Healing and counseling sessions
The way we pray
July 15, 2008
Photo courtesy of Sandra Hutter
"And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn."
~ Khalil Gibran, "The Prophet"
O servant, where dost thou seek Me?
Lo! I am beside thee.
I am neither in temple nor in mosque:
I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash:
Neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in Yoga and
renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time.
Kabir says, "O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath."~ Kabir
"Religion's real business is to prepare man's mind, life and bodily existence for the spiritual consciousness to take it up. It has to lead him to that point where the inner spiritual light begins fully to emerge. It is at this point that religion must learn to subordinate itself, not to insist on its outer characters, but give full scope to the inner spirit itself to develop its own truth and reality."
~ Sri Aurobindo, "The Life Divine"
Contents:
- Children of the jungle
- Shortcuts to God
- One God misinterpreted
- Buddhism for Westerners
- Buddha's true teachings
- "No self" doesn't mean no Divine Self
- What is our goal in spirituality?
- Catholics and Protestants
- Distorted doctrines
- Native spirituality
- Bringing the light of I AM
- There are no limits to growth
How did it happen that in the long history of human race we got so alienated from God that we forgot that It is within. As child originates from Mother and Father, same do we originate from God, our Creator. And have a part of It embedded is us. The child can never forget its parents, except if it was raised in a jungle, among wild beasts, like Tarzan was. And the beasts didn't tell him - well, they couldn't really. And there was no one to tutor him and affirm who he really was. So he learned the language of the beasts, although he had all prerequisites to learn to speak like a human. But he didn't know he had those faculties within. There was no one to show him – his parents were not there.
We are raised, many of us, in a spiritual jungle, far from our spiritual parents. We are raised to be "mere humans", while we are in fact spiritual beings, children of God. There is hardly anyone today who can tell us the truth about who we really are. What is out there on the market are various models of truth, various descriptions of reality. Some of them contain greater amount of truth than the others, and we can make better progress if we follow those instead of the others. But they are still models, concepts, ideas of how various people conceive God... but not the real thing.
Whenever a teaching tells you that you are separated from God, that God is distant and his Kingdom cannot be manifest on Earth, it's a false concept. Or that you don't have to express your divine individuality here and now, in the material world, but it's enough if you stay in your cave, meditate and wait until you are taken from this harsh place called Earth. Whenever a teaching tells you that God doesn't care about what you do with your life, because "all is God, both light and darkness" - that's a false concept too. If they tell you you can get to know God through some outer activity like praying, chanting, having tantric sex, taking medicinal herbs, dancing to the beat of the drum … that's also just wishful thinking.
You can never come into oneness with God by following outer rituals only, no matter how "holy" they might seem. You cannot see God if you are not willing to see your resistance to God, to the true God within. If you are not willing to acknowledge and let go of the ego – the separated self which doesn’t really want to come into oneness with the true God, but would rather create its own image of God, thinking he has God under control. Because ego wants to be saved, but under its own terms. And so, various egos throughout human history created various concepts of God, and they expect us to worship those concepts. But they are just graven images.
True teachers did appear though, we were not completely left to ourselves. Jesus came, Buddha came, Krishna came. Others came too. Many of those prophets spoke about one God – but they referred to the one true God, our Creator, out of whom we all sprang and whom we can know in our hearts. God that is close to us, God that is within. God that unites us all. But their teachings were distorted to fit the ideas of particular human egos. And so, big monotheistic religions were created – claiming that "our God is the only true God".
But the prophets never said that. In fact, the first commadment that God gave to Moses is "have no other Gods before me". Which means, don't put any graven images before the true God that resides in your heart. However, people of the time couldn’t grasp it, the collective consciousness was still low, so they interpreted it to mean that their God is the only true God. And they created an image – a graven image – of God, and proclaimed that this is how God is. And it gave their egos a sense of security. And there was a lot of ritual and ceremony and outer signs of worship, which were considered more important than tending the inner temple.
