He made a point of saying that most people are “possessed” by their minds – by an “incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking.” Many of us if we were completely honest would affirm this to be true. Buddhists and eastern spiritual seekers call this the “monkey mind”. Chatter. Chatter. Chatter. If a person is not aware of this they will mistake the “thinker” to be who they are. This being the egoic mind, egoic because there is a “sense of “I” (eg0) in all our thoughts, memories, reactions, and emotions. This Tolle said, is “unconsciousness” in a spiritual sense.

It is important to point out that thinking is conditioned by the past and many other factors. Again, honest introspection would show us that we identify with persistent thoughts, emotions, and reactive patterns. When we say “I” we mean the ego, not our real self. Furthermore, this I, says Tolle, “consists of thoughts and emotions – a bundle of memories that people identify with as ‘me and my story’ “. The false “I” also personally identifies with possessions, opinions, external appearances, long standing resentments, or even concepts of oneself as “better than or not as good as others – as a success or failure”. Egos survive on separation.

Thoughts and emotions are nothing more than fleeting information and energy, as Deepak Chopra might say. Most unenlightened people live through their mind-made self. So, if every ego strives to survive, to “protect and enlarge itself”, others will be seen as enemies.

Now we can begin to see the structure of personal and collective egos. One egoic pattern, rather on one side of the scale, the ego consists of the compulsive habit of “fault finding” and complaining about others, and at the other end of the spectrum are the seeds to physical violence between individuals and warfare between nations. The basic component at work is that, when a person criticizes (condemns) another, it makes them feel bigger and superior.

Complaining and resentment as a topic was a big part of this chapter. Engaging in this kind of behavior is a strategy of the ego to strengthen itself, it is part of the “mind-made story”. Some egos can’t find anything better to do than to survive on complaining. This happens many times, out of unconscious and habitual neural grooves that are formed in the brain. We love to apply labels to people, to name call, egos need to be right, to triumph. Lower consciousness causes a person to shout, scream, and resort to physical violence.

Resentment as an emotion is linked to complaining. It gives energy to the ego. Resentment really means to feel “bitter, indignant, aggrieved, of offended”. What becomes problematic, is that rather than overlooking another’s unconsciousness, our egos make it their identity. We misinterpret through projection and we strengthen in ourselves what we react to in another.

How does a person go beyond reactivity? Well, Tolle says that non-reaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways to go beyond the ego in oneself and also “dissolving the collective ego”. Moreso, one can “only be in a state of non-reaction if they recognize the ego or product of collective dysfunction in another”. More importantly, refraining from reacting to someone else’s ego, creates the potential to bring out the “sanity” in others – the unconditioned consciousness.

The greatest protection to falling into unconsciousness and acting out negative emotions is to be “conscious”. Continuing with the idea of non-reaction, it is not weakness in any way” to not – react. Tolle says it is strength. Non-reaction is equated with forgiveness – “of looking through another’s ego to see their essence”.
When we peel away to the core of the ego we see that it resents situations, not just people. The ego gets more energy by making enemies. Voices underlying egoic mind-made thinking, for example are “This should not be happening”, or “I don’t want to be here,” and “I don’t want to be doing this,” also “I’m being treated unfairly”.

A very important point to make note of from this chapter it that the ego’s greatest enemy is the present moment. We must remain neutral if we are to feel any sense of peace. The little “me” enjoys making someone wrong. The ego does NOT want to change. It would be content to go on complaining. To reiterate, the ego is a conditioned mind pattern. But, you are NOT the ego voice, rather you are the one who is AWARE of it. “You are the awareness that is aware of the voice”. Once you become aware of the ego inside you, it becomes just an old, conditioned mind pattern. Since the ego equates to unawareness, awareness and the ego cannot co-exist. Therefore, once noticed, the ego is weakened.
A big section in chapter 3 was subtitled “Reactivity and Grievances.” It talked about how people become addicted to being angry and upset, in the same way someone becomes addicted to a drug. Many people says Tolle, are “just waiting to find something else to react against, to feel annoyed or disturbed about”. No doubt, this is toxic. Such feelings are strengthened through continuous reactivity.

The way the planet is effected by not only individual egos, but the collective ego, is that collective grievances are potentially dangerous and can lead to cycles of violence between nations.

Tolle defines a grievance as “a strong negative emotion connected to an event in the sometimes distant past that is being kept alive by compulsive thinking – by re-telling the story in the head or out loud of ‘what someone did to me’ (or us)”. Furthermore, to show the effects of grievances he went on to point out that they contaminate other areas of people’s lives. For one, it creates negative emotional energy. Secondly, it distorts perception of people or events in the present. Also, it negatively influences behavior and speech, and it keeps you in the grip of the ego.

By forgiving enemies and keeping our grievances in check, we can target one of the many egoic structures of the mind. In essence, grievances are baggage of old thought and emotion and by focusing on something from the past, we cannot exist in the “Present”.

