A Reflection on Spiritual Guidance – Needing to be Loved
Everyone I meet I say to them
“Love me! “
but I don’t say this out loud
because someone might call the cops.
There was a time in my life when I lived those lines.
I sometimes wonder why I spend my time writing and reflecting on spiritual guidance. This is especially so in relation to guidance using what might be clearly identified as terminology based on the Christian tradition. There are a number of reasons for this. While I am not a fan of the Christian church and its associated hierarchies of power I am a lover of the teachings of Christ and the invitation to what the modern mystic Andrew Harvey calls the way of Christing. Christing is a journey in consciousness raising through many stages including the stages of temptation, surrender and death. This is not necessarily the experience of the death of the body but is the experience of the death of the sense of the separate self which then leads into the realisation of the true Self – the Christ.
In my own spiritual journey I have been graced certain revelations. I have been graced glimpses of what is beyond the sense of the separate self. In Zen this is called Satori. It is not full enlightenment but is a glimpse of the potential that is experienced within the enlightened state. It is the perfume from these experiences that I offer you in the writings that populate this blog and its related website. Any of this writing that inspires comes from this knowing and the reflection of that knowing state. Any uninspired aspect of this writing is me getting in the way of such inspiration.
Another reason why I write 
reflections on spiritual guidance using the language of the Way of Love is because I find that there is so little inspired instruction available within organised religion. I have met with many who are priests, who are clergy and who are monks. I have met with gurus and those who claim to have the secret to the meaning of life. Not one of them had any knowing of what they professed to know. The only people I have met who were the knowing of the Divine in form where those who were living outside organised religion. The priests, the clergy seemed to know about the Divine but had no personal experience of direct revelation of the Christ in their own lives. However, this is not to say that there are not people within the Christian tradition who have experienced this. One person who inspires this writer and storyteller is Thomas Merton. Another is Bebe Griffiths. There is St. John of the Cross. There is St. Teresa of Avila. One of my favourite revelatory men is St. Francis of Assisi and there is of course one of the greatest Christian teachers of all time as revealed in the writings of Meister Eckhart. And of course there are the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth.
There is another reason why I write this blog inviting spiritual revelation of the wild and precious life. This is because in this world of time and space there is a deep spiritual hunger for what has been referred to in one of my favourite hymns as the bread of Heaven. This is not some kind of special loaf that is made somewhere in a place beyond the confines of the earth. This is the wish to be fed, to be nourished directly from the Source of Creation – whatever name you care to give it – because it is beyond all names. This nourishment is not confined to the reading of words. It goes beyond words and nourishes you in ways that are far beyond the grasp of language.
I also write and reflect on spiritual guidance in order to heal the wounding from my religious upbringing in my native country of Northern Ireland. I am what I sometimes refer to as a Christian in recovery. I am in recovery from scripture and from stricture. The way in which I was personally wounded is still going on in that country. I returned to Ireland for a number of reasons. One of these was to try and offer some sort of alternative to the sin and damnation program that was, and still is, on offer in many of our religious institutions. The best evidence of the teachings of Christ are the ability to radiate compassion and Love from the silent interior knowing of who you are. This you will not access through words alone although words can point the way.
I would be a rich man ( although I am a rich man) if I had been given a dollar every time I was told I should believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and accept him as my one and only Saviour. I wanted to believe. I needed to believe because I so wanted to belong. The problem was this. When I said, “Yes,” to this invitation nothing changed. I was still as lonely and forlorn as before and maybe even more forlorn. It seemed to change others but not me. When I asked if I was doing something wrong I was told again and again that all I had to do was ask the Lord Jesus into my heart and I would be saved.
Well I tried that. I tried it many times. I said the words silently inside. I said the words aloud. Still there was no sense of something different happening except that the process made me feel more lonely. I thought that I did not belong. Even at this very young age, however, there was a part of me that knew that those who claimed this was the Way, the Truth and the Life, were only mouthing a script. The words that they spoke were words from the Bible but they themselves had never been directly nourished by experience called the bread of heaven. That inner knower within me that was there, even at a young age, has been a blessing and a curse. It has been a blessing because it took me into the real. It was once a curse in the sense that I could never really belong to any group and I was always left to move on.
My spiritual community is composed of those who have taken the hero’s journey. These are the mystics of all traditions and none. You meet them amidst the pages of this blog and its related website. I hope that they invite your awareness of the grace note you are here to play as the reed of Love. My spiritual journey really began out of a sense of wanting to belong and needing to be loved. Only there was no way in which I was going to accept anything but the real thing. Mouthing words of a creed and simply saying that you accept the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart, or that you believe in God, isn’t revelation and doesn’t lead to revelation. It isn’t knowing. You might belong to a group of believers but that doesn’t mean you have had the experience of being born again into the knowing of who and why you are.
