Who is “Christian?” What is “Mystical?”

A discussion among Quakers about de-emphasizing the Christian foundation of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers),  and its Christian principles got me thinking about the definition of  “Christian.”  People shy away from the word because of  the negative and repressive connotations connected with fringe elements.  Fundmentalists,  Evangelicals and similar sects have hijacked the word and given it a narrow, often angry and aggressive, generally hateful meaning; they have made Christianity repugnant to many people.

The discussion about Christianity has been going on in Quaker circles here in England for years.  In the last revision of  Faith and Practice (the book of queries and testimonies) pretty much all the references to Christianity were removed. When I first went to Strawberry Creek Meeting in Berkeley, the meeting described itself as Christ-centered rather than Christian.

Friends accept anyone into meeting for worship, and woe betide any meeting that offends the one single Bah’ai or atheist who might wander in one day. The issue is serious; that is, that Friends in general do not believe there is one exclusive path to God, and so do not judge other religions. But it is carried to silly extremes lately.

My definition of Chrisitian is pretty simple and broad: A Christian is someone who reveres Jesus Christ as a teacher or leader, someone whose life is an example to follow. Doctrines such as redemption, sin and all the rest are not so important to me as the principles Jesus taught. If you follow Jesus’s example, you’re a Christian– living the teachings, not just believing them.

That’s part 1. Part 2 is, I love all the Jesus stories. They are whacking good yarns, in my book. Raising people from the dead, walking on water, making wine from water, accepting people as they are (i.e tax collectors and whores, etc.) — all of those are great stories, every bit as good as anything the Grimms or Anderson or Lewis came up with. Plus, in my view, it doesn’t matter whether he was “truly the Son of God” or not. If we do nothing more than follow his example we’re making an effort. As it happens, I do believe in his divinity. Whether he was more divine than Krishna or Buddha is another question, and, again, I don’t think it matters.

Oddly enough, the Christian mystics I know about are the Catholic ones, especially Theresa of Avila, who apparently had orgasmic experiences of Jesus (although we won’t find that word in any of the stories of her). I’ve always been fascinated that descriptions of Christian mystical experience so often sound like sex as described in borderline pornographic novels. Is it the Catholic Church’s  preoccupations with sex and masochism? Is it all in their heads? Is it truly a physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit entering their bodies? Is it delusional– and if it’s all delusions, are they the result of fasting or lack of sleep or other explainable reasons?

More seriously, mystical experiences are by definition unique and personal. No two people experience God in the same way. We are all imperfect humans, and we bring to any experience of God all the intellectual and emotional baggage we carry, no matter how genuine our intentions. Being open to being taken over by God is a pretty big order. Quaker meeting started the process for me; Tantra moved it forward very, very fast. Being able to surrender completely, even if only for a few seconds at a time, is an incredible grace. And the more you can do it, the more exciting and wondrous it becomes.

Have you seen Scorcese’s Jesus movie– The Last Temptation of Christ– the one with Willem Dafoe as Jesus and Harvey Keitel as Judas? It’s my favourite of all of the Jesus movies. Dafoe plays Jesus as a real man, with doubts and needs and secrets, not as a perfect godlike creature. I mean, he obviously likes women (which none of the other Jesus actors seemed to do). And the relationship between Judas and Jesus is close and loving (and interpreted by some hopefuls as homosexual, but I don’t see it). The apostles are very real too, bickering among themselves, all trying to impress Jesus. To me, showing these “holy” people as human, with the fears,  needs and quirks we all have, makes them MORE holy, not less. They were able to overcome those things and follow this guy for three years. That’s a big sacrifice if you were making money, sleeping with women and living a life before he turned up.

For me, that is the point: the mystical takes you out of the physical world and into the inexplicable, but even more real, world of pure spirit. Even if we  have it only for a few seconds, or once or twice in a lifetime, what a gift! That some of us manage to have these experiences at length or repeatedly, then actually to communicate them in human language, and to have people hear and understand and follow— well, that’s a great grace.

The Language of God(dess)

©2008, Ramona K Silipo. All rights reserved.