When Jesus came, he tried to make Jewish people see that their concept of God is very limited. He talked about love, about peace and brotherhood, about loving your neighbor as yourself. But they rejected him because he didn't conform to their image of God. He proclaimed to be the Son of God, and that was considered heavy blasphemy. Not only did he claim that he was the Son of God, but he was saying that all people are children of God and that we can follow in Jesus' footsteps and free ourselves from the bondage of ignorance and slavery and the grip of the power elite of the time. Well, that was too much. For that, he had to be killed.
And soon enough, well, a few centuries later, another power elite arised, putting Jesus on a pedestal as the only Son of God, special and unreachable, and very far from us, ordinary mortals. And as it happened before, the true teachings of Jesus were distorted and turned into a dogma. And now we have millions of people around the world following that dogma. Or even if they don't follow it - because they see there's something wrong with it - they still don’t know where to look for answers and what to believe, because 1700 years of brainwashing did its job.
Spiritual people in the West have had enough of monotheistic religions, which were telling them they are sinners and will go to hell if they don't conform to the Church doctrine. And so they started searching for something else, something more open, more inclusive, less judgmental, something that doesn't suppress the feminine aspect of God and women in general, as is the case in the male-dominated religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
Some seekers turned to Buddhism because it is very open and inclusive, it doesn't even use the term God but talks about something transcendent, something beyond material reality. That something is vague and mysterious, and unlike the God of the Old Testament, it is impersonal and benevolent. It doesn't expect anything from them, it doesn't judge them for their mistakes and it accepts them as they are - both light and darkness.
That is equivalent to a perfect parent - in child's eyes - who loves you and accepts you no matter what you do, and never makes a single comment about your life. True, this parent might be a bit distant - because you don't feel great love and affection from him/her either - but at least they leave you alone. Well, that's what many people need in their lives, at least in a certan phase, both from their physical parents and from God, so they opt for it.
One of the main approaches in "westernized" Buddhist teachings is to empty the mind of all disturbing thoughts. The problem arises if we are unwilling to face our psychological issues and - rather than trying to understand them and heal them - we avoid them, pretending they are not there. Avoiding is not the same as transcending, because transcendence involves seeing the problem, understanding it, healing its cause and then letting go, or rising above it. If we seek to transcend our problems without facing them, it's like sweeping them under the rug. And that's not what Buddha taught.
The way of the Buddha is to pursue enlightenment, but that includes understanding and transcending the reasons that prevent us from reaching enlightenment. His teaching is based on four noble truths, which explain the causes of human suffering and the way to free ourselves from that suffering. He says that the cause of suffering is our selfish desires – the cravings of the ego and the carnal mind, and our ignorance of the Truth. Therefore, the way to liberation is to know the truth of who we really are, and to let go of our attachments to selfish desires.
Buddha also taught about impermanence of worldly happiness – which is always tinged with sadness, because we know that happiness will go away, that the moment of ecstasy we might have experienced will inevitably be lost. And so we are always slightly sad. The cure is to pursue permanent happiness, and that is happiness which stems from knowing who we really are, and knowing that all attachments and cravings of the ego are ultimately unreal – that they are a product of our illusion.
And so we are not craving any more, we are not expecting to find bliss and fulfillment in the things of this world (because they are temporary, they will inevitably go away). Rather, we anchor ourselves in the deeper – spiritual – reality, and we attain peace – "peace which passeth all understanding". We are at peace with ourselves and with the world, because we know that we are the only ones responsible for our happiness. And we don't need anything from the world to be happy. We are happy, we are blissful – simply because we ARE.
And what are we? Buddha says that there is no permanent self outside of Being. Meaning that the ego self – the separate self – has no permanence and reality, but is the product of our illusion. He talks about the illusion of "I" as a separate entity outside Being. There is no I, but only I AM. That's when we flow with the River of Life, that's when we ARE (who we really are). If we separate ourselves from the River of Life, from Being, we identified ourselves with the ego and so we are not Being - we are not.
