interesting show

[Guest guest]

Hi Folks,

 

I just watched a fascinating show on PBS - Oliver Sachs, darn, I didn't

catch the name of the show or the condition that it was about. (pay

attention much? - my excuse was I was studying for a final exam in

psychology tomorrow night, but the truth is I was playing elist poster

and reader... damned addiction if you ask me. no offense meant) Anyway,

it was about a genetic condition in which people are born deaf, and lose

their sight over the course of about 30 years, ending up both blind and

deaf. Oliver asked one woman if she could have her sight back would she

want it? Oh yes, she replied, absolutely. Would she want to become

hearing? "No, certainly not." A young man, not yet blind, but becoming

so said the same thing. Wow. They both said that they "were" deaf (part

of their identity, and strongly defended), but that in essence, they

suffered from blindness (well, they were both very positive about the

loss of sight, and willing to live their lives to the fullest... cool

people!) Anyway, I had an epiphany watching this. This is how we are.

We define ourselves by that which we have experienced and therefore feel

safe with and deny and refuse anything outside that. (well, that's too

strong, because we are willing to grow, but mainly on our own terms,

defined by comfort level...)

 

I say yes! I want it all. I'm willing to not be, in order to for it

all... words fail me, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Perhaps if I

could say it in American Sign Language, it would be more clear. I

think I mean that surrendering the limitation is worth experiencing all

the possibilities. (but I'm still testing this hypothesis... anybody

have a complete picture you want to share (again...))?

 

Love, Mark

[Guest guest]

Mark!

>I just watched a fascinating show on PBS - Oliver Sachs

>snip<

>it was about a genetic condition in which people are born deaf, and lose

>their sight over the course of about 30 years, ending up both blind and

>deaf. Oliver asked one woman if she could have her sight back would she

>want it? Oh yes, she replied, absolutely. Would she want to become

>hearing? "No, certainly not." A young man, not yet blind, but becoming

>so said the same thing. Wow. They both said that they "were" deaf (part

>of their identity, and strongly defended), but that in essence, they

>suffered from blindness (well, they were both very positive about the

>loss of sight, and willing to live their lives to the fullest... cool

>people!) Anyway, I had an epiphany watching this. This is how we are.

>We define ourselves by that which we have experienced and therefore feel

>safe with and deny and refuse anything outside that. (well, that's too

>strong, because we are willing to grow, but mainly on our own terms,

>defined by comfort level...)

>

>I say yes! I want it all. I'm willing to not be, in order to for it

>all... words fail me, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Perhaps if I

>could say it in American Sign Language, it would be more clear. I

>think I mean that surrendering the limitation is worth experiencing all

>the possibilities. (but I'm still testing this hypothesis... anybody

>have a complete picture you want to share (again...))?

 

I have been talking with someone about Christianity and the other paths. I

am licensed but not ordained by the Christian church... the reason was

that I'm a woman... that was before it was illegal. I am also

Buddhist... a Moslem friend once called me a good Moslem... and I would

be happy to be called a Hindu or Taoist or Wiccan. I walk my own path...

it's the way of the shaman... and I find them all good and true.

 

My partner Matt is working part-time as Minister of Youth in a Christian

church... his spiritual guides include his Lady, who is Goddess herself...

and Christ... and Big Kahuna.

 

Now I find that we could be ordained priests if we are willing to say that

the world religions are all good... but Christ first and foremost! And I

won't do it... I do not believe that Christ wants me to. I wrote to Matt:

>Christ first and foremost! If that means I'm supposed to insist on the

>name of Christ to the extent of putting off people who use other names, I

>won't do it! And I don't believe Christ would want it.

>

>I have said before, if you could put Christ and Buddha and Krishna and

>Lao-Tsu all together in a room, do you really think they would fight? Do

>you think any one of them would be concerned about who is foremost? Of

>course not!

>

>However... sometime tomorrow or another day, you might want to read about

>this church:

>

>It seems just possible to me that these people might accept us with our

>vision... of a Christ who walks hand-in-hand with the Lady... who speaks

>with Coyote and Eagle and Sun and Wind... who sits in the Sweat Lodges and

>the mosques and the temples... who said in Jerusalem that his followers

>would be known by love.

>

>Luther defied the Catholic Church and its insistence on works... "By faith

>alone!" he said.

>

>I say, "By love alone!" Anyone who loves is worthy to be called Christ's

>follower... his brother or sister... whether he knows the name of Christ

>or not.

 

Matt said:

>Ask her what religion God belongs to? All I know about it is that it turns

>no-one away, no matter by what door they enter. You may tell her this is the

>religion to which I strive to belong. If I were to undertake a formal role

>in any religion it would have to have that quality. I suspect that means I

>cannot be a priest in any religion.

 

My friend answers that what I have said is all true... Christ and Buddha

and Krishna and

Lao-Tsu would not quarrel... but down here on earth every religion centers

on one as the head.

 

Years ago I was telling two Hindu friends about Christianity, and the

husband said to me that God is One... that they would gladly come into my

church and worship... why would I not go into their temple and worship? I

went home and thought about that for a long time... he was right.

