A Troubling Comment I received on Meditation

My Friends

I have always felt that truth isn’t owned by anyone person creed or religion. With that said I must say that I have come across a particular comment that has really disturbed me. This comment was left in response to the blog post I wrote many months ago entitled “What is meditation Part 1: Is it evil, Do devils talk to you and play with your mind during meditation?”

I have gotten many responses that say

1. “Jesus is the only way,
2. The Holy bible tells us how to seek God
3. Devils talk to me during meditation
4. Sitting in meditative posture makes you sterile – supposedly meditation, the yellow starburst and tropical Fantasy soda all kill sperm and make women barren.
5. We just have to go to church and treat each other correctly.

There is no limit to the type of comments I have gotten.   Here is a comment I have gotten recently.

Guys I am a Christian and know of countless times that TM has lead to these demonic happenings.  It is great to seek God, and yes it is good that you are interested in seeking him, but he’s not left us alone with no advice on how to do so.  The Holy Bible teaches us how to seek God, and how to “experience” God, but in an unselfish or self-serving way.  God said that if we seek him with all that we are, we shall find him.  But he has given us directions on how to do so.  TM is not one of these ways.  When jesus said to meditate on these things, the origin, and meaning was related much to the way you would simply ponder and think about something, not the act of TM.  TM is seeking a spiritual experience, and the Devil sees that as an opportunity to mess with people.  This is not the will of God to practice TM.  It’s a new age and very secular idea at its roots.  Please accept my advice.  Seek Christ and what he has to offer, not things of this world, or concepts that man tries to come up with in order to “feel good” or “experience God”.  I thank you for reading my post.

I didn’t approve this comment because it goes against the purpose this blog was created. In case you were wondering what the purpose of this blog is or one of the purposes I should say, I should say its is to so the universality of the human experience both the quotidian and the spiritual which in my view are so intertwined they cannot be seperated. But I just wanted to share this comment. I find it very forceful and imposing. I would like your comments on what you think about this comment. I would like to do a post on my experiences with meditation if anyone is interested. Many times I dont feel there is a clear conception of what meditation is one should make a distinction also between meditation and other mental and physical exercises which are quite commercial at the time.

I leave you with this quote from Bawa Muhaiyadden

“You are a Christian because you believe in Jesus. You are a Jew because you believe in all the prophets including Moses. You are a Muslim because you believe in Mohammed as a prophet. You are a Sufi because you believe in the universal teachings of God’s love. You are really none of those, but you are all of those because you believe in God. And once you believe in God, there is no religion. Once you divide yourself off with religion, you are separated from your fellow man.” 

Jesus, a Bishop and a Bektashi Dervish – A funny anecdote & Some Thoughts

Hey Friends,

Here is a funny anecdote I came across today. It was  interesting and go me thinking on my way to church.

A Bektashi Dervish from the First Albanian Bektashi Monastery in MI

Eastern Rite Catholic Bishops

A Bektashi dervish apporached a certain bishop and said:
      ‘I have heard of a young man who harangues crowds,
advocating their breaking the law, claims supernatural
connetions, performs “miracles” and contradicts himself….”
      ‘Enough!’ said the bishop. ‘he shall be tired, charged
with blasphemy and upsetting public.If he does not recant, he
may be put to death as a heretic and corrupter. Just tell me
his name, and I shall arrange the rest!’
      ‘I wish you could realize how impressed I am by your
competence,’ said the Bektashi. ‘His name is Jesus.’

Some when I pass by church,or site for service, I never feel partof a community.  It feels like a highschool reunion. We are all together for the same reason by expectations, ideas and prejudice keep us sequestered to the little niches where we have chosen to live. When we turn and give each other the sign of people its is only a formality.  When someone really means with their heart a wish of peace upon you, it can change your life on many levels.

I had a lot of problems in my formative years going through 13 years of catholic education, there is a subtle denial of the freedom of spirit. I have to see that a religion is a unique seed or plant that can grow in any soul an takes on the mentality of the environment. It can be used as a tool to do great things. It came be used as a bridge into the mystery that is behind every manifesting act.  The fact that mysticism is a historical fact in that from every religion we have had mystics claiming that there are ways to have a personal relationship with ‘The Friend’ makes me really think.

There is a saying I have heard recently. It said though man cannot drink up the entire ocean of Divine Consciousness, each man can at least drink to his fill. For some of us, mechanical rituals are what is needed. For other there is a inner correspondence to the thought behind these words by Ikbal Ali Shah, father of the late Idries and Omar Ali Shah.