Other sections of the chapter dealt with the temptations of wanting or needing to be right and make another wrong, thereby strengthening your false sense of I (enhancing the false self by making it morally superior to others). Another section talked about how we defend ego illusions by taking everything personally and over-identifying with the mind and a mental position. Basically what was said in that section was that every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation and that again, only through awareness and NOT thinking can a person differentiate between fact and opinion.

Under the section “Truth: Relative or Absolute”, the distinction between defending insane points of view of misperceived notions of having possession of “absolute truth” has led in history, to such things as torturing and burning people who held different opinions. The Catholic Church was one such institution that used the notion of “absolute truth” to justify violence. Tolle made a strong point: “Absolute Truth is NOT found in doctrines, ideologies, sets of rules, and stories (made up of thought)”. Thought can point to truth he said, but never be the truth. The major trap of religion is for one to claim that “my” religion is the only true one. This only creates illusory thinking and division and conflict with people.

All these things mentioned point to why we need to help create “A New Earth” or a “New World Order”. We in essence are each, potential saviors. If we would only transcend the ego, by undoing it, we could live in the power of our True Presence. In the Now. Not in the past, not in hurts, not in grievance, not in negativity, not through defending what we perceive to be absolute truth when it is really relativism, not by separating ourselves from others in an “us” versus “them” mentality, and not through underlying dysfunction or mental illness. The reason the planet is caught in an insane spiral of perpetration and retribution, action and reaction is because collectively and individually, we don’t go to the root, or the core of the problem. It is the complete identification with thought and emotion that is leading to the destruction of earth. This is the old way, the unevolved way. Our greed, our selfishness, our exploitation, cruelty, and violence all act as a time bomb that could destroy us all. Once we recognize that war is a mindset and that we can’t fight unconsciousness with unconsciousness, by making ourselves right and others wrong, we can peel away at the ego and see it for what it is: the insanity of the human mind. Through awareness and the presence of our Being, or through the I Am Presence found in each of us, we can exchange reactivity for forgiveness and compassion. It is only through radical honesty that we can in fact create “A New Earth”.

Author: Fr. Bryan Rice

“Words are a hypnotic spell,” he says. Just because we know a word, doesn’t mean we know what the word signifies. When dealing with words and mechanics of perception, Tolle used the image of seeing only the tip of the iceberg to understand how the ego radar works. He is very clear in “A New Earth” and even in “The Power of Now”, that humanity is possessed by thought. That obviously is not the optimum situation for us to be in. We have to sense “beingness” found in all things and in life circles. It is hard to see the real essence of things, when we are hypnotized by the sign posts, or the meaning to which words point.

I agree with Tolle, when he said that a great miracle needs to take place – we need to experience the true self before labels were either self-constructed by our mind or by the minds of others. These labels of the mind lead to disentanglement and we thereby sacrifice creativity, wisdom, joy, and love. Getting back to words, we are not only possessed by them, but we are imprisoned by them. The funny thing about words is that they are just basic sounds assigned a meaning by the mind. These basic sounds, Tolle says cannot explain our being.
The false sense of “I” is the greatest truth or error, as stated in the book. The very existence of the ego-illusory self is a primordial error in falsely identifying the “I”.

On a positive note, if you are able to recognize an illusion as illusion, it dissolves. That should be our goal in dealing with the false identities we construct for ourselves.

Returning to the idea of reality versus unreality, it is true that the ego’s survival depends on our mistaking IT for reality. For instance, when we say “I”, we are not referring to our true self in God or Being. To understand the workings of the ego, think of a baby. He or she equates “I” with their name, then the next step in ego development they look at things in terms of “me” or “mine”. The primitive ego, unaffected by advanced consciousness and awareness represents things as their self.

The mental construct of “I”, rather the egoic self ties into gender identity, identifying with possessions, it relates to a sense perceived body, it identifies with a certain race, and also a religion.

Transcending the mind is a big focus point for Eckhart Tolle. In more than one of his books, he refers to thought as compulsive, mostly repetitive, and pointless. Most people, he says, are spiritually unconscious, meaning that they have no sense of “I” apart from their thoughts.
The voice in a given individual’s head causes one to be absorbed in thoughts, unaware of their surroundings, thinking through the intellect that as an individual who thinks, we are alive and have meaning.

Tolle clearly states that we must shift from thinking to detached, observing awareness. But so many of us are content to let the mind possess us with unhappiness. Since thinking is only a small fraction of the consciousness that we are, we need to free ourselves from compulsive thought.

To summarize briefly, the crux of Tolle’s argument about how we must undo and understanding the structure and content of the ego, centers around moving beyond the structure of “my” in relation to things. He touches on the nature of the consumer society, advertising, and how it feeds the “hungry mind” and “greed” in people. He goes on to say that there is “an unchecked striving for more and more and more, for endless possessing – this being a dysfunction and disease. Tolle compared this dysfunction with the spreading and manifestation of cancer cells in a sick person.

Lack leads to wanting. People who’s ego feel diminished will become self-grasping. According to Tolle, when you know longer feel life within you, it is easy to look for something to “fill” you, from outside of you. Detectors for the ego are signs of anger and defensiveness that one might feel when they experience the loss of something they identified with.

