Be Forewarned: Oz is not for sale...

But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
That he didn't, didn't already have

America(the band),  1974

If you read any of my previous articles for Rebelle, and this website, than you know that I’ve been through a very challenging personal ‘Odyssey’ and that I am always on the lookout for ways to heal, mend and move forward.

Recently, I had an encounter with a truly gifted teacher and healer, who opened me up in a very personal and vulnerable way, and then gave me a pamphlet listing the programs she offers on 'tuning into one's divinity', and their cost. Afterward, I wrote this to her:  "at this point in our collective spiritual evolution, I feel it should be untoward for anyone to charge someone else for teaching them how to be 'more spiritual'. There's such a void, such a longing to fill, that I'm sure one can make a fortune. Even if you say that's not why you are doing it. It amounts to that in the end.  I've watched this phenomenon all my life. It truly sickens me.

"Let me cut to the chase further:  I have as much experience and knowledge of the things you are talking about, but I choose to use that energy directly with the people I meet every day. There's no program; no cost.  There's only Life getting better through the personal exchange of two human beings being fully open with one another. Therein lays 'real spirituality'.

"The whole present Gestalt of bringing 'spiritual awareness' to people assumes that they don't have it, and need it (and if they can afford to, pay for it).

"It may not happen in my lifetime, but I'd like to help blast that tripe into the deepest part of the ocean forever."

I then went onto to recommend her to read Rebelle Society and Chris Gross’s meme Indie Spiritualist.

From my perspective on Life, it seems to me that when people have their basic needs met – food, clothing, 

shelter – they then rise up on their hind legs, look skyward, and want for spiritual and sexual fulfillment. (Not necessarily in that order.) 

There are people among us who are either innately blessed with adept knowledge and skills in these areas, or they practiced until they mastered them.

I know from experience that being around spiritual adepts, like Yogis, hastened by own spiritual growth simply by osmosis. This past weekend I spent Father’s Day at Muktidham, The Abode of Liberation, where Shrii Kripalvanandji did the last four years of Kundalini yoga sadhana. Just being there for an hour in silent meditation revitalized me in ways a hundred yoga classes, or books, would not. The real thing is palpable.

In the same way, I’ve had special sexual partners who opened me up to states of ecstasy and bliss that I would not have encountered on my own, or with ordinary partners.

And here’s my point: when you sell spirituality or sex you not only sully the practice but dissipate its potency.

How?

Because, the only way to truly advance in one’s knowledge and experience of these aspects of Life is to be intimate with the source of the teachings and experience. Without that intimacy, it is just mechanical spiritual practical or rote Eros.

I’m not saying it is never all right to pay for guidance in these areas: if you have a physical or emotional dysfunction that prohibits you from advancing personally, then yes, by all means get the therapeutic help you need.

But by and large that is not the case.

One should not charge money to get into Oz if, for no other reason, than that sooner or later, your ‘clients’ are going to figure out that Oz is free. I’ve watched this happen over and over; what was once cherished, and rightly so, becomes yet another disappointment, something you overpaid for and lost energy on.

It doesn’t have to be that way. But rather than leave you with a rather dour cautionary note, I’d like to offer  a brief video that shows two people in a loving relationship sharing their spiritual intimacy. You don’t even have to listen to their words: just observe the sparks in their eyes, and the barely containable joy in their smiles: http://thecoolvegetarian.com/blog/2014/05/the-key-to-powerful-lasting-love-gabriel-cousens-shanti-gold-cousens-video/

Have a Blissful Day!

Spiritual Evolution

I do not like being an apologist for the country I am living in because I recognize that America has produced many exceptionally talented artists, inventors, innovators, athletes and scientists -- but it has also produced way more than its fair share of Dumb Fucks (DFs).

DFs distinguish themselves from regular stupid people in that they are not dumb at all, but take great cynical (and nihilistic) pride in appearing that way. Case in point: Not even the most DFing Yah-Hoo Marlboro smoking cowboy, whose cattle grazing lands have been blistered by droughts, and livestock funneled up into the air by tornadoes during the last few years, can possibly think that the weather and climate around them is not changing dramatically. But rather than admit that, they will proudly & stubbornly deny it.

