Religion is a complex subject to approach
because like the splintered cross it is
old and cracked like a winding road through
tangled woods and brings just as much agony
as it does relief. In ancient times,
mankind invented religion out of respect,
awe, and fear for their miraculous elemental
environment. They saw how beautiful
and harsh the world could be and were terrified
and elated at the same time. The true
root word for religion is the Latin "religio"
which means to "re-link", to bind back together
with God. The implication is that
we each need to find a way to re-link ourselves
with the divine intelligence who created
everything and who we are extensions of..
The Biblical Creation Myth states that when
God created man he breathed his spirit into
our nostrils. That's pretty clear
that we are only alive because we are extensions
of God which I like to define as eternal
being.
Now I'm treading into fierce waters when
I get into my own beliefs. I don't
think we need to "believe" in God as if
he were some kind of magical fairy that's
going to vanish if we don't believe in his
existence. I think we need to know
God, to share a unique relationship with
eternal being. If I had to pick a
religion I would have to say I'm a Christian
mystic, Taoist poet-Magi. Now
that's a mouthful! I am inspired by
the Biblical stories and their lessons of
love, forgiveness, inner peace, and the
inner battle to align our lower egotistical,
selfish selves with our higher, cosmic loving
origin. I write about these themes
in my fantasy adventure novels all the time.
But I'm also deeply inspired by the wisdom
of the Far East in Taoism, Shinto, Buddhism,
and the spiritual path of awakening through
body wisdom and nature wisdom. I also
love the Celtic wisdom and the Egyptian
and Persian teachings. My religion
is pretty much like Einstein described it
when he called it Cosmic Religion.
It's universal. It works for everyone
and doesn't alienate or isolate any group.
I have deep reverence for nature, the stars
and planets, love, and languages, but I
do not "worship" them in the Biblical sense.
I am aware that there is a deeper intelligence
behind creation that lives in my heart and
I open to that intelligence in my meditations
and when I write. To me, sitting before
the blank page with my heart aimed at eternity
is my Zazen, my temple, my praise, and in
the words of
Antonio Michado,
my listening at the shores of the great
silence.
Overall I would have to declare that my
path in life is one of communicating with
divinity through the celestial spheres.
I am here to engage the infinite.
So the ancients would have called someone
like me a Magi or Astrologer, like the three
wise men who came to visit Yehoshua (Jesus)
after his birth. I wrote a poem about
their journey called Quest of the Magi.
There is definitely a dark force that we
are struggling against in the world.
You only have to look at the way our society
is to see that! Watch the news for
ten minutes and you'll see how prevalent
the evil is. But I think we create
most of this evil through ignorance of universal
principles of harmony. I believe that
evil is just the inharmonious blending of
the natural forms, colors, and tones of
good. If you play a note on an instrument
it may sound "good". But if you combine
it with other notes it can sound melodious
or awful, depending on how you blend the
music, how you create it. This is
the same with the world of forms and the
realm of dimensions. There is a recipe
for wholeheartedness, and our world has
lost it! In any recipe if you don't
follow the steps and use the right amount
of ingredients then it could turn out disastrous.
Life too has a recipe for living a balanced
existence in harmony with the divine current.
There are Seven Energy groups which make
up what I call the Way of Fruition.
This is the "Diet" that leads to Am-ness,
unified consciousness with divine being.
Here are the Seven Energy Groups:
Fire/Spirit
Air/Mind
Water/Soul
Earth/Body
Fire/Air Polarity
Water/Earth Polarity
Eternal Being/Love |
Sunshine
& Celestial Energy
Pure Breathing & Mental Stimulation
Pure Drinking & Emotional
Expression
Pure Eating & Nature Connection
Transformation & Change
Love & Relationships/Community
Pure Sleep & Meditation |
My goal in life is to balance these energy
groups for total physical, mental, emotional,
and spiritual health. It is holistic
living made simple. Just get enough
of each of these energy groups and watch
how your life flows. I know when I'm
out of balance intuitively. And I
can look at these energies in my life and
see where I've gotten off track. Fire,
Air, and Water are the Divine Elements in
the sense that God is always showing up
in scriptures as burning bushes, mountain
top clouds or winds, or living waters pouring
out of rocks in the desert. They symbolize
the Cosmic Trinity of God's essence.
Air and Water are the Yang and Yin elements,
the masculine and feminine faces of divine
being and divine image in which we move
and live and have our being.
The Christians are always calling God Father,
inherited from the overly-masculine Hebrew
culture where they referred to God as Abba,
father. Some of the New Age folks
prefer calling divinity Goddess in revolt
over four-thousand years of patriarchy.
I think the answer is unification as always
in this Age of Pisces. God can neither
be male or female and yet contains both
and more! Even the Hebrews described
God on certain occasions as the "many- breasted
One." God is both Yin and Yang unified.
I often meditate on the koan "What is God
divided by two?" Yehoshua said that
the most important principle was that God
is One, the unification of Divine being.