Revelation is the direct experience of Oneness that leaves you certain. It leaves you knowing that for certain you are not simply a body living in this time and space dimension. It is the revelation that you are the birthless/deathless One and, paradoxically speaking, you are the play of eternity in form. Revelation is the knowing, rather than the cerebral belief in what is called eternal life. You don’t get eternal life as a gift. You are eternal life. Eternal does not mean that you live for an immeasurable time in the body or beyond the body. Eternal life is the direct experience of living beyond time. You can attend any number of bible study classes or classes studying the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran. If all that you do is repeat and learn the words by rote this does not mean anything other than you know the words of your scripture. It does not mean you are the knowing of the experience that such scripture was written to invite you to live and to be.
As the modern mystic Eckhart Tolle advises. “Religious scripture, whatever scripture it is, is a signpost.” It is an invitation to take the journey within. It is the invitation to redemption. Redemption means simply that you turn your attention within and that you develop faith, not in a creed, but in a living creative process that knows how to live and love through you. This is the journey that the Buddha called The Middle Way. It is the journey beyond opposites that is invited by the instruction
Judge not that ye be not judged.
It is the journey beyond opposites into the heart centre (5th chakra) where one becomes the knowing of the peace that passeth understanding. Mouthing scripture is simply clinging to the signpost. At least there is some comfort in doing this. You can belong to the group and you can take their authority as your own. You don’t then have to venture on your journey to individualisation. You can simply become one of the flock. This gives you some consolation and even some pride in the fact that you are a redeemed one and that yours is the one way. Yours is the Way the Truth and the Life and to hell with all the others.
However, your are unique. You are here as a unique dance of Love in form. What informs you (and it is not intellectual information) is the movement of Love. This real information arises from the well being of who you are. Trust this. It is the development of true faith which is the trust in the unknowing of your becoming. There is no script. There is only the dance. There is only the silence. There is only the stillness that speaks.
It is easier to build a hierarchy that can then tell you that it knows something called the Good News. Then you don’t have to do the work of walking the invitation of the Christ. All you have to do is say a few words and you become a member of the in crowd who profess the one way. However, the Way the Truth and the Life is not something fixed. You cannot own it. It doesn’t belong to anyone. God never creates something twice. The harder you cling to signposts along the way the less you journey. You can spend your whole life clinging to signposts. Worse still you can spend your life inviting others to cling to the same signs. You can spend your whole life living in the known and think that you know.
There are many false prophets along the way. They will tell you that they know the way because they want you to belong to their way. It is a way of authorising what they think they are. There is a kind of safety in numbers. Thus you amass a group of believers who never move beyond belief. They never get to have the experience that is beyond belief that the group consciousness is intended to express. Surely, we think, that if a mass of people follow a particular signpost that it has validity. The signpost is only validated by taking the journey that it is pointing the way toward.
In this blog I invite you, not into creed, not into clinging to signposts called scripture but into trusting that which is within you to know who and why you are and which gives meaning and purpose to your one wild and precious life. The spiritual journey is a journey of individualism. It is not a script that you repeat ad infinitum. The real scripture is not written in words. It is a living energetic of knowing that arises from within. It arises if you tend to its unfolding. You can be guided in a general way in relation to that unfolding but you are unique. You will never be in this form again. Your uniqueness is created to bless creation.
If you are intent on taking the journey into the knowing of spirit and the knowing of the inspired life then begin to cultivate faith that is built, not on the shifting sands of religious dogma, but on the rock of knowing arising from within. This is the building of trust in the power that created you from its intention of Love. It knows you by heart. Words can point the way but words are symbols of an experience that is beyond words. Words can also be used to manipulate and control as has been done by all kinds of hierarchical institutions throughout history.
This faith is not simply a creed. It is faith in the unknown. It helps tremendously to have been graced a direct revelation of knowing. However, the heart knows what the head cannot know. This is because the head thinks in opposites while the heart is the knowing of that which is whole, that which is beyond opposites and that which is holy. This is the experience of sacred unity and leads to an experience beyond belief. This gives you peace beyond understanding. So let me close with one of the greatest spiritual guidance statements ever given.
Be still and know that I AM Love.
Be still and know that I AM.
Be still and know.
Be still
Be.
Spiritual guidance comes in all sorts of ways. Trust the inner knower. Trust the guidance of the mystics from all traditions and especially the mystics who speak from the tradition that speaks to your heart. If it makes you feel guilty give it up. If it makes you feel inspired then follow it. You didn’t arrive here without the connection to your Source. So stay aligned with that.
May it be so.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
levels of consciousness
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
SEVEN STAGES OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION – n his spiritual evolution, man passes through different stages, each of them having some specific characteristics. Recognizing these characteristics can open the path toward superior levels which leads us to perfecti
BLISSITATIONS – At this site they are committed to making it easier, more enjoyable and more effective with guided meditations, visualizations, affirmations and other goodness to help turn your meditation into Blissitation!
Spiritual Guidance – Pitfalls to Avoid on the Spiritual Journey
The spiritual journey is a challenging enough journey for most of us who consciously engage in taking it. There are pitfalls along the way that any seeker needs to be made aware off. This writer and storyteller has been involved with many spiritual groups both as an observer and sometimes as a member of such group. Many of these groups invite certain ideas that those who attend them are asked to make a part of their belief system. I want to share two of these commonly held beliefs that I think can become pitfalls along the way.
