My Beautiful Life with Christ Yeshua: The Circle is Completed, Part VI

As I mentioned in an earlier installment of this series, forty years ago, when I was sixteen years old, I had what would end up being a life changing experience.

At age sixteen I had the first powerful and memorable spiritual awakening/kensho/samadhi/mystical experience of my life, at least that I am consciously aware of. This ended up being only the first of several such experiences I would end up having throughout my life. As I have also mentioned earlier, each experience, including this first one, contained several of the standard elements many people in certain spiritual circles have now become very familiar with. These include an unexplained experience that seemingly comes completely out of nowhere (now here), a total feeling of oneness with everything in the large and expanding cosmos, the complete disappearance of a sense of separation with all of creation of any kind, including the disappearance of a sense of there being a separate “self.” There was also the sense of a seamless oneness with everything and everyone, and a complete sense of inner and outer peace, loss of time, etc. It was also my first experience of what I would call complete and total bliss.

There was also an aspect of this experience that involved the fully human yet fully Divine Yeshua (Jesus) as well as an intense connection to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that has never, ever left me.

At the time of the experience I believed that Yeshua had in fact come to me in physical form. In the ensuing years I have come to believe instead that during the experience I must have fallen asleep and that it was in a dream state that I experienced Yeshua. This does not make the experience any less real nor any less powerful for me in the slightest. It simply helps me understand it more clearly and I believe more accurately. 

During this presumed dream, that was a part of the overall experience I had, Yeshua placed his right hand on his chest, over his heart area. He then extended his left hand and touched my chest, over my heart area, and then said, “We are of one heart.” This aspect of the overall experience, without question, was the most powerful, most moving, and most impactful aspect of the entire thing for me. This aspect placed me on a lifelong quest for mystical union with the divine, cemented in my heart connection with Yeshua that I received in that vision/dream I had during that first consciously aware mystical experience in this life.

And so for the last forty years I have formally and informally studied, practiced, and immersed myself in as many wisdom traditions of the world that my heart and mind could handle.

From there the world became my religious, spiritual, and wisdom oyster, as it were. I delved deeply into Judaism, went deeper into Hinduism by studying Advaita Vedanta, studied Sufism, Native American spirituality and many other earth based spiritual traditions and practices, and I also studied Buddhism, and established a Buddhist practice, first beginning with a Vajrayana practice and then moving onto a serious Zen practice.

Early on it became very clear that I had a very prominent appetite and very natural inclination toward mystical traditions of every stripe. Meanwhile, in the catholic seminary while studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood, I studied both the Old and the New Testament very deeply as well as Catholic Church history and the lives of the saints in the Catholic Church. I became an amateur hagiographer in the process and still am to this day.

Somewhere along the line, while not completely losing my Christian faith, it somehow definitely got placed somewhere on the back burner. In the 1990s, for example, in America, Christianity, at least the fundamental expression of it, became deeply enmeshed with very conservative politics. For me this seemed very much like a marriage made in Hades. For much of those same 1990s I also lived in a conservative southern American state—Kentucky—and so this made it doubly worse for me. And so it became very natural for me to distance myself from the prevailing expression of Christianity in the USA and the prevailing consciousness I was living in at that time.

I however, didn’t shun the Christian faith completely. I found my way to Unity and Universalist Unitarian churches for my Christian fixes and they kept me connected to Yeshua in ways that were quiet yet fairly fulfilling. Other practices and other wisdom traditions were always more at the forefront though; always more receiving of my attention and my heart.

This more or less remained the state of affairs with me with regard to my Christian faith until that fateful day last June when I walked into St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bremerton, WA. I cannot stress enough the importance of this day. Perhaps I have even mentioned it in every single part of this series. That is because that day and what was rekindled on that day is the bridge that connects my sixteen year old self, forty years ago, to my fifty-six year old self today.
 
