I face more toward the west these days; it seems almost like a homecoming. I spend more time in the western part of the yard around my house, the side with the angels, the crosses, and St. Francis1. Metaphorically, I am in the western or sun setting part of my life, in my sixties, the beginning of the wonderful winter season. Understand, I try to take in every sunrise I can, but I also bask in sunsets (in the deepest meaning) in this season, both poetically and literally, soaking in the Light of God.
I was born in a western culture and have a western mind and psyche. I went east for a few seasons (several decades) but seem to have come home with some balance. I cherish what I learned and experienced in the Mother Religion of Hinduism and her daughter Buddhism, in which I was ordained as a Kyoshi-dharma teacher. I also learned from the experience of the Tao. I reveled in Lao-tzu, the Old Master, teaching, “I am not like other people, I drink from the breasts of the Great Mother.” The metaphorical ‘milk’ from the breasts of the Great Mother is nothing more than sheer grace of the Beloved. A western mystic, describing that milk might call it the Logos, the Pure Light of God, straight from the Bridal Chamber in the Palace of Light.
For me, the journey in eastern spirituality came in earnest in my thirties, after my time of missionary work teaching what I thought was the Christian “Word” on Nevada Indian reservations. While trying to teach others something that seemed increasingly dogmatic and exoteric to me, I felt I was withering. So for many years I dove into the eastern traditions with a new fervor, thinking they had something the west was missing. I had read Autobiography of a Yogi and had begun the lessons of Yogananda’s Self -Realization Fellowship around 1970 and had begun practicing Hatha Yoga but now was preparing for what seemed a more intense search for who I was. I had not yet learned that the totality of the search, east or west, is intense.
I clearly remember around that time what seemed to be a chance happening; you know, those funny little life events. I rented a car at the airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was around 1980. The car radio was tuned to a call-in talk show featuring secular psychiatrist Dr. David Viscott, who gave counsel and comfort to those seeking advice. As I sat in sweltering temperatures and snarled traffic, Dr. Viscott responded to a caller’s spiritual dilemma, saying, “All we can ever know about God is what we can know about ourselves.” Something caught my attention that day. It took me back to the ‘tat twam asi,’ or ‘Thou art that,’ teaching of Hindus like Yogananda. I had slipped into the rut of exoteric thinking about God mostly as transcendent, out there, so to speak. I had been neglecting the other half of the process, the immanence of God in and around me. In fact, I began to think more in terms of process and journey than structure and destination on the path of spiritual self-discovery. I had been more comfortable talking about knowing God though reading the red-lettered words of Jesus in the Bible, or in rote prayer. Viscott’s words stirred an agonizing internal debate already simmering within. I wanted truth and freedom in a deeper way and needed more light, so I went east in my studies and spiritual practices.
Over the last decade or so I have come home to the west. Even during my years doing temple work as a Buddhist priest, I studied the western mystics, the early Church, the Gnostics, and compared them to the highest revealed eastern teachings. The mystics, both east and west, point to the mystery and the initiations into Light.
Having experienced that, I feel at home again with my western spirituality. Oddly enough, what we scholars call Western Tradition comes from ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, Persia, Greece and Egypt. (However, we are discovering that these teachings were also present in the ancient Americas.)
So much for a few disjointed pieces of my personal history and journey, and forgive me for rambling. I include a bit of my personal trek to show I have been on the journey long enough to have a few things to say for those who have ears to hear; something that fellow mystics who have started ascending the Jacob’s Ladder of Lights will recognize. For those who have ears to hear, I quote from the Gospel of Thomas:
He said, “O Lord, there are many around the drinking trough, but there is nothing in the cistern [that feeds it].”
I suspect anyone reading this is on a spiritual journey and longing for Light. The above passage from Thomas tells us that many in their day were also looking for the living water but the well of exoteric religion was dry. Neither Jesus nor Buddha before him was able to find the Living Water in the broken religious cisterns of their day. The same is true today of the dogmas and creeds, eastern or western, that do not quench thirst or offer much Light. My experience is that the dogmatic exoteric structures of organized religion today lead very few (if any) to the Beatific Vision, the Bridal Chamber, the Pure Land, the Worlds of Light, or liberation or salvation. Our outer structures of religion have lost all but fragments of the ancient, true teachings and have been mostly involved with self-preservation. By and large, the officials of these structures are very nice people. They have made some strides in the area of social justice in the last century and helped many temporally; however, and in general, they have lost, don’t know of, or don’t offer, the original, ancient, transformational and supernal teachings and techniques of Christ. These teachings, also given by other holy ones of old, lead to the Kingdom of Heaven, to becoming a Light Being, to directly experiencing God. The late mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested that this outer kind of exoteric religion was actually “an inoculation against having a divine experience.” As Jesus did, many of us continue to pray that our outer religious structures re-member, and come to life again, and provide light again, in these late and dark days. I take no pleasure in saying this. I have spent much of my life as a clergyperson in these structures, eastern and western. I have many friends in them.
The spiritual journey is the only real path one can choose here on planet Earth, or any other planet for that matter. It is the journey home to becoming a Light Being, a Bodhisattva, or a Seer. The journey leads to the mystical Bridal Chamber. Yet the scriptures tell us that one must have on the proper wedding garment or vestment to be admitted into the feast and then the inner chamber. The vesture of Light is required. This is the mystery the true initiations lead to, east or west.
Speaking again of those funny little life events; finding the teachings and techniques of Cosolargy was my good fortune. I have stumbled into the treasure-house. The true, ancient, and revealed teachings have always been shielded from, but often embedded in, the outer and mundane teachings. The real techniques have never been put into public print. One has to find a mystical order that can impart them if one has ears to hear and eyes to see. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask and it shall be given unto you. Seek and ye shall find.
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