In my
fantasy writing
the Elves always refer to the creator as
the Eternal One. So what is God divided
by two? Well the Yin/Yang answer works
but it's not so cut and dried. I think
the answer, and koans don't really have
logical answers, is
vibration.
Unification
leads to Vibration.
When you study astrophysics you find that
everything is energy in vibration, including
matter. So the Air or Yang face of
Eternal Being is the phenomena we recognize
as space, awareness, intelligence, and Spirit
flowing. While the Water or Yin face
of Eternal Being is what we recognize as
organic pattern, wisdom, and compassion.
When Air and Water symbolically merge the
Element of Fire is created in the mix which
symbolizes light, creativity, and the spark
of life and love. So now there is
consciousness in the universe. God
can say "I AM!" What
a great realization that is!
"I AM WHO I AM" he said to Moses.
So once the universe is in a state of cosmic
vibration, rhythm is born and the wisdom
and light that flows through rhythm.
When this happens inside a human being I
call it the State of Amness being realized.
It's when you realize your intimate connection
with everything, everyone, and especially
with Eternal Being as the Ultimate Whole
containing all individual wholes and flowing
through them all giving connectivity and
pattern to creation. That's intense.
So what comes out of cosmic vibration?
Is it the unified field theory that astrophysicists
are searching for? I think so.
But I also think it goes beyond mathematical
equations because scientists can't write
equations for why you are alive and can't
come close to explaining creation as it
really is. That's the domain of metaphysics
and intuition. The third Element of
Divinity is Fire, and the third process
of creation that results from vibration
is the Gravitational Principle of Divine
Love. Sheer consciousness, utter Amness!
The universe literally and symbolically
starts to Gravitate. Everything
is attracted (in love) with everything else.
And this is the beginning of motion in the
eternal realm, which gives birth to a whole
new dimension in the universe that I can
only call the Life of the Imagination.
William Blake said that Christ was the Imagination.
Eternal
Vibration gives birth to Gravitation,
the principle of Divine Love.
These are the three critical components
of God: Unification, Vibration, and Gravitation.
Air, Fire, Water and their mysterious union
which is beyond words. The Tao that
can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao!
The word God can't even contain Eternal
Being. But I think the sound AH which
is hidden in God and Tao is key. It's
the same Ah! you say whether you're inspired
or in pain. An old Japanese poet-monk
named Kukai wrote an amazing poem about
this Ah sound. He understood all this
centuries ago.
Singing Images of Fire
The
hand moves and the fire's
whirling takes different shapes.
All things change when we do.
The first word, Ah!
blossoms into all others.
Each of them is true...
I think it is this unified field of Divine
Love, Wisdom, and Creativity that both Yehoshua
(Jesus) and Gautama Siddhartha (Buddha)
aligned with and became one with.
I think they surrendered their will to Divine
Will to the point where they embodied eternal
being. They brought God into the body,
or out of the body where it lived all along.
We all have the Image of Divinity within
and according to the Hebrew scriptures God
created us in his image, male and female.
So we have the male and female aspects of
eternal being within. And the only
battle lies within to unify your consciousness
with this realization. This is the
ultimate quest and adventure of life.
But I think it scares the hell out of people
because the intuition is that you're not
going to survive this quest and the intuition
is entirely correct. Your old selfish
lazy self won't and can't survive.
But your new reborn self will rise out of
the ashes of the old. This is what
it means to be reborn, a twice-born individual.
And actually, the Greek term in the New
Testament means literally "to be born from
above". The implication is to be born
from Heaven Within. But people would
rather have someone do it for them and would
rather not as Paul says, "work out their
salvation with fear and trembling."
When Leo Tolstoy wrote his masterpiece "The
Kingdom of Heaven Within", the Russians
exiled him. No one wants to hear that
the spiritual path is a dangerous journey.
So instead they dive into relationships
which is really the same thing. They
think they'll just settle for the pleasures
of love, but all love is a reflection of
this Gravitational Divine Love that holds
the planets in orbit and the stars on course
around the galactic center. So either
way we come to it, even beyond the threshold
of death, the ultimate transformation.
It's kind of strange to think that planets
orbit the sun because they are in love with
the sun. But it's okay in our thoughts
to think of lovers orbiting each other (being
together) due to the power and mystery of
love. This third aspect of Divinity
is the love that binds us all.
As gravitation comes into being the potential
is realized for creation. Gravitation
leads to the stage of Divine Imagination
which I like to refer to as the Dream
of God. In this stage the three-fold
or triune God starts to dream the possibility
of creation. This is when awareness
realizes that it can create! So after
I Am, eternal being gets really excited
and declares I can Create! Thus the
Dream of God flows through the universe
to produce a kind of background prototype
of creation we like to call the spiritual
realm which is really just the imagination
of God extended into Space and Time.
This spiritual realm has many intersections
and dimensions and it's the realm in which
the angelic entities were first given life.
It was the realm of the physical universe's
conception. But the physical realm
still had to go through the creative process
of labor. The word universe is derived
from "uni" which means "one" and "verse"
which means "to turn." So the universe
is literally the Turning of the Eternal
One! The word conversation is equally
startling because it implies that we can
turn or "verse" with (con) the One and each
other!