The first of these pitfalls is that the goal of the spiritual life is to get rid of the ego. The second pitfall is that the world is to be seen as a dream or an illusion. When you get rid of the ego you tend to have an experience of serious mental illness. You lose the ability to distinguish between what is real within this dimension of time and space and what is the contents of an unconscious mind that has no boundaries. The ego is a boundary and it needs to be strengthened in order that the boundless Self can, paradoxically speaking, be contained within a boundary called the self.
When you are invited to get rid of the ego who is doing the inviting? Is it not the ego attempting to get rid of itself in order to gain something the ego thinks it wants even if what it wants is transcendence of itself. The result is a kind of spiritual warfare. When you try to get rid of anything within the psyche you are simply creating a shadow dynamic. You create the opposite effect. Then what you resist persists. This is the invitation at the heart of the spiritual instruction
Resist not evil
The ego is an organising principle within the personality living within this time and space dimension. It is needed. For this writer and storyteller the problem of getting rid of the ego is attained through expanding the idea of self beyond the limitation of the body and the senses. There then comes a point when you may be graced the awareness of who you are beyond this separate sense of self that you refer to as “me, my and mine.” The ego tends to be that aspect of yourself that experiences fear, resistance and doubt. You do not get rid of fear or doubt by beating yourself up about these human experiences. All that you do then is to create your personal Pandora’s box. You might become a more functional persona but your unconscious remains fearful and this fear will become a block to the unfolding of your higher potential.
One way to expand your awareness is simply to witness the fear, witness the doubt and witness the resistance without having to do anything to get rid of them. This doesn’t mean that you ignore or suppress or indulge these energies. You are invited to simply allow them to be. In this way you are practicing the great spiritual directive
Judge not that ye be not judged.
In this way you are practicing a form of forgiveness. In witnessing these, so called negative aspects of your persona, you are absolving and reducing their power. However, let me issue some words of warning here. Do not practice this form of awareness watching awareness unless you are emotionally grounded. If you have issues around feeling your feelings then try a warmer practice such as the Buddhist meditation practice called the Metta Bhavana. This is a loving kindness meditation and it begins with kindness towards yourself and expands out into inviting and invoking kindness to others.
The reason why I warn you about the practice of witness consciousness (or awareness watching awareness) technique is because if you are detached from your feelings then this technique will allow you to further detach from your detached feelings. Then, in the words of a character in a novel by James Joyce, you will become someone who lives some distance from their body. Putting this another way there is the likelihood of you becoming depressed.
The Metta Bhavana practice uses the emotions to expand your sense of self and others with a focus on developing the feeling of loving kindness. It is a warmer practice and a more devotional kind of practice. It tends to avoid the pitfall of detachment from ones feelings which is often the reason why people start out on the spiritual journey. They hope that they can find a way of not having to feel the pain of their lives and simply transcend the need to experience the full range of human emotions. However, you cannot avoid this aspect of living because it is that aspect of living that expands into the finer feelings of empathy and compassion.
Another spiritual pitfall is the idea that this world is to be transcended and that other worlds are much better places than the one you now live in. This is another case of spiritual instruction that does not move beyond dualistic thinking. At its deepest core this writer believes this instruction contains a shadow of body hatred and a hatred of matter. We don’t say this of course because to admit to hating something would be unspiritual. Anything you try to get rid off without alchemising into higher consciousness will become a shadow issue for you.
This is why I love the invitation from the Lord’s Prayer
Thy will be don on earth as it is in Heaven.
There is no ego desire here. There is no demand that you transcend your earthy existence. There is the invitation, not to transcendence, but to the willingness to be in unity. There is no attempt to escape from this world of form but an invitation to bless all matter with the awareness of sacred unity. There is nothing in this line that is being got rid off in any way. There is no invitation here that would lead to the experience of a form of spiritual schism.
Here the ego has been developed enough through the integration of the opposites to be willing to allow the will of the divine to be made manifest within form. This invitation is not for those who have suspect ego boundaries. If you have weak ego boundaries and you go inviting the boundless to express through you through manipulating sacred technologies you might at best lose consciousness. You might, however, ruin your nervous system and you might even go insane.
In the line from the Lords Prayer there is no request for transcendence. Transcendence for this writer is a kind of invitation to another form of separateness. You cannot transcend Oneness which is the reality that pervades all. What transcendence means is the overcoming of the idea of separateness. Because this idea is not real (although it feels real to most everyone) spiritual teachers have called it an illusion. Transcendence isn’t about thinking that the earth is some second rate place that you are supposed not to enjoy. You are here to invite the direct awareness of love moving and expressing in matter.
The approach I personally take is to question any spiritual idea that invites me to get rid of some aspect of my personality. Please do not take my authority of this. Make your own choice. This doesn’t mean that if I have issues, say around anger, that I simply ignore these or indulge them. Spiritual direction that advises suppression or transcendence without the invitation of forgiveness, without the invitation to compassion and without the invitation to sacred unity is at best suspect. Suppression invites the creation of a personal shadow which then becomes a deeper problem for the ego.