Forty years ago Yeshua came to me and symbolically connected his heart to mine. Forty years later he came to me again, this time in a church, and said to me—“I have not forgotten you my beloved brother and I know you have not forgotten me either. Unburden yourself. Come to me, and I shall give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me. For I am meek and humble of heart. And you’ll find rest for your soul. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Forty years. Two messages of love and connection from and with Yeshua. A universe of experiences of both fear and love separating the two points. A fierce and fiery return to Love.

It took me several months after the revelations I received on that first day at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bremerton to accept that Yeshua had come back into my life in such a powerful and meaningful way—that our heart connection was still there, real, alive, and not just something created in my very active imagination. It took me that long to believe words like…”and he will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun and hold you in the palm of his hand.”

So many of us sing and proclaim words like those so much in Christian life. Yet, most of us do not believe we are at all worthy of these words being true, at least not as applied to ourselves. I was no different. I too fought this truth with every ounce of my strength. And finally, finally during this recent Holy Week, while in prayer, the overwhelming love of Yeshua was made so clear and so pure and so present to me, I simply could no longer deny it. I could not deny that it was and is making itself available to me freely and generously and completely. Alleluia!

And something else has been revealed to me that may be very shocking and unbelievable to many Christians. Yeshua is not the only eternal savior who has walked the earth who has this unfathomable amount of love for all creation that is available to all humankind. Additionally, the word salvation itself has very different meanings throughout the world, all of which are correct. Yeshua however, is the one who has connected with me deeply for reasons that are not entirely clear to me at this time. I will perhaps say much more about all of this much later as more is revealed to me should it feel like information that needs to be revealed, information that will increase the probability of healing and transformation, should they be revealed.

With Yeshua at my side and The Holy Spirit as my guide, much has been revealed to me in the last several months. I now know what my true vocation is in this life. I understand the things that I must do in order to live my life in the way that has been ordained. I now understand that everything that has occurred in my life has been a preparation for what I will do from this point forward. There have been no mistakes. I have no time to waste now. I have a lot to do. Much of it is crystal clear to me. Some remains mystery. None of this makes me special. During a moment of grace (while at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church) I had a moment of openness. It only took a moment. If it had taken longer I might not have been able to remain open. However, it only took a moment. Hallelujah!

Humility and Love must now become my two most enduring and foundational traits. It has taken me forty years and two exquisite moments of grace for my heart to be broken open—to go from being broken to being broken open. Praise God! It has taken me fifty six years to discover what my true vocation in this life is. Many people come to understand such things much earlier in life. I am not special. And yet again we all are because we are all filled with the Light of God which is to say we are all filled with LOVE!

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My Beautiful Life with Christ Yeshua, Part V

Various human frailties and limitations were on display throughout that experience with the spiritual community in the San Francisco Bay Area that is mentioned in Part IV of this series. These human frailties and limitations were on display in both members of that community and in myself as well. It felt necessary for me to compose Part IV in this series because the information contained in it, despite potentially being difficult or awkward for some to read, plays a vital role in the totality of this series. The power of these frailties and limitations eventually began to wane, at least for me. I cannot speak for anyone else. I became the slightest bit aware of this on that June 14^th Sunday of 2015 when I walked into St. Paul’s Episcopal Church for the first time.

I must admit to not knowing everything that happened to me when I walked into that church on that Sunday and even further, by participating in the service on that day.  I have received some information about this both through what I am going to call divine revelation and also through my own intuition. However, I do not know the whole of it and I may never know the whole of it. If that is the case, that is perfectly OK with me. What I do know is that an intense fire was rekindled in me that day. It is a fire that seems to have started in the center of my chest and then radiated throughout my entire body and eventually even beyond my physical body. I am calling this fire--the love of Christ.

I don’t know why the fire needed to be rekindled in me. I don’t know why that particular day was the day the fire needed to be rekindled. I don’t know exactly what the impetus for the rekindling was nor is.

What I do know is that I have received a great deal of clarity about the purpose of my life and what I am to do with the remainder of it as a result of the re-igniting of this fire in me. I have never had quite this level of clarity about such things before.

