output. Only the ego can measure out micro doses of compassion or titrate forgiveness in milliliters.

  Perhaps, the greatest testament to our shared origin is attributable to modern medicine; it’s the phenomenon of the NDE (Near Death Experience.) And of all the facets of the NDE, the one that most fascinates me is the Life Review. The NDE’r is temporarily outside of time and so every significant event of his life is re-experienced in full, 3-D, high definition, wrap-around Dolby sound.

  Moreover, as I re-experience an exchange that involved Mary and Denis and Larry, I get to experience it as  Mary and as  Denis and as  Larry. And it’s not just that I’m thinking, “I wonder how that exchange felt to them?”, rather, for the purpose of the review, I become  each one of them simultaneously, until I have understood the full, karmic, knock-on consequences of my every thought, word and deed. And that, of course, is merely the innermost circle of an infinite  series of concentric circles that ripple out and affect the entire gene pool, present and to come. Love carries a truly cosmic responsibility; and anger does truly cosmic damage.

  As we’ve juggled the twin concepts of the utterly ineffable transcendence of God, and the palpable experience of Her all-present immanence, we’ve created schizophrenic theologies that oscillate between a Self-loving and a Self-loathing God; we fashioned a bipolar divinity in which compassion is God forgiving Himself and justice is God punishing Himself.

  Isn’t time for a new theology?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — March 28, 2017:  Essay Number 4 of 4

• (H) Forgiveness – The CliffsNotes

  During a recent homily, somebody asked, “Is there a faster way to learn forgiveness?” The following is my response. There are two quick tricks; firstly, changing your cosmology; and, secondly, finding metaphors/analogies that make sense. Let me treat of them in sequence.

  Check your cosmology. Really check it. If it tells you that you only live one life, then all insults have to be repaid in the here and now; otherwise, you’re a loser in a zero-sum game. The winner is not the guy who dies with the most toys, but the guy who gets in the most blows before the final bell. Life is a boxing match and only one fighter’s hand is raised in victory by the referee.

  If, however, your cosmology tells you that life is an eternal stream  that occasionally goes subterranean (the bardo states) but always re-surfaces (reincarnation); and if your cosmology further states that you make Pre-Conception Contracts with many other souls to incarnate together so as to create a life in which each one gets the ideal circumstances to develop the virtues that are especially meaningful, then the cut and thrust, the blow and parry are all part of the training. It doesn’t make any sense to get mad at the sparring partner who just landed an uppercut, because your training is about how to ride with the punches.

  Moreover, in this Pre-Conception Contract, you purposefully chose members from two different kinds of groups: your soul pod (people with whom you’ve had many previous loving incarnations) and a shadow pod (people with whom you’ve had many previous difficult incarnations.) And, believe it or not, the latter group is the more important one for the purposes of your harvest. Forced to choose between fertilizing or weeding his crop, the experienced farmer will opt for the weeding, because fertilizer is blind and encourages the weeds and the crop with equal enthusiasm. The shadow pod agrees to provide your weeders during an incarnation. You can say, “Ouch!” when they pluck, and then hang on to the pain and resentment; or you can say, “thank you!” when it comes to harvest time, and you realize how they have helped you grow.

  Nobody is in your life by accident or coincidence but, rather, by design. It is a mutual agreement; that is the whole meaning of karma: the hand you were dealt at birth, is exactly the hand you planned as you signed up for an Earth Experience. And each of the players – the good, the bad and the ugly – were interviewed and vetted for their contributions to your lessons in life. They get to play supporting roles in your life, in which you are on stage 24×7. And, of course, you are simply playing a supporting role in their lives, in which they are on stage 24×7.

  Added to the mix is free will, so everybody is allowed to play their cards any way they want – well or badly – and then the drama takes on a life of its own. But the truth is that there is neither a designated plot nor a carefully written script for this life drama. It is always “improv theatre”. The only things you know for definite, as you enter stage left, are the previous performances of the characters – your’s and their’s – and the lessons you hope to master by spending another life drama with the same cast of characters.

  The second trick is to choose helpful metaphors and analogies. So here are two. Imagine you are sailing by an archipelago of islands, dotted along a 500-mile stretch of ocean. From your perspective, these are discrete, disconnected lumps of real estate; but if you were to trade your sail boat for a submarine, you would notice that as you go deeper, the islands reach out to each other until finally you realize that they are all simply eruptions from the one global crust.

  Or take a mycelium, the underlying womb out of which mushrooms emerge. The biggest organism on planet Earth is a mycelium that undergirds four states of the USA. DNA sampling shows that the trillions of mushrooms are all siblings from the same mother. Similarly, all human beings – in fact all sentient beings on planet Earth or elsewhere – are just manifestations of the one, universal life Source. Once you realize this, you realize also that all forgiveness is simply letting go of my anger at myself. Why would I get angry at my feet for stumbling and hurting my wrist in a fall?

  Just as all wars are civil wars and all violence is an autoimmune reaction so, too, all forgiveness is self-forgiveness. It means setting myself free – and, therefore, setting you free – from negative shackles and energies, which have benefitted neither of us but, rather, crippled both of us. Moreover, interpersonal conflict does collateral damage to the wider, cultural environment. The greatest toxins on the planet are not oil spills, chemtrails, fossil fuels, nor garbage dumping – but anger, fear, anxiety, xenophobia and revenge. While the former clog the physical arteries of the planet, the latter clog the etheric and astral arteries of Gaia.

  The most effective form of chelation is forgiveness!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — February 28, 2017:

• “The Good Ole Days”

  Do you remember the good ole days when you were poor and powerless, but you knew you belonged to a religion that was “the one, true Church”? Wasn’t that really comforting? Didn’t it make up for the fact that you lived in this “vale of tears”, because not only were you guaranteed heaven in the afterlife, but you had the added satisfaction, in this life, of knowing that you were one of the chosen ones? Didn’t those twin beliefs make any vicissitude bearable?

  You followed an infallible leader who, himself, was a “prisoner in the Vatican”, surrounded by hostile, secular and atheistic regimes, but piously suffering these indignities as he communed daily with God and channeled infallible teachings from Jesus to his scattered, global flock in a series of inspired encyclicals. You had simple, black and white guidelines (the ten commandments of Moses, the six commandments of the Church and the provisions of the Code of Canon Law). Basically, all you had to do was avoid sex, abstain from eating sausages on Fridays and go to mass on Sundays.

  If you kept all of these, you were guaranteed heaven. You could even claim a spot ahead of time by doing the “nine first Fridays” (confess your sins, receive Holy Communion, and pray for the pope’s intentions on the first Fridays of nine consecutive months.) Even if you subsequently led a life dedicated to debauchery, when you met Peter at the pearly gates, you could give him a wink and a nod and say, “dude, check the records, I have a reserved seat!”

  If you didn’t do the nine first Fridays, and were about to die in mortal sin, you could get shriven by a priest, and get out of jail free. If a priest weren’t available, you could say an act of perfect contrition. That way, also, you forced Peter to admit you. Now an act of perfect contrition is a strange bird, because it meant that at the hour of death, after a lifetime of ignoring God, you were genuinely contrite that your sins had offended God. Any hint that your sorrow was merely a fear-based ruse to avoid hell, would void the warranty and you’d be destined instead for auld Nick’s place.

  To make things even easier, the church provided us with a catechism. That way you didn’t have to figure out any of the answers; or even any of the questions. (I must confess here that I am guilty of writing a catechism myself, in Swahili, while I lived in Kenya.) No priest, during my childhood, ever encouraged his flock with Socratic questions; and when a priest was stumped by the query of a curious child, there were two classic responses: “It’s a mystery; you’re not supposed to understand it” or “you must have faith.”

  When you finally made it through the pearly gates and were escorted to your appointed seat, part of the joy and reward of heaven was that you had a spectator’s seat to look down at the suffering of the damned.

  And, then, there was a very simple and elegant hierarchy. At the apex was the pope, the infallible vicar of Christ; below him was the Curia – a band of Seraphim; followed by the lesser cardinals – archangels every one. Bishops were angels and priests were saints. At the bottom were laymen; and at the very bottom were lay women. But this was a hierarchy with a difference because even the lowliest Catholic lay woman was more precious, in God’s sight, than a male Protestant prince or pagan president.

  Beyond this glorious pyramid lay the slums, populated by the “perfidious Jews” who killed God and rejected Jesus, the dumb Protestants who blew their chance of salvation by seceding from the one true church, and utterly ignorant pagans who never had a chance to begin with – this included most all of the residents of Africa and Asia.

  As a boy, I marveled why each country in the world didn’t simply elect a Roman Catholic bishop as president so that instant peace, prosperity and justice might break out. Then I read about the Borgias, the inquisition, the crusades and the conquistadors; and the first niggling doubts raised their pernicious heads. No amount of denial managed to dispel them; and there was no encouragement from any “authority” to bring them into the open, research them, talk about them and resolve them.

• The End of “The Good Ole Days”

  This entire edifice began to crumble under the twin laser beams of ecumenism and intelligence. Vatican II, which oiled the rusted hinges and opened the shutters of Roman Catholic theology, allowing the wind of the Spirit – Ruah Yahweh – to clear the cobwebs of two millennia of close mindedness, ushered in a new era of dialogue with Jews, Protestants and Pagans.

  Now the old certainties are gone and suddenly life is much more complicated. Part of me yearns for the safety of the old prejudices which made all the sufferings of incarnation worthwhile. Of course, how an all-merciful God would reward the sufferings of the “others” by further consigning them to everlasting suffering in hell, is a bit of a conundrum.

  So, we gotta problem. What happens when we can no longer call upon our gender, socio-economic status, caste, creed, color, religious affiliation or national identity to make us feel special? Well, we can either sink back into the awful anonymity of the faceless masses or we can soar into Unity Consciousness whose currency is unconditional love for all of God’s creatures.

  Incarnation, then, is not about being special; but it is about being unique. The last things God-the-grandmother whispers in the ear of every soul who volunteers for planet Earth (or any other world) is, “don’t forget your secret name; and don’t forget your sacred mission, which is to awaken your planet to Christ Consciousness.”

• Whence, Then, Corruption?

  Possibly the most impressive peaceful mass transition of power, in human history, took place in South Africa under the inspired leadership of Nelson Mandela, archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Based on the three concepts of confession, contrition and forgiveness, centuries of cruelty, oppression and discrimination were expunged. But, unfortunately, it has not lasted. The new governing party of South Africa, the ANC (African National Congress) has proved itself every bit as corrupt as the colonialist Boers had been. Poverty continues among the Black community who are now joined by a new wave of homeless, hopeless White South Africans who live in tent cities.

  The Boers were not corrupt because they were White, they were corrupt because they were in power; and as the loyal but intelligent Catholic English aristocrat, Lord Acton, said, when Pius IX was promoting the idea of papal infallibility in 1871, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The ANC officials are not corrupt because they are Black; they are corrupt because they are in power.

  At what stage does affirmative action deteriorate into revenge, and we simply flip the switch on oppressor and oppressed; toggle between perpetrator and victim? Why would White homeless South Africans be any less deserving of compassion and justice than Black homeless South Africans?

  But, in truth, that situation and many like it, do not appear to be driven mainly by revenge, though it may be a minor factor, as much as it is by the corruption of power. There is a huge difference between power per se and power over. Power over is the megalomania born of a scarcity mentality and fanned into full anxiety by the fear of being powerless. Power per se is the full alignment with our God-given nature, and the recognition of that same nature in all other creatures. Any power struggle, then, is seen for what it really is – your right hand attempting to arm wrestle your left hand.

  Why don’t you, instead, just shake hands with yourself?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — January 31, 2017:  In this essay, I want to discuss True Lineage. And True Lineage is not the same thing as linear descent. I will mention three great world religions and tie my thesis to them: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

According to Judaism, the chosen-ness is passed on through physical descent. God chose Abraham and it is through physical descent from Abraham that the covenant promise continues. It goes from Abraham, through his son Isaac, through Isaac’s son Jacob and so on down the line.

Christianity, in its attempt to usurp Judaism, said, you people got it wrong. You are no longer the chosen race, because it is not physical descent from Abraham that makes one the covenanted people. What makes us the chosen race is that we demonstrate the same kind of faith that Abraham had. And, beginning with the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, faith came to mean a cerebral acceptance of the corpus of church teaching – the embrace of a creed. They had substituted Credo (I believe, I give my head to) in place of Cordo (I give my heart to).

Then, six hundred years after Christianity, came Islam. The Muslims say that while the Jews claim descent through physical means and the Christians claim it through faith, they – the Muslims – have both bases covered. As far as physical descent is concerned, they rightly point out that Isaac was not the first child of Abraham. Abraham had a child before Isaac who was called Ishmael. He was born of an Egyptian slave woman and was some years older than Isaac. So, if you are going to speak about linear descent and first-born, we Muslims have the right because we are descended from the first-born child of Abraham.

And, if you Christians claim that it is faith that makes the covenanted people, then know that our very name means faith. The word “Islam” from the Arabic root “Salema” means: submission and obedience. In the religious sense, Islam means submission to the will of God and obedience to His law.

(Of course, figuring out exactly what God’s law is, creates all kinds of opportunity for human hubris and prejudice. In my opinion it most certainly is not Sharia nor Canon Law nor the 613 precepts of Torah. But that is a discussion for another essay.)

So, Muslims say, in effect, Abraham was the first Muslim, since, demonstrably, he was the first faith-filled person within the scriptural traditions of the peoples of the book – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He is the first person to totally prostrate himself and to submit to God.

I think, in some sense, the Muslims have it right. Theirs is the best articulation of the three because what they are pointing out is that it is an attitude of submission to God that puts us in the lineage and makes us people of the covenant. It is not about miracles, it is not about extraordinary births or extraordinary conceptions, it is not about the miracles or the signs and wonders of coming into incarnation nor resurrecting after death; rather it is about being in alignment with the law of God and the love of God. It is about alignment with is-ness, alignment with the God who plays no favorites.

If we think God looks down on this vast universe of ours, with its one hundred billion galaxies, and picks the Milky Way as his favorite; and if we think, further, that he then chooses, within that galaxy, our sun with its nine planets; and if we think he then chooses our planet as his favorite; and from our planet he picks out one special group of people to love. If we think that is who God is, we do not know God. For God is the God of all. In fact, all that exists is simply God in drag. God is neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Muslim. God is She who favors neither daffodils above dinosaurs, nor earwigs above elephants, nor human beings above humming birds.

Why do we constantly try to force God to decide among us? We tire Him with our constant, insecure whining, “Do you prefer them or us? The Blacks or the Whites? the Jews or the Christians? the Muslims or the Hindus? Whom do you really prefer?” What a question to be asking God! Our insecurity constantly wants to push God into choosing sides. Of course, there are no sides. God is the Source from whom all of creation emanates in a delightful dance; and when we are in alignment with that, then we are standing in the lineage God.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — January 24, 2017:  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Homo Sapiens,

Here is the end of term report card for your son, Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

• (A) Our School’s Purpose and Reputation

  We pride ourselves on caring for the full, integrated welfare of our students – their physical, emotional, intellectual, mental, social and spiritual needs. Our staff is composed of world-recognized leaders e.g., In Civics, Mr. Confucius; in Psychology, Mr. Gautama Siddhartha; in Spirituality, Mr. Yehoshua Christos.

  Our students consistently score in the 99^th percentile in world-wide tests. And we maintain an ongoing interest in their welfare after they have graduated.

• (B) Your Son’s Previous Schooling and Our Approach

  I don’t have to remind you that your son was expelled from his previous school – The Garden of Eden High School. We agreed to accept him, only on condition that he achieve and maintain high grades, cooperate with the staff, align himself with the school’s mission statement, and form healthy relationships with his fellow students. To that end, we set up for him an I.E.D. (Individualized Educational Program) and assigned him to the care of the top three teachers previously mentioned.

• (C) His Behavior and Its Consequences

  His behavior has been so disruptive that several of his fellow students have been withdrawn from the school by their concerned parents. This, as you can appreciate, is devastating to those students and an unwarranted assault on our school’s previously impeccable reputation. He has refused to adopt the I.E.D. and seems immune to the inspiration, counsel or directives of his assigned team of teachers.

  After a careful and in-depth analysis, we are of the opinion that your son is a psychopath. He evidences many of the clinical symptoms: frequent lying, artful manipulation of situations and people, failure to exercise compassion, perpetrating and seemingly enjoying the discomfort and pain he causes others, and displaying no evidence of either guilt or contrition.

• (D) A Sample of His End of Term Results

  I will just focus on three areas so as to give you a flavor for his performance and issues to date.

  (a) Science – He achieved an A plus here. He is obviously highly intelligent – as one might infer from his name – and excels in the sciences. However, he frequently leaves the laboratory in a dreadfully messy state, and has, on occasion, conducted very dangerous experiments, without either permission or forethought. Some of these have resulted in costly damage to school equipment, and have endangered the lives of fellow students.

  (b) History – We awarded him a D minus here. In our high school, as you may recall, we prefer to call it Karma. Your son does not seem to take this topic seriously, and he consistently repeats behavior which, in the past, has resulted in poor grades for him and difficulties for fellow students. He does not take feedback, however constructively or lovingly given.

  (c) Foreign Languages – We awarded him an F here. In order to appreciate their place in the Natural Order, we insist that our students become fluent in two foreign languages, Florish (the language of plants, trees, grasses etc.) and Faunish (the language of animals). Three members of our staff – Ms. Pacha Mama, Ms. Vandana Shiva and Mr. Francis of Assisi – are recognized as world leaders here. But they have failed to interest Homo Sapiens Sapiens in either language.

• Conclusion

  It is very doubtful that your son will graduate. In fact, it is increasingly likely that he will be expelled lest he become the cause of more parents withdrawing their children from our school.

  Sincerely Yours,

    God the Mother

  Principal
  

  Gaia High School Conclusion – It is very doubtful that your son will graduate. In fact, it is increasingly likely that he will be expelled lest he become the cause of more parents withdrawing their children from our school.

Patheos.com — January 17, 2017: The journey from gods, to God, to Source is a long, arduous one. It starts with the amnesia of incarnation, and wanders through the labyrinthine illusions of ego, until it finally finds itself on the pathless mystery of the soul, on the verge of merging. Let me try to parse that journey.

• (A) The gods

  Those whom we originally worshipped – the gods – are really the thinly disguised personifications of the vices and virtues of individual humans writ large. We took the very best and the very worst in our own behavior, magnified it, and then ascribed it to the sky beings. This allowed us to worship greed and violence, while admiring the theory (though not the practice) of love, justice and compassion. In fact, these gods were no less and no more moral than ourselves. They had dalliances on the Olympian heights that overlooked the plains of plainly inadequate plain people, who simultaneously feared and attempted to emulate the lifestyle of these divine beings.

• (B) The One “true” God

  Then about two and a half thousand years ago, we graduated to monotheism. No more gods, only a one, “true” God – the omniscient, the omnipresent, the omnipotent, the just, the vindictive, the irascible, and the jealous. He is the thinly disguised personification, not just of individuals, but of the tribe itself, writ large. We took the very best and the very worst in the behavior of the entire nation, magnified it, and then ascribed it to him. And he returns the compliment, even today. He blesses both our National Security paranoia and our denominational chauvinism, and he allows us the right to conquer other tribes, enslave them, plunder their resources – and then convert them.