You can witness the effect of shadow energy being made conscious in the catalogue of sexual abuse that was perpetrated against children by those in authority in the Roman Catholic church both in Ireland and abroad. This is not simply an issue for the Roman Catholic church. I have witnessed the same dynamic off abuse of hierarchical power in a Buddhist organisation that I was almost ordained in. If you read the book The Holy Longing – The Hidden Power of Spiritual Yearning written by Connie Zweig you will find that she writes
But sometimes our religious yearning goes awry. We may attribute it to an authoritarian personality who abuses us, leaving us feeling shocked and betrayed. Or we may direct our holy longing to another world, devaluing the pleasures of human life. Or worse, like cult members or fundamentalists, we may mistake death for transcendence and sacrifice our lives for paradise.
These are only two of what are common pitfalls along the spiritual path. Be careful who you invest your authority in and be especially careful of investing your authority in anyone who invites you to go against your conscience or asks you to get rid of some aspect of your personality that they think you should get rid off. Getting rid of anything in the psyche ties you to the world of opposites and creates internal opposition. Such instruction is filled with judgement rather than the invitation to forgiveness. Always remember that the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung said that there is gold in the shadow. These aspects of ourselves that we disown are often those aspect of ourselves that can teach us the greatest spiritual lessons which are the lessons of Love, forgiveness and compassion.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
spiritual guidance
CHAKRA HEALING – Articles on Chakra Healing by Energy Master Carol Tuttle
4 STAGES OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH – The stages of spiritual growth is sometimes not easily identified, and we’re all of us are undergoing a transformation down this path, even if some of us don’t know it.
INFINITE BEING – Spiritual metaphysics articles to help spiritual seekers find inspiration, love and creativity through heart-powered consciousness.
The Downside of the Law of Attraction
The real secret of the law of attraction, for the most part, goes unspoken. In this way it disempowers those who are sincerely interested in what is called The Secret. When you become aware of the downside of the Law of Attraction then the real power of this law will be revealed. There will arise within you a real vision that you can manifest in the world. This is a vision that not only gives true abundance, but also gives a life of true meaning and purpose.
The chestnut by the eaves
in magnificent bloom
unnoticed by men of this world – Basho.
The above lines are by the Zen poet Basho. They are lines of one who is able to see beauty. They are lines written by one who is a true attractor. He sees beauty in its fullness. The reader might ask, “Does it matter that we are able to see beauty” and “what has this to do with the workings of the Law of Attraction?” This writer and storyteller thinks it has everything to do with attraction. The inability to see beauty and attractiveness (which is not the same as glamour) in form is in large part why we destroy the natural world. What we do not see as beautiful we are not able to truly value. We miss what the German mystic Meister Eckhart called “the aliveness of things.”
The ability to see and feel the beauty that is around you is not something that you learn to do. It is an attitude of mind that is feminine. It is an attitude of allowing. You cannot grasp beauty in the same way that you cannot grasp the experience of joy. The moment you cling to either they are gone. In his marvellous book, The Power of Intention- Change the Way you Look at Things and the Things you Look at will Change, Dr. Wayne Dyer writes about the seven faces of intention. The fourth of these faces is the face of Beauty. Let me share what he writes.
The fourth of my seven faces of intention is the face of beauty. What else could a creative, kind and loving expression be other than beautiful? Why would the organizing intelligence of intention ever elect to manifest into form anything that’s repugnant to itself. Obviously it wouldn’t. So we can conclude that the nature of intention has an eternal interaction with love and beauty.
This is the invitation to beauty in our world. Are you, as the Zen poet Basho asks, a man of the world who does not notice the magnificent blooming of creation without? This is only a reflection of your inner life. When you begin to feel the beauty and attractiveness of who you are then you become a man or woman of the two worlds. Then you will know how the law of attraction can truly empower you. As Dr Wayne Dyer invites, “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change.” You will begin to look with real vision and not from a bored vision.
In our modern day culture most of what we look upon we are taught to look at with the attitude of acquisition. This has become the modern day focus of the universal law of attraction. However, in this world of duality where energy is moving from one state to its opposite, the law of opposition is working just as powerfully as is the law of attraction. The real secret is to go beyond opposites and to seek what unifies the opposites. This is to find, and to feel, the state of Oneness. When you move, and are willing to be moved from this state of unity, then there is nothing more powerful and nothing more attractive. You become the fullness of who you are and you experience the glorious state of not wanting and you live from a state of glorious abundance.
You feel attractive because the life energy that expresses through you is naturally focused on sharing. It is the way in which a rose opens to express the very perfume of existence. You give yourself away from seeing and feeling your true nature. This true nature expresses your true purpose, passion and prosperity. You don’t have a vision board that arises from a bored vision but you are envisioned from within. You express the creative principle you are willing to serve. You are willing to be graced the knowing of who and why you are and you experience the joy and beauty of Love rightly informed.