I am a very worldly man in some clear senses. I am also a man of science. I am a man of faith as well. However, my faith has not traditionally been that which completely ruled my life and it is not in any way limited to my Christian faith—not in the least. I have studied Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and various First Nation spiritual practices quite deeply and know much of the important teachings and philosophical underpinnings of them all. I have gained much from each of them. 

I have the knowledge and the wherewithal to attribute what I am feeling inside of me to any number of entities, cosmic energies and forces, ideas, Gods, Goddesses, spiritual guides, avatars, saints, and psychological or mental states, or to nothing at all. Yet I know that it is Yeshua; it is the love of Yeshua, it is the Sacred Heart of Yeshua, and it is the peace of Yeshua that has ignited this fire inside of me. I can feel this truth inside of me. And I also know this was done in the presence of The Father/Mother and with the guidance of The Holy Spirit. I do not know how I know all of this. And yet I know it just like I know I am breathing in and breathing out and that the sun has risen today and will likely set later in the day. This knowledge pervades my very being; it takes up every moment of my waking and non-waking life, it envelopes every emotion I experience, it underscores every thought I have. I am filled with the love of Christ. Sometimes I feel I am going to explode as a result of this reservoir of love. And even though I am filled with the love of Christ I am still fully human and so I am extremely aware of my flaws and imperfections. Still, it seems I am in a perpetual state of appreciation and grace as a result of this knowledge and from the re-ignition of this fire.

I am currently intensely aware of this fire that seems to have started in my chest and I am also intensely aware that it is unquestionably connected to Yeshua. I trust it. I know it is good. And at the same time I periodically wonder just a little bit if I am going mad or if there is something I am not dealing with emotionally and am using this expression of spiritualism as a way of bypassing some important emotional work I should be doing instead. But then I very quickly realize that I am addressing more complicated, complex, and uncomfortable emotions as a direct result of this experience than I have in a very long time. So it simply does not make sense that this is some kind of spiritual bypassing experience. Or if it is, it is a very, very poor excuse for one since it is accomplishing exactly the opposite of what any real spiritual bypassing experience worth its salt is supposed to accomplish.

I am not running away from emotional nor psychological difficulty or challenge in my life. If anything, I am running toward them, infused with the love and blessed assurance of Yeshua. I have had more “difficult” conversations with people in the last several months than I can ever remember having in any other several month span of time. And there is also more of a present sense of forgiveness and reconciliation in my consciousness. And my personal boundaries with people have also gotten much clearer. I am much more aware of what is not OK with me in terms of behaviors and projections and just plain ole bullshit from other people. None of this seems to support the spiritual bypassing proposition.

I have come to understand that it is not my job to question this experience of the love of Christ manifesting so brilliantly in my life. I believe it is my job to listen, to be humble, to run with this and praise God and be humble in response to it all and to be of service to the earth and all its inhabitants and to respond with loving kindness as a result.

Amen.

Part IV is HERE
Part III is HERE

Part II is HERE
Part I is HERE

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My Beautiful Life with Christ Yeshua, Part IV

I want to tell you a story.

It is a story I, when being completely honest with myself, am quite reluctant to tell. It places some people (who are never personally named) in what might be viewed as a negative light and that aspect makes me feel reticent, slightly uncomfortable, and also sad. Yet it also feels like a story I must tell now, during this season of Lent, when I have been spending the last several weeks since Ash Wednesday largely in a state of penance, repentance, self-denial, being in the desert with Yeshua, fasting, being brutally honest with myself, facing various demons, and ultimately preparing for ecstatic union with the everlasting Yeshua on Holy Saturday.

About a year and a half ago, at the age of fifty-four, I had what is turning out to be one of the most interesting and multifaceted experiences I can ever remember having in this life.

At that time, I was a member of a spiritual community in The San Francisco Bay Area of California. I was also in something of a temporary leadership role within this community. I loved this community very deeply and considered it to be my primary communal and spiritual home on planet earth. This leadership role I had came with certain privileges and powers which is usually the case with leadership roles, in general. The people in the community also had certain forms and expressions of privilege and power that were also afforded them as well. These however, were never talked about, or they were consciously or unconsciously disowned, or perhaps they were even outright denied by some or many. None of that however, made the privileges and real power the rank and file members of the community had, any less real.