Being is a favorite word of Tolle, and is a synonym for God or the I AM presence. He says being must be felt, not thought. The ego, by nature, cannot know being because it is thought.
The key is, with things, is to remain detached. But, the illusion of ownership creeps in with regularity in each of us, if we were honest about that fact. Reality says that no thing ever has anything to do with who we are. Unfortunately, it is not until being on the brink of death that we examine, and realize that our truest essence really in fact wanted to be identified with being. Blessed are the poor in spirit can mean not having any identification with things. No attachments. And no mental positions.
The start of transforming your consciousness happens when you are able to say to yourself that you are the awareness that is aware that there is an attachment (to be overcome).
Tolle spent a great deal of time in chapter 2 talking about “wanting” and the “need for more”. The ego, not the true self identifies itself with having. Voices and demons that are concealed within us remain deep-seated notions of dissatisfaction, of an incompleteness, of a feeling of “not enough”. The voices that drive the ego are : “I don’t have enough yet” and “I am not enough yet.”

In essence, having is a fiction that the ego creates to give it solidity and permanence, to make itself “stand out”, and be “special”.
Wanting gives the ego life juice. Pursuing in a manner spoken of by Tolle, in a grim and ruthless determination can lead to a person’s downfall and can create hell on earth for them and other people in their life. The real thing that the ego and people identified with the ego do not want is to encounter the present moment – the
power of “now”.

The sense of lack can thereby lead to destruction and continued unconscious choosing and behaving. “No content will ever satisfy you, as long as the egoic structure remains in place.”
The last section of Chapter 2 dealt with body and gender identification. I found it quite strikingly true, the observation Tolle made about people who are afflicted in some way. The voices “I’m sick, I’m a patient, I’m a sufferer” are one way people negatively identify with the egoic structure as well.

So, the incessant compulsive thought of the ego can turn reality into a nightmare. We must move bravely past identification with form, things, and especially our thinking and wanting. Basically, hunger of the mind can lead to insatiable hunger in the body. That can be tragic, for in the body is where Being and Presence are felt.

Author: Fr. Bryan Rice Edit this entry

Malachi, then says something brilliant. “Whatever might transpire in our incarnation in the material plane and physical world, the unique essence and truth of our soul of light remains unchanged. It is, was, and forever shall be the same, completely pure and pristine, radiant and glorious, ever at-one with the light of the infinite and divine being. At anytime, we can remember ourselves and the light that is in us and experience a conscious unification with God and Godhead. It is the present truth of our inmost being – our Christ self”.”

Unity with God. That is sought after by every mystic and it is the call of every human, longing to return to its source. Notice he said “conscious unification with God and Godhead”, not “becoming God”. Again, this writer does not seek that in my active formation for priesthood, and hopefully, one day to the episcopate in the Free Apostolic Communion.

Psychiatrists of the present are filling a role that priests of the past did in terms of dealing with dangerous, volatile, evil pathology. Possession by a demonic spirit, or a wayward spirit for that matter, to many is a medieval concept now. Much  more is known about mental health, behavior and emotional problems, and psychosis. Gerald May wrote a book that compared diagnoses from the DSM-IV, listing psychopathology and states of spiritual turmoil. The book I am referring to is Care of Mind, Care of Spirit. May is also the well-known author of the book The Dark Night of the Soul. Having worked in the mental health field as a crisis counselor, I have seen first hand what emotional disturbance looks like in a stress filled or fight or flight moment.

When I was dating my wife she took a class in Psychopathology. During that time she shared with me an article she had read about Catholic priests who refused pastoral care and exorcism to mentally ill patients. So, as I mentioned, the role of psychiatrists has evolved in according to May, psychiatrists are the modern day priesthood. So much has been learned about psychosis, the brain, psychology, behavior, abnormal psychology, and “the mind”, that have led to many advancements in the treatment of chronic and organic mental disorders. When I worked as a crisis counselor, what some would call emotional disturbance or escalation of afflictive emotions, appeared like evil entities who had entered the bodies of the patients I served.

A concept that has revolutionized my thinking about psychological suffering versus the issue of possession by a spirit, is a phrase coined by spiritual thinker, Eckhart Tolle. Tolle is an enlightened teacher not affiliated with any particular religion. What he called the pain-body, has inspired Catholic priest Richard Rohr in his talks about violent behavior and spirituality. Rohr specifically talks about the biblical notion of “driving out demons” and relates it to Tolle’s ideas about the pain-body.

The key to understanding pain, is to (if mentally able) check how aware you may or may not be in the present moment. Tolle’s best selling book The Power of Now, deals directly what I have mentioned about pain and its cumulative effect on the well-being of an individual. He says that emotional pain leaves behind a residue that gets lodged in your body and mind. When you include pain you experienced as a child, from intimate relationships, family dysfunction, patterns of rejection or abandonment (my emphasis), then there is an accumulated source of pain that exists as a negative energy field. As mentioned this occupies your body and mind. When looked at as an invisible “agent” or “energy field”, it can rightfully be called the pain-body.