The real secret is the secret of surrender and not the pursuit of acquisition. When your will is in alignment with the will of the Divine that created you to express beauty, then you will be the knowing of a life without lack. You will be a giver and in giving you will receive. You might not receive what your culture demands that you receive in order to be considered a success. You might not receive all the things that the advertising industry, with its diseased focus on infinite growth and meaningless production, tells you that you should possess and as a consequence be possessed by.
What you will receive are qualities from which an environment of beauty, justice, compassion, true faith and love will arise. What you then see will be filled with real attractiveness. You will be productive in an abundant sense and not simply be a worker bee doing things as a means to an end. You will feel abundant because you are tuned to the Source and not simply focused on the duality of ego desires. This will make you attractive in the real sense of the word rather than narcisstic. Without this connection to Source, like Narcissus who died because he could not express love and was unable to see the beauty of Echo who was close by, you too will begin to die inside. There is no meaning in living a life that is only about you and your reflection as it appears in the world of the outer.
So how do you learn to look and see beauty? How do you learn to focus and reflect the true power of the law of attraction? In a culture such as ours this is a great challenge. You cannot see beauty or feel the power of attraction if you are focused on what Eric Fromm writing in his book To Have or to Be refers to as the having mode of existence. This is the prevalent way of viewing the world for most people. This is the way that most people are taught to focus the Law of Attraction. Only this way of focusing tends to deepen the sense of separateness and loss of meaning that is the primary cause of suffering in this world of duality. The way to learn to see beauty and to feel beauty is to move from the mode of grasping to allowing. Eric Fromm calls this the movement from having to being. It is to move from noise of the mind into the silence of the heart.
You cannot grasp beauty. You have to keep the window open so that the singing bird will come. This allowing, this waiting with humility, is an affront to the ego. Waiting in silence is seen as doing nothing. It is seen as non-productive. It is seen as not accomplishing anything. It is seen as a waste of time. Those who are able to see and who are true attractors of the secret energetic of creation will tell you that everything is the opposite way around. The problem is that most people have never tried living a life without grasping. Even when they have tried it they have no faith in its power and so it has no power.
To see the beauty of who you are and why you are and to have the world reflect this beauty back to you is the journey of the hero. You are the hero who is being called to be a revelation of beauty in form. This is the real secret of the Law of Attraction. You attract to you what you intend but beware of how you intend to use this power and who you serve in using this power.
Every thought you think, every action that you take, impacts each and every sentient being in this dimension of time and space. Your life is not separate from the One life. The question is this – “What are you going to attract into being? Is it the experience of the self or the experience of the Self? Are you intent on attracting into form that which expands the awareness of beauty, is abundant, is receptive and is loving? Are you intent on attracting the grace of being able to give away the abundance of who you are in an outpouring of joy and blessings? Or are you simply intent only on attracting more of the same but which has more style, more status and more ego.
Remember the greatest invitation from knower of the Law of Attraction is,
Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all will be added unto you.
This is the invitation to a new kind of dawn. It is the dawning of a new kind of way of living. This is the realisation that your sense of separateness from Love is unreal. This is the realisation of who and why you are. The choice is yours. There is no sense here that you will be punished for making the wrong choice. There is, however, the reality of suffering that goes along with attachment to the idea of opposites. There is suffering in this world of duality. There is suffering in this world of desire. There is, however, another way. There is joy in allowing the full expression of the heart’s desire in alignment with the will of the Divine.
These are all feminine virtues that I invite you to cultivate and create within yourself. More to the point, I invite you to allow these qualities to be revealed through you. This will bring you truly alive. This is real culture. This is a culture that arises from within and cultivates what is alive within you and out of which you give yourself away from the direct awareness of Source energy. This source is infinitely abundant, infinitely creative, infinitely expansive, loving and beautiful. This is truly attractive. This is the law of being and brings you into true alignment with the Law of Attraction.
May it be so.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
law of attraction
THE HERO’S JOURNEY – Video that outlines the personal and spiritual development called the Hero’s Journey
EN*THEOS RADIO – en + theos. Two little Greek words. Put ‘em together and you’ve got enthusiasm—or “God within”—the secret sauce to authentic awesomeness. Helping you tap into Highest within is pretty much what our little business is all about.
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
Spiritual Direction through Silent Inner Knowing
Would you be willing to meet again the one who has loved you all your life? Would you be willing to meet the one who knows you by heart? This is the one who is never separate from you and reveals to you the meaning and purpose of your being here. This is the inner knowing within you that aligns you with your life purpose and your life’s passion. When this is known then you have your own authority and true spiritual direction.
This does not mean this silent inner knowing outlines a set of goals to be accomplished in some linear fashion. It doesn’t mean that you will be advised what career path you need to follow in order to become what is termed successful. This silent inner knowing invites you to expresses the way Creation has intended you to express in your unique way. Neither does this mean that what you express in your unique way has never been expressed before. Although, as you deepen your alignment with this knowing, you become more and more innovative.
