A friend of mine is “into” Angels. “Suspend your disbelief,” he told me, explaining how belief in angels re-materialized into his life recently. I knew at that moment that the resistance he had spoken of was puffing out its chest and stepping between me and the computer screen where his words appeared.
(Written by Melanie Kriebel)
The Maiden of Athena to the Foolish Knight:
Is this not, yet another spiritual practice for you?
For me too.
The Maiden: I felt quite empty for the last few days, as if I was waiting for something to fill me up, elevate me to a passionate state. I can’t say that I’ve ever felt like this for a prolonged amount of time…I’m wondering what’s coming next.
The Foolish Knight: You ask, “What’s next”?
I don’t know. I, too, feel empty. I want to end my activities and just stay inside myself. I hurt. And, I know why I hurt. It stems from a desire I have that is overcoming all of my waking hours. I escape by disciplining myself to think of nothing. You see, my mind is creating thoughts that seem to ruin my well-being. It’s taking away most of the happiness I have discovered on this path.
I feel tortured. And, I know that I am torturing myself.
God, why does love hurt so much? I wanted it so badly and prayed for it, and the Almighty granted my wish. It had been so long since I felt such bliss and joy. I found it outside of myself and in another, but I should have known that it had been hidden within me all the time. But, like a fool who can understand love from an intellectual, book-learning experience, I cannot, for the life of me, understand it from where it counts the most, my heart, and from my soul.
This is a destructive love I experience. I long to be in the presence of love, and I count the hours before we commingle and commune. But a sliver of doubt has developed.
A toxic, invisible ether has begun to envelop me. I evaded it as much as I could, but its poison seeped into my mind, creating a fear of losing the love. It frightened me. Here I am, professing to be a spiritual warrior who can’t even protect against the smallest of negative thoughts, negative thinking, negative fixations.
And that is what has gotten me in its grasp. A negative fixation that no love can ever really last. Once you grow comfortable with Love’s security, the blanket covering you seems to shrink. At least that’s the way I felt the past few horrible days.
I ask you, “What good is love if you always need a reassurance of that love”? Can a person not only feel love, but come to know it will always “be there?” That the love will not fade or get directed elsewhere by the whim of someone other’s looks, charm, or witty take on the true meaning of life and death?
I want to give it up. Here, take away this love. Take away the anguish my doubts cause me. I want the peace and calm I dreamt love would provide, not the turbulent and stormy nightmare a sick and love-starved child like me conjures out of seemingly nothing.
What’s next? I really don’t know. Know someone good at performing a lobotomy?
(For the Maiden of Athena’s Wise Response, See:
Am I among the “Chosen?” Will I be one of those who make the “cutoff” at the end when the proverbial bill finally gets to be paid?
I don’t know. If you had asked me some five years ago, I’d tell you to hit the road, Jack. I’m not into any of that Doomsday Stuff. The so-called “Chosen People” were the Jews, right? Look what happened to them.
And don’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses folks believe that a couple of hundred thousand of them will disappear from the earth at the time of the Rapture? And what about some old-fashioned Presbyterians? Didn’t Calvin or one of their leaders claim to be among the chosen few?
I’d tell you that this is the stuff that kooks dream up for superstitious old ladies and men who have nothing better to do than face their own mortality, hoping they could miraculously get to Heaven if they just turned their lives around in the last years of their lives. They’ll believe in anything or anyone that could offer them salvation with a money-back guarantee!
But something happened to me. I felt like I got hit upside the head with a spiritual sledgehammer from some animated cartoon. I heard a voice ask me if I was ‘squandering away my life,” and it scared the hell out of me. I looked at the world around me and saw that nothing had “staying power.” I’d have fun and get my kicks from the old standbys: wine, women, and songs.
But they held no meaning anymore. I’d drunk too much wine, my wife fell down the steps and suffered a traumatic brain injury, leaving me nothing but sad songs of days gone by to sing about. I hit bottom and found there was nothing on this planet that could inspire me to get my butt off the ground, and my head outta my butt.
I got the call. I got the spiritual call. And, more importantly, I answered that call. And, I’ve been seeking answers ever since, sharing some tidbits of crazy wisdom with people I feel might be of like mind and what I call a “what-the-hell-do-I-have-to-lose” desperation.