My sense has always been that God speaks to each person in the language that s/he best understands. And that the language we can comprehend changes when our life experience changes us. So, someone who is a mathematical genius with no concept of Oneness as a teenager might end up being a writer about amazing spiritual journeys at 40, because pure science convinces him/her that there must be a Divine Intelligence

I also see that we “get” information when we need it and not before. This comes partly from my channeling of the spirit guides, who sometimes say to someone, “You don’t need to know that at this time.” Then if the person comes back a year or even years later and ask the same or a similar question, the answer comes. It’s also partly from traditional prayer work, in which we have to learn to ask for what God wants us to have, not what we think we want.

In Tantra (well, some branches of tantra; there are hundreds of threads, because it was still handed down teacher to student until very recently), we consider quite often the difference between material desire (i.e.our own ego’s working) and Divine Passion (inspiration or God’s leading). We also spend quite a bit of time talking about needs vs. wants and individualism vs. universal mind.

Differentiating between “ego desires” and “soul yearnings” (using different words for different people) is a frequent theme from the spirit guides. Leading people to understand the Universal Consciousness requires baby steps a lot of the time. In the 30+ years I’ve been doing the channeling a few patterns have, of course, emerged. The most obvious I have observed is that people who meditate, who do some sort of personal, individual spiritual practice striving toward the Light, always are given much clearer answers and much more information than others. This is partly because they ask much clearer and less ego driven questions, I’m sure. But it’s also because their meditation practice, giving them moments of transcendence, makes them more capable of comprehending

Ritual Among Friends (Quakers)

©2008, Ramona K. Silipo. All rights reserved.

The query for our day retreat was, “Other religious traditions use rituals to help align their lives with the Light. What helps us open our lives to the Light and realize our visions?”

The basic assumption inherent in this query is that there are no rituals among Quakers. Among the group I was in for Quaker dialogue, there was a further, somewhat disturbing, assumption that all ritual is empty.

The idea that there are no rituals among Friends is interesting.  The central ritual for the Christian world, the celebration of Mass or traditional communion service, is, at its core, a meal. From my observation, the principal ceremony to mark Quaker milestones is a meal: baby and new member welcoming, newcomers’ brunch, graduation, friendly sevens  — all revolve around a table where Friends are gathered to share food. These are not very complex events, but nevertheless are a ritual in their regularity and simplicity.

The truth is, we need ritual in our lives, and if we don’t have any, we create it. I have my personal ritual for Meeting for Worship, and have no doubt that others do, too. I have, in fact, observed people’s personal rituals as they arrive at Meeting and find it both comforting and slightly amusing that a body that so definitively eschews ritual comprises so many people with very specific small rituals.

Neither for me nor, presumably, for my fellow Friends in Meeting, are our small routine activities empty rituals. They give structure to worship, mark a beginning and an ending to the formal meeting period. It is strangely naive, while also condescending, to assume that all ritual is empty. Certainly a great deal, perhaps even most, of religious ritual has arrived at emptiness after a couple of thousand years. And there is no doubt that the ritual George Fox rebelled against was empty. The ritual itself had replaced the sanctity of the real events it was meant to represent.

However, ritual is valuable if we observe it as a remembrance, or symbol, or representation, of its original meaning. The meal I mentioned earlier was, of course, the Passover meal at which Christ used the bread and wine to speak of the feeding of the Spirit of humankind by the Spirit of God (or the Light, the Absolute, Jehovah, Allah, or any other name you prefer). Christian services, both Catholic and Protestant, throughout history, have maintained the ritualistic meal as the center of their worship.

As a former Catholic, what I miss most are the rituals around candles, which are used in various ceremonies and to indicate specific periods in the liturgical calendar, for those who keep up with those things. The lighting of a candle “‘with an intention,” that is, with your own or someone else’s special need, was a simple ritual that always had meaning for me. The dancing flame was a reminder of the Light, and of the fact that we could be bringers of Light, too, if we live by the Light.

Friends talk about the Inner Light, which we experience not only in Meeting for Worship, but also in our daily lives, if we open ourselves to it. Sometimes, however, an outward symbol is a powerful reminder to others of our commitment to a particular way of life. When I was growing up, the consecrated Eucharist was left in the tabernacle after mass. (It is rarely done these days because of the increasing frequency of theft and vandalism in churches.)  To Catholics, the Eucharist is literally the Body of Christ, changed from bread and wine during the mass. The altar light, never extinguished, was a constant, warmly glowing reminder of Christ’s presence– a symbol so literal even a child grasped it and was awed by the fact of His being there on the altar and inside us at the same time. Jesus, as the Light of the World, was a concept I grasped early.