The pain-body can be both dormant and active. For those in whom, it lies dormant, it can be triggered by any number of things. Whether active or dormant in a person, it particularly can be triggered by anything that resonates with a pain pattern of the past. When awakened from its dormant stage, even a thought or an innocent remark made by someone close to you can activate it.

Tolle says that some pain-bodies are “obnoxious”, but “relatively harmless”, while others are “vicious and destructive monsters”, “true demons“. Some are even physically violent any many more are emotionally violent. He goes on to say that some will attack people you surround yourself with and others may attack you, as its host. Then what happens is your thoughts and feelings which you have about your life then become “deeply negative”, and “self-destructive.” This is something to take serious, because illnesses and unplanned accidents can happen as a result of this. Even worse, certain pain-bodies can corrupt a person into committing suicide.

So, how do you recognize the pain body trying to take control of your being? Tolle advocates watching for unhappiness in one’s self. That sounds generic, but whatever form unhappiness takes, there are warning signs. Irritation. Impatience. A somber mood. A desire to hurt. Anger, rage, depression, or a need to have drama in one of your relationships. He says to recognize it the moment it awakens from its dormant state.

The pain-body’s desire is to “survive” and the only way it can do that is to get you to unconsciously identify with it. Once that happens, it can “rise up”, “take you over”, “become you”, and “live through you”. It needs to get its “food” through you and will try to feed on any experience that “resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and even illness.”

When the pain-body has taken you over, what happens? Well, you want more pain. You become one of two things, a victim or a perpetrator. So, what drives the pain-body at this point? You/it wants to “inflict pain”, or you/it wants to “suffer pain”, or both. To continue to further describe its nature, the pain-body is the “dark shadow cast by the ego” and is afraid of the “light of your consciousness”. The pain-body has a fear. A fear of being found out. The reason it feels this way is because its entire survival depends on “your unconscious identification with it” and on your unconscious fear meeting the pain that lives in you face to face. Tolle stresses the importance of facing your pain, for if you don’t bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, “you will be forced to relive it again and again.”

The pain-body once understood in an objective way, may seem like a dangerous monster, something you can’t find the strength to look at because it is too hideous. Tolle, who understands this phenomena with great authority and tact, assures us in The Power of Now, that the pain-body is an insubstantial phantom, that cannot prevail against the power of “your presence”. A phantom? This sounds like a spirit? So, were those Catholic priests in the wrong or were they just not educated in the way Tolle is about such a reality.

Having come full circle with the description of the pain-body, a question was posed to Tolle, in the chapter titled “Consciousness: The Way Out of Pain” (from which I have been quoting. Someone wanted to know what happens to the pain-body when a person becomes conscious enough to break their identification with it. His response was such that, “unconsciousness creates it; consciousness transmutes it into itself.”  He went on to quote St. Paul, who he believed expressed “the universal principle beautifully”. St. Paul said, “Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light.”

In tribute to Eckhart Tolle’s phenomenal teaching that explains the nature of “being possessed”, I will publicly agree with him. He says,”Just as you cannot fight the darkness, you cannot fight the pain-body. Trying to do so would create inner conflict and thus further pain.”

In conclusion, the substance of the pain-body is trapped life-energy that “has split off from one’s total energy field and has “temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of ‘mind identification’. ” What happens is it turns in against itself and becomes “anti-life”.  Tolle used the analogy of an animal chasing its tail to describe this. He goes on to talk about the calamities that occur when the ego identifies with the pain-body. I think we’ve all met those self-loathing, or super critical, explosive people.

Though evil lurks in the shadows and shows itself through things appealing to the eyes and senses, trying to gain our allegiance, we are also pursued ten fold more aggressively by God through His/Her love, grace, outpouring of light and spirit, and His/Her tactics to bring us into full Union with His/Her Fullness, what gnostics call The Pleroma. The experience that I think mainstream Christians need to adopt for the sake of full Self-Realization in God, is the experience of gnosis, or knowledge – self-knowledge and knowledge of God. The source of such experiences are Light, therefore the meaning of Illumination and Enlightenment are known. I believe that this should be an intergal part of not only spiritual formation, but an essential element of salvation (no, I’m not saying these should be the primary means, like gnosticism does; again I think that we need to judge a tree by its fruits and find a cohesion through comparitive religion, something that Jesus did do too) and well-being.

The direction of this blog depends on mentioning what I have to this point.  As a Christian and Catholic, I think we’ve inherited a bankrupt system of sin, punishment, rewards, and what A Course In Miracles calls “special love” and “special hate”. A big problem the whole of Judeo-Christian and Islamic faith systems need to examine are perhaps unconscious beliefs of being “special”, “chosen”, or “the elect” of God. Granted scribes of Holy Books may not have had the contemporary word for the Ego, the type of beliefs I just listed are qualities of an inflated ego. I’m not only pointing my fingers at these faith systems. In a past blog, I pointed out that experiences of gnosis can lead to inflation too.