  In its most virulent form it results in progeny conceived by an IVF procedure, in which the sperm is donated by the secularists (politicians, economists and the military-industrial complex) and the ovum by fundamentalist religion. It is assayed in a solution of xenophobia, fear, prejudice and self-righteousness. And it always gives birth to a demon child, an anti-Christ who promises salvation but delivers carnage and global destruction.

  This is the divinity of which Meister Eckhart spoke, when he said, “I pray daily to God to rid me of God!”

  He is a God with three sets of rules. The first set is one that governs his own behavior. He is entitled to break all of his own commandments with impunity, e.g., “’Thou shalt not kill”, but he can wipe out all of creation in a fit of pique. The second set of rules is for his chosen people (he always has one, and it is always “us”). This is a code that governs their internal relationships, and by and large, it’s a pretty sophisticated one, unless you’re a woman or gay. Then the third set is for his chosen people in their dealings with outsiders (gentiles, pagans, infidels etc.) Here, not only murder but even genocide is permitted and, occasionally, even mandated.

  He is a God who has long since outlived his usefulness. I hope Nietzsche was referring to him when he shouted, “God is dead!” Moreover, I hope Nietzsche was correct in his diagnosis. We can no longer afford such a God. He is very high maintenance and has done far too much damage to the human family. But we shouldn’t really be surprised; that was his avowed intention when, having detected our efforts at building the first skyscraper at Babel, he declared in Genesis chapter 11, “Let us go down and confuse their language…”

• (C) Source

  It’s high time to retire that kind of an insecure God, give him a pension and then set out in search of Source. The gods are to God as the persona is to the ego, and God is to Source as the ego is to the soul.

  We know we are approaching Source when we begin to see that all life forms, in all dimensions, all worlds, all galaxies, and all universes are equally beloved and deserving of respect. Then we know that there are no chosen people, nor even a chosen species. And that there is only one rule for all. It is to love with all your heart and soul and mind and body. Because my neighbor IS myself.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — January 10, 2017: Maybe it’s the cold weather following upon four full days of welcome rain that precipitated the vision during this morning’s meditation. It reminded me a lot of the dream/vision I had, with its images and voiceover. So I’m going to treat this one in the same way. First, I’ll describe the images that came unbidden; then I’ll report the voiceover that explained the symbolic meaning of the images; and then I’ll unpack the experience as a spiritual lesson for myself, and for you, if it makes sense to you.

• (A) The Images

  I see planet earth, this blue-green jewel with its multicolored landmasses dotted about as continents and islands in the deep azure oceans. My attention is directed to the two poles around which great mile-deep ice shelves are hanging on, while the globe pirouettes. As I watch, they begin to “calve”, birthing icebergs that crash into the freezing waters, snapping their umbilical chords and bobbing up and down until each finds its homeostatic resting point in the frigid liquid. Each one is like a skyscraper and has about 10% of its bulk showing above the surface. The majority of its volume is submerged. Ocean currents and surface winds push them about like pieces on a chessboard and, depending on the season, the sun beams down approvingly on their bald pates.

  They bump and jostle each other and occasionally run foul of dry land. These interactions can lead to pieces breaking off and, sometimes, one of them will split itself in two, upon encountering a land mass.

• (B) The Voiceover

  “The global ocean that holds the landmasses, the poles and the frigid waters, is the symbol of Source Itself; the great ice shelves are the Spirit; the icebergs are individual souls; the visible portion of each iceberg represents egoic consciousness; while the submerged portion represents the personal unconscious; the icy waters symbolize the collective unconscious; the currents represent the actions of Source, while the surface winds represent the actions of Spirit; the great landmasses represent the world’s cultures; and the jostling and collisions with each other and with dry landmasses represent individual encounters and clashes with and among cultures; finally, the sun represents the power of love, the only force strong enough to embrace the entire globe and yet the only force gentle enough to find the hidden, fragile, tiny crevices.”

• (C) A Small Detour

  Before I begin the unpacking let me take a little detour, so that what follows may begin to make more sense.

  You know the hot, steamy, tightly rolled towelette you’re given on an airplane at the end of a meal? The steward uses a thongs to offer you this item. You take it and realize it is very hot, so you toss it from hand to hand to allow it time to cool down. You discover, however, that by opening it up you can reduce the temperature much more quickly. This is due to a simple scientific fact: heat is generated and maintained through volume, and lost through area. By opening up the towelette you greatly increase its surface area and so it cools much faster.

  Elephants discovered that fact many millions of years ago. The heat generated by their great volume is effectively dissipated by sending, several times a day, all of the blood of their body through their ear lobes, which have a great surface area. To accelerate the cooling process, they also fan their ears, rather like the ladies in the Mikado.

• (D) The Unpacking

  Now back to the unpacking: the sun’s influence on the iceberg causes it to melt, and the greater the surface area exposed, the faster the melting happens. Melting is the process of enlightenment; it is the (sometimes glacially) slow reduction in size of the ego and its sense of separation. Similarly, the ocean currents (the activity of Source) and surface winds (the activity of Spirit) facilitate the jostling, and thus afford individual egos the insight that other individuals also have egos, needs, perspectives and prejudices. Hopefully these dynamic encounters reduce the sense of separation and alienation. And, of course, collisions with landmasses (cultures) represent the ways in which individuals are affected by the civilizations they encounter.

  Egos, like icebergs, come in many sizes. On November 12, 1956, the USS Glacier discovered an iceberg whose perimeter, at water level, enclosed 12,000 square miles – larger than Belgium. History is rife with examples of such egos and their devastating consequences.

  All of these forces influence our soul’s evolution. Like the “Butterfly in Beijing affecting the weather in San Francisco” all living things are as connected as are the neurons on a single brain. The largest iceberg on Earth (not the largest of all time) ran aground on October 27, 2005 and split into several pieces as the result of an ocean swell generated by an Alaskan storm six days earlier and 8,400 miles to the north!

  Nor can we escape our karma. The iceberg that sank the Titanic in April 1912 has recently been photographed; it is still wearing smudges of black and red paint from the ship’s hull, just like a belt, at its water-waistline.

• (E) Conclusion

  If Nature “had it in” for the planet, she could utilize ocean, wind, rain and sun to erode all the dry land and swallow it up in water; but she doesn’t. So – to countermand this possible entropy – earthquakes and underwater volcanoes make new dry land regularly. It’s a cycle; and life manages to thrive at all stages of the cycle.

  Incarnation itself is a cycle – a grand adventure of Source, Spirit and Soul, that involves ego and interpersonal relationships. Aren’t you glad you volunteered?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — December 27, 2016:

• Perfection

  You’d be hard pressed to find another word in the entire bible which is more frequently misunderstood, in the sense that wrong meanings have been attributed to it. The word I have in mind is the word, Perfection . It conjures up notions of a stainless steel sinlessness; of being without fault or blemish.

  In biblical Judaism, it meant being absolutely law abiding; knowing and fastidiously adhering to all 613 precepts of Torah – many of which may have promoted good hygiene for nomadic tribesmen, but which were promoted as divine decrees.

  In the Roman Catholic world, it meant keeping the ten commandments of Moses, the six commandments of the church, accepting the dogmatic teachings of the councils and believing in the infallibility of the pope.

  In all  cultures, it meant accepting the pyramid of power, the stratification of society and blind obedience to the leaders.

• We Are Products of Our Future

  In truth, however, perfection doesn’t mean any of these things. What it does  mean is, “to be committed to the purpose for which you were created.” The word in Greek (and the New Testament was written in Greek) is Telos , from which we get the English word, teleology, which means, “to be attracted to a goal.”

  It epitomizes the truth that we are as much products of our future  as we are of our past. It is our dreams and hopes, our fears and anxieties that determine the courses that we chart for ourselves. As you watch a snail’s silky trail, you learn as much about him by looking at where he is headed as you do by examining where he’s been. The mouse stuck in the trap is a victim of his desire for cheese; and the antelope drinking ecstatically at the water hole is being rewarded for his drive to satisfy his thirst. Your years of sweating at your college courses are the result of the dream of landing a good job; and the daily careful choices at mealtimes are driven by the hope of becoming healthy.

  Perfection, then, is about evolution;  hence Nature is the exemplar par excellence. The newly dropped acorn is perfect because it is utterly committed to growing into the mighty oak tree which it was born to become.

• The Cosmic Positioning System

  Here, then, is an important question, “what were you  born to become?” You are perfect if you are committed to becoming that, no matter how many falls you take, no matter how many “sins” you commit, no matter how many detours you take.

  A GPS is a global positioning system that allows you to know, with great specificity, where you are at any time, on the surface of the planet. The soul, in comparison, is a CPS, a cosmic  positioning system that allows you to know, with great specificity, where you are at any time, in the journey of perfection. Lovingly, compassionately, non-judgmentally, it guides you to your destination, never screaming at you for ignoring its directions, nor blaming you for getting lost. No matter how many detours you make it understands that ultimately you want to go Home, and so it patiently plans a route to get you there from here – wherever here  happens to be.

  And each one’s journey is different; you have a different starting point from everybody else because you are a unique manifestation of Source; and you have unique way stations to visit on your journey, because you have a unique mission; so the CPS will give you different directions from those it gives to others.

• Is God Perfect?

  And what of God? If my argument is correct, how do I explain Jesus’ injunction that we be “perfect even as your heavenly father is perfect”? Do I mean that God, too, is evolving? Yes, I do. And yes, She is. While Source, the transcendence  of God, is beyond categories, including that of evolution, God’s immanence  is in a constant state of development. In all of manifestation, Spirit is at work, inexorably lessening the gap of a perceived  separation from Source. So, when Jesus speaks of “the father” he is not really speaking of Source; rather he is speaking of God’s immanence, of the Spirit of evolution, the thrust to complete the journey that began in God’s womb and will end in God’s heart. So, yes, the father is  “perfect” in that sense; and we do well to imitate his perfection.

  The statement, “you must be perfect even as your heavenly father is perfect” is found in Matthew’s gospel. Luke has an apparently different but, in fact, complementary idea, “you must be compassionate  as your heavenly father is compassionate.”

  What’s the deal here? Though Luke was writing in Greek, Jesus was actually speaking in Aramaic. And in Aramaic the word for compassion is “rahamim” which is the plural of the word for “womb.” And when Jesus speaks of “our father” he is using the Aramaic word, “Abwon”, which can also be translated as, “birthing principle of the cosmos” or “womb of all that is (or can be.)” Now, a womb is that organ that can conceive, carry and birth, not just once but again and again and again.

  Here then is Jesus’ injunction ala Luke, “you must be womblike, and birth continuously more evolved versions of your self just as the birthing principle of the universe does.”  What would that look like?

• How Much Birthing Do You Want to Do?

  It means initially birthing a version of the self in which you identify with your physical body;  then you birth a version of the self in which you identify with your emotions;  then you birth a version of the self in which you identify with your ideas;  then you birth a version of the self in which you identify with your family  (now your concern has extended beyond a skin-encapsulated ego); then you birth a version of the self in which you identify with your tribe;  then you birth a version of the self in which you identify with your nation;  then you birth a version of the self in which you identify with your enemy  – this is a huge leap forward; you realize that your enemy is you  bleeding through from a parallel universe to hasten your growth and to weed in the garden of your shadow-land; then you birth a version of the self in which you identify with all life forms on planet Earth;  next you birth a version of the self in which you identify with all sentient beings  no matter what world, what universe or what dimension they inhabit; you are becoming sequentially closer to your purpose; and, finally, you give birth to God!

• Dream Catcher

  In this birthing process, you have been ripping apart the cloying cocoons which had previously trapped you into a series of nested dreams. Now you wake up to the fact that life  is simply a dream that the ego is having; that the ego is simply a dream that the soul  is having; that the soul is simply a dream that Spirit  is having; and that Spirit is simply a dream that Source  is having.

  Now you are perfect and  compassionate. You have given birth to God; or rather God – which IS all that IS – is winding up the game of hide-and-go-seek She had been playing with Herself. Like a puppy that chases its own tail for the pure fun of it, and then lies down for a well-deserved rest, God “sleeps” in order to dream up Her next game.

  Would you like to audition for a part in that  dream?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — December 13, 2016:

• The Boy

  Last night Santa brought me a drum! I’m not very good at it yet, because I’m only five, but I do love it. This morning the priest told us, during mass, that the Baby Jesus had just been born in a stable in a place called Bethlehem. I don’t know where that is but it must be in some part of Cork City. The priest said that Jesus was very poor and couldn’t afford to be born in a hospital – like I was – but that he was also a king – of all the world. The priest said we should visit the Baby Jesus and bring him some gifts. I asked my great-grandmother about that and she told me she knew exactly where the Baby Jesus was and promised to take me to visit him.

  We found him, and his mother Mary and Joseph and some animals, in the life-sized crèche at Saints Peter and Paul’s church in the center of Cork City. My great-grandmother exchanged some pleasantries with Joseph and cooed at the baby, but her main interest was in Mary. In fact, she spoke at length every day with Mary about mother stuff and great-grandmother stuff.

  While she was busy I decided to play my drum for Baby Jesus. I still wasn’t very good at it, but I gave it my best shot. He began to smile toothlessly and to gurgle. I’m not very good either at understanding gurgle but I took it to mean that he approved of my gift.

• The Young Man

  Years later, during mass, I found a portal and entered a time warp, traveling into the past at a dizzying speed. I found myself in a Middle-Eastern city. I heard the sound of drummers, but this was chilling, fear-instilling military drumming. A crowd was approaching, following a band of soldiers who were vindictively prodding a criminal forward with their spears. He didn’t look like the criminal type, but you never know. Swept along by the mob, I decided to take a closer look. Holy God! I recognized the same eyes I had seen in Saints Peter and Paul’s church, so many years ago at the other side of the portal. I was dumbfounded. When I came to my senses, I followed the noise and found that he had been crucified; skewered grotesquely on a jibbet. Then I saw his mother. I recognized her immediately. There was no sign of Joseph – perhaps he had died already.

  I stood a little way from the crowd, and softly began to play my drum. In Ireland, we are taught three kinds of music – Goltraí  (music to make people weep with nostalgia for home), Geantraí  (music to make people happy or to make them laugh) and Suantraí  (lullabies to soothe pain and induce restful sleep.) I began to play my own favorite Suantraí music, and as I did, his mother turned around and we looked soulfully at each other. She nodded gratefully. Then he looked at me and in spite of the searing pain and the fear of being abandoned by his father, the light in his great heart shone. It’s hard to imagine a crucified man smiling; but he did.

• The Old Man

  Since then many more years have passed and now I am an old man, getting ready to die. I am sitting in a chair, out of doors, in the warm sunlight, wrapped in a comforting blanket. A grandniece of mine has been lovingly looking after me these last few weeks, but just now she is indoors attending to some chores. And that was when he chose for us to meet the third  time. By now I would have recognized him anywhere. He looked younger than when I had seen him last and his very being glowed with a transpersonal light. I bade him sit down; which he did. Whenever my grandniece reappeared, I intended to ask her to bring him a cup of tea and a piece of plum pudding – it’s just a few days after Christmas.

  On a whim, I decided to play my drum for him. With old, gnarled fingers I began to beat out some Geantraí – I wanted to see him laugh. But soon my old fingers got tired and the sticks fell to the ground. He bent down and picked them up; then he asked, “May I?”  I nodded and he took the drum from my lap. I have never heard anybody play like he did. Honoring my mood, he began with Geantraí, but subtly and over time, it morphed into Goltraí, evoking such longing for home that tears rolled down my cheeks. Finally, he moved seamlessly into Suantraí. I closed my eyes and suddenly 10,000 stars went supernova, exploding inside my skull and releasing unimaginable light! All boundaries dissolved and the ego faded like a morning mist under the loving attention of the Sun.

  I wonder who will wake up?

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — December 7, 2016: I don’t think they had come for the baptism. In fact, I know they hadn’t. But I met them for the first time on the day of the baptism of baby Madeline (little “Maddie”), on November 28, 1999.

The first and strongest impression was the overwhelming stench. I’ve done thousands of baptisms – in Europe, in Africa and in the USA, but I’ve never been so overcome by the smell of urine at any other baptism. It seems as if she were an instantaneous converter of all liquids into a heavy ammonia-filled odor. It was hard to stay focused on the ceremony. I could see and hear people shifting uncomfortably in their seats. It was going to be a long morning. As I poured the water over “Maddie’s” forehead, she cooed delightedly – and her parents, godparents and grandparents forgot the odor and smiled in return.

Now, in case you’re thinking that little Maddie was the source of the stench or the urine, let me hasten to assure you that she wasn’t. She smelled of Talcum powder and clean new clothes. The smell was coming from Lucille, who was sitting in the very last pew (aptly named), just near the exit. She was in her thirties, obese, retarded and homeless. And she plied herself with Pepsi, all the better to keep the “converter” running. Beside her sat Donnie – also homeless and, it became obvious during the course of the day, utterly devoted to Lucille. She might as well have been a movie star in elegant apparel and sprinkled with costly fragrances. He explained apologetically to me that she was incontinent and that they just needed someplace to rest awhile and then they’d be on their way.

Sometimes it’s really hard to see beyond the spacesuit and the costume to the ancient, eternal spirit-being inside. It was easy to do it with little Maddie but not so easy with Lucille and Donnie. It was all I could do to not wrinkle my nose as I hugged her during the sign of peace. My vestments stank for the remainder of the mass.

I only saw them once ever again, on El Camino Real near a burritoria on Showers Drive in Mountain View. With one hand he was pushing a Safeway cart that contained all their earthly possessions. The other arm was wrapped protectively around Lucille’s shoulders as she trundled along leaving a trail of wetness in her wake, and nursing her ubiquitous Pepsi. They didn’t see me and I didn’t call out to them. If it were little Maddie and her parents, I’d have honked and waved enthusiastically. But it was only Donnie and Lucille, so I stayed quiet until they had passed. An incontinent Mary, and a toothless Joseph guiding their steel, four-wheeled donkey towards Bethlehem.

Mea culpa!

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — November 29, 2016: There have been many beginnings; even the bible says so. The very first book of the bible, The Book of Genesis, starts with the word “B’reshit”. But “B’reshit” does not mean “In the beginning” as it’s normally translated but rather “In a beginning.” Each beginning involves the creation of Time, and rolls out a brand new game of evolution-on-its-quest-for-divinity. But before there was any beginning, there IS Source.

So let’s look at the beginning that most of us are aware of. Obviously, the time span is actually the same, no matter the lens, but the units of measurement are different. So science says the beginning was 13.7 billion years ago. Hinduism says that it was much earlier and the Judeo-Christian scriptures say that it was much more recent.

If you have a fever, it really doesn’t matter whether you measure your temperature in Fahrenheit or Centigrade. If you’re busted by the highway patrol for speeding, it really doesn’t matter whether your speedometer reads Kilometers-per-hour or Miles-per-hour. So let’s ignore the irrelevant differences and focus on a generic unit.

Before anything WAS, Source always IS. But it’s lonely being Source, so She needed something other than Her Self to love. Source decided to get creative, to paradoxically birth “Other-than-the-Self” in a game of Hide-and-Go-Seek with Herself.