Connecting with the silent inner knowing is true education. This is not so much about acquiring more information but the living as revelation. It is not so much being educated from a sense of lack but from the fullness of being and abundance. The problem is that this kind of education doesn’t fit the system called our educational system. You cannot examine the silent inner knowing. It doesn’t follow a timetable. It cannot be scheduled to appear in fifth grade. It dances into your life rather than asks you to fit in. Because it arrives in its own time it is not subject to the whim of the ego. The ego does not like the silent inner knowing because it arises from dimensions beyond its control.
It takes a deep inner trust to find the silent inner knowing. Its invitation goes against all that our go getting type A culture tells us is the way in which life is to be lived. This is the life focused on success as opposed to failure but it is not a life, nor is it an educational system, focused on meaning and alignment with the expansion of Creation as the movement of Love into form. The inspired life begins with turning within and trusting in this inner power as a Lover of who you are and why you are.
This is the meeting of the true heart. It is the meeting of the one who has loved you all your life and is the One who creates you for the eternal purpose of higher love making. It brings you the revelation of a higher love. This is the practice that is available from the invitation to redemption. The word redemption, is for this writer and storyteller, a word filled with baggage. It is a word that I used to hear a lot. Each Sunday as a child and a young man I spent time sitting in church pews and on wooden benches in Sunday school. Essentially I was told how worthless I was. I, together with others, were advised that we could be redeemed only by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour.
The word redemption was thus connected, and was intended to be connected, to feelings of guilt. When you are made to feel guilty then you can be controlled. You wish to return to a sense of inner peace. In order to return to this sense of inner peace you give away your authority to those who you think know about how to appease such guilt feelings. These are the guilt feelings that they themselves have inculcated in innocent minds. This is called religious education but is not spiritual education and it is certainly not inviting the inspiration of inner knowing.
The word redemption has nothing to do with inculcating feelings of guilt. If guilt is the emotion that is invited then you have a teacher who controls rather than gives spiritual direction and inspired direction. The word redemption is a spiritual guidance word. It is a guide to the dance of knowing the true Self. It is simply a direct instruction. You can choose to do it as a spiritual practice or not. There is no need to make this some kind of test of self worth. The word redemption simply invites you to turn within. It invites you to become available to the silent inner knowing within you. It follows that other great spiritual instruction,
Be still and know I AM Love.
This is practical spiritual direction. You are not being manipulated by clergy, priests, bishops, teachers or others who wish to control you in some way that is in agreement with some script or some cultural code of practice. To feel a sense of redemption means to feel a sense of Oneness. What is it that you are being redeemed from? It is certainly not from any sense that you are in any way wrong. You are not being asked to pay a price for the death of a man murdered on a cross over two thousand ago. You are being redeemed from a spell that you are under. This is the idea, that because you live in a body in time and space and feel separate from other bodies and things, that this feeling of separation is your fundamental reality. Being redeemed means feeling directly your connection to the Source of Creation and its movement as the feeling of Love in action.
How do you get redeemed? You trust the Creation that created you to be the knowing it knows you to be. Notice time and time again this invitation to trust the knowing of who you are. There is no script here. You don’t have to crawl in the desert on your knees. You are not required in any way to feel guilty. You are not in any way required to prove that you are worthy. The hard part of this process is to stop trying to prove that there is something you have to do in order to prove you are loved. There is nothing that you have to do to prove that you are loved except to be allowing of Creation as it moves through you.
You are required to do only one thing which is the meaning of the word redemption. You are required to trust the process of Creation that knows you by heart. God isn’t going to punish you. The idea that God is a god of right and wrong is a projection of the human mind and is not the reality of the Oneness of Love. The silent inner knowing brings you a sense of inner peace. With a deepening trust in this inner knowing you build a faith that can move mountains. This is not a faith that is decreed. It is the process of being aligned with the unknown that paradoxically speaking is the fullness of the all knowing. Knowing, as used here, does not mean knowledge. Knowing means movement and means the movement of Love in action. Knowing means you are living in the moment as the dance of the Beloved. Knowing means you are your own authority because you, as one who has turned inward, authorises the power of Love to be your guide.
In allowing Love to become your guide to the direct experience of inner knowing you cannot be controlled by any religious hierarchy that is interested in maintaining its power rather than be the revelatory invitation it is intended to be. Trust the inner knowing within. Be still and know. Make this your mantra but don’t take it as an instruction on my authority because I say so. Learn how to listen to the promptings of your heart. Trust this and trust this again. This is true faith. This is true education. This is following true spiritual direction that will inspire you. This is following the way the truth and the light but not as a dogma. It is following the direct experience of Love living its way through you.
As the singer song writer Gerry Rafferty wrote:
Whatever’s written in your heart that’s all that matters,
you’ ll find a way to say it all some day,
Whatever’s written in your heart that’s all that matters,
Yeh. Yeh.