So our only true reality is I AM. When we are who we really are, we are connected with all life, we are a part of the mandala of life and we don't feel alone, because we are All One. And that's the reality of God.
6. "No self" doesn't mean no Divine Self
But the concept that there is no self and no "I" – which means that there is no separate self but only I AM Being in the flow of life – is misunderstood by some modern spiritual teachers and gurus, who claim there we don't have individuality at all. But that's not true because we do have divine individuality, which is I AM. Separate self, outside of God, doesn’t exist in reality (but is a product of our illusions). But Divine Self, or Higher Self, does exist.
And therefore it is not true that our Higher Self is undifferentiated from the ocean of Allness. And it is not true that we should just float around without purpose and goal, and abandon all initiative in life, thinking that we – as an individual spiritual being – do not exist. It is a false concept and it is deceiving many spiritual seekers into non-achievement and passivity. The truth is that we ARE, we have divine individuality and we are here to express it.
Misinterpreted Buddhist teachings can indeed lead to passivity and escapism - not wanting to change neither ourselves nor our life circumstances. It can also be felt in the outer circumstances in countries like India and Tibet. There is a great poverty, bad sanitary conditions, people literally doing their toilette in the streets. And there is little initiative for improvement. In Hinduism they put stress on reincarnation, but that is sometimes used as an excuse for not doing anything in this lifetime – why bother when I will come again anyway? It is a bit like Spanish "mañana", only in the Hindu interpretation tomorrow might never come.
7. What is our goal in spirituality?
The notion of an empty mind was given to emphasize the need to get rid of the chattery, monkey mind, and not our higher mind, which is the mind of I AM. In monasteries in Tibet, monks spend hours on end in chanting mantras and putting themselves into a kind of hypnotic trance, where they don't hear the monkey mind any more. But if they don't replace it with the higher mind, i.e. if they don't embrace who they really are, it's of no use, because the chatter will return. And so they'll have to chant even more fervently, and spend their whole lives chanting and spinning prayer wheels. But what's the point? It's just brainwashing ourselves. God doesn't need our chanting, he needs our Being.
We cannot know God through reciting mantras or spinning prayer wheels, but only through becoming one with God. And for that, we need to remove all obstacles between us and God, get rid of all graven images and look for the real thing. If we just recite mantras, or practice any mechanical ritual for that matter, we can create a hypnotic state which may result in an altered state of consciousness. But even if we had an extraordinary experience - a peak experience - it doesn't mean that we came closer to who we really are, that there was a real transformation in the heart. People even take drugs to connect to "other realms".
But they won't find God there, because Heaven cannot be taken by force. Heaven starts in the heart, when we humble ourselves and say "please God show me where I am stubborn and how I am rejecting your love. I sincerely and honestly want to change, I want to experience your love and I am willing to let go of my resistance to it". Heaven starts when we say "O Lord, be it unto me according to thy will".
So we need to see what is our purpose in spirituality - is to achieve a deeper understanding of ourselves and attain peace of mind, or it is to have peak experiences? Because the latter might become just another way of getting high, of escaping our problems. Same goes for all practices which focus on the ecstasy of the body, like ecstatic dance, trance dance, tantric sex, i.e. the entire Osho-based spirituality. We need to be honest with ourselves and see how much we really want to grow spiritually - which always includes being willing to face and surrender the ego - and how much we do it for the sake of a pleasurable escape.
To return to Buddhism - there are many good things about Buddhism, specially if we stick to Buddha's original teachings. Buddhism is more focused on the spiritual realm and puts less emphasis on the material side of life, which is good up to a point. Because it's true that we should first be aware of our spiritual identity, and seek spiritual fulfillment, and only then everything else. However, escaping from life and being lenient about improving ourselves and our lives, is not what spiritual growth is about. It should be as Above so below.