(Cows DO NOT graze in trees, Billy-Bob – something is WRONG!)

Okay, part of that denial is general human nature.  None of us wants to hear bad news, and our first reaction is often to avoid it. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m referring to arrogant stupidity, because it will even deny good news. (When it’s not delivered from a familiar ‘trusted’ source: white, Christian, non-intellectual and male).

Next case in point:  In July of last year, Rebelle Society posted an article by me called Darwinism Debunked – by Charles Darwin. In it, I simply point out that Charles Darwin was wrongly credited with ‘survival of the fittest’ and all the bad behavior that it ‘justifies’.  What he actually wrote was:  ‘Humankind arose through the higher agencies of love and altruism. Selectivity and survival, being foundational, are retained, but in service of this higher and more complex life-form.” (The Descent of Man, 1871.)

Rebelle readers responded positively to this information. But when I posted an excerpt from the article on a site where people were having a heated debate about whether Life originated through random molecular and chemical reactions, or if it was created by a Divine Intelligence, my article was attacked from both sides.

Creationists cannot accept that humans organically evolved emotions like altruism, compassion and self-less love; they can only conceive of those attributes being given to humans intact as a gift from God in order to make humans singular reflections of their Creator. (Try running that past dolphins, orangutans, gorillas, elephants, or for that matter, the insect crawling across your floor.) And the fundamentalist scientists will say that giving biological reactions and adaptations that improve survivability abstract names like altruism and love is wishful or ‘magical’ thinking (as opposed to being brutishly reductionist).

(Magical thinking allowed me to produce a quartet of kick-ass novels – thank you very much.) 

Why can’t Life be seen as both an evolutionary process and divinely manifest? Because there are DFs on both sides of the issue who will not accept the other side’s viewpoint of the issue for reasons that have nothing to do with the issue. Instead, they resort to pride, arrogance, belligerence, snobbery – DFing nonsense.

But let’s not let that claptrap stop us – non DFers – from examining the issue intelligently & creatively.

In another article I wrote for Rebelle in June of 2013, called If You Have to Struggle, Then–for Heaven’s Sake Prevail, I described an encounter I had with a rare Kundalini Yoga Master while I was in India researching my book on Kripalu Yoga:
 

I would dare say, because I believe it to be so, that if you were to plop a Kundalini Yoga Master down in the general population (this is hypothetical, because no true Kundalini Yoga Master would ever let this happen), you’d have a sharp increase in your rates of murder, rape and suicide.
Why? Because Kundalini is pure, unadulterated life-force energy. And what do humans in general, at this stage in our evolution, most commonly use the life force for? Dominating others (even if it means killing them), sexual reproduction (even if it is by force), and all sorts of self-destructive behavior (including suicide).

I then went on to opine that: A person … in the process of mastering Kundalini Yoga sadhana, is literally someone pushing the envelope of human intelligence, liberation and enlightenment — he or she is experiencing in this lifetime what I believe evolution has in store for the rest of us in the future, assuming we do not self-destruct en masse before then: an intimate, personal and dynamic union with the Creator.

The visionary author and Tantrist, Stuart Sovatsky, elaborated on this in his book, Advanced Spiritual Intimacy: The Yoga of Deep Tantric Sensuality, and in his forthcoming book that I had the privilege of reading a draft of recently. 

In Stuart’s cosmological perspective on spiritual evolution, it comes down to you, and me, and how we relate to the most important aspects of our lives: our parents, our siblings, our lovers, our children and our extended families. When we have a fully-developed mature relationship with those aspects of our lives, we are moving the evolutionary ball forward. When we are not, we don’t.

It’s simple, and profound.

I don’t think that even Billy-Bob and his cow, lodged so comfortably in their Tree of Ignorance, could argue with that. Or maybe they could; but then again, who will give a FF (Flying Fuck)!