Understanding that God passionately pursues us, and wants us to ”know” him intimately, in our hearts and in our entire beings, is key to the point I want to make today, one that we should fruitfully and freely adopt from gnostic theology and soteriology. Gnostics teach that the experience of gnosis or what others may call “Christ consciousness”, is an unmediated experience of grace. The idea is that priestcraft or episcopasy (bishops) should not ever stand in the way of a personal experience of God’s love, rather gnosis is not dependent upon an intermediary. As a seminarian, I need to maintain my identity as a member of the laity, from this day onwards, on the day of my ordination to the priesthood, and every day thereafter. My studies in gnosticism have humbled me. I’m not going to advocate that everyone abandon their faith practices, take up gnosticism or a perverted ascetic form of it, and become a recluse. Please don’t misunderstand what I am trying to advocate for. As a Catholic, I have integrated Buddhist interests, and ideas from spiritual teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, Gary R. Renard, Deepak Chopra, and Wayne Dyer. This doesn’t make me any less Christian. Perhaps the teachings of other spiritually advanced mentors, carry some of the yeast to make the Bread of Life rise to its potential.

SO, UNMEDIATED GRACE. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF GOD. EVENTS SIMILAR TO PENTECOST WHEN TONGUES OF FIRE AND THE HOLY SPIRIT POURED ITSELF OUT FREELY ON ON THE APOSTLES, without expectation or foreknowledge (other than that Yeshua the Messiah send he would send an Advocate) – this is something to savor and encourage. I need to talk out of both sides of my mouth for a minute. Adopting this belief, where you may “close the door, and meet the Father in your inner room”, don’t excuse you from being an active member of The Body of Christ. As Father Richard Rohr taught in a series about the Apostle Paul, the life of the Church is participation. He emphasized this over and over, but DID say that what we can learn from Paul’s life as well, is finding deep meaning and love in personal revelations of God to his Children.

So, if the Holy Fire descends upon you, you don’t necessarily need to talk in tongues or prophecy. You are allowed to cherish the experience and remain in God’s love. Eventually, though, like the Apostles who saw Jesus transfigured, you do have to come down off that mountain top experience and go back into the valleys and get your hands dirty, or incarnate again. I wouldn’t be responsible if I didn’t say to the everyday enlightened gnostic: “remain in that love, KNOW HIM/HER, but please, devote yourself to sharing what you learn/experience with a world desperately in need of Light workers.” Yes, you are one too.

I just want to say, in closing, that I have integrated a practice into my life that has been fruitful, intensely loving, and full of that Holy Fire. Awhile back, even before I began to study gnosticism, I felt moved by the Holy Spirit to celebrate The Eucharist or Holy Communion. No, I haven’t been formally ordained or received the laying on of hands and thereby receiving apostolic succession, but like on Pentecost, the spirit comes and it does transform the elements of bread and wine into the Spiritual Food, I like so many people savor. This isn’t a replacement for experiencing traditional sacraments ministered by a priest or a deacon. I do value clergy very highly. In a recent internet search, I found a site belonging to The Gnostic Order of Christ. They advocated for and had a Eucharistic liturgy for people who could not get to a priest.  They consider it valid and powerful. I do too. So, why become a priest? Standing in for Christ and being Christ for others is a necessary vocation. People need a shepard, and Christ calls them into service to Him and The Holy Androgyne. I am meant to do more than administer sacraments. I want to be a spiritual director, a healer, and a vehicle to inspire peace, love, justice, surrender, transformation, transcendence of the violence that keeps cultures intact, and to be a “deathwalker”, as shamans call it, helping souls transition to the realm of eternity. Wishing you peace and resolve.

During my prayer after receiving the Eucharist today, I felt inclined and moved to reflect on human error. Despite growing up as a Roman Catholic and adhering to both “Tradition” and “Inspired Scripture”, and the idea that teachings of the Magisterium are preserved without error by the Holy Spirit, my views changed. If you are a subscriber to my blogs then you know that I converted to Gnostic Christianity for a while and was pursuing preisthood at a Reformed Catharist Seminary. Now I have gravitated back towards Independent Catholicism for its Liberal Nature and openness to what other faiths have to say, but carrying with me the belief in gnosis as salvific. For a very short time in my life, I read and interpreted the Bible literally, holding every word as infallible. I later realized that I was becoming what I disliked the most. A fundamentalist. This demon came out in me in conversations I had with family and friends. I was a bible beater. Looked for all my answers there, no matter what the crisis I was having. I went through an identity crisis for some time following a destructive, impure relationship with a young woman I was co-dependent on. I spent a lot of time alone after I was with her and for a long time I was ungrounded and was dabbling in teachings by Deepak Chopra and metaphysics, Quantum Physics, and esoteric spiritualities that didn’t effecitively deal with pain and the reality of sin.  Nothing was giving me solace. Not even friendships. I gave up drinking alcohol for a long time and tried to stay away from negative thinking. I became addicted to Chip Ingram, Christian pastor and teacher of the ministry Living on The Edge. To this day, I think he has a fruitful ministry and wouldn’t label him as ” right wing” or “a fundamentalist”, but my exposure to him was still during a time that I used the Bible as a crutch instead of a means towards liberation and freedom.