At some point—a point that is not exactly clear to me—several months after I assumed the leadership role in this community, there began to be murmurings of complaints and dissatisfaction connected to some of the ways I managed some of my leadership responsibilities. There also was, as it turns out, a fair amount of unchecked projection and psychoanalysis of me engaged in by some, using what I imagined they believed were their natural deductive powers around trying to figure out why my performance as leader of the community had been less than sparkling. People chose projection and psychoanalysis instead of having a simple conversation with me. None of the complaints were directly checked out or discussed with me personally. No one sought me out to find out if there was possibly anything going on in my life that might have potentially contributed to the perceptions that fueled the complaints in some way, even though many members of the community knew that I, at the time, was homeless, had been for several months, and was living in my vehicle with my partner and our two dogs and they also presumably also knew of all the potential trauma and danger that can very naturally ensue during such a life experience and situation, especially in a large urban environment, which indeed we were in.  

I was not given an opportunity to address the concerns some people had put forth until many weeks had passed and many other processes and conversations had occurred between various other people directly and indirectly involved in the whole affair. So initially, nothing was said to me directly about any of this that was occurring within this community.  All of it, for weeks, which was completely about my performance as the leader of this community, was discussed within clandestine and semi-clandestine channels and thoroughfares within this community minus the very specific involvement of the person who was being spoken about—me.

Instead, all of the communication about all of this took place through gossip, other clandestine forms and avenues of communication, conjecture, also presumably through private phone calls and exchanged emails between people, and ultimately through a series of letters that were composed by the most ardently offended party’s.

Once again, these letters were meant to be kept clandestine, meaning I was not supposed to see them. However, through an innocent error by one of the members of this community who received the letters via email, the letters were mistakenly forwarded to me in a group email that was sent to me as well as to all the members of what is something of a coordinating or oversight committee of this particular spiritual community.

It however, became immediately very clear that I was not supposed to have seen nor received the email that contained the letters. This became evident when, during an open and quasi side conversation that was held in my presence, during a meeting between the members of that above mentioned oversight committee and myself about whether the letters should be placed on the agenda for the meeting we were all, at the time engaged in. This side conversation was meant to be one, I suppose, in which I was simply either not supposed to know what was being discussed in front of me or I perhaps presumably was not supposed to be intrigued enough to inquire about what was being discussed in front of me, since you must remember, I wasn't supposed to know about the letters. However, because I had erroneously been emailed the letters too, I calmly announced that I too in fact had also received the letters, had read every single word of them, and so indeed had knowledge about what was being discussed in my presence even though I had no opinion about whether or not a further discussion of the letters should be added to the meeting’s agenda. It was the very first time, during this series of events, that I received something directly about the complaints certain people had about my work and it was perceived as a mistake that I had received this information directly. I was not supposed to have gotten the information I had received. That is very telling, ironic, sad, and important to me.

The “deer caught in the headlights” looks on everyone’s faces in the room once I let it be known that I too had received the emailed letters immediately let me know that I was not supposed to have seen those letters. So, with this error, the cat was now out of the bag, as it were. We also ended up not discussing the content of the letters any further on that particular day, at least not in my presence.

The rest of the process that ensued henceforth, from my perspective, for the next several weeks, was essentially a series of poor choices, horrid missteps, more semi-clandestine meetings and discussions, inconsiderate and insensitive actions taken on the parts of many people involved, and my being (in my opinion) inappropriately kept in the dark about everything that was being said and done about it all—until several weeks later still, when I was ceremoniously (because it took place during a ceremony of sorts) relieved of my leadership role in this spiritual community without ever truly nor seriously being given an opportunity to address the complaints directly in any way whatsoever, until decisions and beds, as it were, had already been completely and very efficiently made.

Oh well, no one ever promised me a rose garden of a life.