Therefore on “Day One”’ She laughed into life a great explosion of possibility. Science calls this “The Big Bang”; the Hebrew scriptures call it, “Ruah Yahweh” (the Breath of God): a swirling mass of atoms-becoming-gasses that coalesced into galaxies that spawned stars and planets which danced like whirling dervishes. And God saw that it was good; and there was Evening and there was Morning the First Day.

Then She took spores of biological matter that She had harvested from previous universes and scattered them generously among the galaxies, seeking hospitable environments. One such environment was a green-blue planet called Gaia, that opened its womb and received the sacred seed, saying “Fiat voluntas tua.” And God saw that it was good; and there was Evening and there was Morning the Second Day.

And Gaia gave birth again and again and again and again, just as Jesus advocated, “You shall be womblike (rahamim) even as the birthing principle of the universe (Abwon) is womblike.” Then Source fertilized and weeded and genetically upgraded these new biological forms creating a riotous array of colors and shapes, of skills and niches. It was the beginning of the entrepreneurial impulse. And God saw that it was good; and there was Evening and there was Morning the Third Day.

All of these life forms needed Source in order to survive, but Source wanted beings that didn’t just need Her but loved Her. So She engineered the mammals who could dream and emote and play with their young. Empathy had been introduced into the equation. And God saw that it was good; and there was Evening and there was Morning the Fourth Day.

Then Source, like all females, decided She wanted someone who could talk to Her during this lovemaking. So She upgraded Earth-life to a brand of mammal that could speak and think abstractly about existential issues. Now the dance had become very exciting. And God saw that it was good; and there was Evening and there was Morning the Fifth Day.

Source was ready now to really go for it. She conferred the penultimate gift, the discovery of Soul, which could lead to Self-realization, Buddhahood or Christ consciousness. And God saw that it was good; and there was Evening and there was Morning the Sixth Day.

And on the Seventh Day She rested. She said,

“Now you’re on your own; see if you can finish the course. I’ll be waiting and watching. I’ve worked on the evolution of consciousness; you must now work on conscious evolution. But you need to know that I’ve conducted this experiment many times. Once I insert Freewill into the equation, all bets are off. Sometimes it works and I get Angels to interact with; sometimes it fails and I have to deal with Demons. Angels or Demons – those are your choices. Please don’t screw up!”

And God saw that it was good; and there was Evening and there was Morning the Seventh Day.

Before there was any beginning, there IS only Source; after all the endings are done, there IS only Source.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — November 15, 2016: I know who you are, John Smith of Littleton. I googled you. I know that you are 45, married to Marian; that you have three sons, Tom, Dick and Harry. You’re a farmer and quite an accomplished amateur actor, currently starring as Hamlet, which will run for a week in your town. I hope you are enjoying the performances. According to the Littleton Gazette, they’re enjoying you!

But I’m sure that when the curtain falls at the end of Act V, scene II each night and you doff your costume and re-engage with your extra-thespian life, you desist from Thee-ing and Thou-ing your family and settle in to being a father and a farmer again.

In past seasons, you’ve starred in Macbeth, Death of a Salesman and Waiting for Godot. All were roles; you donned the costumes; you performed; the final curtain fell; you got into your street clothes; and you went back to being John Smith.

But I have upsetting news for you, John Smith: you’re not really John Smith at all. John Smith is merely another role, albeit it a meta-role, that you play. Remember when you say to your friend in Hamlet Act I, scene V, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” ? I’m sure you were pushing him out of his cosmological comfort zone. I’m going to push you a little, too. John Smith, farmer and father of three is just another role you play; as was Hamlet, Macbeth, Willy Loman or Vladimir.

Extrapolate, “John Smith.” Over many lifetimes you’ll star in many different spacesuits. You won’t always be John Smith. Once you starred as Jane Doe; maybe next time you’ll star as Audrey Offenbach. In actual fact you never were John Smith; you’re only playing a role as John Smith now, in this current lifetime.

Remember the day village vandals broke in, before the performance, and spray-painted the set? Immediately, you stepped into a bigger role as protector of the facility and repairer of the theatre flats, before you got on with being Hamlet again when the curtain rose at 8PM.

“John Smith” is an alias. You’re a spirit in a spacesuit, you’re a soul on safari on planet Earth, you’re a bite-sized piece of God who volunteered for incarnation – again and again. A great Jewish carpenter-avatar once said, “You must be compassionate as your heavenly father is compassionate.”  He was speaking in Aramaic and the word that gets translated as “father” is much more accurately translated as “birthing principle of the cosmos.” And the Aramaic word for compassion, Rahamim, is the plural of the Aramaic word for a womb. So what he really said was, “You must be womblike as the birthing principle of the cosmos is a womb.”  How can you be womblike, “John Smith”? By birthing yourself over and over again until you’re fully satisfied with the final product.

You’ve already come a long way. At your first attempt, you fashioned a zygote that became an embryo and then a fetus, fully convinced of its own omnipotence as it steered the mother-child organism into blissfully granting its every wish. But then you birthed a nightmare: the walls of your intra-uterine paradise began to close in upon you in a series of violent contractions, while the escape door was still locked tight. When it finally did open, there followed a period of scary spelunking, ending with the glare of lights and the freezing cold of the extra-uterine world. Now you would have to try to manipulate the mother-child organism from a remote control tower inside a little nine pounds corpus. That was the second birth.

And then came, perhaps, the scariest self-birthing of them all: you realized after several months that there really wasn’t a single mother-child organism of which you were the driver. The sheer horror of the realization, that the mother part was separate from you and that she held all of the power, was so traumatic as to set up a psychic split within you. You developed an Ego to make sense and take control of the little part of the organism that was you. You now used your lungs and your tantrums to force mother into a subservient role. Sometimes you succeeded and mostly you probably didn’t.

Then you birthed an ambassador for the ego, called, a persona. Its role was to promote your interests by showing only (and greatly exaggerating) your gifts and loveliness, and doing damage control if you got any bad press. But the persona demands a very high psychic salary and drains lots of energy from the needier parts. Life frequently punctures this glorified self-image, unless you become famous enough to draw a retinue of sycophants into your life who convince you that you are your persona. Movie stars, great ball players and successful politicians often suffer from this self-misidentification. And when two such narcissists meet or, heaven forbid, marry, then it’s fireworks, as each one wants to be the sun around whom the other is meant to orbit.

Keep birthing, John Smith. You’re a father; you probably love your kids more than you love yourself and would be prepared to lay down your life for them. Good work! When you’re ready to lay down your life for your enemy, then you really know that you’re good at this birthing business. But you’re not done birthing until you’ve brought forth Source. Once you give birth to God you can now practice contraception.

After each birth, you see greater and greater beauty, grander and grander possibilities. But after each birth, the possible pathologies also increase. The village vandals who once spray-painted the theatre flats are now plying their trade globally, often while they wear tuxedos at important international events. They are the corporate royalty, media moguls and the best-politicians-money-can-buy, with a colorful sprinkling of religious dignitaries, fervently committed to sectarian salvation. Once the light gets brighter, the shadows get darker.

So now, John Smith, extrapolate. How many lifetimes do you want to spend believing only in Samsara? Your serial birthing has alerted you to different levels of the drama. If A equals conception, and B equals a body, and C equals an ego, and D equals a persona, and E equals compassion for others – are you going to have to work yourself laboriously through the entire alphabet over countless lifetimes in order to reach enlightenment? Or, now that you have identified the pattern, can you extrapolate and go straight to Z from E? Waking up can actually be EZ.

What if you were to recognize that reality, this concatenation of concentric levels of life, is simply a game of hide-and-go-seek that God plays with Herself? When you finally get it and grab God by the shoulder, you realize that it’s your own shoulder you’re grabbing. But the you who grabbed and got grabbed is not the little narcissistic, egoic skin-encapsulated self. And it’s not even the compassionate, forgiving father of Tom, Dick and Harry self. It is, in fact, Source, from whom all manifestations, even the vandals who are torturing our planet, have arisen.

When you realize this, you don’t have to trudge through F, G, H… Then you are truly liberated. Now you can throw back your head and laugh; a great, big belly laugh; the laugh, not of cynicism nor of superiority, but of admiration and awe at the power of the illusion-just-pierced.

And then you are free to fully celebrate and participate in this incarnation. Now you can be the best Hamlet possible, “John Smith.”

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — November 8, 2016: The Ego makes a great servant, but a tyrannical master. A very wise man once said, “All human suffering lies in the gap between the ego and the Self.”  It is like the gap of the spark plug that ignites this engine of suffering; and this engine drives the automobile of life’s journey. The problem begins when the ego, not content with being a spark plug, also attempts to be the entire car and  the driver of the car.

Spark plugs have their place, and the ego is vital to the experience of incarnation; without it you wouldn’t be able to pull on your boots, stop at red lights or pay your taxes. However, when the ego gets beyond itself – and consumerism constantly inflates the ego’s importance and its needs – tragedy follows.

Many of Christ’s parables, which are normally interpreted as addressing a human’s relationship with God, can be much more pertinently interpreted as dealing with the relationship of one’s ego to one’s soul.

Egos are little islands peering over the ocean’s surface, convinced that they are discrete, separate entities competing with each other for sun, wind and waves. However, islands are an illusion perpetrated on a consciousness unaware of its roots – planet Earth’s single, global crust. When islands battle each other, both personal and interpersonal damage is done.

• The Ego of the Oligarchy

  But there is another far more powerful (for good or ill) level of ego; it is the ego of the oligarchy. When this ego is out of whack, then international or even world-wide damage is done. We see this in the history of tyrants, inquisitions, crusades, world wars, hostile takeovers, surveillance regimes, fascism, National Security States… It is alive and well in politics, corporations, religions and the military-industrial complex.

  Vatican II was an effort on the part of the Roman Catholic Church to bring back balance into the ego of the oligarchy. It proposed a model of concentric circles of influence and of a “Pilgrim People” rather than the old pyramid of power with its skewed two-way communication: orders from the top down and obedience from the bottom up. Those were the heady days of Pope John XXIII in Rome and flower power in the USA. Unfortunately, the curia in the Vatican and the FBI in America knocked those silly ideas on the head.

  So the struggle to tame the megalomaniacal ego of the oligarchy needs to be undertaken again in our times. The ultimate authority is meant to be an informed  individual conscience, with the emphasis on informed; and that means, as a first step, freeing oneself from the propaganda of the mass media and thinking and searching for oneself.

  In this pursuit, it is important not to confuse the person with the office held; and it is equally important not to divinize the office – any office. There are neither infallible people nor infallible offices. And the duty of the prophet is to keep that fact in the public awareness.

  Each one of us must attempt to find the ideal way to identify our Buddha nature and to promote Christ Consciousness. In this endeavor it is important not to give any person or institution a blank check in the currency of obedience. Gurus and popes, presidents and military commanders have frequently demanded that and, upon receipt of it, have turned the sheep into genocidal wolves.

  According to the Rule of St. Benedict – the founder of Western monasticism – the monks should listen to the views of its youngest member. Before ideals disintegrate into cynicism, we need to listen carefully to the questions our children are asking.

• Submission

  The notion of submission is frequently misunderstood. It is not about self-denigration but rather putting the piece of one’s personal  mission into the jigsaw puzzle of the greater mission of the planet. It is a sub-mission. It is most certainly not about placing one’s ego (however imperfect) under the control of some other imperfect ego – of a leader or an organization. Out of the frying pan into the fire is not going to save you from getting badly burned.

  The word, “Islam” originally meant that: weaving one’s personal thread into the fabric of God’s greater plan. In Gaelic we use the phrase, “Féin ísliú”, which again does not mean self-abasement but rather becoming a team player. There is a huge difference between teamwork and servility.

• Humility

  Humility, from the Latin, “humus” (meaning earth or dirt or soil) means to be radically grounded in truth, not to demean oneself. An old spiritual director once told our young, eager class in the seminary,“humiliation is the road to humility!”  He couldn’t have been more wrong. Humiliation is the road to resentment, lack of confidence and depression; and when one gets into a position of power, to the infliction of humiliation on others; until the energy driving the entire endeavor is craven obedience and spiteful bullying, so that the entire enterprise becomes fodder for a global therapist’s couch.

  The ego – both the individual’s and the oligarchy’s – needs to be regularly earthed in the reality of love and compassion, and in practices of kindness, forgiveness and patience.

  The ionosphere impregnates the planet with good, negatively-charged particles, via thousands of lightning strikes a minute, so that bare-footed beings (animals, plants and humans-before-shoes-and-carpets) can regularly discharge the pent up free radicals produced in our bodies by the chemical and emotional toxins of our stress-filled environments. Just as surely the ego needs to be earthed and grounded by daily bare-hearted contact with the overarching reality of love.

  To whom, then, should we defer? There is nobody on the planet whose soul is older than yours; respect that fact in yourself and in them. All of us have simply volunteered to play different and complementary roles during incarnation. When the drama is ended and we step out of our costumes, in the green room of the bardo, both pope and pauper realize that all of us are equally beloved, equally precious, equally important, byte-sized bits of God. Shame on the ego for being dazzled by the costumes – mine or others.

• Personality

  Personality is the interface between the soul and its incarnational environment. Temperament is the hard-wired developed imprint of all previous incarnations, experiences, learnings and mistakes. Modern psychology only got two-thirds of the equation by claiming that personality is simply a jousting match between genetics and environment or between nature and nurture; rather it is a holy trinity of nature, nurture and the pre-existing, eternal soul.

• All for one, and one for all

  The human body is a community of 70 trillion cell-members, each one of whom can be totally self-reliant; each one has its own brain (not the nucleus but the surface membrane), its own respiratory and elimination systems etc. But, at some stage in our 3.7 billion years evolution on the planet, individual cells banded together into multi-cellular groupings in which clusters agreed to specialize as discrete organs (heart, liver, lungs…) and re-identify as a total organism. So when you move about, you move as a monad; no part of you gets left behind when you go from the sofa to the fridge to grab a snack.

  Occasionally cancers occur, when one group sets about to create a coup. If it’s successful, it will inevitably lead to a murder-suicide, for, in killing its host, the cancer is sealing its own fate too. And cancers can occur not just in the physical body; they occur also in the psyche: anxiety, anger, depression, jealousy… All can lead to murder-suicide pacts in our relationships to self and others.

• Fractals

  A fractal is a pattern that occurs at an infinite number of scales. Each of us is a printout of the fractal nature of reality. And you can start the fractal at any level: from quarks to universes; or from single cells to the community of all sentient beings. However, at no stage in the life of an organism does the collective oppress the individual cells, though each cell has a shelf-life during which life it honors both itself and the collective.

  However, there is at least one level of the fractal which hasn’t yet learned this lesson: human sociology. There have been several unsuccessful attempts, each scuttled by the fear-based greed of an ego (individual or oligarchical) e.g., Communism, Socialism, Democracy, Capitalism, the Jesus Movement. All of these have, at some stage, been corrupted; but we need to be patient and forgiving. In comparison to the history of the cell (3.7 billion years) the human sociological experiment is a neonate. It’s less than a quarter of a million years old.

  Even the protozoa, the original cells, struggled and got their asses whupped for 1.5 billion years, for instance, before they learned to survive the (to-them) toxic oxygen which they liberated from water (H2O ) as they extracted hydrogen – their favorite food.

  Imagine an obese American teenager gorging on Big Macs (favorite food) and thus signing up for a premature death, and you have a modern example of what cell development experienced way back when.

  The good news is that evolution has gone asymptotic; so it is not going to take us 1.5 billion years to unleash our Buddha nature. It’s a dance between the soul’s eternal  perspective and the ego’s it’s-gotta-happen-in-my-way-and-in-my-timeline’s agenda.

  So the trick is to appreciate what it will yet take, sprinkle patience on this Christ Consciousness project but never compromise the vision.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — October 4, 2016: The vivid, imaginal world of my childhood oscillated between two kinds of mythology: the great, epic Celtic legends told to me by my grandfather, whom I called, Daddy Jim, that involved Cúchulainn, Fionn MacCumhaill, Oisín, Niamh Chinn Óir and the Lochlannaigh, on the one hand; and on the other hand, Cowboys and Indians, courtesy of the Saturday morning children’s matinees in Cork City’s movie theatres.

But while the Celtic myths made me feel proud, the matinees frustrated me. I was continually annoyed by the portrayal of the Indians as stupid, painted savages who simply circumnavigated the encircled wagons waiting to be picked off by the sharp-shooting Whites.

My matinee heroes were not John Wayne, Gene Autry or Roy Rogers but Cochise, Geronimo, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. When we re-enacted these battles as kids, I always insisted on being an Indian and it was a point of honor, not just for egoic reasons, to be the last man left standing. This was the beginning of a life-long passion for social justice.

A while ago, I was trekking in the forest near my home in Tír na nÓg outside the little town of Healdsburg, when I stumbled upon a Caol Áit (a Thin Place) and got sucked into a time warp. At the other end of this “tunnel”, I found myself in a strange location watching two men angrily facing off, one an “Indian” and the other a “Cowboy”. I could see inside their psyches and read their minds.

The “Indian” was a very athletic brave fuming at the indignities that had been visited upon his people by the Pale Faced invaders. He was spoiling for a fight, and his nemesis, the “Cowboy”, gave him an ideal opportunity. Meanwhile the “Cowboy” grinned smugly, totally secure in the knowledge that his six-shooter was more than a match for this “savage’s” tomahawk.

As I watched, a dignified, wrinkled elder took the brave aside and said, “You have to think of the long-term consequences of your actions. If you injure this man, his people will come in hordes and kill our men, women and children. I want you, instead, to go on a Vision Quest and see what the Great Spirit has to tell you.”

The brave reluctantly agreed and, following the time-honored custom of his tribe, spent the next ten days in the wilderness, alone and fasting. And indeed the Great Spirit did speak to him in a series of inner visions that rocked him to the core of his being. He saw, in graphic detail, his previous three incarnations and he wept in shame.

In one he had been a conquistador, arrogantly oppressing the native population. In the second one, he had been a member of the US cavalry, pushing the Indians into more and more inhospitable and resource-less reservations. And in the last-before-the-present incarnation, he had been a bounty hunter, making a killing, literally, from the scalps of the Indians, which he sold to the authorities who were committed to ridding the continent of these “varmints”. His greed was stoked and his cruelty disguised by the “patriotism” of general Philip Sheridan who declared, in 1869, that “the only good Indians I ever saw were dead.”

The young brave sobbed uncontrollably for several hours. Then he asked the Great Spirit, “Is that why I chose to be an Indian in this present incarnation?”  The Great Spirit nodded. The brave realized then that he had simply swapped one set of prejudices for another. He saw that his anger came from the sleepwalking of being unaware of his past lifetimes and of his present mission – which was to develop compassion and forgiveness for the human condition.

Meanwhile the “Cowboy” had taken a very bad fall from his horse and was clinically dead for about 20 minutes. During this time he had a Near Death Experience: the tunnel, the white light, the mentor, the life review. He, too, was rocked to the core of his soul. He recovered the memories of his last three incarnations, in each of which he had been a Plain’s Indian, suffering unspeakably at the hands of the Whites.