“No understanding of the holy book is possible until it is actually revealed to the believer just as it was revealed to the Prophet” – Ikbal Ali Shah, in Islamic Sufism (1933).

Tell me what you think?

Dave

Morning commute and the one thing I hate “Preaching on the Train” (1)

Hello Everyone,

How are you? The ride to work is always, well not always but sometimes, the most interesting part of the. There  are about 20 million people in NYC during the workday, and it seems like 200 times more during rush hour. One of the things you will get use to seeing on the train is people who come in preaching.

Sometimes they come singing off key really really loudly a christian hymn. Other time they have pamplets telling you how the end of the world is near, and that this or that politician is the beast of revelation. Its really really annoying and funny at the same time. Today I was fortunate to be subject to a lot of off key singing at 149th Grand Concourse station and I was told how I must repent to enter the kingdom. I was told how beautiful heaven is. It turns out if I get there I could eat and eat and not gain weight and no, I know what you are thinking,  I can eat everything I want not just subway sandwiches.

Nothing I like more than being scared into treating people nicely, and doing good things because God will burn me with fire. Somehow despite hearing   this for years and going to catholic school and hearing the same things in another more toned down way [ do this or be punished] I have come to feel that [warnings of paina dn torture to comes, hellfire, brimstone] isnt Christianity at all. I feel at times  that what was once sublime and living in Christianity has in many cases been forgotten.

Looking at today’s trends and  what problems we are facing I feel we are long past the days of ‘what religion is better’ or ‘Who is going to be saved’ or ‘Who is in allegience with The Beast’. I can hear Sister Margaret’s call warnings trying to keep us from the grilling and charring of the hellfire. To me what is important is our personal experience of the Divine in the arena of our day to day life  most of the times. We are all people first. I think the real church, masjid, or temple ultimately is the human heart. The Question at the end of the day is how big is our heart. How large an experience can be keep and hold in our hearts. There are as many ways to the truth as there are people.

What do you think? These are just my commuting musings.

Dave

Reflection on another View on Christianity: The Path of Mary, The Illusion of Time and more (2) – My thoughts on the passage….

Hey friends,

That excerpt from the last barrier was very thought provoking to say the least. Luckily if you pick up the book you ill see how it is pleonastically littered with such thought provoking and interesting sections. Of course nothing happens in isolation, while this has been running in my head  I have been part of or heard many people talk about religion and about christianity. Also I found myself watching the news something I hate to do. It has been an interesting thought process. I will give you an example of what I mean from the book Among the Dervishes by O.M Burke. In this example the author O.M Burke

 In it the author asks a Sufi ” What is the Koran to the Sufis?”.

“…the Koran was sent down and entrusted to the breasts of men for a purpose. This purpose was not only that it should help for a community believing what is said literally. The Koran itself say this, where it is repeated that allegories are used.What is the use of an allegory? Why simply to take a mind into a realm where it can no loner think in the pedestrian way that scholars think. No, for the man who has to be civilized and prepared for another stage the Koran must be  adhered to as literal truth. But for those who understand more, the higher developmental secrets will be available.

I asked him for an example.  He told me that any words in the Koran could be taken to illustrate this fact to an intelligent man, though more than intelligence was needed to get into contact with the higher meaning. ‘Take the very first words of the Koran: “In the name of Allah, the Beneficient, the Merciful.” The lowest level of man has only the conceptions which he understands by these words. “Beneficient” to him means something or someone who does him good? And so on. This illustrates that man reads words without knowing what they mean because the meaning of the words alters in accordance with the experiences of the people using them. [not my italic]

He continued, ‘ There are vital secrets in the Koran.All history, all experience, all patterns of creation are there. But each man or woman will be able to know jsut as much as he is capable of understanding of these, and the same is the case with the first chapter  and the Moslem prayer, as it is with the original prayers of Christianity and Judaism and other faiths, which have no been so edited by the ignorant that they are useless as a sources of secret teaching

 I have always felt that only at the deepest level of religious experience do we have unity of all people, because at that point there are taints of the lesser self. I think its at that point where time in the psychological sense becomes unreal, and whatever was manifesting itself 1400 or 2000 years ago or whenever is still just as real and experienced.

History remains only words on a page or on the clearance and bargain section at Barnes and Noble only when we look at human history with the eye of the mind that looks for trends, that like to generalize, categorise and label. when we look at history this way there will always be something new not discovered. When we look with the intuitive eye we see there are no barriers. This reminds me of a poem of Rumi’s I heard read by Coleman Barks:

What Was said To The Rose

What was said to the rose that made it open
was said to me here in my chest.