Listen to the heart’s inner knowing and become the wild and precious one you are here to be and to gift and bless the world. Give up any sense of guilt. It does not in any way serve Love’s purpose and was never intended to be any part of the teachings of Jesus Christ who taught the Way of Love. Most guilt is not about love. It is about control. If you are being made to feel guilty then you are being controlled. To appease any sense of guilt I suggest you turn within and find the one who has loved you all your life. I suggest you turn within and find the still inner knowing that loves you by heart. This is real spiritual direction and does not make you feel guilty. It gives you a still point centre from which to live a wild and precious life of true meaning and purpose. It gives you real authority. It gives you integrity and you will not be asked to do something against your conscience.
So, won’t you help me sing another song of freedom? It’s all I ever wanted and want in a redemption song.
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Personal Development through Mystical Poetry
One of the unique aspects of this blog and its related website is its focus on personal development and beyond through the use of poetry. This is the use of mystical poetry to invite the experience of living the “wild and precious life.” It is the invitation to meet again the one who has loved you all your life and the one who knows you by heart. The one who invites you to feast on your life.
Ben Okri, Booker Prize-winning author of The Famished Land writes in A Way of Being Free,
The inklings of poets are the forgotten adventures of God.
It is the intention of this writer and Irish storyteller through this blog and related website that such inklings are not simply forgotten. It is my intention that this invitation from mystical poetry be a way of remembrance of the grace and beauty that is your essence. The intention is to provide a way to overcome the primary cause of suffering in this world of form. This primary cause stems from the individual and collective idea of separateness. This is the idea that we are human beings living lives separately from the Creation that is the movement of One Being.
Creation speaks to poets and artists. This makes them different but this is not to be confused with making them better than you. Their words are invitations to personal development and beyond. They invite you to the adventure of living as the divine paradox they know you to be. This is especially true of mystical poets who have at some stage been graced a glimpse of what is beyond this limitation of living in time and space. It is a glorious limitation for all that.
The language of poetry is the language of the heart. In this blog you are not asked to consider the structure of poetry. You are invited to learn how poetry can instruct you in being courageous enough, focused enough and committed enough to become the one who takes the journey of the Hero and lives from the power and grace of their one precious life for the highest good of all. Living the Hero’s Journey means being willing to live the revelation you are here to be and to surrender your will to Love’s purpose as it is intended to manifest through you.
Let me illustrate how poetry can invite a life life of purpose and spiritual direction. Here is an extract from a poem I recently discovered in poetry anthology entitled The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart.
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt – marvellous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart
and the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
from Last Night by Antonio Machado
translated by Robert Bly
The metaphor of Last Night is about our old life, which is a life of dreams and especially the nightmare that causes suffering. This is the suffering of the separate sense of self. This sense of the separate self in a very real sense is a marvellous error. It is the process in this dimension of time and space that awakens us to the sacred unity that is Love.
In this poem the poet is sleeping and dreaming. This is the sleep of the ego self dreaming of its separate existence from the one Self. Yet it is never truly sleeping. The heart is always awake to some degree. If this were not so then the body could not live. No matter how distant one feels from the All One, the All One is never distant from its creation and is forever creating for the joy of creating. This is the activity of making sweet honey from what is the experience of opposites. This is the work of aligning and healing the 2nd and 3rd chakras. It is the process of unifying what we identify as our old failures.
The beehive in the heart is the place of the 4th chakra, the heart chakra. This is where one begins to transcend, but not feel apart from the personality. It is where one begins to feel integral and the energy of the personality and the energy of the divine begin to make sweet honey. This is then made available to feed the parched mouths of those who are living in this world as busy bees but who are unable to taste the sweetness of their lives.
The work of the Way of the Chakras is the work of making sweet honey out of our old failures. At higher levels of consciousness we alchemise those old leaden failures, those old judgements, those old conflicting opposites within us, into a form of gold called honey. Writers, and others who work in the sphere of personal development, very often invite such alchemy. However, for this writer and storyteller, it is the mystical poets who occupy a very special place in his heart. These are the real honey makers of the world. These are the mystical poets who can invite you to live with life purpose and passion within the space of five short lines. They take me, and I invite them to take you, into the magic of what the poet Rumi calls The Heart House.
Take some lines from a poem and learn them by heart. This doesn’t simply mean learn them by rote. Rote learning was the way that I was taught poetry as a young man and the way in which I was turned off poetry until much later. This is the way that poetry is still being taught in local schools here in Ireland. Poetry is the language of the heart. It is the invitation to align the lower chakras with the higher chakras. It particularly aligns the 4th chakra – the heart chakra – with the 5th chakra – the throat chakra. This then gives you the ability to speak your joy and your truth. You are then able to articulate into form your hearts vision.
Intend that you become a golden bee. Not simply a worker bee who is always busy. The symbol of gold in storytelling is always an invitation to the golden child within you which is the revelation of your sacred unity with the divine. It is the realisation beyond the marvellous error of separateness. This sacred unity begins in earnest when you begin to realise that you have a beehive in your heart. You begin to feel that you are living in a promised land flowing with milk and honey. This is a land that exists, not in the outer world but within. The paradox is that this honey is made from the processing of all your old failures.