At the end of the third lifetime, his mentor had asked him, “How well do you think you’d handle being a White with greater numbers and superior technology? Do you think you’d use these advantages compassionately? Or would you simply forget?”  He obviously had forgotten. After three lifetimes of being oppressed, he had just as mindlessly been an oppressor, despising and hunting “his own people” of the three incarnations just past.

He cried bitter tears of contrition. And it was the tears that revived and awakened him; that and the taste of cool water on his lips from the cupped hands of the brave who was kneeling at his side, shielding his face from the blazing sun and his defenseless body from the circling coyotes.

Two pairs of eyes embraced in complete love; two souls recognized each other; two brothers separated by incarnation had been re-united by remembering.

My vision ended. I stepped back through the Caol Áit and found a madrona tree. Sitting under its generous shade, I wondered, “Where do my prejudices come from? What task did I set myself for this incarnation? Why have I been asleep?”  The tears flowed silently – and my dog, Kayla, licked them lovingly from my face.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — September 20, 2016: Five million. Five million! That’s how many of my cells die every second! 300 million every minute. 18 billion each hour. Three trillion every week. That’s a lot of dying! How can I possibly ignore death? Dying is what I do for a living. So why do I pretend that death hasn’t happened, that it isn’t happening now, that it will not happen again?

Conception and death are the two most important things I do on planet earth. I spent many heaven-years preparing for conception, and then Aiyella, the angel of night, touched my nostrils and my upper lip, leaving permanent indentations, to remind me that I have forgotten, indeed must forget. Because the first essential step of my mission is to discover what my mission is. Being told it, doesn’t work.

Aiyella’s touch, however, created amnesia also for my dying – the thousands of times I have done this before. Like a child in summer-camp being exhorted by playmates, at the swimming pool, to go ahead and dive in off the high board, like I did successfully last year and the year before, I stand transfixed and shivering on the quivering tip of the undulating board and remember only that I haven’t done it since last year – and I’m scared. I have spent a lifetime of earth-years preparing for this death, but the preparation has been unconscious: biologically unconscious, psychologically unconscious and spiritually unconscious. Today in this meditation, I am determined to prepare consciously, lovingly, fearlessly and with full awareness.

I feel the coldness in my feet and legs and thighs and I think “I came into the world cold, shivering and gasping for breath. And now I exit the world cold, shivering and gasping for breath.” But today there is absolutely no fear. Every breath was a gift. And I took them all for granted – all the 663 million breaths of my 70 years. Now I can count the number left to me on my fingers. I may not even have to use my cold toes for the final tally. Each breath now is pure gift. But I don’t clutch at it, I honor it.

Soon breathing will no longer be necessary for me. It was part of how this extraordinary spacesuit worked. But I’m almost done with this spacesuit. I freely lay it down. I make a donation of its 70 trillion cells to planet Earth: “Come butterfly and use what you will. Welcome worm to my garage sale – the profits go to charity, to love. Take what you want. There is something here for everybody!”

And when all the molecules have been claimed and the happy hunters retire with their finds, I have yet more gifts to give. I give back to the Universe the intelligent energy that fashioned such a miracle from carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen. “Perhaps this intelligence is of use to somebody? Maybe this energy is just what you needed for your project? Take it and be well!”

I’m not done giving just yet. I have a heart, not just the fleshy chamber that beat two and a quarter billion times in my chest, but my love. “Can you use some more love? Come and drink and be filled. This is my body, this is my blood which is given for you.”  My dying, Christ’s dying, your dying is a new covenant. Let us do it in memory of each other. It is a love-covenant not just a law-covenant. It binds us through lifetimes – the lifetimes we have forgotten, the one we are now about to exit, and the ones yet to be conceived in bodhisattvic orgies of compassion for all sentient beings.”

Here is my body. I took it, blessed it, broke it and gave it, as Christ did at that final Passover meal. I blessed it by inhabiting it. I broke it in the sweat fields of Ireland and Africa and America – not the sweat fields of enforced labor, but the sweat fields of passionate lovemaking with all of God’s little ones. I gave it and shared it, as you, all of my sisters and brothers, gave yourselves and shared yourselves with me. And together we have sung the hymn of life.

And when the last note dwindled into the insulating embrace of the cobwebs on the rafters of our sacred Caol Áit, you and I we went forth to our garden of Gethsemane. We said YES to life. YES! YES!! YES!!! We said it and we ran to the place where death smiled on us. And we smiled back and said, “I know that I love God and I know that God loves me.”  And we danced, you and I, in that moonlit arbor. And in the surfeit of ecstatic, boundless love, we lay down on the carpet of leaves and we said YES once again to death.

But there was a wistfulness to our joy, for weren’t there others of our brothers and sisters dying this night too? A frightened pedestrian watching the looming, weaving headlights of a drunkenly driven truck? A man whose skin or race or sexual orientation was “wrong” and who was now being tortured terminally in a God-forsaken alleyway? A woman whose only crime was to be beautiful in the wrong place at the wrong time, and whose decomposed corpse would lie undiscovered while the predator gloated in the remembering of the murdering? A majestic elephant hunted cruelly by swashbuckling, telescopic-gun-toting poachers in jeeps? A wild pig caught in the jaws of a vicious trap, while her uncomprehending baby continues to try to suckle?

Can we forget these as we lie here, peacefully commending our spirits to God? Is it not the same life force that courses through all of God’s creatures? Does the élan vital feel any different as it organizes the spacesuit of a daffodil, or a hippopotamus or an Olympic gymnast? So let our dying be purposeful. Let it be a sabbatical. Armed with our experiences and driven by compassion could we use our Bardo-time wisely and come back again even better equipped to love?

Where now is fear? Where anger? Now can we understand why Christ said, “I have a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how I long until it is accomplished!”?  A man he was who remembered his mission. Look at the headstone newly erected over your year-old grave. See what it says? It says, “This was one who remembered the mission.”

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — August 23, 2016: [Note: this is the first half of a two-part short story; the second half is on its way.] They were as cosmopolitan a group as you would expect to find on the New York subway. Engrossed in their own worlds, each one’s attire told something of their profession. The young woman with the baby in her arms looked like a hippie from the ‘60’s – definitely an “earth mother.” Beside her sat a doctor-type. He was, in fact, a neurosurgeon. On the other side of the surgeon was a dreamy-eyed college girl, a student of goddess lore – dreaming of love and romance. Across from them sat the psychic who could tell you your past lives simply by looking at your aura. And, finally, beside her, fully awake with the soft embracing gaze of Shakyamuni, was a Zen Buddhist monk.

Standing in the middle was the person who set the whole episode in motion. With one hand he was holding on expertly to the overhead strap, as the train bucked and squealed and tried to throw him. In the other hand he held a newspaper, and something in it was giving him great pleasure. He beamed, guffawed, and to nobody in particular announced “Well whad’ya know. So, black holes in space may not be the annihilators of matter they were reputed to be. They may, in fact, be the birth canals for new universes!”  Just then the train came to a screeching halt and with a final amused shake of his head, he imprisoned the newspaper under his left arm and disappeared into the milling masses on the station. Five pairs of eyes followed him until he was swallowed up, and the train began to lurch away. Then five brains began to muse.

The young mother hugged her baby more tightly, smiled to herself and thought, “Of course the mother does not annihilate! What appears to be destruction is but a reconfiguring. What were those scientists thinking about when they claimed that black holes were terminators, annihilators or destroyers? We live in a Brahma-Shiva universe. Creation always re-emerges from apparent entropy.” She gazed adoringly at the sleeping face of her infant and thought, “Perhaps, this universe, our universe, came from a black hole in our mother universe? I’m sure the Big Bang was her joyful shout as she gave birth to this baby universe in which we live. I wonder how many baby universes can a parent universe create?”

She looked out the window as the train shuddered to a halt at the next station. On the platform a group of carolers in Santa Clause outfits sang Christmas songs. The lyrics drifted into the open compartment as it disgorged one group and sucked in a whole new troupe.

“I wonder” she mused “if some incredibly wise beings were watching, billions of years ago, and enquired of the locals, ‘Where is the new cosmos to be born? We have seen its star in the East and have come to bring it gifts.’ ”

The train pulled into the darkness again, and now when she looked toward the window she could see her own form. A form that up to two months ago was pregnant. She had feared four months ago that she would go on expanding forever! “Perhaps” she mused “that is what is puzzling the astronomers, who can’t figure out whether we live in an ever-expanding universe or not. That’s the reason!” she felt, with a great surge of discovery. “It only appears to be expanding forever because it has been increasingly pregnant for as long as we have known it. When it gives birth, then it will contract until its next conception. I wonder if post-partum mother universes have to do yoga to get their shapes back!”  She laughed aloud at this thought, put her hand embarrassedly to her mouth and looked furtively at her companions. Nobody, except the Zen Buddhist monk, seemed to have noticed.

She remembered a lecture she has once heard by an eminent physicist. “What had he said?”  She cast about trying to remember the numbers and the statement. He had said something like, “For every cubic centimeter of eleven-dimensional mathematical space, 1027 brand new universes are created every second!”  She thought “Wow, what a mouthful. Wow, what prodigality.”  He had gone on to say that many of them were duds that only lasted nanoseconds. The notion now caught in her throat “Are these, then, still-born universes? I wonder does a mother universe weep when she miscarries?”  She hugged her own baby close, and then stood up carefully as the train approached her stop.

The neuro-surgeon watched her go and then went back to his own reverie. “I wonder if black holes are the dendrites and the axons joining the siblings to their parent in the brain of God? Is each universe a single cell in the divine brain? And are black holes the neural pathways which create the network? Are there psychic and literary umbilical cords connecting Shakespeare to all of his creations? and his creations to each other? The mother of all universes may not so much be a parent, who birthed and is now separate from, though in contact with, all of her daughter universes, but rather a ‘suprawomb’ in which all the adult-children-universes continue to live and evolve while, themselves, birthing their own baby universes! Rather like an extended, multi-generational, meta-cosmic family.”

For some reason he remembered a nature film he had once seen, in which a water-spider was filmed in a pond. The camera work was superb and it tracked her as she built her underwater home. First she swam to the surface and, somehow, trapped a pocket of air with her two hind legs. She pulled this bubble several feet underwater and fastened it to the stalk of a water lily. Then she went back to the surface and lassoed some more air. She fused the two bubbles into one, doubling its size. She made several more trips and each time she managed to merge the bubbles, until she had one great bubble attached to the stalk. Then – the piece de resistance – she went inside the bubble without ever popping it! This was her home and she entered and exited at will, without bursting the delicate membrane!

“Perhaps”  thought the neuro-surgeon “the pond is like the suprawomb and the bubbles are like the baby universes within it?”  Suddenly, he had a vision of a tiny, quivering baby universe, shivering in the palm of God’s hand as She crooned, “Do not be afraid, little one, because I love you.”  Quite suddenly a large tear ran down his right cheek. “Did anybody notice?”  he thought self-consciously. Nobody had – except the Zen Buddhist monk.

[This story will be completed in the second essay]

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — August 30, 2016: [Note: this is the second half of a two-part short story] Next to the doctor the college girl, too, was thinking up her own cosmology. She lived to recognize love and sensuality and creativity wherever they could be found. “What if each universe is androgynous – penetrating itself, receiving its own seed into its own womb, expanding and then expelling its baby universe through a black hole!?”  The thought gave her goose bumps of pleasure. “Evolution, then, may be the ecstatic love-making of an adult universe with itself, which will eventually, result in a brand new baby universe.”  She smiled to herself and thought “Gee, I hope the Religious Right don’t condemn it as a deviant sexual practice!”  She remembered that the universe is thought to be 13.7 billion years old. “So”  she figured “Our pubescent cosmos is just now becoming sexually active. What an adventure lies ahead of it. Pretty soon it will be writhing in the orgasm of conceiving its first-to-be-born.”

The college girl hugged herself and sighed aloud in satisfaction. Nobody, except the Zen Buddhist monk, noticed.

The psychic was aware that an interesting shift had happened in the carriage since that chance remark of the “newspaper man.” She had covertly watched the auras of her companions expand and change colors. Moreover, light seemed to arc from each person’s aura to the auras of the others – like cosmic dancers in a creatively choreographed holographic display.

She gave herself up to her own part of the dance. “Just as a cosmos births new universes, does each soul birth new lives through reincarnation?”  She had no doubt they did. But what she now wondered was “Since time is an artifact of human consciousness, and really doesn’t exist until we manifest on the physical plane, might a soul, who had just finished a lifetime in 20th century America, decide, after a Bardo respite, to incarnate the ‘next’ time in 13th century Africa? Why not, indeed? If incarnation is the experiment of learning to love in the many configurations of human experience (e.g. gender, ethnicity, skin color, I. Q. level, religious affiliation etc.), it makes perfect sense that Spirit possesses Fast Forward, Rewind, Cut, Copy and Paste functions.”

She smiled in the glow of where the dance was taking her. Another sudden insight gripped her “Oh”  she thought “If time is, indeed, part of the illusion of manifestation, why not parallel lives? Why not lives as a female Egyptian slave of 2500 BCE, as a male American politician of 1800 CE, as a gay Italian man of 1960 CE, and as a Celtic Druid of 400 BCE – ALL AT THE SAME ‘TIME’? Modern business protocol might call it ‘multitasking’. Why not, in fact, as the Hindus taught, an Atma, who remains steadfast and unattached, while its Jiva dives repeatedly into a myriad of simultaneous incarnations? Perhaps there are three levels of the process, all occurring at once! Firstly, the Atma – eternal, unperturbed, unmanifest, disincarnate – watching without attachment, aversion, fear or anger. Secondly, Jiva, in its bardo states, between incarnations being debriefed and preparing for its next safari. And, thirdly, the time-circumscribed, spacesuit-inhabiting entity, simultaneously learning in parallel incarnations, all at once. Thus, when the heart-broken, bereaved young wife anxiously asks ‘Will I see my beloved after I die? What if he has already reincarnated?’ the answer is ‘of course you will. You will meet him in the bardo state and in a parallel joint experience.’ ”

She smiled again to herself and wondered, “What if, right now, I could be simultaneously aware of all of the fellow travelers with whom I am sharing parallel bardos and incarnations?”  She looked about the carriage. “Is this group”  she asked herself “here by chance or by design? How is each of us experiencing ourselves and the others in the parallel situations?”  She attempted to radiate recognition to her companions. The Sanskrit phrase “Tat twam asi” (That thou art) leapt to mind. “Of course”  she thought, “we are all one to begin with, and to end with. But wouldn’t it be cool if we could remember that occasionally!”  From the corner of her eye, she fancied she saw the Zen Buddhist monk nod his head in agreement.

“What would that recognition do to the illusion of separation?”  she wondered. “Would it vaporize it and dissolve it, and extract from it Self-Realized beings?”  Her mind went back, once more, to the black-holes-in-space conundrum. “What if, like Self-Realization, black holes are very efficient recycling devices that take a massive physical object, like a planet or a star, and thoroughly pulverize all its matter, reducing it to its DNA, which it then hurls into a brand new environment to begin a whole new evolutionary journey?!”

“Is the universe, then, merely birthing itself? Manifesting its own recessive genes? And is each black hole an opportunity to birth a different version of itself? Perhaps, all the black holes in a universe are the channels for it to simultaneously birth the different permutations and combinations of its own DNA? Since the cosmos is the ‘manifest’ dimension, then each universe is merely the articulation of a different possibility. So the ‘original’ universe is not a universe at all, but the unmanifest void of all possibility.”

Just then the carriage lights went out for a few moments, as subway lights sometimes do. They were in a tunnel at the time. Utter darkness enveloped them. The only sensory feedback was the rattling of the couplings between the cars. It was easy to imagine the dark womb of nothingness. She clapped her hands as if to applaud the synchronicity of it. Nobody detected the sound of it – except the Zen Buddhist monk who sat beside her. “What is the sound of one psychic clapping?” It would make a good koan.

The monk was as aware in the darkness and of the darkness as he had been of the light and in the light. He, too, had been sitting in contemplation of the black hole. “If a black hole cannot be seen in the light, can it be seen in the dark?”  He had an image of a black hole. It seemed like a vehicle by which a universe might turn itself inside out, rather like what happens to a glove when you take it off. As he watched the image, he saw the universe re-reverse itself. The question arose “Did it use the same black hole to re-reverse itself as it used to reverse itself?”  He sat with that for a while. In his mind, he heard one of his students ask, “Master, if that is how it is with universes and black holes, kindly tell me does the re-reversed cosmos go back to where it started or does each folding and unfolding cause new manifestations?”  In answer the master peeled off the glove from his right hand. It had fit perfectly. As he retracted his fingers and thumb, all of the finger sheaths turned themselves inside out. He held it aloft for the students to see. He handed it to one of them, the questioner, and said “Put it on your hand.”  Since it had been a right hand glove, to begin with, the student attempted to put it on his own right hand. Of course, it did not fit – for now it was no longer a right hand glove but a left hand one.

“What is the sound of one glove clapping?”  he asked aloud of his companions in the carriage.

Nobody answered, except the Zen Buddhist monk himself, who said nothing.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — August 9, 2016: Cnochán Dara na Naomh (The Hillock of The Oak Tree of The Avatars) is a Caol Áit. Now, in Gaelic, a Caol Áit (a thin place) is a location in which the veil between the mystical and the mundane, between the sacred and the secular, between the transcendent and the immanent is diaphanous. Even the dullest of us will have experiences, in such places, that stir ancient memories of our true home. Even the most pre-occupied of us, in such places, will have déjá vu experiences of another time. Even the most cynical of us, in such places, will find our hearts asking, “Why not?” Children will easily spot faeries, sprites and elves there; and the mystics become one with the God-energy. That’s the sense of Caol Áit in Gaelic.

Well Cnochán Dara na Naomh is such a place. Cnochán means a little hillock, and, indeed, that’s all it is. It rises humbly a mere 12 feet above its surroundings, and even that lofty perspective was only afforded it because, in an effort to carve a building pad for my planned home, I excavated down through nearly 12 feet of gravel and churt. So it’s really a hillock by default. But it has taken to its newfound pre-eminence with a dignity and a demeanor that would do justice to an Everest or a Mount Blanc. It now guards the southern flank of my completed home.

On the crown of it is an old Scrub Oak. Now, in the family of oak trees, the scrub oak is not exactly a prince, more like a scullery maid, really. Still it bestrides the hillock and from its twin boles affords shade, via its many gangly limbs, to the entire hillock. The word, Dara, in the title of the place is the genitive form of the Gaelic word for an oak tree. And oak trees were sacred to the Celtic druids.

Around the sides of the hillock I have constructed a sand-strewn pathway, bordered with hundreds of little stones. At various places along the path stand six “Peace Pots,” little ceramic containers each with a symbol of a major religion – Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Shamanism. At some of these places, I also have stone statues – one of Krishna, one of Kwa Nyin, and one of an Inukshuk that I built myself. On the trunk of the tree, at eye level, is a wooden carved Madonna and Child.

This hillock is the final stage in a pilgrimage route that wanders around my house. It has 23 stations each representing a part of a new Eucharistic Prayer which I wrote in May 2007. I call it, “The Eucharistic Prayer of the Cosmos.” Well, Cnochán Dara na Naomh is the final station on this Camino. Each day when I complete the stations-pilgrimage, I sit there, looking to the West and feeling the energy of the sunset.