What was told the Cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that’s happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

Accordingto the commentary given by Barks in Rumi: The book of Love,the appearance of formal beauty comes as a responce to beign spoken too. The fact that on an intuitional level history is alive at all times is a natural consequences in my mind to the fact there we can, under the right circumstances recognize how we are continually manifesting ourselves on a soul level, and that we can experience history as alive because at some level we are both continually manifesting. When Protagoras said ” Man is the measure of all things, of those that are , that they are, of those that are not they are not.” – I wonder which type of  “man” was he referring too, one ruled by reason and one by the heart.

Reflection on another View on Christianity: The Path of Mary, The Illusion of Time and more (1) – An Interesting Excerpt from The Last Barrier by Reshad Feild

Hey Friends

I was talking to a friend of mine this week and this allegory that I had read recently came to mind and of course with the events of the week it was thrown out again back into the ocean from whence it came. I came across this allegory in The Last barrier a book I gave some brief thoughts on in a previous post [ http://caravanofdreams.wordpress.com/2008/12/19/book-review-2-the-last-barrier-a-journey-into-the-essence-of-sufi-teachings-by-reshad-field/ ]. I figure I will present the allegory and then post my comments and thoughts on it.  There are some really cool comments on this passage of the book from the mystic saint’s blog,  take a look at it: [ http://mysticsaint.blogspot.com/2008/04/esoteric-inner-meaning-of-virgin-mary.html  ]

You must first of all understand that although I seem to be talking about an historical event, everything of which I speak is within you and is happening at this moment.
There is no other; and what happened, in our world, two thousand years ago is part of the unfoldment of this moment, not that moment but this very instant. It is neither a question of looking back two thousand years nor of trying to recapture the moment in your imagination. All you have to do is to be awake. …

Your body is the Virgin Mary. The Spirit is Christ, the Word that was conveyed through Gabriel the eternal messenger. The breath is the Breath of the Mercy of God, and it is that breath that quickens the soul. Until the soul is quickened by the Spirit it is like an unfledged bird.

There are many paths to God, but the way of Mary is the sweetest and most gentle. If you can melt into Mary, the matrix, the blueprint of life, the Divine Mother, you will be formed and shaped in Christ and Christ in you, and thus through the breath of God’s Mercy you will come into being and know Him. For it is the breath of mercy that bestows being. Every moment God appears in living form, never manifesting twice in the same moment.

Mary brought Jesus into the world because she was chosen to be the one for this work, and so she was trained in the knowledge of birth. It is said that Gabriel, the messenger, appeared to Mary in the form of a man. She thought that he wanter her as a woman, so she froze for a moment, turning to her Lord. If she had not relaxed, then the child born from that moment would have been uncompromising and impossible to live with.

You body is the Virgin Mary, the Spirit is Christ, the breath is the Breath of God’s Mercy. Your soul remains asleep until it is quickened by the Holy Spirit. …

Mary is the Divine Mother. Mary is the blue of the flame, and Mary is the matrix of all divine possibilities in form, here in our world. It is necessary that she be recognized. Learn to love God with all of your being, every part of your self, your heart, your mind, your soul and then we may all be granted the understanding of the meaning of virgin birth. Learn to pray and your prayers will come back from the very matrix that forms the child.

A sufi is called ‘the son of the moment.’ As you melt each moment into Mary, something is being redeemed that a child may be born, and what is being born is the son of the moment. That child may become God-realized and thus be called a Sufi or he may walk the earth unaware, asleep – not yet human, not conscious of God or of the wonders of His creation, having no knowledge of himself and thus no understanding of love.

Your body is the Virgin Mary – remember this each moment of your life. This is the responsibility that we must take as we come into knowledge, into being.

Mary was chose to bear Jesus because she kept her purity intact. Simple people call this her ‘virginity’, but those who know understand that to be pure means to be completely adaptable, to flow with each moment, to be like a running stream cascading from the water of life itself. To be pure is to spread joy, and joy is the unfoldment of the knowledge of the perfection of God. …

The eternal messenger is always within, wanting to unfold the moment through the Word, and one day when Mary is recognized again, there will be a reappearance of Christ, manifested in the outer world. Remember who Mary is, and one day when you are ready, and when God so wills it, you will know what I have told you.”

My Views on Christianity as modern day Christian (I) (Potentially heretical)

Hey There Guys

How are you ?  Somone had asked me what are my views on christianity beings a christian and I wanted to put them here maybe spark some conversation. I have to say though that my experiences with christianity arent based on mindless repetition of rituals but of a life long inquiry and experience, and it has been a unique journey for me .