NOTE: I just hit the shift button again, and it took me to a search engine. Luckily I have been saving my material, for their would have been another blog lost. So, fast forwarding, I eventually found my way back to Catholicism. The progressive Catholics whose material I studied always said to take what you read in scripture and put it in its proper context. That made sense. I remember when I heard my first, what I considered accurate teaching of the Book of Revelation. It made much more sense than the “Left Behind” series did and the unbiblical idea of the “rapture”. Don’t get me wrong, Bible Christians and evangelicals are well-meaning in their teachings of rapture and tribulation. I never subscribed to it, not even when I took up membership at a Convergence Church (yes, I moved away from Catholicism again). They focused their structure on the three streams prevalent in Christianity: Evangelical, Sacramental, and Charismatic. I discerned priesthood in their communion. Ultimately, as I have said in other blogs, I could not move beyond all the violence and blood sacrifices perpetrated in the name of God or Yahweh. Nor could I reconcile the contradictions with people justifying killing after they had been given the 10 Commandments. That is to say, I could not agree with their communion’s teachings about inerrant scripture.

When I left that church, I did it on good terms, and remained loving in my attitude towards those I was in fellowship with for several months. It was then that I was enticed and gravitated towards the radical teachings of Gnostic Christianity. The Archbishop I studied with in The Reformed Catharist Seminary shared the teaching that scripture was in fact NOT INERRANT, rather it did have errors in it, even Gnostic Scriptures. The Archbishop Christian Thomas Umberger wrote a wonderful blog about the subject of written language and how it becomes corrupted. But what I did like in his reflections was he did say that there was a “Golden Thread” of truth that runs throughout writings in history, in particular, inspired scripture.

It only makes sense that what was finally scribed in the scriptures I am familiar with, the Old Testament, The New Testament, and gnostic literature and gospels, did not contain the exact verbatim teachings of either Hebrew, Christian, or gnostic nature. We are humans. Not God. Not that God didn’t have the power to preserve scripture from error, it’s just inevitable that Error in the Bible did occur.  I could never go back to believing in sola scriptura or infallible scriptures. Not with the violence and blood shed that God supposedly ordered. Thank God for the prophets and for the incarnate Jesus, who came to set things straight and institute the new covenant between mankind and its maker.

Yeah, I bet some of you are saying, how can this writer dare to study for priesthood, in a Catholic Church no less? I have used my conscience to decipher what truth is and isn’t and what I must devote myself to and what I must dismiss as maybe the projections of ego or evil, even the doing or influencing of the archetypal Satan.  I think about some of the gnostic ontology, or the study of entities or beings, and I don’t necessarily object to what gnostic creation myths teach about the Father of Light, or the Holy Androgyne of Father-Mother, Aeons, Holy Eideas, or Emanations of that High God who is in what is called The Pleroma, or the fullness of God. In fact, I think it is a rich way of looking at Divinity and its Radiance. That being said, there is something to take from all religions, with the exception of those that exclude, persecute, or deify human beings, rather try to urge followers to “become God”.  Just for the sake of distinction, Jesus’ teachings according to Gnosticism say that we all must become Christ’s, and share in the anointing of the Christos. That is different than saying we must become God.

In conclusion, until someone figures out how to get past the blasphemy of just believing they are God and actually become Him/Her through misguided intent, human error will always exist.

The topic I am going to address today is one that has a great deal of significance in the grand scheme of things for the whole of human race and history, but the matter that I am going to target the hardest and with the most conviction is the meaning of gnosis, the search it implies for an individual, and its mistaken notion that gnostics equate with “salvation” or “karma”.

I have been called to be a priest. I have known for sometime. After a long and diligent search, I am seeking ordination in an Independent Catholic Church that will be open to teachings of gnosis. Because of restrictions that the Roman Catholic Church puts on individuals who are eligible or feel called, I searched elsewhere. After spending time in discernment and applying for Holy Orders in a Convergence Church, consisting of 3 specific natures, Evangelical, Sacramental, and Charismatic, and after in depth studies of the Old Testament, I came to see discrepencies, inconsistencies, and just plain evil done, said, and carried out in the name of God, Jehovah, or Yahweh. I remember when I wrote my first song that was critical of Temple Sacrifices of Jewish Priests. The song was called Burning Butchers. I felt inspired by the Holy Spirit to share this song publicly, that reduced the priesthood of that time to bloody butchers. I rejected any and all proclamation that such instructions for this kind of behavior could have come from God. Other areas that fueled a passion of disent in me was mass genocide by “The Lord”, and the instructions about capital punishment that supposedly came from Him, and was spoken to Moses, instructions that contradicted the 10 Commandments. I talked with the Deacon of the Convergence Church at length about my feelings and objections to parts of the Old Testament. I felt very strongly about some of the points I just mentioned and still do.