Gravitation
leads to the stage of Imagination,
the Epic Dream of God.
At this point the possibility of form is
realized through the mixture of all that
is Good. I think our concept of Cosmic
Evil enters at this stage when one of the
created beings in the Imagination Realm
tries to take over that realm. Suddenly
this angelic being says, "Hey, I'm creative
too." But then he goes on to think
incorrectly, "Hey I must be God" Which
leads him to declare, "Hey, you other beings
lower than me, bow down and worship.
I am the living God of eternity."
Big mistake! Here we have a mix up
but it's a little bigger and more cosmic
in its implication than playing two notes
that don't go together. But it's pretty
much the same principle of inharmony emerging
from two good things that were mixed incorrectly.
But God keeps on dreaming anyway right on
down to creation.
Divine
Imagination leads to the
Seven Stages of Creation
I think the Biblical seven days of creation
were actually astrological Ages from Pisces
on down to Virgo and the fabled Garden of
Eden. The Age of Virgo was the time
when God rested and Man roamed the earth
and multiplied. We used to live a
thousand years in those days. What
happened? The wave of inharmonic vibes
must have swept in from the spiritual realm
and now were sitting here forgetting our
true nature and destroying our planet.
In our modern culture of technological sophistication,
God has been slain on the alters of both
science and religion and replaced with the
human ego. Call me ultra-traditional,
but I think I'd like to align my life with
the Eternal Spirit of Love and Harmony moving
through and guiding the universe.
This is why enlightened folks like Yehoshua
and Gautama came along to illuminate the
Way of Living Truth. And this Way
as the Tao calls it too is a life of deep
faith in eternal being and a life of simplicity,
contemplation, and sharing in the spirit
of love. If I had to recommend a book
about it all I'd say read "The Aquarian
Gospel of Jesus the Christ." My astrology
teacher handed me a copy when I began my
studies at 14 and I was blown away.
It goes deeper than the Bible, even into
the 17 missing years of Jesus' life when
he went to India and they called him Issa,
the Light from the West. It gives
a great non-denominational, universal look
at the life and teachings of Yehoshua (Jesus).
Check it out. But also learn about
Hebrew and Greek writing and study the scriptures.
You'll be amazed how inaccurate and devoid
of poetry our English translation are.
In our Bible, the first line of Genesis
says, "In the beginning God created the
Heavens and the Earth." In Hebrew
the meanings come across more deeply as,
"The first fruits of the Sacred Spirit aspiring
to express eternity through a fountain of
Divine Wisdom were the creation of the celestial
dimensions and the manifest worlds."
Now that's some scripture you can write
home about!
Great teachers have come throughout the
last 6 Ages to remind us of eternity and
unconditional love. It's like God
is still at the center of creation trying
to have a conversation with us but our lives
are too busy for eternity, silence,
and contemplation. So we live these
shallow lives in desperation trying to stay
alive in the world while were committing
spiritual suicide. And we try to fill
the spiritual void with TV, sex, movies,
recreation, and plastic religions that don't
make sense. When all you have to do
is go within and listen at the edge of the
great silence and let it guide you.
It's that simple. Cultivate a relationship
with Eternal Being through your creative
power and the living conversation with Divinity
in your heart. The scriptures say
that God has placed eternity in the hearts
of humans and hidden it from them, and that
we don't understand why this is so.
Well there is a season for everything including
you realizing that eternity is etched into
your heart. That's why I study astrology
so deeply. It opens up a living daily
conversation with God through the motions
of the universe. I can get fired up
about that. It's sheer poetry woven
by the Eternal One. God, I sound like
a preacher!
The
Seven Ages of Creation made way for
the Seven Ages of Civilization.
These last six astrological Ages have been
leading up to the Seventh Sabbath Age of
Aquarius, the enlightened man pouring forth
the rich waters of divine wisdom from the
sacred urn. This is the Age we've
all been waiting for! And yes I do
believe their will be a massive awakening
on the planet. But I don't think it's
going to be a Hollywood version of Jesus
coming down out of the clouds followed by
a Holy Ghost with a sheet on and some white-bearded,
Saturn-like figure who I'm supposed to bow
down and worship. That's insanity!
I think that slowly there will be a rapture
in people's hearts that brings them back
into alignment with the eternal heartbeat.
I think the Second Coming will be more like
a fiery orgasm in our hearts where our corroded,
egotistical minds fall away with all their
worldly desires die as the planet is aglow
with spiritual light. I think Earth
will become one of many planets in the galaxy
to have a spiritual awakening. And
I think these 7 Ages of Civilization that
we've been grinding through are paving the
way for the seventh and final installment
in the unfolding of the Divine Image which
I like to call the Ages of Illumination
where each person activates 100% potential
and people get to travel the stars in their
spiritual bodies!
And
the Seven Ages of Civilization point the
way to the Ages of Illumination!
And
thus goes the Poem of Being!
Here's
a poem I wrote about religion called
Bind Me Back Together