So if our spirituality doesn't manifest in our daily lives, as more order, purity, beauty, abundance ..., but most importantly, as changing the way we see and treat other people, we are not really walking the talk. We are spiritual only in theory but not in practice. And that's not the way to go, because expressing our divinity here and now, on Earth, is what really counts.
In the West we have the opposite tendency – putting too much emphasis on the material life, specially in Protestant countries, where work is considered one of the pillars of religion. In Protestantism, a good believer is one who excells at work. As a result of this, in the Western and Norther Europe – in places with Protestant religion in majority - there is more organization, order, cleanliness, efficiency and material wealth.
While as we go South towards Spain and Italy, the standards loosen and the approach is more relaxed – which has its positive and negative sides. But people are said to be more friendly, open and relaxed, at least in terms of work. Maybe that's because Catholicism - the religion there - doesn’t put too much stress on work and material achievements, but rather on attaining the treasures of the soul - living a virtuous life and loving our neighbor as ourselves. That's a good part of it.
However, Catholicism also promotes martyrdom and suffering as a way to salvation. It is the so-called Via Dolorosa, as exemplified by many Catholic saints in the past, and Mother Teresa in more recent times. The idea is that we should endure the hardships of life - "bear our cross" as Jesus did - because we will have our just reward in Heaven, in the afterlife. This pacifies people and makes them unwilling to improve their personal lives, and even insecure about their right to do it. But it also pacifies people towards the manipulation and abuse of the power elite. It tells them they should accept things as they are - and not stand up for their rights.1
Catholicism - meaning the official Church doctrines - has been a way to pacify people since the Middle Ages, when they were exploited both by their feudal lords and the clergy. And this is still happening today to some extent. A stark example of such manipulation can be seen in Catholic nations of South America, where people are very religious, very loving and kind, but completely incapable to stand up to the abuse of narco maffia and military junta, who control even the government. In Columbia, for example, a country abundant in natural resources, people are barely surviving because all of the land and natural resources are held in the hands of the maffia, which came into position of the land illegally - often through killings and death threats to the original owners.
While people seem to be powerless to do anything about it. And the root of the problem is that they believe they are powerless and that they are supposed to suffer, as Jesus suffered. And so they think they cannot do anything to stop the molestation of the drug barons. Clearly, if they refuse to claim their basic human rights, which are also their God-given rights to peace and freedom, then of course there will be someone to abuse it. And so we see extreme examples of power abuse in those countries. Until people stand in their own power, they won't be able to help themselves.
Christian doctrine says that Jesus was the only son of God. They put a stress on his suffering, which they use to instigate guilt in people. They focus on Jesus' death, instead of on his life, which was supposed to serve as an example for all people to follow. However, it became an exception, a path that no one can follow because we are mere mortals. Not to mention the notion of the original sin, which accuses women for the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden and treats them like second-class citizens2. And even if women's rights' initiatives have done a lot to achieve a certain equality, the last bastion where women will never be allowed - as to hold positions of power - is the Catholic Church.
As they say, it would be an offense to Jesus, who only had male apostles. Well, even if we disregard the fact that Mary Magdalene was one of his disciples too, it is just absurd to apply the rules of the world as it was 2000 years ago – which was a very male-dominated world – to the situation of today. This really shows how inflexible and closed are the minds of some in the religious establishment.
It is important to note that Protestantism did away with some of the bigotry and abuse of the Catholic Church, but in their zeal to cancel out the importance of the clergy as the mediators between God and man, i.e. to cancel out the often corruptible human element - they went too far. They said that you can be saved through God's Grace only (and not through intercession of some priest), but that you can do nothing to earn God's grace. It doesn't matter how you live your life, if you are virtuous or not - you simply cannot deserve to be saved by anything you do. Because - and here comes the most shocking part - no human being deserves to be saved. But wait - you will still be saved, because God is so merciful. The only thing you need to do is proclaim that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, i.e. that you belong to their church.