Personal development is not just about you. it is more about your inviting the unity of the personal and the impersonal. When this begins within you then you become the golden bee you are here to be. If you are looking for a sense of spiritual direction then you can feel a sense of safety by inviting those golden bees called mystic poets to come and pour honey into your dry mouth. This is the mouth that is dry because it lives in the desert of the separate sense of self and rarely, if ever, gets to drink from the living waters of true well being. These mystical poets come from all traditions and none. Let me conclude this blog post with a reading from one of my dearest soul friends who is constantly feeding me golden honey from the great Heart House.
Mystical poetry invites you to awaken at dawn for another day of loving and living the “wild and precious life.” Let it be so.
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Finding Spiritual Direction from Dreams
I take council from the wisdom of dreams. Dreams, I believe, do not lie. Sometimes they are frightening and sometimes, as in my own case, they are unflattering. One of the central aspects of my own spiritual journey has been my relationship to the dynamic of arrogance. Teachers have refused to teach me spiritual lessons because they have told me that I am arrogant. That has pained me.
I have dreams that tell me I am more arrogant than compassionate. In these dreams there is a part of me that shouts down those whose theology is not so much childlike, but according to me, is childish. In some dreams I am in a classroom, not so much debating the Word of God, but debasing the views of others in the class as a kind of nonsense. In the dream, the God woman who has invited me to be a part of this class, has left feeling disappointed.
Last night a friend asked me if I would consider joining a local group of people interested in exploring and deepening their relationship to the teachings of Christ. My friend is not a Christian and neither am I. Except that I am deeply interested in the experience called the Christ. I have thought about this invitation and its relationship to this dream. I think this invitation to this group would be an opportunity for me to explore my woundedness in relation to the teachings of my childhood. Here I am being given the opportunity to be in a classroom in the outer world where I might explore this dynamic of arrogance that my unconscious tells me causes conflict rather than harmony.
In this dream I am experiencing myself, not so much as an instrument of peace, but as an instrument of provocation. I provoke in others a kind of looking stupid. In this dream I make it quite clear that I know what they do not know. I tell them in no uncertain terms that what is revealed to me is the truth, the way and the life. I tell them in different ways that they only know the words and not the essence the words are intended to express. Rather than being an invitation to revelation from a sense of inner peace within, I roller coaster my way over what I see as their very limited understanding. At the end of the dream the spiritual teacher has left the room and I am being chastised by another classmate.
There is not much compassion in evidence here. Yes, there is knowing, but knowing without compassion is not of much help. As I write these last lines I am reminded of the great invitation from St Paul.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
This is, I believe, what this dream is inviting me to be more aware. You can substitute the word Love in this quotation for the word compassion if you wish. Wisdom, which for this writer and storyteller, is the knowing of who you are and why you are is of little service if it is not allied with compassion. So it is unflattering to my ego to be seen as a kind of superior ranter who knows the wisdom of the two worlds but whose knowing is used to override and berate the understanding of others.
I’ll be honest. At this point I don’t quite know what to do about what this dream is inviting. Except that I intend to be more alert to ways in which I might unconsciously judge others in relation to their spiritual understanding. This judgement can be subtle. One does not even have to say anything. So I will take this invitation from the dream and the connected invitation from my friend to explore my relationship to the teaching of the Christian church that sore wounded and judged me. I will choose to enter a new classroom and I will, with sincerity, attempt to be aware of judgements both gross and subtle that I might be tempted to make.
Each of us has psychological blocks. These block the energy of Creation that arises within us. These blocks are often unconscious and are then projected outward unto others. To become an instrument of peace, which means living from the heart centre (4th chakra), one courageously works to release these blocks. One is assisted in this process by a commitment to dreamwork. John A. Sanford, a Jungian analyst and Episcopal priest writing in, Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language
Yet in our everyday language we use expressions that intimate the power of dreams. We might say, “It was like a dream come true.” We might ask, “What is your dream for living a wild and precious life?” Martin Luther King Jr. lived a dream and left us a legacy that we might follow. Dreams are not simply random images that happen during sleep. They are as, John A Sanford suggests God’s Forgotten Language
One way to uncover the symbolism of a dream is to talk about it. Another way, the way in which I invite the unfolding of dream symbolism, is to write about them. This is a form of spiritual practice. It is also an honouring of the process. I do not analyse the dream but simply free associate about what the images might be saying and how I might take direction from them. This takes time. This practice is about becoming fluent in another language. It is the language of the unconscious. It is the language that guides you through periods of doubt and even despair.
This is a unique language. It is not a language of words but a language of symbols and images although it is not a flight of the imagination. Honouring your dreams honours your individual authority in your spiritual life and its spiritual direction. The more that you ask of your dream life the more you will receive guidance from these nocturnal visitations that tell you a deeper story of who and why you are. They invite you to be reconciled within and without in ways unknown. If you are intent on living the wild and precious spiritual life then pay attention to all aspects of the invitation that is playing out in your life. Let this include your dream life and let the inner and the outer world become reconciled within you. Then you will receive real spiritual direction and might become one who is graced with the ability to balance wisdom and compassion and live as a true instrument of peace.
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