Still and Know

"Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion you are sheep.  You are souls immortal, spirits free, blessed and eternal."  ~Vivekananda

One day, the devil and his friend were walking down the street.  Ahead of them, they saw a man bend down, pick something up off the ground and stuff it eagerly into his pocket.  "What was that?" asked the devil's friend. "Oh, that was a piece of the Truth," said the devil.  "Well, that's bad news for you, isn't it?" said the friend.  "Not at all," the devil said with a smirk. "I'm going to let him organize it."

On our spiritual journeys as Lesbian, Gay, Bi-affectionate and Transgender people, some of the most insidious illusions that arrest our progress are the trappings of organized religion.  For many of us that were expelled from the garden of our faith tradition because of our gender identity or sexual orientation, the struggle to return takes over our thinking about religion and spirituality.  But return to what?  Too often we are content to return to the rituals, the community or the drag of our faith tradition-overcoming those who thought they could hold us back or keep us out-but fail to engage our lives and souls in a transformational relationship with the Divine.  We claim the words, but not the power; we celebrate the customs, but avoid the practice; we bind ourselves to institutions, but drown out the Spirit; we sketch vast architectures, but remain blind to the Truth.

It's not that religious traditions are bad, quite the contrary.  Beautiful buildings, colorful fabrics, smoke, crackers, cadences and harmonies are all nice things to have, but if they do not facilitate the deepening of individuals' consciousnesses, if they do not simplify instead of complicate, transform instead of translate, if they do not, like language, point beyond themselves, if they do not lay bare our true selves, then they are all of them empty, valueless barriers to the evolutionary maturation of the human spirit toward God. 

The simple truth is - and you can stop reading after this is you want since the rest will just say this with more words - the simple truth is that salvation, enlightenment and inner peace can only be found by going inward, and never by rummaging through what's outside. 

"If your leaders tell you, 'the kingdom of God is in the sky,' then the birds will get there before you.  If they say that it is under the sea, the fish will enter and will precede you.  I say unto you that the kingdom of God is inside you and outside you and all around you. Whosoever knows oneself will find the kingdom.  And when you know yourselves, you will know that you are the children of the living God," says Jesus in The Gospel of Thomas. How do we come to know our true selves?  We become still, quiet and fully present.  We close our mouths, block off our senses, blunt our sharpness, untie our knots, soften our glares, and settle our dust. Only then can we know our primal identity.  Only then can we hear the still, small voice of Spirit.  Only then are we open to the action of Spirit.  Only then are we available for the great work of transformation.

There are many techniques that can support this transformation, from centering and contemplative prayer to yoga, Zen meditation and Vedanta.  The goals of a transformative spiritual practice are self-realization and partnership with the Divine. 

Of course, self-realization and partnering with the Divine mean exploring parts of ourselves and parts of God that we wish weren't there.  Only when we become fully conscious of the web of assumptions and beliefs that we have constructed about the world and about ourselves-a web in which we now are caught-are we forced to dismantle our illusions.  Then we learn to see what lies within us and what lies outside us as they really are; only then are we able to interact with the world as it is and not as we imagine it to be.  "Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease," cautions Lao-tzu in Tao Te Ching. "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power."

Unfortunately, queer people are as skilled at avoiding this kind of conflict with our own minds' constructions as we are adept at confronting the discriminatory traditions and values of our society and many religions.  This conflict is so primal, so radical-to change not only the public translation of spiritual values but to transform our very understanding of reality-that part of us wants to escape it.  The loud, pushy voice of ego keeps our focus outside of ourselves-driving us to change things on the surface of the phenomenal world.  Any kind of fundamental questioning, any opportunity for deep, inner quiet, threatens to shatter the concepts of what the self is and how the universe operates upon which we base every thought and decision!  Many of us think, subconsciously or not, that we just don't want to know that much.

I've certainly seen this hesitance in myself; it took me years to pick up a Ken Wilber book because I knew I just couldn't handle having my worldview challenged that much.  The last time I confronted my Dad about the religious reasons for his disapproval of my marriage, he emotionally responded to my informed exegesis of scripture with, "I don't want to hear it.  I need to believe what I believe."  It's true of most of us. Our entire lives are constructed around certain assumptions about how things work and why.  We want our understanding of Spirit and our experience of the world to be static things that after you get them once, they never change.  Unfortunately, as time goes on and human beings learn more and more about the universe and human nature and how they operate, our personal understanding has to change or we become fossils of an outmoded worldview.  Our development becomes arrested: full stop.  Just because a way of being has become comfortable doesn't mean it's correct.