It is a very humiliating position, if you think about it, because no matter what you do, you cannot possibly become worthy in God's eyes. You are born a sinner and you will die as a sinner, and you cannot help it. But even if you don't deserve it, you will still be saved, because God is so merciful. ... What would you say to such God, or rather, to such church? I personally would leave without ever looking back.
And indeed, many people in the West have abandoned the Church, be it Catholic or Protestant one, and distanced themselves from religion altogether – as is the case throughout Western and Northern Europe and in many places in America. People are interested in living good material lives, without giving too much thought to "salvation of their souls".
Those spiritually inclined are looking for other possibilities – some have turned to Buddhism and Eastern traditions, as described above, and some to shamanism and native practices of worshipping Mother Earth and the feminine aspect of God.
Native spirituality revolves around worshipping Mother Earth, Sun and Moon, and natural cycles and phenomena related to them. Native people have a deep respect for nature and see interconnectedness of all life. That is why native spirituality became very popular with the Westerners who are sensitive to nature and the environment, and to those who had enough of male-dominated, hellfire and brimstone religions.
But there is a problem with native spirituality – it sees Earth and the natural environment as more important than humans, because it doesn't recognize that Earth is here to serve as a platform for spiritual growth of souls. Native spirituality believes that Earth would be here even if there were no human beings around – just the animal and plant kingdom. But that's not quite true – Earth wouldn't exists for itself, if there weren't any self-conscious beings to inhabit it. The main purpose of Earth is to provide a platform for the evolution of consciousness, and if there weren't any self-conscious beings around, there would be no point in having the platform either.3
So this is where native people give too little credit to man, and consider him less important than nature. And therefore they think that Earth should remain a pristine environment, largely free from humans, or inhabited by scattered communites that have a minimal impact on the environment. But such a society, be it of hunter-gatherer type, or with some primitive form of agriculture, can support only a very limited number of people, because it cannot produce enough food for everyone. And if we know that Earth serves as a platform for spiritual growth, then probably the idea is to give as many souls as possible an opportunity to embody. So modern agriculture, utilizing modern technology, might not be such an evil thing, of course if used sustainably.
The point is that native people generally believe that white man, civilized man, can only do harm, and therefore that all growth is bad. However, material growth in itself is not bad, but it needs to be balanced with the spiritual growth of the society. It needs to be aligned with the higher vision of God, which always means balance between the feminine and masculine principle, between contracting and expanding forces in the universe and in our soul.
If we focus only on the feminine side of the equation, then we will contract, there will be no growth, there will be no self-trancendence. We will just keep doing what our ancestors have been doing, without trying to improve our lives. That's why many ancient civilizations collapsed – because they became a closed system, refusing to adapt to new conditions, refusing to transcend their old ways of thinking and doing things. The same happens on the personal level – we refuse to transcend our limitations, we reach a plateau where we think we don't need to (or we cannot) develop any more – and so we start not only stagnating, but falling back. Because the River of Life is constantly flowing and moving forward. If we decide that we had enough and step out – well, then we’ll be left behind.
So native culture is unbalanced in the feminine aspect, it is contracting, it refuses to grow. Because the inflow of Spirit from above is missing, the inflow of ideas, of new initiatives. And those cannot come from Mother Earth, but from us, spiritual beings, when we are aligned with the God within. And there is no need to search for inspiration in power animals and totems, when we have the strongest power in the world – the power of I AM within.
Western people who are practicing shamanism and nature-based spirituality should have that in mind. They can easily start thinking in terms of circular nature of life, of imminence of death, destruction and decay, of impermanence of human existence… And it brings a certain passivity, a certain melancholy, because it seems there is no escape from the cycle, no escape from the "lows" of life.