Shortly after meeting with the Bishop from that diocese, I found a Holy Orders program in an Esoteric Gnostic Christian Church. They shared their beliefs about the Old Testament that triggered instant satisfaction in me. Finally, truth was being revealed about the horrid history of a mistaken wrathful, blood thirsty God. A few of my other blogs explain that there was a heirarchy of Divine beings according to gnostic cosmology and ontology. In a nut shell, a lesser god underneath God the Father and Mother, who was referred to as Yaweh and Jehovah also was given names like Ialdaboath, the abortion of darkness, and Samael (Meaning the blind god), was responsible for the massive blood sacrifices and demands of killing innocent animals and humans in cases where they committed certain sins. The more I read the Gnostic creation myths, the more alive, alert, and enlightened I felt. I even began to feel privileged.

The crux of the gnostic idiom is found in the meaning of the greek translation, it being “knowledge”. Gnostics stress the importance of having experiences of gnosis, or knowledge of God, One’s Self, rather self-realization. What I am speaking of is also known as Enlightenment or Illumination. Experiencing these realities is emphasized by gnostics as the fruits of salvation and the eradication of the only sin they believe in which is ignorance.

I didn’t have a problem with this, nor many of the ideas gnostics had about Jesus, what his role was in salvation history, when the Christos annointing descended upon him, extraordinary stories about his infancy and childhood, along with references He Himself made in The Gospel Of The Holy Twelve about being given second changes to become enlightened through reincarnation. I don’t think believing in reincarnation should be a problem for Christians in general, but they are so attached to their visions of hell, punishment, and damnation that it would be hard to shake them from those ingrained beliefs.

Getting back to the idea of this “supreme” form of knowledge, I was guided by the Holy Spirit in my ongoing discernment and preparation for a paper I was to write where I was supposed to defend the gnostic faith having an understanding of how mainstream Christianity erred in their teachings and spreading of the Church. I haven’t written the paper yet, but when I say I was guided, I was led to open up a book I haven’t looked at in quite some time. Many conservatives will be shocked or appalled that I dare to mention any spiritual value of the book I am referring to, The Enneagram: From A Christian Perspective, co-authored by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert. I have heard a great deal of teaching about the Enneagram on tapes and MP3s and was instructed about it while in spiritual direction. A gift of the Sufi Mystics, Desert Fathers integrated it into their formation, for the tool itself dares and challenges each person who encounters it, to examine their ego and almost literally learn how to stand naked before God and humanity, to be stripped of any and all illusions, compulsive behavior, or sin that separates them from certain gifts, fruits of the spirit, a mature, transformed soul, and from God.

In essence, there are 9 energy types and we all assume one that our ego most identifies with, also possessing “wing” energies that are on the right and left side of our number which exists on a circle with overlapping triangles inside it. Anyway, my number, I came to learn, know, confirm, and accept was a four. The type 5 is one of my wings and when I learned about it, it was a blueprint for many of my mishaps, blind spots, failure, and pain. On the flip side, however (which the Enneagram stresses) is the idea that your greatest “sin” is your “greatest gift”. Having a type five for a wing (or any type for that matter) didn’t mean I was damned or anything like that. But it was a starting point. The goal of using the Enneagram is to mature and turn your shadows into gold so to speak. Though type fives are known for being religious mystics, great counselors, and intellectuals, their biggest danger is the temptation that unconsciously tells them that knowledge is power. According to Richard Rohr, “Immature FIVES think they can secure their lives by being informed about everything in as much detail as possible.” Though that statement and a great deal of teaching about type FIVES refers more to intellectual knowledge, that still, as I have found in my experiences with my current Archbishop who I am trying to break ties with, as well as in reading gnostic literature in addition to his, plays a role in keeping fives ungrounded, out of touch and somehow askew from most of society and culture, and in a small, privatized little compartments where they very often distance themselves from the incarnation. Fives hate human contact and touch and find it very easy to be at a distance from the world, having an “immunizational attitude” towards the world of the flesh.

You don’t have to be a type five to be a gnostic, and you aren’t necessarily a type five if you are indeed gnostic. Revelations in recent days have reminded me that the spiritual life that Jesus exemplified was a balance between Action and Contemplation, Asceticism and Participation in the life and history of the world and one’s community. I just know myself and my patterns too well. I would be too tempted to eat of the real forbidden fruit, trying to understand and gain knowledge of the mind of God. An impossible feat.

I would like to expound upon this more. I have come to the conclusions that further pursuing Holy Orders in the Reformed Catharist Seminary, would further disconnect me with the whole of creation, whether disordered, chaotic, or beautiful. Jesus said follow me, not just think about me or know me. In actuality, I don’t put down the idea of gnosis. Just the traps that seeking knowledge without being an active member of the Body of Christ. That is dangerous. And that is not following Jesus.