I was there one evening as the sun disappeared behind Bald Mountain across Pena Creek. And that was when the oak tree began to speak to me.

“Have you never noticed me before?” asked the oak tree.

“Yes, many times.” I replied. He nodded sagely, so I ventured a question of my own, “If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”

“It depends on what you mean by you”  the tree responded. “If you mean the me  of this particular spacesuit? Then the answer is 165 years since my mother shed the acorn that housed me. But if you mean the me of my soul, why then, I am just as ancient as you, and precisely as eternal as God’s first venture into creating.”

“So then, old one” I said, “tell me a story in order that I, too, may remember how old I am.”

I settled back in my seat, had one last lingering look at the green-blue skyline where distant trees marched along the horizon, and closed my eyes.

“Once upon a time” began the oak tree “and a very long time ago it was, your soul and mine made an agreement. We were playing in God-space when we happened upon an Earthling who was astrally traveling in her dreamtime and we asked about her home place. She told us of Gaia, a wonderful Super-soul who had volunteered to animate an entire planet, to produce life there and to nurture it until it finally threw up a species capable of recognizing the God in all forms. She told us that such a species had now been born but was having a very difficult time dissolving the illusions; illusions that had taught it to fear God, to desecrate nature and to breed prejudices within its own family.

“In recent times several great avatars, she said, had been sent to wake up these people, and the tide was, indeed, turning – but ever so slowly. In the meantime, greed and intrigue, science without conscience, technology without ethics and economics without vision were threatening to wipe out the entire species, causing lots of other collateral damage in the process. It was a race between the avatars and the addicts. She told us she had vowed to travel nightly in her astral body to seek volunteers from other dimensions to come to save her people. And you and I signed up. We sat with our angelic mentors and planned a whole series of incarnations to add our love to the work of the avatars. And we got very creative as a team. The agreement was that I would incarnate as an oak tree each time and you as a human. But we would find each other and work together.

“Our first effort found us in Celtic Ireland after the Tuatha Dé Danann had shape-shifted and become the faery folk; and before the missionaries of the Jesus avatar had reached Irish shores.

“Can you remember any of the other places or any of the other times?” He asked me. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “I can. Because I stand here decade after decade in deep meditation. I am still the Axis Mundi connecting the mystical and the mundane.

“So, here we are again – I as an oak tree once more, and you as a human. I have to admit that as oak trees go, the scrub oak isn’t mighty and majestic as other spacesuits I’ve worn; nor does this particular suit stand out among the other scrub oaks, even ones I can see from here. I have a gash in my side where you scored me deeply as you taught yourself to drive a D8 while you excavated a site for your new home. That was a close shave; I thought for a moment that you would blow the entire mission and knock me over with that eight feet wide steel blade of your high-track bulldozer. So I had to make a pre-emptive strike. I sent you down the hill on a slope so steep that you could not extricate the machine. Next day even another D8 could not pull it up the hill, rather it had to create a new trail, 100 feet away and pull the stuck D8 out backwards. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“But, when all the clearing was done, here I stood absolutely alone, lord of the hillock. And you thought it was a coincidence! You sat here, under my shade, daily for years and imagined what your home would look like. You laid it out with colored ropes – orange for the garage and decks; white for the exterior walls; and blue for the interior walls – and then you came and sat at my feet again to survey your handiwork. For years that was all you had to look at – colored ropes, the floor plan of a dream. We sat together and imagined the finished home.

“And when, at last, it was completed, I spoke in the stillness of your soul and said, ‘Now it is time for you to build my  home. Make a shrine of this hillock, decorate it with saints and sages, with flowers and plants, with a sand-filled, meandering pathway lined with little stones gathered from around my hillock. And when it is finished we will call it, Cnochán Dara na Naomh . And, indeed, it will be a Caol Áit.

“Now I can be your Axis Mundi again. Now you can connect to the sacred and the secular. Now you can be a teacher again. Now, once more, we can honor our promise to the astral-traveling Earthling of so many centuries ago. Now you have begun to remember.

“Now is the only time that matters.”

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — July 19, 2016: [Note: This is the first in a two-part blog on the Nature of Divinity.] He was finally old enough to understand, and grateful enough to begin repaying the debt. He was a three-month-old kitten that had been rescued by my dear friend, Arlen, whose mission in life is to save and protect abandoned animals. He had been the recipient of her unconditional love, nursed back to health by her Naturopathic genius and invited into self-confidence by her willingness to accept all of his idiosyncrasies. He now deluged her with gifts. He started by chasing golden Autumn leaves around her back garden. They attempted to dodge his attentions by hitching a ride on passing winds. He would pounce on one, spear it with his sharp claws, clamp it firmly in his mouth, bring it inside the house and lay it triumphantly at her feet. She accepted without demur.

Then one day he graduated to hunting fauna. His practice with leaves had proven invaluable and soon he caught a little mouse. He pushed his way through the animal flap in Arlen’s back door and presented her with this new token. The greatest gift an animal can give us humans is to first draw us into its reality and then bestow membership of its species upon us.

Isn’t that cute! Sometimes we reciprocate by anthropomorphizing them,  ascribing all kinds of human characteristics to Fido or Kitty. Mostly, however, we reserve that kind of compliment for God. The greatest honor we can bestow on Him is to make Him “one of us”; to make Him a “personal” God; to give Him a mega-human personality; and to define Him by ascribing to Him human traits. He must just love the leaves and mice we lay at His feet!

Theology is currently in a messy state; what with Atheism, Agnosticism, Non-theistic spiritualities, Deism and Theism. In particular I find the oscillation between Deism (“God doesn’t give a damn about us”) and Theism (“God will damn you for saying that!”) to be amusing. So to complicate things even further, I’ll throw in a spanner of my own: I do not believe that God is a PERSON.

I live in the heart of the Cosmos, on the outer reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy. I have a deeply personal relationship with it. But the Cosmos is not a person. I do not have to anthropomorphize it in order to be in a personal relationship with it. Since I am a person, the only relationship I can have with it, is a personal relationship.

I live in the heart of the forest near Healdsburg, California. I have a deeply personal relationship with it. But the forest is not a person. I do not have to anthropomorphize it in order to be in a personal relationship with it. Since I am a person, the only relationship I can have with it, is a personal relationship.

I live in the “heart” of God, whether I am in the Milky Way Galaxy, or Healdsburg, California or on vacation to my ancestral home in Cork, Ireland. I have a deeply personal relationship with God. But God is not a person. I do not have to anthropomorphize “Her” in order to be in a personal relationship with “Her”. Since I am a person, the only relationship I can have with “Him”, is a personal relationship.

By saying that God is not a Person, I do not mean that She is distant, remote or uncaring but, rather, that She cannot be described as a PERSON. That is far too limiting a descriptor because God is LOVE UNLIMITED. It is so difficult for us to imagine a love that is not confined to physical, emotional or mental modalities. In particular, we think that ultimate love is the feeling we have in special, intimate relationships. We think that if we were to regard all sentient beings equally, that would mean diluting our love. An all-embracing love seems impersonal and therefore generic and bland; it threatens our narcissistic egos, which can only find self-worth by competing, by being told they are special, different, greater, more attractive or more appreciated than all other egos. We insist on a sun that neglects the gardens of others to focus its rays only on ours; we want a tide that doesn’t lift all ships, but just our beloved boat.

Because of this, if the great mystics ever put words to their experiences of God, it is always in metaphors, analogies, parables and poetry. So I will imitate them and end this essay in such a fashion.

Patheos.com — July 26, 2016: [Note: This is the second in a two-part blog on the Nature of Divinity. It was an experience I had on December 18th, 2007; I have left it in the present tense, though it is now nine years old.] My God used to be very sensible. But, of course, I was really too young to understand. As a boy I saw him frequently, got the scent of his fragrance, heard his voice, tasted his words in my own mouth and reached out to curl my small hand around a single finger of his. Every one of my five senses connected me to him.

I made the mistake of talking to adults about this. They mussed my unruly mop of hair and smiled indulgently at my naiveté – that is everyone except my great-grandmother who had managed to survive into old age without ever losing her mystical ability; and my grandfather who was a life-long druid. A second, even bigger, mistake was made on my behalf; I was sent to school, initially to the nuns and later to the Christian Brothers. They told me that God wasn’t sensible but rather that he was sensible, as in he followed common sense. And I believed them, because they wore the insignia of God: habits and veils and Roman collars; and the important adults in my life all deferred to them.

For the next 13 years, I was meticulously versed in this sensible God, this down-to-earth, commonsensical divinity, who wore sensible brown shoes and created people to be sensible plodders. Sure, he did produce the odd mystic, but they were all safely dead. For the rest of us, the advice was to keep our heads down and measure out our lives in teaspoonfuls; dull, pain-filled, anxious lives that were best navigated by commonsense, old wives’ tales and Old Testament examples. For God was a commonsense God, even when he consigned unbaptized babies to Limbo or sent sinners into everlasting flames for missing mass on Sundays or eating sausages on Fridays. This, too, made sense.

At age 18, I entered the seminary, and God became even more sensible. In exquisite detail, Dogmatic Theology, Sacramental Theology and Moral Theology constructed a fully consistent, logical framework, backed by scriptural references that made it madness to be agnostic let alone atheistic.

That is until I started at university and majored in mathematical physics and pure mathematics. I was introduced to the “God of the gaps.” He was slowly being edged out by science and being given increasingly unimportant portfolios until such time as science itself had enough manpower and evidence to give him a golden handshake (with the presentation being made by Nietzsche) and retire him to an Old Folks’ Home.

Religion reacted by either vigorously defending the commonsense God of the scriptures or deftly surfing the scientific waves, remaking God to survive the Copernican Revolution, Darwinian Evolution, Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. The more creative theologians even managed to find scriptural references that foretold all of these discoveries. These religious thinkers claimed that God is still really sensible and predicted that real scientists would eventually see the light.

I landed in Kenya at age 26 in a remote area without phones, electric light or companionship. So I did the reasonable thing, I began dabbling in mystical ideas, radical new cosmologies and in thinking-for-myself. We all have mystical experiences, but typically we regard them as unsubstantial, like the dreams of the night. So I began recording and working with the dreams of the night and also with the visions of the day. I had an “aha experience” when I read that in Hebrew “vision” and “dream” are synonyms. So when the prophet Joel said, “In the days to come I will pour out my Spirit on all humankind; your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams” he wasn’t discriminating against the senior citizens; for dreams are visions you have while you are asleep, and visions are dreams you have while you are awake.

God was very sensible again; but now he made sense because experiences of him were enabled by transcending the five senses, commonsense, theology and science and, instead, utilizing the soul.

And then, today, the 18th of December 2007, something else happened. It has been raining heavily for three days and the forest is spectacular during the rainy season; and my dog Kayla needs to walk. We set off, me in my rain gear and she in her house clothes; and we bumped into God – again and again and again.

First, I tasted  Him in pearl-shaped droplets of water that hung on each twig. Every leaf on every tree was a chalice of God-life. I stuck my tongue out under a broad leaf and reverently received communion; the blood of God from a Eucharistic minister called Madrona. It was as ecstatic a moment as my First Holy Communion at age seven.

Then I saw  Him. He sat astride a faery horse that wore green, gossamer-thin garments of ferns about its fetlocks. God’s long flowing locks were made of light-green lichen, and each strand was a lace lattice for catching dreams and attracting visions. His steed was planted upon the hillside with its powerful limbs soaking up energy from the earth as he rested on his journey. We saw each other and each of us whispered, “Namasté.”

As I continued to walk, I realized that each time I dug my sturdy staff in the ground I touched an acupuncture point on the skin of Gaia, and she responded by sending shivers of Earth energy up my spine.

Then I smelled  Him, fleetingly. I had walked through a power spot! I stopped, backed up, and moved my head from side to side and sniffed like Kayla taught me. There it was again. I stood absolutely still and sniffed again. I had it! An entire shelf-full from the Akashic Records tumbled into my brain releasing a myriad of memories from many lifetimes on this planet. They danced like children newly reunited with long-lost parents.

It was evening before I returned home; all was still in the forest. I listened more silently than before and then I heard  it, the sound of the sunset. It resonated in every cell of my body; light vibrating with light. After a few moments it was utterly quiet again; and then a new song sounded; it was the slow sensual symphony of the moonrise, a half-moon, teasingly concealing the left side of her face. This song would last for the entire night. And the stars responded with a poem of their own; a poem crafted by the genius of a Yeats, in the language of a Rilke and spoken in the mystical tones of a Rumi.

Finally, I climbed to the top of my shrine, the place I call, “Cnochán Dara na Naomh” or “The Hillock of the Oak Tree of the Avatars.” An ancient Scrub Oak rests there, a garland on the crown chakra of that sacred space. It is always the culmination of my daily pilgrimage. I rested my right hand on the weather-beaten bark and through my now-sensitized palm I could feel the heartbeat of the acorn that begot it; the slow powerful thump-thump-thump of the druid-tree.

So today I came full circle. Today, as I had done in my childhood, I smelled God, I felt God, I heard God, I saw God and I tasted God. After 61 years in this incarnation, I can say once again, “My God is a very sensible God!”

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — June 28, 2016: “Tat Twam Asi.” (Thou Art That). How many words, how many volumes, how many libraries, and how many religious cultures does it take to wrestle with that inspirational insight of Hinduism? None, if we have accessed the experience; millions if we merely try to understand it; and billions if we are foolhardy enough to try to explain it to others. Yet here is one more piece of writing attempting to speak of a personal encounter with it. Silly man that I am, enthusiastic man that I am, I can no more hold it back than a woman in labor can defer the birth.

I have seen that even compassion is a mistake. Compassion is a partial response to a partial comprehension of an infinite truth. Compassion is predicated on the idea of service-to-other. And therein lies the rub. There is no other! And so compassion ultimately is in the service of the illusion of separation. Only moksha (liberation) is Real. I say that with a capital “R” because Compassion, and Service, and Other are “real”, but only with a little “r”. The illusion is not that the physical world does not exist; the illusion is that the physical world is all that exists. How has this come about? The following may be the trail of its unfolding.

In order to experience Herself – as distinct from merely knowing Herself – God created. And since God can only be ALL THAT IS (Brahman in the Hindu cosmology), from the ineffable void of Her cosmic womb She created a dream that led to the manifestation of the myriad aspects of Herself. Hence the arrival of Souls (Atman in the Hindu cosmology) – billions of them; more numerous than all of the stars of all of the galaxies of all of the universes. Yet they are as much a unity as are the 70 trillion cells of your body.

And then the dream got complicated. In order for these aspects to “talk” to each other, gifts of communication became necessary – telepathy, clairvoyance etc. (the Causal Body in the Hindu cosmology). The slide into forgetting had begun. Little “mind” (the Mental Body in the Hindu cosmology), as distinct from universal “Mind”, latched upon the notion of communication among parts as evidence that, in fact, each part is totally other. By now the “souls” were believed to be ontologically discrete entities. In short order, mind had invented a new cosmology, perceiving separateness as “Reality” when, in fact, it was only “reality”. Emotions (the Astral Body in the Hindu cosmology) were then invented so that we could feel the differences between us. And, finally, the senses (the Gross Body in the Hindu cosmology) were the ultimate proof: we could see that we are distinct; we could hear our differences; we could smell and taste and touch our differences. The veil, at last, was tightly drawn and fully opaque.

Now we could know what fear was – the feeling of utter isolation and total separation. This would lead to despair, despondency, depression and denial. To rescue ourselves from this pole of the nightmare, we would invent anger and violence, warfare and persecution, prejudice and chosen-ness. Henceforth, any newly discovered “difference” quickly became a further proof of our separateness. And it became a midwife to the existential scream of our own cosmic abandonment.

Who will help us retrace our steps? Mysticism, perhaps, which has drawn maps of the journey, some of which are 9,000 years old. Even modern science can help the process along. It is quite easy to demonstrate from the “hard” sciences that all of the differences are superficial, since all are ultimately a collapse of the probability wave due to observation. Each kind of observer and each type of observing causes a different collapse, resulting in a different manifestation of the underlying field (the Subtle Body in the Hindu cosmology).

The “soft” sciences demonstrate that emotions and ratiocination are produced by perceptions, expectations and inherited models of reality – thus allowing us back to the Astral and Mental Body stages of the devolution. Over 100 years of extraordinarily rigorous scientific studies by parapsychologists have shown the existence of the “gifts” of the Causal Body. We are most of the way back by now.

Can science provide, for mysticism, modern metaphors for the last two laps back to Brahma? I think so. I believe that the journey is throwing up a new era, that of the Mysticists – a hybrid race of mystics and scientists – people trained in rigorous scientific methodologies, while being steeped in the utterly empirical practices of mystical, experiential Self-observation. These are the space travelers of the future – combining the inner and the outer explorations, until the veil is finally parted, the illusion dissolved and unity recaptured.

The mysticists will be the next wave of bodhisattvas. Today, I met an old dog, with the saddest eyes on the planet. He is in renal failure and his owner is planning to put him to sleep tomorrow. She told me that she had adopted him last year from a man whose new wife didn’t want a decrepit mongrel in her nice new home. I squatted in front of him and we gazed into each other’s eyes. He had his tail between his legs but was attempting to wag it in that impossible position. I recognized him and he recognized me. He asked me, “How many sleepers does it take to undo the work of a single Buddha? How many Christ’s does it take to wake up a single sleeper?”  I sidestepped his questions and, instead, pleaded, “You’re one of the lucky ones; you get to go home tomorrow. But please do not abandon us. So many of us cannot remember. So many of us are asleep. And each sleeper amplifies the illusion and thickens the veil. Please send us some more lovers, some more bodhisattvas. We are ready. Please send us the mysticists. Please!”

I think he will.

Namasté,
Seán

Patheos.com — May 17, 2016: [Note: This will be the first of three essays on the spirituality of the Celts.] Around the time that Lao Tzu and Confucius were plying their trade in China; when Mahavira and the Buddha were teaching in India; when Zoroaster was preaching in Persia; and Jeremiah was the prophet to Israel, a tribe of people called the Milesians – better known as the Celts – was invading Ireland. They defeated the earlier inhabitants, the Tuatha Dé Danann (the People of the goddess Dana) and an agreement was reached whereby Ireland was divided between them in two equal parts: the Celts got Ireland above the ground and the Tuatha Dé Danann got Ireland beneath the ground! So the Tuatha Dé Danann shape-shifted and became the Slua Sidhe (the Faery Host).

• (A) Some definitions and differentiations

  This essay will give a brief account of the history of the Celts, but in order for you to fully understand the Celtic mind, I need to (re)define three key concepts. Firstly, imagination is not the ability to make up stuff which is not real (that ability is called fantasy) but, rather, the ability to shift one’s state of consciousness, enter into different dimensions, interact with the beings and energies that reside in those dimensions, learn from them, bring that learning back and cross-fertilize it with the learning of “ordinary” consciousness.