I quite soon afterwards was very happy and very content with no longer being in a leadership role in this spiritual community. And I am also glad that many years earlier, and on more than one occasion, I had already become keenly aware of just how insensitive, thoughtless, and even cruel spiritual communities could be. So thankfully I did not have to add shock and total disillusionment to the vast number of emotions I experienced as a result of this whole (to me) horrible experience.

Breathe in, breathe out.
Breathe in and, breathe out some more.

Three months after experiencing all of this with this spiritual community I left both the city and the State this all occurred in, feeling a near complete revulsion rooted deep in my stomach towards this specific spiritual community I once viewed as my loving spiritual home, and feeling a deep compulsion to leave that specific city as well, which, for completely unrelated reasons, had also become clear was never going to truly be a “home” for me in the deepest sense of that word.

I went through a long and deep period of anger, rage, a poignant sense of reliving past trauma, and a concentrated process of healing intersected with a very intense process of The Dark Night of the Soul, afterwards. The sense of reliving trauma was the result of specific trauma I experienced in my childhood—trauma I believed I had all but completely healed from—that was deeply triggered by the whole experience.

Fairly soon after all of this with this spiritual community, I began to once again strongly question, reassess, and then reject some of the intellectual and experiential foundations I saw as being very present in that specific spiritual community itself. The community was very progressive and leftist leaning both politically and socially. It was comprised of many progressive social justice activists. It was comprised of many critical race theorists both academically trained and not, etc.I began to reject some of the foundational tenets of all of this.

At the very beginning of this process I was likely being somewhat motivated by a desire to distance myself from certain elements I found to be very present in that specific spiritual community. However, to the untrained eye, this is what it might have completely looked like what was going on for me—my going through a type of strong and negativity based emotional reactivity born from my experience of anger, betrayal, and resentment inside of me that was directly aimed at this spiritual community.

In truth however, that was only a partial truth. I have also been on a near lifelong collision course with leftist and progressive politics and political activism even while for most of that same life I have simultaneously and strongly aligned myself with such as well. So while it may have looked like the experience I had with this spiritual community birthed a rejection of values that were/are strongly expressed in that spiritual community--a rejection rooted in my own emotional and overwrought reactivity--the reality is that the experience I had with this spiritual community mostly served as perhaps the “straw that broke the camel’s back” in a several decades long deeply felt frustration and periodic distancing of myself from these same intellectual, social, and activist based communities and ways of understanding the universe. What however, is also likely true, is that my experience with this spiritual community is probably the strongest and likely deadliest blow that has or will ever be dealt to my relationship to leftist and progressive politics and political action. Through this experience with this spiritual community the courage to become extremely strong in my own truth about many things began to emerge and flower, beautifully.

On one level it was a very horrible time in my life. However, I always knew that “this too shall pass.” I always knew this without any doubt whatsoever. I simply didn’t know just how incredibly beautiful and life changing the next stages in the process would be. This in fact is the primary reason I am writing about this now and why I will probably continue to write about this whole episode for some time to come—because of the incredible healing and transformation that has come about as a result of experiencing something I initially held and experienced as being a very ugly and negative life experience that then slowly and then very rapidly began to morph into something of stunning beauty. I want people to know how deeply something experienced initially as negative can be transformed into something extremely positive and even how it can become a positive foundation for discovering one's true life's purpose. I want people to know about this possibility. Like so many people before me and like I also know there will be so many people after me—experiencing something like this that was experienced as so terribly awful became the very exact fertile ground for self-forgiveness, forgiveness of others, reconciliation (without reunion however), a powerful re-birthing experience, and the experience of Yeshua bursting through my brokenness and my weariness and a beautiful, love centered, mystical union between us taking place in the process.

You see, I believe the pain, the sense of betrayal, the sense of grief and loss, the experience of anger and rage that were all manifested within my experience of this episode with this spiritual community, all served as the preface to the opening of a cosmic door. I believe this experience became the opening of a door through which Christ Yeshua would eventually enter. I am filled with gratitude for it all, the entire experience, all of it. Thank you. Alleluia! Exhale...

To Be Continued...

The Loving Kindness Revolution

My Beautiful Life with Yeshua, Part III