In fact, we usually become more and more uncomfortable as we become closer and closer to Spirit through meditation and prayer.  First, "We see that God is not a drug or an instantaneous bliss maker," explains Julia Mossbridge, gifted author of Unfolding: The Perpetual Science of Your Soul's Work. "We discover that our lives are not the sole item on God's agenda. Partnering with God is not about developing an ethereal, airy-fairy relationship with some force of Love.  It is about developing an intimate, everyday, every-moment-of-every-day friendship in which you are with God all the time: while doing volunteer work, making a speech, singing in a choir, dancing at your wedding, getting in a fist-fight, eating the third plate of nachos, cursing at pedestrians.  All the time."

"It is a call to follow Jesus out of all the structures, security blankets, and even spiritual practices that serve as props. They are all left behind insofar as they are part of the false self system…The false self is an illusion," says prominent Christian contemplative, Father Thomas Keating in Open Mind, Open Heart. In short, when we become fully, deeply present-as we begin to recognize our true selves and look God in the eye-we get the rug pulled out from under us. 

It's not a bad thing, although we have a low tolerance for discomfort.  Getting shaken up is just evidence of our rising up.  If our feet stayed firmly planted on the rug of our conventional understanding, our feet would never leave the ground. Groundlessness is inherent in the process.  Just as there must be silence for Spirit to be audible, there has to be space in our thoughts and beliefs for Truth to manifest.  Groundlessness wipes away our preconceptions. Pema Chodron explains in The Places That Scare You that as we become used to this insecurity, "To the extent that we stop struggling against uncertainty and ambiguity, to that extent we dissolve our fear."

There is no fear in love.  When groundlessness cultivates our fearlessness, we encounter our own genuinely loving nature, and we become available for open-minded, whole-hearted interaction with the universe.  As gay Christian mystic Jim Marion puts it in Putting on the Mind of Christ, "All we need to do to be 'saved' is to consciously realize who we have been all along.  We need to realize our own divinity, own it, take up the responsibility of it, and live it." 

If Transgender, Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay women, men and young people do not awaken to our full responsibility, to our fulfillment, our empowerment, then our natural function as human beings in society will continue to be frustrated, obstructed and disjoint.  The possibility for our final emancipation, legitimation and liberation will wither if LGBT people do not unmask and become more present to others, in service to others, and bring the gentle qualities of Spirit to the details of living. 

These universal qualities of Spirit-love, compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, humility, contentment, responsibility and harmony-will help us transform straight communities into just and sustainable environments that nurture whole, mindful and evolving individuals.  Our awakening of spiritual and emotional intelligence will be the thunder that cracks their slumber.  Our care and service will rain down and wash away the dark stains of hate and prejudice.  Our radical realization will be the Shirt of Flame that burns bushels and allows our inner lights to shine. 

Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us 'til we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity's sake?
~Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners

Comments

[CJM]

I really can connect with the rug being pulled from under you feeling. Being gay or not, it's amazing as you open yourself from within to explore Source/God/Being there is a deepening which can shake the ego into a place of fear and discomfort as you begin to experience Life more authentically.

I asked my teacher and shaman, "How is it that I have lived in this world and never noticed the planetary unconsciousness? Now I walk and feel everything. I feel uneasy and confused about who I am now. How can I now serve the world knowing what I know within? How can I serve to make the planet more conscious?"

She answered, "Simply by being. Simply by working on deepening and observing within yourself that which flows through us all, you are in Presence with Being, consciousness is present with you in union with the planet. It isn't easy always and one has to honor that our ego does not want to crumble and be re-sculpted. You can re-scuplt, and this truly is the relationship (serving) with the world and God."

I've never been to this site before. I'm glad I've come across it. :)

CJM :)

[joe perez]

Yes! It's good to hear your voice from Shirt of Flame again, Ko!

Joe

[Steve]

This was truly lovely, challenging and enlightening. I look forward to reading more like it.

Thanks.

Steve

[Phil in Princeton]

I did more than "read" your post, Ko. I Read it. Aloud. Twice, in fact. I Read it. I Heard it. I was touched by it.

Your thoughts are positively transformational. Thank you for reminding me that my being "shaken up" is simply evidence of my "rising up." As a dear friend told me: "You're giving birth to your Self ... and labor is a process that's always accompanied by discomfort."