  Secondly, I need to differentiate between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is information which is accessed via the senses and processed by the brain. It allows us to navigate in the ordinary state of consciousness in the physical world. Wisdom, on the other hand, is information which is accessed via the soul and processed by the heart. It allows us to navigate in all states of consciousness in both the metaphysical and physical (which is simply a printout or hardcopy of the online metaphysical program.)

  Thirdly, I need to differentiate between fact and truth. A fact is merely a data point in the physical ordinary state of consciousness which corroborates a fabricated map or model of “reality.” Truth is very different. Something is true if it transforms me and aligns me with Source – whether or not it is factual! And something is ultimate truth if it transforms me radically and aligns me permanently with Source.

  So, as an example, when Jesus told the parable of “the Good Samaritan”, the details of the story – the muggers who waylaid the traveler on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, the uncaring priest and Levite, the compassionate foreigner/enemy, the hotel keeper – may all have been fictitious, but to those who understood the answer to the question which drew forth the parable, “Who, then, is my neighbor?” it was really transformative and, hence, true.

  Similarly, something can be factual but not true e.g., as I write this sentence it is 3:34 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. I’d be shocked, however, if that fact leads you to sell all you possess and spend the rest of your life volunteering with Mother Teresa’s sisters on the streets of Calcutta.

• (B) The Celtic Wisdom Keepers

  Strangely, we know of these, initially, from the reports of Julius Caesar after his conquest of the Gaulish Celts, and his forays into Celtic Britain in 55 BCE. There were three orders of wisdom keepers among the Celts.

  Firstly, the bards were the keepers of the past. A bard would either be a permanent member of a chieftain’s court, or a nomad who visited there for a time and then moved on. As keeper of the past, he was historian and genealogist. He was also poet, minstrel, storyteller and performing artist. He had to be able to produce three kinds of music – Suantraí (music that “soothes the savage breast” as well as lullabies); Goltraí (music that induces a profound nostalgia and leads to tears); and Geantraí (music that fills people with joy and makes them laugh from the soul to the eyes.)

  And storytelling is not primarily about entertainment or information. It is about transformation. The great storyteller engages the imagination (as I have defined it) and leads the audience into a trans-temporal state (they are no longer locked into the “now”); into a trans-spatial state (they are no longer identified with the “here”); into a trans-rational state (which is not ir-rational but, rather, post-rational – beyond mere left-brain logic); and into a trans-personal state (they are no longer identified with a narrow sense of separate self.) So the bard made time travelers and mystics of his listeners.

  The second order of wisdom keepers was the Ovates, who were the keepers of the wisdom of the future. They conducted the ceremonies that escorted people through the rites of passage – initiation into the different levels of the human life trajectory. They were the seers, the psychics, the shamans, the visionaries, and the prophets.

  And the function of the prophet is not to predict the future but, rather, to prevent the future. The prophet (ovate) is the one who sees the present really clearly, unlike the rest of us who see what appears to be or what we are told to expect. Since he can see the present clearly, it is obvious to him where the graph is headed. And, due to the greed of the ego (both the individual ego and the much-more-deadly ego-of-the-oligarchy) the future regularly takes us down evolutionary cul-de-sacs. The prophet’s job is to prevent that from happening.

  In ancient Israel, the prophet would call the Hebrew nation back into alignment with its covenant with its god Yahweh. For the ancient Celts, the ovate would call the Milesians back into alignment with their goddess Nature. More about that later.

  The third order of wisdom keepers was the Druids. They were the intellectual giants of the Celtic world. They were the scientists and astronomers. And for the Celts, as for many ancient peoples like the Sumerians, Egyptians and Mayans, astronomy was based on the deep realization that the universe, as a whole, is an interrelated puzzle with all the parts being in significant relationships. All life is energized by this web and information exchange. The heavenly bodies are not merely dead rocks spinning in mind-less space, nor fiery nuclear furnaces burning themselves into ashes. They are intelligent partners in the cosmic dance, and humans had better learn the steps.

  The druids were also the philosophers and psychologists delving into the meaning of the intra-psychic cosmos and its fractal representation of life’s ultimate purpose. As theologians and priests, they attempted to understand and dialogue with the goddesses and gods. As healers, they tried to restore and maintain balance among all these moving parts.

  And, finally, they were the lawyers and judges, guiding the application of the Brehon Laws – a much older system than the English legal code and one which eschewed capital punishment in favor of the Eiric — a system of fines, often paid in cattle.

• (C) The Three Realms

  Like shamanism, the Celtic cosmology consisted of three parts: firstly, the heavenly realm inhabited by the gods and goddesses; secondly, the Earthly realm inhabited by humans and by flora and fauna; and, thirdly, the underworld inhabited by the ancestors and by the Faery Folk.

  These three realms interacted regularly and the function of ritual was to facilitate that tria-log. The Celtic knot is an artistic reminder of that conversation. Roman Catholicism would eventually come up with its own version of this – a beautiful concept but its language was warlike and its boundaries too tightly drawn. Focusing only on baptized Catholics it was, firstly, the Church Triumphant (the souls in heaven); secondly, The Church Militant (souls still on Earth); and, thirdly, the Church Suffering (the souls in purgatory). This arrangement is called The Communion of Saints.

  The Celtic version was far more “Christian!” I call it The Communion of All Sentient Beings. Each flower, rock, lake, wild boar, grove of trees, human, faery, god or ancestor was part of this great family. This, truly, was a vision worthy of a cosmic spirituality.

• (D) Thin Places

  In Gaelic the “Caol Áit” or Thin Place is a reminder that there are locations where the veil between the mystical and the mundane, between the sacred and the secular is diaphanous. These were entry points into other dimensions. The Song of Amergin – the earliest known Irish poem, dating to about 600 BCE – is a waltz through such places, using the “I Am” phrase as a portal to bathe in the numinosity of the images. Unlike the famous “I Am Who I Am” phrase of Yahweh in Exodus 3:14, in which the distant demanding deity warns Moses to not approach, Amergin is inviting the listener to see and interact with all the manifestations of God.

  So these portals were not merely confined to physical locations; imagination (as I have defined it) was a powerful Caol Áit; so, also, were music and storytelling. Indeed there were people whom I would describe as mobile tabernacles of transcendence, whose very being conferred a numinosity on any encounter with them.

• (E) Liminality

  Limina, in Latin, means a threshold, and the idea of liminality, for the Celts, was very closely related to the idea of Thin Places. It had to do with the idea of sacred time. There were four great feast days in the Celtic calendar: Imbolc (February 1st.), Bealtaine (May 1st.), Lughnasa (August 1st.) and Samhain (November 1st.) The year revolved around the Samhain-Bealtaine axis, and it began with the darkness. For the Celts, darkness was not the villain who gobbled up the light, rather it was the sacred womb out of which light and all of creation was birthed. Like Buddha’s insight that “form is emptiness and emptiness is form”, the Celts saw darkness as the feminine aspect of God. Light and dark are lovers, not enemies.

  The same was true of the day, which began not with sunrise but with sunset. Once again it was dusk/dark/mother who gave birth to dawn/light/child.

  So, for the Celts, dusk and dawn are time-thin places.

• (F) Nature

  The single most important teaching of Celtic spirituality is respect for Nature. Unlike “radah” of Genesis 1:26 which is constantly misinterpreted in the West as God giving humans the right to subdue nature, the Celts saw humans and nature as partners in a divinely-choreographed dance. Hence the goddesses are the archetypes of nature while the gods are the archetypes of culture. Culture and nature are passionate lovers not bitter rivals. And, as I said earlier, the mission of the ovate/prophet was to continually call culture back into alignment with nature.

  So important was this partnership that once the High King of Ireland had been selected by the Liath Fáil (the Stone of Destiny) he underwent a marriage ceremony where he (as the representative of culture) exchanged wedding vows with the goddess (as the representative of nature). If he proved faithful to his vows the land would prosper; if he proved unfaithful, famine and war were assured.

  This, then, was the vibrant, mystical, nature-aligned spirituality that Christianity would later encounter.

  I will treat of that meeting in the next of these three essays.

  Slán go fóill. (Be well until then.)

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — May 24, 2016: Cultures either meet or they clash. And the clash can be a war among equals or a ravaging of the weaker by the stronger. This latter typically results in colonization and occupation. There is no tribe living anywhere on planet Earth, on land that they did not wrest from previous occupants.

Occasionally, however, cultures meet gently in an exchange of cosmologies. Each culture then either regards the cosmology of the other to be weird, or realizes its inherent value and begins cross-fertilizing with it. The hybrid culture that eventually emerges will lie on a spectrum; it will look like more like “mother” (its original cosmology) or “father” (the incorporated one.)

In its most extreme form it can lead to idolatry – when a technologically primitive group meets a really technologically sophisticated group and treats the newcomers as “gods.” This has happened many times on our planet -the most recent examples being the Cargo Cults of World War II, when remote Melanesian tribes encountered American and Japanese air forces that landed and took up temporary occupancy of their islands.

• Celtic Storytelling

  Gratefully the encounter between the Celts and Christians proved to be a fairly seamless and peaceful cross-fertilization. The two story lines had enough in common to be amenable (no pun intended) to each other; and enough differences to prove attractive to each other.

  Storytelling proved to be the great medium of their intersecting. Stories are the archived wisdom of a culture; and proverbs are its purest and pithiest distillation. An old man told me – as I spent the summer of 1963 living in a Gaeltacht (areas in Ireland in which Gaelic is still the mother tongue) – “If Christianity had never come to Ireland, we could live according to the proverbs.” Incidentally, the Gaelic phrase for proverbs is “Sean fhocail” – literally, “Ancient words.”

  Even though the bards had an ancient form of writing called, “Ogham” – pronounced, “Om” – they intentionally never wrote down their stories, because stories are a living, organic, evolving wisdom that must never be trapped in a final form. This, too, was the reason Jesus spoke only in parables, and never wrote them down.

  Eventually, however, medieval monks recorded many of these myths – and, of course, probably sanitized and Christianized them in the process. But that, also, is part of the organic nature of story.

  Since the beginning, these two strands – oral and written – have braided the Celtic storytelling tradition: Bards (oral), Medieval monks (written), Rural seanachaí (oral), Folklorists (written) and modern Irish Storyteller (oral.) As a young seminarian in the 1960’s, I was lucky enough to befriend Séamus ÓDuillearga who, in 1926, had founded the Irish Folklore Society. By using school children to access their storytelling grandparents, Séamus collected 1.5 million manuscript pages of folklore.

• How Christianity Came to The Celts

  There are four traditions among which to choose. I’ll give them to you in chronological order.

  Story one says that the boy Jesus made regular trips with his uncle, Joseph of Arimethea, who was an international trader, to the tin mines of Cornwall, a Celtic speaking area of southwest England. There, at Glastonbury, he encountered the druidic wisdom of the Celts. There were Celtic speakers in Cornwall up to the 1800’s.

  A second story says that Mary of Magdala, who was pregnant with Jesus’ child, escaped to France after his death. There she gave birth to a girl child who became the progenitor of the Merovingian bloodline that ruled France until the advent of the Carolingian dynasty under Pepin the Short in 754.

  A third story speaks of hermits from Egypt seeking more and more remote areas in their Peregrinatio pro Dei Amore (Journeying for the Love of God) towards the end of the third century. A group of them sailed across the Mediterranean, out through the straits of Gibraltar and up the west coast of Europe. They landed in Ireland, which was very heavily forested at that time and scattered, each to their own isolated region.

  The fourth story – and the one most people are familiar with – tells of St. Patrick, a Roman bishop who landed in Ireland in 432 AD and set about converting the Irish to Roman Catholicism until his death in 461 AD.

  The story that makes most sense to me is the third one – the Egyptian one – for it is obvious from the records that Celtic Christianity was not organized around the Roman model of parishes and dioceses (names taken from empirical Rome’s jurisdictional units.) The Celtic Christian Church, from its inception was organized around the little chapels of individual hermits. People wanted to bury their dead in close proximity to these holy women and holy men.

  So, in Gaelic, the word, “Cill” (written as the prefix “Kil-” in English) can mean either a church or a graveyard. When you encounter Irish place names e.g., Kilarney, Kilkenny, Kildare… these originally were the graveyards that grew up around the churches of these saints.

• Whitby and the Normans and the English

  The proof of this “Egyptian connection” is strengthened by the fact that in 664 AD, Roman emissaries called a synod at Whitby in Scotland, whose objective was to lick the Celts into alignment with Rome. The dispute centered around the dating of Easter, with the Celts favoring the date given by John’s gospel (14th Nissan) and Rome favoring Petrine dating.

  In the end the Celtic churches of Britain kowtowed to Rome but the Irish church stubbornly refused.

  Then in 1169 AD Ireland was invaded by the Normans and, at the behest of Pope Adrian IV, the first (and only) English pope, in his papal bull, Laudabiliter, they sought once more to lick the Irish church into ecclesiastical shape. Droves of new monks, primarily Augustinians, were tasked with this “reform.” They were only marginally successful.

  When the Normans of Britain morphed into the English aristocracy, the pressure was on again but in a different form. A now Protestant England attempted over the next 300 years to replace Celtic Christianity with a state-controlled, imagination-less, dry puritanical religion. To jumpstart this process they created, in 1609, the “Plantation of Ulster” – which involved the mass deportation of Celtic Catholics from the ancient northeastern province of Ireland in favor of joyless Presbyterians from Scotland and England.

  Ireland was now being ruled from Westminster which enacted the “Penal Laws” which, initially, made it a big financial and social disadvantage to cling to Irish Catholicism and, eventually, a crime to do so. Irish Catholics were forbidden from purchasing or leasing land, from voting, from holding political office, from living in or within 5 miles of a corporate town, from obtaining education, from entering a profession…

  Now, priests were shot on sight and so future priests had to be trained in the great “Irish Colleges” of Europe – Rome, Douai, Paris, Louvain, Brussels, Lisbon, Seville… They were then snuck back into Ireland to celebrate Eucharist at “mass rocks” and in wooded areas.

  Concurrently, education was denied “the mere Irish” and another band of renegades created the “Hedge Schools” in which, amazingly, kids were taught Hebrew, Greek and Latin as well as the “three R’s.”

  Finally, with the Catholic Relief Acts of 1782 and 1793 and, in 1829, with the “Act of Catholic Emancipation” it was no longer a crime to be Catholic and Irish Catholics were permitted to open schools. The first seminary was built in Maynooth in county Kildare, not far from the birthplace of the great goddess/abbess/saint Brigid, known in Gaelic as “Muire na nGael” (Mary – as in the mother of Jesus – of the Irish).

  Unfortunately, during the time spent training in the Irish Colleges in Europe, Jansenism – a Catholic theological movement that emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace, and predestination – was popular. The eager young staff of Maynooth College, infected by Jansenism, now trained generations of Irish priests in a form of Christianity that was a total aberration of our Celtic past.

  Now, nature, the feminine and sexuality would be demonized; and Pelagius’s Original Blessing would give way to Augustine’s Original Sin. Waves of Irish priests would then spread this version of the “good news” to the English-speaking Catholic world – Australia, Canada, the USA, England and Ireland itself.

  What Rome, the Vikings, the Normans, the Plantation of Ulster and the Penal Laws could not accomplish, namely the dilution of Celtic Spirituality was, ironically, achieved by the Act of Catholic Emancipation! As we say in Gaelic, “Is ait an mac an saol” (the world is a strange son.)

  A great socially engineered “famine” followed, from 1845 to 1847, which killed one million people and sent another one million to emigrate in the “coffin ships.” It seemed as if the Celtic Spirit was finally dead.

  However if history teaches us anything, it is that Spirit can never be snuffed out. It always finds a way; and that will be the subject of the third essay in this series.

  Go dté tú slán! (May you travel safely.)

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — May 31, 2016: It takes a great darkness to produce a great light; and Europe slid into a great darkness beginning around 500 AD. Eventually, the Renaissance – beginning around the 14th century – led to the re-flowering of culture and science; and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century challenged the despotic hypocrisy of the Vatican hegemony. But both the “Dark Ages” and Puritanical Protestantism had large shadow sides. Celtic spirituality provided the remedy for both of these dips into darkness.

After the fall of Rome and the end of the “Pax Romana”, European culture fell into an economic and intellectual decline. The study of History and Literature also suffered. And then came the Celtic monks from Ireland.

Again, when an over-zealous Puritanical Protestantism sucked all the joy and spontaneity out of spirituality, the Irish Celtic Church became the living archives of a brighter and happier cosmology.

There were three special areas in which these archives proved vital: Mariology, Monasticism and Mysticism.

• (A) Mariology

  The Celts had taken very easily to the veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She was the quintessential goddess, the feminine face of the Divine, the archetype, par excellence, of Mother Nature – conceiver, carrier, birth-er and nurturer of Life.

  “The Infancy Gospel of James” is a Gnostic text of the early 2nd century, in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the central character. It tells of her own miraculous conception by Anna, her mother; of her “internship” in the Jerusalem Temple from childhood to puberty; of her being assigned to the protection of the old man Joseph; of her own miraculous conception of Jesus; and of her perpetual virginity.

  This gospel was translated, early on, into many languages including Irish! As a child, I never heard any priest mention this gospel in a homily, nor did I even know of its existence during eight years of seminary training, yet I regularly heard my great-grandmother, who lived until I was almost ten years old, tell these stories. They continued to exist in the “underground” oral Celtic spirituality of my boyhood. I was in my 50’s before I read this gospel and realized that my own great-grandmother had been a living branch of this ancient vine.

  By the 9th and 10th centuries, Christianity had become so dour and fear-filled that even Jesus had been reduced to a terrible judge – of baleful visage – who separated the sheep from the goats and sent the latter into the bowels of hell to be tortured by Satan and his merry pranksters for all of E-T-E-R-N-I-T-Y. God the Father had long ago been turned into a Distant Demanding Deity, but now even Jesus had become a merciless monster.

  So, European Christians, under the influence of the Celts, did the sensible thing – they turned to Mary, the compassionate, loving, forgiving, and understanding Mother. The Rosary – a concatenation of mantras told on beads, while meditating on great events in the life of Mary – became the refuge of the little people. One hundred and fifty “Hail Mary’s” counted off on the beads accompanied the monks who, in Gregorian Chant, sang the 150 psalms; Mary, mysticism and monasticism side by side.

  The great cathedrals of Europe were built towards the end of this period and dedicated to Mary. Many were erected on “Thin Places” that had been sacred to the earth goddesses in pre-Christian times.

  In spite of Jesus and behind the Father’s back, Mary was smuggling souls into heaven. And so we sang her praises in Marian hymnologies that brazenly told of her role in salvation history. In a great Irish hymn that I learned as a child, one verse says,

  Is maith an bhean í Muire Mhór,
  mathair árd-rí na slua síor;
  bean is díon do ar gach cath,
  bean le gcoisctear fearg an rí.
  (She is a good woman, Mary the Great
  the mother of the high king of the eternal hosts;
  the woman who is a roof over me in all battles,
  the woman who protects me from the anger of the king.
  

  And the angry king is Jesus!

  When the Protestant Reformation accused Roman Catholicism of idolatry because of its devotion to Mary, it backed its own spirituality Quixotically into patriarchal quicksand. And the Celts of Ireland, once again, protected Mary, even as she protected them.