If you’ve read this far, you might be one of ‘em. The Chosen, that is. You don’t think you got to this point in your life on your own, do you? You were knocked to the ground on purpose. You were forced to “Call on a Resource” you thought had given up on your wretched personhood. You could either sink into major depression, drugs, and/or the negative lifestyle you had led, or let go.
You let go, didn’t you? Just as I had to, with no assurance that tomorrow would be any more secure or stable as today had turned out to be.
I had learned to take a step without moving my foot, as Rumi once suggested. I could only do it by completely surrendering my old self, the ego-self that controlled my life and got me on a bridge to nowhere with no guide to help navigate away from that dead-end.
It was in the process of “letting go” that I discovered a path similar to the one you’re walking. We could never have reached this point without first humbling ourselves and admitting we needed help. We needed something the world couldn’t provide, and so we looked beyond this world. We’d be ridiculed, barely tolerated, and our sanity questioned as even well-intentioned family and friends would whisper about our loved one finally going off the deep end.
I removed myself from a reality that focuses only on the material, that judges you only by your successes and the riches you’ve acquired, the medals you gained, the reputation you so carefully strove to keep up. None of this meant anything anymore. I wanted the freedom to simply “BE.”
I needed the Divine in, and of, the Cosmos to become my dearest lover, my comforting parent, my faithful friend. I found all of these – this trinity of engaging partners – through a sincere and contrite prayer, and the trust that the prayer would be answered. That you and I could grow into our purpose for, and in, life by giving up our will for the Will of God; by becoming corrected as prayed for by Kabbalists; by celebrating like a laughing Buddhist monk when he realizes Karma has finally ripened for him to always act in his Buddha nature.
I got picked to play on a team that can’t lose. What are you waiting for? You can join me by simply leaving your “self” outside the playground. You’ve been chosen! Now, help others you know who could practice with us in this game.
I wanted so much to write about your soft, careful touch on my arms and my hands. How you slide your fingers ever so meticulously over the outer parts of me, teasing a sensation to come forth, to grow from the inside out, knowing all along your touch is the Touch of Love.
Your touch is the touch of a mother on baby’s soft back side, the comforting touch of her when the child later stumbles and cuts his or her knee, the firm touch to the face and chin directing that child’s head toward your loving eyes and stern expression, while saying, “Listen: You are good, and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”
Now.
Not in some future, but this very moment as I recall it in all its sweetness.
I recall the past touch as if it just occurred and did not actually happen some time ago.
It is one long present moment that I think of when I recall this touch of yours.
It makes me want to use my appendage to humbly try to bring a small pleasure to you, my beautiful child. “My Dearest One.”
May I call you that? “Dearest!” “My Dearest.” You are so dear to me, the dearest. For you are the closest to my heart than anyone, save the Creator who brought you into my presence, into my arms, and into my very being!
When I touch you, I want you to feel love over every inch I hope to slowly move the fingertips, praying that I too can awaken in you the softer side of love and caring.
Trust me.
Please believe me You can trust again. I won’t hurt you. Not in this moment.
I will not harm you. For, I am Love. You are Love. We are love together. And in the name of all love that has ever been and ever will be you know that I am yours and you’re mine right now.
It’s a Divine Possession we share, formed from an internal pure and clear light of understanding and wisdom. And joy, let’s not forget the bliss of joy that sets us apart from any and all other attractions by something less divine than the perpetual, primordial, infinite love of the Universe.
It is a Divine Love that we tap into when we give all of ourselves so that the other person might live in love.
It is pure, unselfish. It is what Soul Mates are made of and from. And, it started with the first magical, mystical touch!
When you touch that part of me that has never been touched, a dormant thing erupts.
I am observing this thing for the first time.
Did it exist inside of me or did you put it there when I wasn’t looking?
When I noticed it, it hid behind my ear. I tried to find it, put a name to it, and store it in a folder where everything is orderly and safe. It wouldn’t go.
It was quick like a fox, creeping down my left arm while I examined my right, hiding under my knee when I thought I felt it brush the side of my face.
I am barren without it, yet all the happier to have seen it, if only for such a brief time not long enough even to know what to call it.
— Melanie Kriebel 2013
Sometimes the only way for me to understand something is to try to put it into my own words. Particularly, if I want to memorize or “imprint” something so that I can keep it near and dear to me, like an inspirational poem or saying I still remember from my earliest days.