[pennyjane]

indeed a lovely post and interpretation. i would caution: do not underestimate the power of organized religion, nor overestimate peace and tranquility.

community is essential to the human condition and continueing struggle is personal growth itself. as a christian transwoman and a member of a traditional church i have done that battle with acceptance and have arrived. i did this not by challenging the fundamental beliefs, but by acknowleging them and swearing my own allegence: by being a living christian and a transwoman at the same time, knowing there is no conflict in that and demonstrating it. i need the community and i know that, i am not strong enough nor smart enough to be the kind of christian i know i need to be without the love, support and fellowship of the community of the church. a church should focus first on worship and then on caring for the community. any church that gets that priority wrong, in my opinion, is struggling against the wind.

i hope i never find peace and tranquility on this earth. that would mean i have arrived at my destination and there would be nothing left needing done. (poof)...it is finished. may i leave this plain asking God for just a few more minutes to get just one more thing done to improve the lives of my fellow travellers here. may i struggle and toil in conflict, may i never avoid temptation, may i never be fully loved nor fully love until i land in His arms. this is the kingdom of God on earth, this is His will for me and i am both thrilled and humbled. He does live in me and works through me...and so he is and does in us all.

[ned]

Hi, Ko -- I can completely relate to the journey you are describing. I grew out of a strict sort of Islam, and was an atheist for a while, after which spiritual experiences led me to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (and also Ken Wilber on the side), and truly it feels like the rug is pulled out from under one's feet when these things happen!

It is not that organized religion is wrong, it's just that it was a stage humanity had to pass through because of its limited nature, and now its time is coming to an end. Like all human endeavours, religion is limited. The human intellect is inherently limited and can never grasp the Absolute Truth. This is what postmodernism is really trying to tell us.

Each organized religion really just presents one relative/temporal lens to the Absolute which is beyond time and space. And each religion is valid within the parameters that it chooses, but becomes a tool of falsehood and evil when it is reduced to a set of doctrines and dead dogmas. I'm reminded here of a quote from Robert Bellah's excellent book "Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World":

"We may be seeing the beginnings of the reintegration of our culture, a new possibility of the unity of consciousness. If so, it will not be on the basis of any new orthodoxy, either religious or scientific. Such a new integration will be based on the rejection of all univocal understandings of reality, of all identifications of one conception of reality with reality itself. It will recognize the multiplicity of the human spirit, and he necessity to translate constantly between different scientific and imaginative vocabularies. It will recognize that in both scientific and religious culture all we have finally are symbols, but that there is an enormous difference between the dead letter and the living word."

Amen! Dead letter versus living word -- that is the difference between organized religion and a dynamic relationship with a living Divine Presence in a nutshell! And the amazing thing is that with the proper mystical awareness, every scripture in the world can be reclaimed and reinterpreted in ways that are appropriate for the present moment ... because the truth is that each moment has its own law, and only true surrender to the Divine within can guide us to make the right choices on a moment to moment basis. It is these higher states of communion with the Divine that we ought to aspire to -- such that every living moment becomes a revelation, and every form in creation begins to speak to us and reveal to us the happy laughter of the Supreme.

Thanks for this lovely post!

[pennyjane]

when i was little bazooka bubblegum came with a funny in the wrapper. i don't know if they still do or not, but i'm sure if they do, reference to "the little moron" has been updated. used to be, though, that those were pretty popular little riddles for us kids. for instance; one was "why did the little moron take a knife and a gun to town?" answer: "because he wanted to cut down the alley and shoot up the street." pretty cool, huh? another was, "why is everything always in the last place you look?" answer; "because you stop looking." seems the little moron took the simpleton test and passed.

simpleton that i am, the few questions i have found answers for i don't question anymore. that i am a transsexual and what a transsexual is are questions i spent years and years trying to sort out. i now believe i have the answers so i don't visit the questions anymore. i spend much of my time dealing with the consequences, but the question itself is never anything more than academic pursuit anymore. when i was blessed with the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the risen son of God and the way of life for me i stopped seaching for other answers, that quest is satisfied. i continue my inquistition into the life of Chirst and strive to understand His message and how to make it work on earth, but i no longer question His authority or His truth.

that being said, this is the truth as i see it. others may have different views and i will continue to respect them as i do my own. anyone, in my opinion, who berates or belittles the views of another is a part of the problem, not the solution. that's what causes all the religious wars and the carnage within. arrogance and disrepect. if one cannot debate issues respectfully and forward their own beliefs without disparaging another, then in the name of God.....remain silent. big words don't hide contempt and contempt breeds contempt.

organized religion got it's start when the first human realized there was mystery in the universe and began to search out what it was. he shared and religion was born. as long as there is mystery and searchers there will be organized religion, we are human...we share and as we convince ourselves of answers we convince others that we are right about it all, that's our nature. perhaps there are a few individuals in the world who know all the truths already and need no further instruction, but the billions and billions of the rest of us are more then willing to listen and learn from others. we will continue to share our beliefs and search in tamdem as long as there is mystery. in other words, organized religion ain't goin' nowhere, it's here to stay. just my opinion, but what do i know? i'm just a girl. much love and hope, pj