• (B) Monasticism

  St. Anthony, an Egyptian born in 251 AD, was the father of Christian monasticism. He sought out a remote place in order to devote himself completely to the contemplation of God. It must have been a really healthy lifestyle because he lived to be 105 years of age. The idea caught fire and soon he was followed by other would-be hermits who became known collectively as the “Desert Fathers and Mothers.” That was the first phase of Christian monasticism.

  St. Pachomius was born in 292 AD, and he advocated a variation of the remote hermit, in which these silent ones – living semi-isolated lives, Monday through Friday – would come together each Saturday and Sunday for religious ceremonies. This may have been tougher on the health because Pachomius died at age 56.

  The third phase was initiated by St. Benedict, born in 480 AD. He created full-time, communities that lived silent lives (only using their voices to sing God’s praises) around the axis of prayer, study and manual labor. They were totally self-sufficient, building their own monasteries, making their own furniture, sewing their own clothes, growing their own food and medically treating their ill.

  All three kinds of monasticism were found in the Irish Celtic Church. As I mentioned in the second essay in this series, I believe there is incontrovertible evidence that the Celtic Catholic Church was founded by some of these Desert Fathers and Mothers who thought Egypt too crowded for the hermit’s life and escaped across the Mediterranean, out through the straits of Gibraltar and up the west coast of Europe, landing in (a then very heavily forested) Ireland. This “Pereginatio pro Dei Amore” (Journey for the Love of God) was taken to extremes by the Celts who loved nothing better than confronting death and laughing at it.

  From the 6th to the 13th centuries a band of monks (12 at any one time) lived on Sceilig Mhichíl, a craggy island lying seven miles west of the Dingle Peninsula. It looks like a broken tooth, with two roots jutting into the air – the highest one reaches 715 feet. A monastery consisting of small cells clung to the cliff face, and the monks dined elegantly on seagulls’ eggs and fish; drinking rainwater trapped in a simple canal system.

  In the 13th century, however, European weather deteriorated significantly – colder and stormier – and those hardy souls were forced to abandon it and move their monastery to the mainland. Sceilig would remain unoccupied until the 1970’s when my own father, Paddy O’Leary, an archeologist, became the first person, in 700 years, to live on it. He spent several months there, having food supplies delivered once a month – weather permitting – and did the first set of archeological drawings and plans.

  In the late 1980’s it came to the attention of the faculty of archeology at UC Berkeley and a team led by Prof. Walter Horn – that also included my father – did a more extensive survey, using aircraft. They discovered a one-person hermitage on the 715 feet high pinnacle! Some really, really hardy soul spent his days in contemplation on this needle point peak. Don’t mess with Celtic monks.

• (C) Mysticism

  I believe that once Homo Sapiens Sapiens developed language 50,000 years ago and began to wrestle with the great existential issues, they started their love affair with God. It has gone through five stages: First, is the phase of the theologians, where they spoke ABOUT God; next came the era of the priests where, in sacrifice, prayer and ceremony, the spoke TO God; thirdly came the era of the prophets where they purported to speak ON BEHALF OF God; then came the phase of the mystics where they spoke AS God; and, finally, came the era of the non-dual mystics who DON’T SPEAK AT ALL! They live in a radical, bliss-filled silence in which the experience of the numinous is beyond any language.

  I must hasten to add, however, that since we Celts love the taste of words, these mystics must have regularly broken their silence, if only to say, “Wow!”

  From its inception, Celtic spirituality was based on the mystical experience of God’s love – in Nature and elsewhere – rather than on dogma, creedal formulations or orthodoxy. While Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin dominated both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, Pelagius’s doctrine of Original Blessing was the water in which Celtic Christians were baptized and the Holy Oils in which they were marinated.

• Conclusion — The Celtic Diaspora

  The vicissitudes of the Celts, culminating in the Penal Laws, the Great “Famine” and mass Emigration, led to a million starving people crossing, not the Mediterranean but the Atlantic, in a more recent “Peregrinatio pro Dei Amore.”

  Like displaced Tibetan Buddhism and like vanquished Native American wisdom, both of which are seeding a revival of deep spirituality, I believe that the gaunt, starving, hounded Irish carried a “virus” across the ocean. Hidden in the cells of their “Roman Catholicism” lay the mitochondria of the ancient spirituality. It has been fallow for over a century, but it has recently begun sending up green tendrils, coaxing the soil of culture to allow it safe passage, and smilingly greeting the Sun of God that has long awaited its arrival. God’s tears are raining upon it, while Her breath whispers, “Long have I waited for your coming.”

  It carries in it fruit the antidote to a soul-less materialistic science that desecrates Nature as a mere resource, and an antidote to a heart-less, fundamentalist religion that reduces awe at the Mother’s love down to fear at the Father’s wrath.

  The mysticism of my great-grandmother and the druidry of my grandfather have convinced me that:

  Life is a dream that the Ego is having;
  the Ego is a dream that the Soul is having;
  the Soul is a dream that Spirit is having
  and that Spirit is a dream that Source is having.

  As a Celt, I know that all of creation is simply God-in-drag.

  Níl a thuile le rá agam! (That’s all I have to say!)

  

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — May 11, 2016: As the first shock jock, Jesus specialized in pricking the bubbles of the spiritually self-righteous. Once, the self-important apostles asked Jesus, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called over a child and said: “Truly I tell you, unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Was he simply deflating their egos or did he really mean it? If so, to what child qualities was he pointing? Here is my analysis.

• 1. Awe

  The English translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, say, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This conjures up an image of craven humans cowering before a distant demanding deity, when, in fact, what is translated as, “fear” actually means, “awe.” We have the same expression in Swahili; if someone achieves something of note, friends will joyfully exclaim, “nakuogopa!” (literally, “I fear you!” but meaning, “I’m in awe at your accomplishment!”)

  So, the first great gift of children is their sense of awe at all the experiences they are having. You can see it in the size of their eyes. Old eyes are squinted, beaten into submission by conventional propaganda; young eyes are wide open all the time.

  And this, indeed, IS the beginning of wisdom.

• 2. Curiosity

  The obvious response to awe is to seek answers to life’s miracles; so children pepper adults with questions. Some of these questions are so deep, that they are never asked by adults, thus appearing to be naive or cute.

  Until age six, I lived with my grandparents and seven aunts/uncles. I was born in 1946, and I regularly heard table conversations about “the war.”

  One dinner time, I piped up and asked, “How long did the war last?” I’m thinking the response will be something like, “Well, it started at 8:15 AM and lasted until 5:45 PM.” When I heard that it had lasted six years, I was incredulous, so I asked other questions, each of which resulted in hilarious laughter from the adults:

  “What happened when it got dark?!”
  “And what happened when they had to go potty?!”
  And the clincher – for a Catholic family:
  “And what happened when it was mass time?!”

  As a four-year-old, I could see that this particular emperor was stark naked, but the adults had already been marinated in the cultural trance.

• 3. Openness

  Kids have to be taught prejudice. This was borne in upon me by an incident during my time in Kenya. One day a woman – whom nobody in the village knew or could trace – arrived and sat under the shade of a tree. She was obese, naked, disheveled and psychotic; and was nursing a six-month-old baby boy, who looked adoringly into her eyes while lovingly fingering her face, as satiated breast-feeding babies are wont to do. In the child’s mind, this woman was God; and indeed she was. Like Christ’s Eucharist, she fed him from her own body and blood. But in the eyes of the world, this woman was crazy. Eventually, alas, this little boy would grow into the same realization – but he would have to be TAUGHT it.

• 4. Forgiving

  Shortly after arriving in the US, in 1987, I saw a newspaper photo of an abusive mother of another six-month-old boy, whom she had used regularly as an ashtray to stub out her cigarettes. She was being led away in handcuffs while the little child was freaking out and desperately attempting to be reunited with her. He was more than willing to take her back.

• 5. Vulnerable

  It’s hard to get more vulnerable than being naked, unable to stand, walk, talk; to be doubly incontinent and be told what and when to eat. Which is why we love children. Their vulnerability is their greatest asset. Jesus put it succinctly, “the meek shall inherit the Earth.”

• 6. Imaginative

  This gift is always misunderstood. We think imagination is the ability to make up stuff that is not real. That ability is fantasy. Imagination is the ability to alter our state of consciousness, visit other dimensions, interact with energies and entities that reside there, learn from them and bring back the new perspectives and cross-fertilize them with “waking consciousness.” Kids, poets, mystics and really great scientists know that this is the primary tool for understanding reality.

• 7. Resilient

  The essence of this gift is working with the present moment. The tenacity and creativity of children in surviving horrible circumstances – holocaust camps, refugee camps, and street living – is nothing short of miraculous. No matter what level of technology you throw at them – cardboard cartons or sophisticated Lego, donkeys or bikes, pencils or iPads – they will instantly become experts at it. If only there were some way to unleash that on the political process.

• 8. Sense of Fairness

  Even little kids have an innate sense of fairness and quickly spot the discrepancies, especially when authority figures do not walk their talk. One authority figure they frequently call to task is the Church-God, made in our image and likeness, who creates hell and limbo. As they grow, these kids don’t give up on God, they simply abandon the parody of God.

• 9. Access to Akasha

  Under the scientific baton of Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, who personally investigated over 2,000 cases “suggestive of reincarnation”, the reality that kids can dip into the Akashic Records and access experiences from previous lifetimes, seems pretty well substantiated. Is it any wonder, then, that the first eight child gifts mentioned above are available as they touch down on the tarmac of their current lifetime?

• 10. Conclusion

  Babies arrive as warriors, storming the Normandy Beaches of Maya, giving their lives to liberate the human spirit. But “education”, ignoring the adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, deforms them into caricatures of the soul, and promotes the ego to CEO of the new start-up called the psyche.

  What a pity!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — April 5, 2016: There were three crosses on Calvary that day. And I don’t mean the ones on which Jesus and the two “thieves” were hanged. No, I don’t mean those at all. There were three other  crosses there that day. I had seen two of them years ago, but the third one I just saw for the first time today. So I will briefly mention the first two and then speak in more detail of the third one.

• (A) The First Cross

  The first cross, which I saw years ago, was not the tree to which Jesus was nailed but rather the figure formed by its two beams: a horizontal one representing the connection among all living forms. Wherever there are sentient beings, this horizontal beam invites us to recognize the brotherhood/sisterhood of them all. This was symbolized by his outstretched arms, embracing all of the Father’s children.

  And the vertical element of that first cross, symbolized by the flow from his head to his toes, represented the connection between heaven and Earth, between the transcendent and the immanent, between the mystical and the mundane.

  And the intersection point between the vertical and horizontal elements is the SELF. I can only find my true core by finding where I lie in this dance of dimensions. This cross I call, the cross of re-member-ing . The fractured body of Life has all of its members reconnected into the original family.

• (B) The Second Cross

  And the second cross, which I saw some years later and which I call, the cross of re-surrect-ing,  was formed as the disciples of Jesus wrestled with the problem of trying to explain to those who hadn’t yet met the risen Jesus, what that experience of meeting him was like. Since it was basically an ineffable  experience they resorted to paradoxically complementary accounts which bible scholars have called, “The before/after and the below/above images.”

  And here you can visualize the second cross I saw: the before/after images are the horizontal arm in which they sought to impress upon their listeners that it really was the self-same Jesus they encountered after  his death as they had known before  his death.

  The below/above images are symbolized by the vertical arm. Here the objective is to show that although it was the same Jesus he was now radically transformed. This cross, then, makes any Avatar (Buddha, Jesus, Krishna…) a master of time (before/after) and of space (below/above). Since modern science claims that we live in a space/time universe, this makes any truly awakened one a master of all reality.

• (C) The Third Cross

  But I really want to focus on the third  cross of Calvary, the one I saw for the first time today. Whereas the first two crosses were two-dimensional, having simply a vertical and a horizontal arm, today’s was a three-dimensional cross with, to use a simple mathematical image, an X-axis, a Y-axis and a Z-axis. And it represented the cosmic energies in which we live out our evolution into enlightenment.

  So imagine three orthogonal axes, each of which is an infinite line, all three of them intersecting at a single point which we can call, Zero. One axis represents the spectrum of Relationships  (how we view others), one represents the spectrum of Behavior  (Virtues and Vices) and the third represents the influence of Non-human Entities  (from Angels to Demons). Let me explain those.

  If zero is the “neutral” measure on each of these scales then, beginning at zero and going in a negative direction, on the Relationships axis, we find, progressively: annoying people, negative people, enemies, sworn enemies… Going in the positive direction on the Relationships axis, we encounter acquaintances, friends, family, soul mates…

  Beginning at zero on the Behavior scale and going in the negative direction, we find progressively: disinterest, disregard, hostility, pleasure in the discomfort of another, willingness to impose discomfort on another, willingness to impose pain on another, willingness to torture another, willingness to intentionally kill another… Going in the positive direction on the Behavior axis we find concern for others, love for others, compassion for others, willingness to lay down one’s life for another. Incidentally, no one lays down his life for an enemy, because if you are willing to lay down your life for him, you have already made him your friend.

  Beginning at zero on the Non-human Entities scale and going in the negative direction, we find, progressively: discombobulated recently-deceased astral travelers, Earth-bound entities addicted parasitically to living humans, energy vampires who seek chaos on which to feed, psychic bottom-dwellers who create suffering in order to feed on it… Going in the positive direction on the Non-human Entities axis, we encounter spiritual cheerleaders, disincarnate mentors, angelic beings, and Seraphic guides for the evolutionary path of love that began in God’s womb and ends in God’s heart.

  Each of us is situated somewhere in this three-dimensional matrix, composed of this web of Relationships, Behavior and Non-human Entities. As always, the mission is to come fully awake to where in this matrix you  operate, and to strive to move towards full enlightenment which is, with the prayer-requested assistance of Seraphic guides, to develop life-bestowing compassion on all beings, thus turning them from “enemies” or “neutrals” into soul mates on safari. In the kingdom, there are none who are not the I AM.

  This is the most important of the three crosses: soul mates compassionately merging, under the tutelage of the Avatars, into the One-ness of the No-thing-ness. It is the sin of separation finally dissolving under the sun of Source.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — February 23, 2016: I’ll wager that as soon as you heard the word “terrorist”, you instinctively added the word “ISIS” or “Muslim”. If you did, you’re the victim of a regular diet of sound bites.

Fundamentalism, whose modern name is “Sound Bites”, has a long pedigree, but essentially it is: (a) the reducing of a complex situation to a few simplistic half-truths; (b) the identifying or creating of an “enemy”; (c) the frenzied cultivating of xenophobia; and (d) the unleashing of the dogs of war on the by-now-less-than-human “others”. At various stages the “others” have been called: pagans, gentiles, infidels, heathens, barbarians, niggers, queers, papists, communists, terrorists. . . Pick any culture or any era of history and you can harvest a barn-full of “others”.

Our own times are typical. Even a cursory perusal of the current national political debates assure us that fundamentalism is alive and well in our own country. So let me pick just one of these issues and examine it. I’ll pick “terrorists”.

I’ll wager that as soon as you heard the word “terrorist”, you instinctively added the word “ISIS” or “Muslim”. If you did you’re the victim of a regular diet of sound bites. But when you really think about it or research it a little, you realize two things: (a) terrorism is as old as our reptilian brain; and (b) terrorism comes in a huge variety of flavors. Let me treat you to a few scoops.

• (A) Religious Terrorism

  Despite the fact that each religion has its origins in a mystical impulse, it quickly adapts to the pathology of the second and third generation leadership and becomes a powerful way to control “the faithful”. The love-based supertanker of the charismatic founder will be turned by the tugboats of theology and dogma through 180 degrees, until it preaches and practices the antithesis of the original loving message. Fear replaces love, obedience replaces awe-filled curiosity, and goose-stepping gullibility replaces personal seeking.

  God stops talking directly to Her children and, instead, whispers revelations to infallible pontiffs and jihad-pronouncing ayatollahs. And these whispered revelations become darker and uglier until the unwashed sinners are told that the divinely appointed leaders have control not just of their Earthly lives but of their eternal destinies as well. That’s enough to lick 99% into shape.

  The 1% who still aren’t convinced can be shown the error of their ways by a one-way visit to the Inquisition. As for those “outside the fold”, a few well-armed, well-financed, genocidal crusades can do wonders to establish the merciful message of the founder.

  By any other name, this is terrorism.

• (B) Economics

  Older even than religion, economics are a powerful tool of either the evolution of human society or the corrupted control of it. Beginning around 3,000 BCE, when mechanized agriculture replaced horticulture’s digging stick, and the invention of glazed pottery allowed us to store great amounts of food in waterproof and rodent-proof jars, it became possible to hoard food and even to weaponize it. It is no accident that the invention of the ox-drawn plow came at the same time as the first empires, the subjugation of women and the great expansion of the slave class.

  Burning his granaries or salting his fields was a very effective way of defeating the enemy; while hoarding the local food supply and doling it out only to “the faithful” (that phrase keeps coming up!) was a way of controlling the citizens of the empire. And the emperor lives on; he may still have no clothes, but he has lots of patents. His modern name might be Monsanto, Syngenta or DuPont; and now he claims ownership of life itself.

  And corporatocracy completes the picture. The average pay ratio of a CEO to the median worker was 204-to-1 in 2014. And these worker bees are merely resources to be hired, fired or relocated as profits dictate.

  By any other name, this is terrorism.

• (C) The Military

  There is probably no “tribe” anywhere on planet Earth which isn’t living on land that was stolen from earlier occupants. And each group has taken it at the tip of a cudgel, spear, arrow or fighter-bomber. The response of the lesser armed has always been guerilla tactics. These people are called “freedom fighters” if they win and “terrorists” if they don’t.

  As the self-appointed World Policemen, we feel it our right to grab any resources we need (oil, precious metals, food…) while pretending to be spreading democracy. Each Tuesday morning, while most of us are at work and retirees are walking the dog or playing bridge, the “leader of the free world” is identifying people half ways across the globe who are to be dispatched to their Maker that day, courtesy of drones financed by our tax dollars. “Collateral damage” is simply an unfortunate byproduct. The National Security State – a screen to hide all kinds of vicious and deadly crimes – works at the behest of the economic puppeteers to ensure an interrupted flow of goodies to the elite.

  By any other name, this is terrorism.

• (D) The Law

  According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, by the end of 2013 the USA had the highest incarceration rate in the world – 716 per 100,000 of its citizens – or 2.3 million people. We are only 4.4% of the world’s population but account for 22% of the world’s prisoners. By 2007, it was already a $74 billion industry – and I do mean industry.

  From the 1920’s to 1980 the figure was less than half a million, but that number had doubled by 1990 and redoubled by 2000. Between prison, probation and parole there are now 7.5 million Americans under some kind of criminal justice control. And, of course, Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately represented in this rise. If you’re Latino, you’re almost three times more likely to be imprisoned than if you’re White; and if you’re Black, you’re almost seven times more likely.

  Three factors have led to this meteoric increase. The first was Nixon’s “war on drugs” beginning in 1970. The second was Reagan’s Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1980 which led to mandated longer sentences. And the third salvo was the emergence of the Prison-Industrial complex. In 1980 private prisons did not exist in the USA; now, as an example, Louisiana – which has the highest incarceration rates in the world – “houses” most of its prisoners in private, for-profit facilities. A 2013 Bloomberg Report states that in the previous decade the number of inmates in the for-profit prisons had grown by 44%. These corporations – such as the Correction Corporation of America – negotiate deals whereby the states guarantee to fill at least 90% of the prison beds or else reimburse the companies for the short fall.