11. Bringing the light of I AM
But as Buddha said, this happens only if we are not anchored in our true spiritual identity, in our divine individuality, I AM, which is eternal and infinite and ever More. There is no decay in who we truly are, and if we embrace that divinity, we might even slow down aging processes and preserve the vitality of our body. It's true, nature runs in circles and repeats itself, but our spirit doesn't. And it is exactly the task of us, self-conscious beings, co-creators with God, to infuse nature with that spirit of I AM, so that it can in each subsequent cycle become more – more abundant, more nurturing, more balanced in terms of weather and climate.
And eventually, nature would become so imbued with light and love of co-creators, that it would become self-aware. The animal and plant kingdom, and eventually even the inanimate matter, would become aware of their origin: God, the One behind the All. As Jesus said, if men should hold their peace, even the stones would cry out.
And then, the Earth would become a self-luminous conscious being, with no shadows left, with no doubt that behind everything that exists there is God's light. And that the whole material world is God wearing a diguise. That we are God in diguise.
And then the Earth - having attained such high level of consciousness and vibration - would ascend to the spiritual realm, with no need for dense physical reality to exist any more. But growth wouldn't stop there. Because in spirit, there are no limits to growth.
12. There are no limits to growth
Limits to growth are a myth. There are limits only to unbalanced growth, to blind growth, to growth driven by selfish interests and greed. Of course, such growth sooner or later leads to unfavorable consequences, and we need to put a halt on it. But if we change the paradigm, if we understand that we are here primarily for spiritual growth, then the whole perspective changes. Because it means we are here not just to improve our own lives but to help raise all life – because we are all One.
And we will understand that if we want to raise all life, we need to find ways to enable the people and nations who currently live in abject poverty, to attain at least a minimum standard of living and rise above 2 dollars per day. Instead of trying to limit the economic and/or population growth in those nations. We will need to come up with new solutions, Golden Age solutions, and new technologies which might be radically different from what we know today. But if collective consciousness rises enough, we will be inspired to develop those technologies and solutions, which will then be utilized not for selfish goals of the small elite but for the benefit of all.
So growth is not bad, if it is guided by our Higher Self and aligned with the vision of God. But we need to bring in that vision, we cannot expect Mother Nature to do that for us. Mother will support us in our endeavors but we need to take action and bring the light of I AM into the material world.
And so, it is time to be who we really are. We cannot continue to behave like "mere mortals" when we know we are much more. We have the power to change ourselves, our lives and our world. God is within us, through I AM. That I AM is a self-conscious being endowed with Love, Wisdom and Power. We love who we are and God's plan for our life, we know what it means to Be who we are and how to manifest our divinity, and we have the power to put it through and realize our divine plan, transcending all resistance, both inner and outer.
Love, Wisdom and Power of our True Being is enough to transform the world.
________________
1 People in the Protestant nations are also prone to manipulation by the power elite, but it is done through glorification of the material side of life and consumerism, which makes people run after material success and material pleasures, neglecting the spiritual side of life.
2 This same doctrine exists in Judaism and Islam, and there it is even more pronounced. And as we know, women there are treated much worse than in Christian nations.
3 There will be those who will disagree because there is a notion that Earth itself is a conscious being, called Gaia. Well, that's true, Earth is in fact conscious because it is built of the same substance of which everything in the universe is built - Mother Light lowered in vibration to the point of becoming dense matter. And Mother Light is conscious - but it cannot change its condition by itself (for example heal itself). For that, co-creators are needed, who shape Mother Light through the power of their minds. Two types of co-creators influence the state of the Earth: cosmic beings called the Elohim, who created the Earth (to serve as a platform for spiritual growth), and we, spirit sparks, who are the ones who should be spiritually growing! If it hadn't been for us, the Elohim wouldn't have created the platform in the first place. In fact, if we weren't here, the Elohim would withdraw the light which sustains the Earth, which in practice means that Sun would most probably cease to be. And no Sun means no life, so Earth would cease to be too. (Note: this is just my speculation, I am open to alternative views).