And so, thanks to the kindness of WordPress, I will use my meager intellect to place into words something my heart has tried to understand and permit to grow from one lifetime to another. It is the Four Truths that can enable those noble among us to overcome what is wrong in our lives, and we can set things right.
The First is the basic truth that there is much of life that is plainly unsatisfactory.
I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but I sometimes feel an uncomfortableness, an irritation that goes away temporarily, but returns too soon, too often. Some people call it “suffering.” They say, “There is suffering.”
Wise men and women thousands of years ago called the suffering “Dukkha,” a Sanskrit word which roughly means “unsatisfactory,” or better yet, “incapable of satisfying.” I liken its meaning to the old Rolling Stones song of the 1960s, with the words by Mick Jagger screaming his truth to the world:
Suffering and dukkha can be understood.
Once I achieve this, I can say I understand suffering and dukkha.
The Second Truth is that there is a Cause for this dukkha, and that is attachment to desires.
Desires in and of themselves are all right. It’s my clinging to them at all costs that causes the harm, the dissatisfaction, or suffering. Desires can be let go of. When this happens, I can say I have let go of desires.
The Third Noble Truth is that there can be a “cessation” of suffering or feeling unsatisfied.
This cessation can be realized. Once I have experienced this cessation, I can say that I have fully realized it.
That leads me to the Fourth Noble Truth, and that is that suffering and its cause can end if I follow a certain path.
That path is called the “Middle Way” between the extremes of pain and pleasure. I can aspire to follow 8 guidelines, called by some sages as the “Eight-Fold Path.” The first two “practices” call for wisdom, while the next three deal with a form of morality, and the third group, concentration.
I can develop wisdom through understanding, the right understanding of the way things are, and not the way my unenlightened mind usually sees them. It helps me to always have the right attitude, or right intention toward things, events, and what scientists call phenomena.
As far as morality goes, I should simply have “Right Speech,” “Right Action,” and “Right Livelihood.” Don’t curse too much, don’t slander anyone, don’t lie or gossip. Act upon the maxim that whatever you do in life, you are approving everyone else to do, according to Emmanuel Kant, one of my favorite philosophers, I recall from my college days. It’s the same action that Jesus said: “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.”
And right livelihood means that I should be careful in choosing a career that doesn’t involve gun-running, moonshining, or trading nuclear secrets to terrorists. Don’t work in a field that could endanger or kill some being, man or beast.
The next three deal with the focus and reflection of life, and how we can enable the noble truths to act within us and to us.
All will help uncover insight from within. You can use whatever words you like or feel comfortable with.
Use mine if they help. I got them from others whose purpose in life was, and still is, to help bring a certain enlightenment to everybody while we are here, just being the loving kindness and compassion we want for everybody.
It took several hours for the effects of the Sweat Lodge ceremony to kick in, but when it did, I realized the control I always thought I needed was not in my hands, but in what the Greeks called the Fates; the Christians, God; and the Buddhists, Karma.
A Divine source, referred to by some as the “Force,” the Divine Feminine, the Creator, has dealt a hand to play with our own free will. We get to choose which cards to keep and the ones to discard. By standing pat or by seeking new ones to “change our luck” or to improve our hand, we cast our lot to the future. None of us expects to lose or to face tragedy or a financial crisis. We hope for improvement, to enrich ourselves through our card-playing skills and years of studying the game of life.
In the end, the winner is not necessarily the one who drew the highest hand – a royal straight flush versus a pair of kings and deuces. It is the player that can place the bet, and deal with the loss or win with equanimity, that emerges the victor. There is no win, there is no loss. There is just an awareness of the game and how to view it from a state of grace, the right frame of mind, the right attitude. All disappointments arise and end.
All roller-coaster thrills must end. In understanding that everything that comes into my existence must someday leave, I can live with its impermanent nature more easily. Treat it the same whether it is good or bad, foul or fresh, holy or unholy. The moment of pleasure and the moment of dissatisfaction will pass. Each will arise and reach its crescendo of joy or sadness, and then each will fall, dissipating and returning from whence it came, leaving naught but a memory we can choose to relive or to drop if similar conditions arise to trigger its recall later.
