"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
, the ninth studio album of her
singular career. It's a journey full of joys and
tears, portrayed in songs that are at turns powerful and playful, at
once confessional and engaging, personal and universal. In other words,
Melissa Etheridge at her creative peak and the most open she's ever
been...
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