  The final indignity is that these corporations then use their profits to lobby at the state and federal levels to introduce legislation such as “three strikes”, longer sentences and expanded definitions of “crime” to ensure a steady supply of client-inmates. For the lawbreaker crime may not pay, but for the jail masters it pays handsomely.

  By any other name, this is terrorism.

• Conclusion

  Jesus famously said, “Before you attempt to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye, first remove the log from your own”. The self-righteous West, which points the finger at middle-Eastern terrorists, has enough logs in its own eyes to stock a lumberyard.

  It’s time for cultural ophthalmology.

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — March 8, 2016:

• (A) Strike One – Satan as Shadow

  One of the most impactful archetypes driving human behavior, according to Carl Jung, is the “Shadow” – that unacknowledged part of us which we typically project unconsciously onto others. It’s a pity that we don’t recognize that the shadow is 80% gold – the unrealized potential, the gap between who we could become and who we presently are. But more problematic is the other 20%, the repressed material that makes it difficult for us to see the log in our own eye, thus enabling us to ascribe it to others.

  When we do this as individuals, we simply project this material onto another person, typically onto someone with whom we have a significant relationship – good or bad. Then we wind up, literally, shadow boxing, often with disastrous results.

  When we do it as a community, we form prejudices and dump the shadow of the entire group onto another group. I remember watching the movie “Mississippi Burning” several years ago. The part of the movie that most upset me was an interview with a young White woman who was nursing her infant, all the while vilifying the Black community and claiming that if they weren’t kept in their subservient role, the Blacks would be raping White women, killing White men-folk and burning White homes and churches. This is precisely what the White community had actually been doing for years to the Black community! That is what happens when a group fails to acknowledge and work on its own shadow.

  The nation also has a shadow, and so it creates a major industry to convince the citizens that the “bad guys,” the “axis of evil,” is the other group. Billions of dollars are spent on propaganda and trillions of dollars are spent on war machinery in order to project the nation’s shadow onto the “enemy” and then in attempting to conquer it. All wars throughout human history have been fought on the basis of this one-two punch.

  All shadow-casting results in a double-sided illusion: firstly, a failure to see ourselves as we are; and, secondly, a tendency to see others as they are not. This skewed reality creates a misalignment – a background/foreground disorientation – which leads to psychological and sociological crippling. It’s rather like seasickness, which is produced by the contradictory sensations being delivered by vision (the eyes) and kinesthetics/proprioception (the stomach).

  So, for instance, if you’re in your cabin in a ship that is being tossed about by a storm, relative to the interior of the cabin you are not moving or pitching or yawing, so the eyes are deceived, but the gyroscope of the stomach can detect the motion; and it is this conflict between the eyes and the stomach that leads to sea-sickness. Hence, you’ll feel less sick, if you go up on deck where eyes and stomach are giving you the same message.

  Well the unrecognized shadow operates something like that and, depending on the numbers involved (individual, community, nation etc.), the results can be anywhere from mild discomfort to a category 5 hurricane.

  But it’s not just nations that have shadows; the entire human species, qua species, has a shadow. This is projected onto nature and is so severe in our times, that we run the risk of a murder-suicide pact, in which we destroy nature’s ability to feed and support us, and, thus, we have become a cancer which, having killed its host, now finds itself in the clutches of death.

  And this leads me to the first “strike”. Satan may well be the aggregated shadow material of homo sapiens sapiens; a cancerous archetype of the unacknowledged but destructive energy of this dark part of the human psyche.

  Nestled between the east coast of Asia and the west coast of North America, lies a huge gyre, a swirl of ocean currents that has trapped a massive amount of human garbage. It has been called variously, “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” and “The Pacific Trash Vortex”. It consists of plastics and chemical sludge, 80% of which comes from land-based dumping and 20% from ship-based dumping. It is made up of a host of items – from abandoned fishing nets to micro-pellets used in abrasive cleaners.

  Typically, it takes the North American currents about six years to ferry their contributions to the dump, while the Asian currents can manage it in less than a year. Depending on how you measure the items in this dump – from microscopic plastic particles to soda bottles – this garbage pile is either the size of Texas or twice the size of the continental USA.

  As you can imagine it results in the deaths of millions of sea creatures, and the poisons ingested by them, and by hence their predators, work their way up the food chain to be delivered to you on the shiny antiseptic shelves of your local fish market.

  Satan may well be the psycho-spiritual equivalent of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” – the constellated island of the human community’s unwillingness to face and heal its own darkness.

  And that is “Satan, Strike One.”

• (B) Strike Two – Satan as Cosmic Service-to-Self

  Imagine a spectrum joining narcissism and compassion or service-to-self and service-to-other. Each of us will land somewhere along that line; or, more likely, we will skip about at various stages of our lives and in different situations, occupying different spots on that spectrum. However, we tend to have a home base or center of gravity which defines our typical placement.

  Similarly, each group or community – though it may also skip about – will tend to have a favored location. This is true all the way up to culture, nation and species. As an example of service-to-self versus service-to-other, we in the USA are 4.4% of the world’s population but we consume 30% of the world’s resources. And we have displayed a brutal willingness to defend that lifestyle with the most expensive military machine that world has ever seen.

  In 1964, the Russian astrophysicist, Nikolai Kardashev, created a typology of cosmic civilizations in a hierarchy of technological advancement. He originally proposed three types. More recently it has been expanded to five. Type I is a civilization that has learned to sustainably harness all of its planetary resources. Were humans to reach that level (but we are still a Type Zero, he said) we could use waves, wind, sun, volcanoes and earthquakes, etc. to satisfy all of our energy needs. Type II’s would manage to harvest the energies of their local star and entire solar system. Type III’s could do that for their galaxy; Type IV’s for the universe; and Type V’s for all of the universes that exist.

  Now imagine positioning those civilizations on the service-to-self service-to-other spectrum. Any group on the negative side of that scale would prove to be powerful enemies, if you got in their way or possessed what they wanted. Is this what St. Paul meant in his letter to the Ephesians when he declared, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of the dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”?

  In this cosmic struggle between compassion (seeing the God in everyone) and narcissism (thinking only I am God), is Satan a leader of a dark Type IV or Type V civilization? A being equipped with freewill, who regularly chooses the selfish, violent, egoic alternative?

  That is “Satan, Strike Two.”

• (C) Strike Three – Satan as The Devil’s Advocate

  Counter-intuitively, the Roman Catholic Church, in the process of investigating the life of a holy person before he/she is declared to be a saint, appoints a “prosecuting attorney” popularly known as “the Devil’s Advocate”. His purpose is to try to derail the process by ferreting out “the dirt” on the saint-in-the-making. This is the kind of guy you love to hate, but his purpose is to ensure that no unworthy person gets sainted only to have it subsequently surface that he had feet of clay; and the church would wind up with egg all over its face – if you don’t mind me mixing my metaphors.

  The first such account is found in the Book of Job, where God wants to canonize Job, and Satan appoints himself as the devil’s advocate. In fact, “Satan” means “adversary”. His function is to ensure that Job’s mettle is well and truly tested.

  I remember on one occasion, around age four, causing consternation in my family during evening prayers. Every night, under the direction of my great-grandmother, the family would kneel for the rosary. The five decades took about fifteen minutes, but were followed by “the trimmings”, in which each person got to pray for a particular cause, e.g. “I want to pray for Michael Murphy who just emigrated to England; please, God, protect him from the pagans who live in that country and make sure that he doesn’t marry a Protestant!” or “Please, God, look after our chickens and don’t let the fox kill any more of them.”

  One night – and I have no idea what prompted it – I exclaimed, “Please, God, forgive the devil and let him back into heaven.” I don’t know if I was being guided by a cosmic compassion or if I just figured we’d all be much safer if he was back at Source, where Jesus and Mary and St. Joseph could keep an eye on him. Anyway, there was a shocked silence and then my grandmother scolded, “In God’s name, child, what are ye sayin’?” To which her mother, my great-grandmother snapped, “Leave the child alone, Frances, because God knows exactly what he means!”

  So, maybe, after all, Satan is a very necessary ingredient in the plan of salvation. I’ll pick up on that idea in the next episode in this series on “Evil”.

  Strike Three – and You’re Outed, Satan!

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — March 19, 2016: [Note: I wrote this piece almost 37 years ago, as a young missionary priest working in East Africa. It is a creative encounter with Satan and Christ.]

• (A) FOREVER is longer than History!

  On the lips of bronzed old-timers back from the dust of the battle it had a tropical intriguing mystique; in books it sounded exhilarating – a heady, inspiring challenge to a young seminarian with a heart full of ideals and precious little experience. But now Lord that I have tasted it myself, I am aware only of the pain of it, the empty uncertain agony of being alone, lonely and celibate. Tomorrow Lord I will be 33 years old. By then you were ready to lay down your life. But tonight, Sunday night, I am still only 32.

  I have been celebrating Mass and preaching from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on an empty belly. The nearest priest is 30 miles away and my heart is aching for someone to talk to. Only the flickering Sanctuary lamp indicates a presence who will listen. So listen Lord! Answer me honestly. I don’t want sweet words, I want the Truth.

  Have you never felt the weakness and the vulnerability of yourself listlessly soaking away the energy of you? Have you never agonized on whether or not you can remain faithful forever to the vocation the Father has given you? FOREVER is a lot of days Lord. FOREVER is longer than History!

  Have you never craved to gather in a manly embrace a living, throbbing, loving woman? If you haven’t Lord then we are completely different – and I don’t believe you ever became a man.

  And when you spoke of RESURRECTION did you have some special knowledge or were you also operating, as I am, only on Faith?

• (B) He Speaks

  The wind rattled the corrugated-iron roofing on the little church and then was still; the endless chirping of the crickets stopped suddenly and there was a loud pulsating silence. And HE was there in the middle of it and HE was speaking.

  “Come with me into the Garden.
  Over there lie Peter, John and James – sleeping.
  Leave them be, I want YOU to watch with me.
  Judas is in town making final arrangements.
  And the Prince of this world is armed for the battle.
  Now I want YOU to listen!”

• (C) The Interrogation

  He threw himself full-length upon the ground. It reminded me of an Ordination scene. And a great oppressive heaviness came upon him. I could feel it myself – the lonely searing agony of Temptation draining joy and life. There was a sinister chuckle and I was aware of the presence of the Tempter. He began to interrogate Jesus and this was their conversation:

  “One more day Emmanuel —
  correction: 20 more hours.
  How does the Hero feel?
  You’ll make a lovely corpse —
  thorn-pricked, whip-lashed, nail-studded
  and oh so very, very DEAD?
  And for whom?

  For Peter?
  No! Not for Peter. Not for that garrulous buffoon
  who’ll swear in his awful Galilean accent
  that he never even heard of you.

  For Judas perhaps?
  Aha yes: ‘This corpse is dedicated in Love
  to my good friend Judas the Iscariot.’
  Yes indeed my son Judas.
  Caught you all napping did Judas.
  Yes, I’m proud of him.

  Or perhaps it’s for John?
  Aaahh, John is special to you.
  Rosy-cheeked, beardless, innocent, little John.
  He’ll remember you alright —
  for a year or two anyway!
  But TIME is a great healer.
  Time is my greatest ally;
  So time will cure John. He’ll go back to his boat.
  He’ll get himself a nice comforting little wife
  and later on he’ll tell his grandchildren
  about a long-forgotten legend called:
  Jesus-who-nearly-became-the-Messiah.

  Come on man — think.
  33 years old
  and what have you done?”

  Jesus groaned and in a very little voice replied,
  almost to himself:

  “I have healed the Blind, the Lame and the Leprous.
  They at least will remember”.

• (D) The Tempter

  The Tempter sat on a rock near the still prostrate form and sarcastically rejoined:

  “Very good, excellent!
  So you healed two or perhaps three hundred people
  in a tiny corner of a despised country
  at a microscopic moment of history.
  Great!
  What about the millions who are still blind
  and lame and leprous?
  Reflect oh gentle, sensitive, loving one
  on the billions of people still to be born
  who will curse their infirmities and heap vitriol
  on the day of their birth.
  No. Cut the crap!
  Don’t tell me about healing;
  tell me about a REAL accomplishment”

  Jesus stammered: “I have brought joy and freedom
  to Magdalene, Zaccheus, Levi and many others”.

  The Tempter scoffed: “Magdalene is a fool
  — a softhearted, easily swayed fool.
  She loves passionately and forgets quickly.
  Let me tell you what will become of your
  precious little Magdalene of the dark seductive eyes.
  She’ll fall in love with Judas!

• (E) The Wedding

  ‘Mr. and Mrs. Simon Iscariot announce the wedding
  of their eldest son JUDAS
  to Miss Mary Magdalene.
  He for the second time, she for the first.
  Reception to be held in the Upper Room.
  Turbans and Evening Gowns, please.’

  Won’t it be nice.
  And – wait for it —
  they’ll call their first-born son
  JESUS!!

  Sorry you’ll have to do better than that.
  Come on you’re 33. You must have achieved something!”

• (F) Jesus Sobs Brokenly

  Jesus was sobbing brokenly by now. Large beads of blood-tinged, salt-flavored sweat trickled into his eyes and the corners of his mouth. In a barely audible whisper he ventured:

  “I raised the Widow’s son, the little girl of Jairus
  and my friend Lazarus to Life”.

  The Tempter clicked his tongue appreciatively:

  “NOW THAT WAS DRAMATIC. I admit it!
  Lazarus, stinking to high heaven,
  shuffling cloth-coiled out of the cavern
  to the delight of the voyeurs
  and the swooning of the more sensitive souls.
  Standing ghoulishly swathed in fetid bandages
  and covered in flies and ants.
  Swaying slightly in the sultry mid-day
  as Martha, with one hand on her nose,
  unwrapped the putrid linen-strips.

  No wonder the religious leaders wanted to kill you.
  I have never in my life witnessed
  a more disgusting spectacle.

  And you realize of course
  that I’ll catch up with them all again,
  when you have gone through with your
  thinly-disguised savior-scented suicide.

  What about making it a Double Event?
  Say, Martha and Lazarus to die on the same day?
  Yes I like it!

  ‘Lazarus and Martha.
  At their home in Bethany.
  He for the second time; she for the first
  . Deeply regretted by their loving sister, Mary.’

  You did a great disservice there, I’m afraid.
  Dying is bad enough but having to do it twice —
  that’s heartless.

  And speaking of Resurrection —
  are you sure you’re going to rise yourself?
  What guarantee have you got?
  None my friend.
  Except a stupidly childish belief in the Father.
  The Father.
  What the hell has the Father ever done for you up to now?
  He has failed you – failed you miserably.
  The Elders despise you, the Priests detest you
  and the few who WERE willing to follow you
  were turned off by the
  ‘My-Body-is-the-Bread-of-life’ crap.
  Face up to it man: you’re a dead loss.
  My advice is this – run from this city,
  flee this country.

  19 hours left now — it could be 19 years
  or 59 years
  if you do it my way.
  Get up, GET UP off the bloody ground
  and DO SOMETHING!!

  Jesus struggled to his knees and hoarsely shouted:
  “Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!! I can’t take anymore, I . . . .”

• (G) Stop It for Christ's Sake

  The Tempter shoved his face grotesquely to within an inch of Jesus’ sweat-streaked, straggly-bearded countenance and spat out the words:

  “Stop it yourself for Christ’s sake!
  YOU stop it!
  YOU!!
  You Head-in-the-clouds, blind buffoon!
  You pitiable laughing-stock, you. . . .”

  I jumped up and caught the Tempter by the shoulder and pulled him away. With all the venom I could command I roared:

  “Begone Satan!
  Begone you destroyer of mankind,
  you Author of lies, of hatred and dissension.
  Leave this dying savior to make his peace
  with his Father!”

  And he left, sneering at the sobbing form. Jesus lifted his eyes piteously to the twinkling stars and begged:

  “Father, Father, why have you abandoned me?
  Take this awful black uncertainty from me.
  Let me KNOW again why I am to do
  what I am to do.
  Help me!
  Abba please HELP me.
  Explain it to me again
  – please?”

  I knelt at his side. He looked exhaustedly through tear-matted lashes and I knew that he needed an answer. I said:

  “Lord it was good for me to be here.
  Now I know that you are Real.
  I have seen that you are a man,
  like me.
  Now Lord, I can try to follow you.”

  Namasté,
  Seán

Patheos.com — March 22, 2016: Homo Sapiens, who developed about 200,000 years ago, could think, but could not think about thinking. That would come 150,000 years later with the arrival of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Thinking about thinking involves language, which is the ability to manipulate symbols in the mind and then create external signifiers (e.g., words, gestures, writing). Soon Homo Sapiens Sapiens realized that they could experience altered states of consciousness by various practices e.g., dancing, drumming, chanting, fasting, enduring extreme pain or ingesting entheogens.

• (A)The First Notion of Sin

  Among those altered states of consciousness, perhaps the most exciting were states of mysticism – the ability to experience and dialog with the gods. They quickly learned that this venture was fraught with danger; hence the caveat: “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living god.”

  There were two main dangers – that of permanent madness (the inability to subsequently operate in the “ordinary” world) or inflation (a virulent form of narcissism.) So, very quickly, the elders set in place a bunch of restrictions to prevent the unprepared (uninitiated) from stumbling into such experiences.

  We call these restrictions “taboos.” The first notion of sin, then, was the willful disregarding of these taboos. Was this, perhaps, the “sin” of Adam and Eve?

• (B) The Second Understanding of Sin

  In later eras, sin would change its meaning fairly radically. The second understanding of sin, I believe, was that it involved failure to honor a covenant between a tribe and a god. The tribe operated as a “corporate singularity.” So, if one member sinned, the whole tribe was guilty and needed to be punished. For the “non-offenders” to protest their innocence would be the equivalent, today, of a murderer pleading that since it was only his index finger that pulled the trigger, only it needed to be punished and the rest of him should be set free.

  This idea of punishing all for the sin of one has a long history; according to Genesis chapter 3, all of humanity was to be punished for the sin of our first parents. Even today, we kill millions of innocent civilians in order to punish the sins of political dictators e.g. Panama, Iraq, Syria…

• (C) The Third Phase of Sin

  The third phase of sin was the notion that it was the breach of a commandment. Beginning with the Code of Ur-Nammu in Mesopotamia around 2100 BCE, the law of Moses around 1250 BCE and the Brehon Laws of the Irish, each culture created or received via “divine revelation” a law-code that legislated all aspects of private and public life. The infraction of any of these led to the punishment of the individual sinner (and, sometimes, his progeny.) This punishment was either meted out directly by the offended god or by his earthly representative – the king or the priest.

  This phase is still alive and well on planet Earth and is, currently, most violently represented by ISIS and fundamentalist Islam, which is outraged on behalf of Allah, and quite prepared to chop off limbs and heads to satisfy Allah’s rage at his subjects’ disregard for his laws.

  Personally, however, I believe that the only sin is the selfish decision or utter laziness to