None of this was clear when the sweat poured out of me as 10 men and women crawled on hands and knees into the Sweat Lodge outside of Pottstown, PA. We took part in a ceremony honoring the “Great Spirit,” while offering prayers to the four corners of the earth and beyond. We sweated as the lodge leader spread bits of sage, tobacco, and other herbs onto the red-hot coals, causing an eruption of tiny flames that shot upwards and out of the stones but remained safely in a pit dug earlier to contain a total of some 15 hot, glowing rocks.
Each one had been baked in a much bigger pit built a slight distance outside of the lodge, where a stone-bearer had been heating them over a slow-burning fire for several hours. Two to four rocks were requested for each “sweat,” or prayerful focus in a given direction. We offered three prayers each for the West, the South, and the North.
Then just as the sweat seemed to be unbearable for the likes of me, the number of prayers for the East increased to five, six, seven, eight, and beyond . . . I lowered my head to the floor of the lodge, taking in the cooler air and praying a silent prayer that all the prayers would stop so that I could get the hell out of there!
The prayers did stop, and we offered a blanket thanksgiving for all. I believe, however, that my silent prayer even helped to cleanse and purify me, removing and burning away the hellish traces of lower, base nature.
Hours later, I revolted against a group of Born-Again Christians. All of them were what I called “lily whites.” The men wore handsomely tailored suits, and the women gorgeous dresses with just the right amount of jewelry. All appeared with the greatest tans that money and lots of free time at the beach could offer.
“I don’t belong here,” I cried to my partner in crime, Melanie, a young Hispanic woman whose mother was raised in Colombia and passed on the natural shade of tan we ethnic types have acquired — her from South America, and me from the southern European countries like my father’s Greek homeland. She had left the sweat lodge and agreed to go with me on this next leg of my spiritual journey
“They’re too white for me,” I said, pointing at their pale faces, their blonde heads, and the white hairs of their elderly wise ones. “I haven’t seen one Black,” I added. “We’re their token brown-skinned people.” Eventually, she helped me to overcome my resistance, and we entered the church even though Melanie was still a little wet from swimming in the pool after the sweat and unable to change out of the bra and other underthings that had gotten soaked!
There we were. Two “Recovering” Catholics, walking into the Valley Forge Baptist Church to take in the solo performance of the daughter of dear retired friends I had made while breakfasting at an IKEA restaurant in Conshohocken. They waved to us, and Melanie and I parted the sea of white folks and sat in a pew behind the proud parents. Their daughter played divinely, and despite an apparent ban against applauding in such a refined church of God, the audience cheered her and I whistled as loudly as the most boisterous fan at a Phillies/Mets game.
A wonderful choir next offered every one the Sound of Angels. That was followed by a group of teens who had recently attended a church-sponsored camp in North Carolina who explained to the thousands of congregational members how Christ had entered into their lives and changed them forever. Each boy reminded me of a miniature “preacher-in-training” with the fervor of zealot for God, while the girls talked of the gentler side of a divine forgiveness, unconditional love, and spiritual camaraderie. Then Satan raised his ugly head.
No, Lucifer made no appearance, although one of the adult preachers brought up his name while chastising the youth for listening to the foulest of foul music provided in the world today. He asked for money to develop Christian music as an alternative to evil sounds my generation had been warned against when Ed Sullivan chose not to show Elvis Presley’s lower parts on national television and “race songs” — those performed by Black artists and Doo Wop groups years ago got banned in Boston.
I couldn’t wait to escape, bid farewell to the lovely white-haired couple who invited us, and put a distance between them and my sinful self. It was while I was drinking water in my car and reflecting on the day’s events that divine insight struck me like the proverbial bolt of lightning.
God and the Divine Spirit of the Cosmos are the same one we all talk about, but we use different languages to praise and worship. He or she is the clear light, the Buddha Nature existing in all that we can tap into when we want to live a life that Jesus lived, or that Mohammed said was possible if we but give up our will and let a more powerful Will control the major part of our lives. Yes, we still have free choice, free will.
But we know where our internal moral compass is directing us to go. It tells us what is good or bad at the moment and that all we need do is seek the stillness and silence where a “Shekinah” — what the Hebrew language calls the “Feminine Side of God” — dwells. She is always available to guide us. Seek her out, this great spirit, this energy, this Great Vibration, and give up all resistance.
You’ll find out you can do it with no sweat, and with no loss of anything God hadn’t planned for your personal purpose in life.
Contoveros 