 

Two years ago I asked a lama: "Can I be a Buddhist without renouncing the

Christ?"

 

He smiled as though he found the question amusing, and said simply, "Yes."

 

I learned from him too.

 

My friend says that what I have said is all right for a follower, but a

priest is different. Ordination comes through the apostolic succession, a

long line going back to St. Peter.

 

But it was St. Peter who got into hot water with the early Christian church

at Jerusalem because he was out baptizing right and left among the

Gentiles... and those men at Jerusalem knew that baptism should be given

only to those who had or would accept the sign of Abraham, circumcision.

Peter said these people already had the baptism of the spirit, so why

should he deny them the baptism by water? He was saying what the church

has said ever since... a sacrament is the outward sign of an inward grace.

It is the community's outward sign confirming the inward grace.

 

If the church does not choose to give the outward sign, so be it... it

doesn't change the reality. Matt and I don't need the ordination of the

church... we need only to follow our own light, to walk the path that our

guides are showing us.

 

Mark, I've been looking for the words to explain my standpoint to my

friend. And then you wrote:

>We define ourselves by that which we have experienced and therefore feel

>safe with and deny and refuse anything outside that. (well, that's too

>strong, because we are willing to grow, but mainly on our own terms,

>defined by comfort level...)

>

>I say yes! I want it all. I'm willing to not be, in order to for it

>all... words fail me, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Perhaps if I

>could say it in American Sign Language, it would be more clear. I

>think I mean that surrendering the limitation is worth experiencing all

>the possibilities.

 

Yes!!! I am convinced that this present time requires inclusiveness, not

exclusiveness... union, not division...

 

In the last century the explosive development of the means of

transportation and communication brought about the union of East and

West... one world, planet Earth... the internet is rapidly bringing this

reality into our full consciousness... the lines of communication

proliferate like the neurons in one great brain.

 

We are told that Gurudev is One... that our spiritual guides are One.

When I ask my own guru about how this can be, how our guides, who seem

quite distinct and often are known to us by names, can in fact be one, I

hear him laughing. Laughing! Poor mortal, poor spirit in a human body, so

hampered by incarnation that this is not evident and obvious!

 

But I do see that it takes a higher viewpoint to see their unity... on one

level we see Christ and Buddha and Big Kahuna and Kali and Gaia... on a

higher level they are one. It is not loss to look higher, to look to

spirit... it is gain!

 

Matt says,

>I suspect that means I cannot be a priest in any religion.

 

And you say,

>I think I mean that surrendering the limitation is worth experiencing

>all the possibilities.

 

Yes!!! It is too light a thing to say "Christ first and foremost." I

think we must be priests of the Father, speakers for the spirit.

 

And I do not think I reject Christ when I say that... it was Jesus who

said, "In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and

I in you."

 

Thank you, Mark!

 

Love,

Dharma

[Guest guest]

[i sent my last post to Matt for permission to quote him... he agreed, and

here is the rest of his response, with his permission. Dharma]

 

I would say, of Mark's observations, that he is right, this is a shrewd

allegory for the human spiritual condition -- born deaf, gradually as we

grow up we become blind. The difference is that if as children we see that

this will happen, we can consciously decide not to become blind, and it

won't happen. We may even have an epiphany at some point and begin to hear

again ... it happened to me!

 

The key is to will to know more, to draw closer to the Sacred, to be

willing to surrender anything of this world so that one may be more a part

of that World. The more one is willing to surrender, the closer one draws

to the Light, until one can see and hear in a world of deaf and blind

people.

 

I think this is what Mark is struggling to articulate -- it is the

framework in which I want to set my journal of spiritual awakening -- the

"deafness" and blindness" being what you have taught as "junk" and

"walls"

in the chakra system, Dharma, and what I have been referring to in other

posts as "automaticity," the tendency to react to present situations

according to principles developed for situations in the past. The more of

this we allow to happen to us the more our lives become robotic, while our

consciousnesses sleep at the center of what Wallace Stevens called

"mechanical beetles, never quite warm" ...

 

When they asked the Buddha if he were God or man, he answered, "I am awake"

-- not deaf, not blind, reacting in the moment to each moment as it occurs.

Awake! It is an enormous concept. And as we awaken we find that we are

surrounded by angels that we never knew were there.

 

On the darkest days of our sleep-walking lives, when there is only one set

of footprints in the sand, it is not because Jesus abandoned us but because

He carried us in His arms ... and we never knew, we cried out and tossed in

our sleep, beset by the material world as a sleeper is beset by a nightmare

.... and unseen the Great Mother brushed our hot brows with Her mantle and

whispered sweet words of hope ... unheard ... yet the darkness retreats ...

a little ...

 

My greatest ambition is to teach the children, not to awaken, but to _never

go to sleep_! Stay awake! It should be taught in the schools from the

earliest age. This is indeed the work of God, and it knows no religion, no

church, no sacred Book or single set of names.

 

 

Matt