As I say in the the subject of this blog, Enlightenment (an inner experience of the Kingdom of God or His Ecstatic Love) and Illumination are not things that can be achieved or earned by following all the rules. Don’t get me wrong, having boundaries is a necessary part of the process of healthy development of one’s sense of self. But rigidly adhering to them, and priding one’s self for doing so, won’t get you that taste of Heaven’s Banquet any more or any quicker than the person who radiates joy, acceptance, and peace. Not even quicker than someone who acts compulsively, irrationally, or impulsively, in many cases rejecting the Love and Power of God’s grace. Father Richard Rohr, OFM has spoken about what he calls “the performance principle”. In addition to refuting the importance many people place on being part of an “in group” or the “chosen religion”, what he calls “tribal religion”, he says that people come to the experience of God’s mercy and love by doing it wrong, by a “spirituality of imperfection.” Don’t misread this; he doesn’t say sin freely and be a heathen. He just honestly admits, including himself in the reality he speaks of, that this is the pattern. Of being lost then found. The parable of the prodigal son is very significant to the pattern of behavior and complacency we have towards God the Father’s hopes for us and how he welcomes us with open arms when we go astray and choose to return.What I am driving towards, is a sort of surrendured stance, a definite kind of humility. Enlightenment and Illumination are terms that most Christians don’t use freely or regularly. Gnostic Christianity does along with other esoteric based religions. God is light in addition to all other aspects we are told about. Having experiences of light or even seeing apparitions don’t make you an Enlightened person who is automatically initiated into the Kingdom of God. Such experiences may preceed a series of mystical experiences, that I can attest to. But for me or any one else, other than maybe Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, and Lao-Tzu if they were here on earth today, to say “I am enlightened” and to proclaim it as an absolute state of mind that they exist in apart from others, is border line heresy and a claim made by an inflated ego. I have been influenced by German spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. He says that at the age of 29, he had an enlightening experience that changed his life. If I have heard him correctly, he never has said or written that he is in an “enlightened state” nor in a “privileged state of consciousness” that is somehow superior to the masses of ignorant people that walk the planet sleepwalking so to speak. He is grounded. He actually talks about what Jesus made clear to his those who desired to follow him, that they would have to pick up their crosses and walk the same journey as he did, maybe not to martyrdom, but to powerlessness and surrender to the Absolute Love and Will of God. Rohr and other more progressive Catholics have spoke of experiencing The Christ-Self within or the Buddha nature. In doing so, they speak of a state of Awake, Alert, Sober, Entrainment of Mind and Heart. Jesus, most radically, connected His earthly body in the experiences or encounters with God, thereby uniting the human and the divine in a way that NO OTHER SPIRITUAL TEACHER ever has. Jesus took an established pattern in nature, of life, death, and rebirth (resurrection) and turned the tables on it. In Catholic circles you hear about the Paschal Mystery, “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” In defense of those who believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and to those who are curious about this reality, the experience of Illumination or Enlightenment is found in the encounter and eating of the Divine Substance, not just taking place in a corporal nature, but in a light filled mystical occurrence, whether through the gift of tears, intense, deep peace, or unspeakable ecstasy and joy. These emotions are not experienced at the expense of a Christ who is crucified over and over in a cannibalistic way, but rather through the vehicle of his risen glorified body – one that serves as a promise for us in the resurrection. In my seminary training as a student of Christian gnosticism, I was told that the “Archons” or Fallen Demonic Intelligences created as the result of a cosmic tragedy (the birth of a light being who became a lesser god, than the Ineffable, Incorruptible Father-Mother) feed off of the sacrifice of the Mass and get people who consume Christ’s Body and Blood to experience “false enlightenment” so that they will remain addicted to the sacrament and ignorant, the only sin in gnostic theology. I don’t commit myself to eating and drinking from a corpse. The sacred meal is much more than that, both a thanksgiving/remembrance of the very life Christ lived in this world and the radiance of Light he brought to those in darkness or illusion (both words I chose to substitute for sin).In summary, with the exception of Roman Catholics who exclude those not of their denomination from receiving the Eucharist, even if a person whole-heartedly believes in transubstantiation and humbly wants to receive the Elements, the gift of Christ’s Real Presence is freely given, not only through the Eucharist or Holy Communion, but in fire and spirit longing to be incarnate or impregnated in everyone. Regularly giving thanks/remembrance and partaking in the foretaste of Heaven’s Banquet will bring Divine Light to you and continually transform you, to allow God to reveal Himself/Herself to you with an Intensity no human can replicate by their own doing. Illumination can happen in every experience of the Eucharist, even if you see it as a symbol of Christ’s love and mercy (God is not limited by human restrictions or metaphors or lack of metaphors). Enlightenment, or the state of grace, or the inner condition of the Kingdom of God, I must confess comes and goes. It’s like losing it then finding it again. The minute we think we have it all, it dissipates. Don’t misunderstand me, God is not a tease. But He/She gives us just what we need as much as we need it, almost careful not to spoil the surprise granted to those who seek Him/Her in this world and the next. As an ascended master who appeared to a man who now is a well known teacher of A COURSE IN MIRACLES said, “heaven is like the perfect orgasm that never stops.” I must conclude that though I believe celibacy should be a choice, not a mandate, those who offer up their sexuality in exchange for union with God in the strictest sense can still know what that feeling is like, for there is no marrying in Heaven. This is not a commentary or a chance to provoke debate about mandatory celibacy for vowed religious. I’m just saying, if we “walk the walk” not just “talk the talk” we all are in for a truly ineffable experience. Alleluia!!!