Where do I start?  I gues its only rightful that I start with my conception of Jesus the Christ.  To me Jesus was a man a human beign like you and I who through successive lives and trials and tribulations reached and attained the status of the CHRIST, i.e. the annointed one. I am checking my window for some hooded peopel coming to burn me, not the KKK but some over zealous catholics.

His mission was unique and he came for everyone. In other words Jesus like Mohommed like all enlightened beings dont belong to anyone they may come admist a certain group of people, but that has nothing to do with the universality of their message.

I feel that anyone who would aspire to be a christ, that means annointed with the light of enlightenment and communion with God is a Christian, the same way I feel that anyone who can most humble submitted themselves to God is a true muslim.  How many people have been declared Saints in both Islam and Christianity. Take a look into it.

For those many years someone so important to so many of us just vanished ( I always found this dubious) Jesus had gone to India, Tibet, Egypt Greece and a few other specific places to commune with the certain “masters”, and when he returned back to start hsi ministry came with a new means of  giving to us the most sacred of teaching of the old in a new way adapted for the specific time and place and circumtances and people.

Of course thanks to some councils emperors and wars Christianity sort of split into two various camps, churchianity and Christianity. By churchianity I mean I follow age old rituals and those who dont I put to death or burn. The church and its practices are what is more important than inwardly discovering jesus and communing with him as he guides you on a path to being a Christed one yourself.

Rudolph Otto talked about the evolution of religion I forget where, btu basically there are three stages and I will paraphrase of course because this isnt a scholarly work, and of course ass soem comments of my own

1. Initial experience -  One person experiences who the religion centers about occur. there is no hierarchical structure to religion at this point. The followers are taught by direct experience through the person, Jesus and the apostles ( sounds like an indie group) , Mohammed & Abu Bakr & Ali.
2. Cult Phase – There are a few followers maybe even different communitties  of followers and there are different heads of each community. each head of the communitiyes represents a direct chain of initiation into the mysteries from the souce.  There is a hierearchical structure but its not the focus  the focus is on the teaching itself, the expereinces through to which the follower cna ascend or better yet transcend his present state.
3. Religion – here in this third stage we are the farthest away from the original source of the truth, and the religion  is  defined by the hierarchy not by the transmission of teachings. The most important thing is the group, the community of followers. of course this religion breaks down into various sects here or group each vying for power to control the mind and of the totally of its followers. This can be a pretty violent stage.

This is where we are nowas christians. Its christians against the world, guidance counselors are writing book about why many young girls are leaving the christian faith and turning towards islam or some other religion.  Some christians feel that evangelizing and supplanting age old culutral traditions with their conception of jesus is quite  alright. I have even heard a woman who watched some whirling dervishes say that her heart went out to them because obvious during the dance and practices of the sama , these poor man adn women are possesed by Satan and his Legion.

To be continued……………….

Dave

Welcome Friend!

Hello Friends,

              In some way shape or form we are all chasing our dreams, and to an extent we regard how good our life has been from how many dreams we have been able to realize. One of my favorite writers has gone one to  say (paraphrasing of course since ican never find a quote when i want to)

“What is a good life but the drams of childhood realized in adulthood” -Antoine de St. Exupery

For the longest time I have had two dreams aside from paying of my credit cards off and college loans, firstly to travel and find a job where I can feel a sense of adventure everyday as I really feel alive when i tlak to new people and hear their stories and share my own, and see new places. Secondly my dream has always been liberation not just from the tender and delicious hold that fast food has on me, but liberation int he spiritual sense. I havent been very religious in my life especiall born a christian.

What I mean by that is that though I have always felt a calling in life I never had that calling answered by the dogmatic practices of the Church. I have felt that there are two factions in the world of Christian faith Christianity and Churchianity. Anyways I will devout a separate post to that. But in order to answer that calling I have traveled a long winding road: studying hinduism and sufism, all expressions of mysticism.

For me both innner and outer life need to be in harmony to give validity to all that I’ve learned on my travels and journies (spiritual, intellectual, academic, personal, etc).  For a time being I have stopped ‘traveling’ because I feel I have found what I have been searching for for lifetimes who knows.

While my caravan of dream is takign a brief pause, come on by lets talk, lets trade stories, lets keep each other company. I have a deep feeling of love and respect for  everyone (maybe except my last boss and 7th grade teacher-lol) and all religions and all people. Stop on by, I will have some tea waiting for you.

     Welcome