From conversations with fellow members and attenders of my meeting, I know that many of us have additional spiritual activities that compliment and enhance our worship experience in meeting. Most of these activities center on some form of ritual , whether it is meeting for old-time nature religion holidays, or attending a rousing Gospel service, or gathering with others in a prayer circle, support group or yoga class.

What helps us open up to the Light? Our own rituals, whether simple or complex. In each of our lives, we have created rituals meaningful to us to replace those which long ago lost their meaning.

A Quaker Retreat Weekend

©2008, Ramona K. Silipo. All rights reserved.

One of the qualities of Friends that attracted me was spontaneity.  Another was the all-encompassing participatory nature of Quaker activities. It took me much of this weekend to realize that this was the reason I was so uncomfortable at the retreat; but I finally recognized that I was peculiarly disoriented because everything was completely staged. Speakers were appointed in advance and there was virtually no time for communal worship or quiet reflection at the beginning or end of the sessions. Everything seemed regulated and orchestrated to me.

I’ve been a Quaker in name for only eighteen years. That’s longer than many others I’ve met, but nothing compared to a lifetime of Quaker experience. I’ve been a member of only one unprogrammed meeting, and visited others. So I write with limited experience, but I’m fully aware that each meeting does things in its own way.

But isn’t it just the human condition that we are generally comfortable with what we know; that we have expectations based on previous experiences; and that we feel uneasy or irritated when our expectations are disappointed?

I was eagerly looking forward to this retreat, especially since my husband had never been to a Quaker retreat and I wanted to share the experience with him. So there I was at my first meeting retreat in England, trying to get into the swing of things. But I couldn’t. My expectations had been disappointed.

The meeting retreats I’ve known have been very different, almost completely spontaneous, with minimal necessary structure. The Retreat Committee made the actual practical arrangements of place, dates, etc., and developed the query for the retreat. They worked out the schedule, listed topics and assigned convenors for the sessions and small group discussions (the only pre-appointed people), from a list of volunteers who had signed up. Then they let everything flow from there.

These retreats were based on silent worship at the beginning of each session (usually about half an hour), followed by Quaker dialogue, when everyone in the circle had  the opportunity to speak (or pass). The numbers were not huge, varying over the years between about 35 and 70 participants (not including children, who had their own activities or child care).  Each person had ample opportunity to participate.

Small group sessions were set in separate rooms, so we could hear ourselves think and hear what others were saying, the groups discussing a “sub query” for an hour. For instance, one year the retreat query was, “How do we experience God in our day-to-day lives?” The sub-queries included one on whether we felt a personal relationship with Jesus and one for those who wanted to get outside and experience God in the natural world. At the end of the small group discussions, the groups came together again and the convenor (or a group member) gave a brief summary of their discussion.

Although this structure sounds similar to the retreat just ended, the key element was spontaneity. Nothing was planned other than the queries; everything else flowed  from the Spirit’s movement among us. I left that sort of retreat energized, invigorated, excited about Quaker life and Quaker process.

At Charney Manor, things seemed contrived; more intellectual activity and thought process than Spirit inspiration or leading. I left this retreat exhausted and left early because I simply couldn’t find it in myself to stick it any longer. Perhapsy this is all my own skewed perception and will change in time.

And I do not mean to say that the retreat didn’t go well. It went quite well, I think. Everything seemed to go pretty much as planned, with the few minor bumps that any gathering of this size and nature have. The planners obviously had everything well-organized. For me, the high point was the Saturday night sharing– music, poems, stories, things that were personal and important to those who were allowed to share. There were moments of Spirit that evening, and it made the retreat very worthwhile.

Tantra Happens

©2008, RKSilipo. All rights reserved

When I first started working with my teacher Jia, in the very beginning, when we seemed to be doing nothing but lots of deep breathing in different ways, he told me, “You’ll be able to raise kundalini at will, just by thinking about it.”

At the time I had my doubts. But it’s true. Once you’ve learned the core knowledge of Tantra, and the practices become second nature, you can feel that energy whenever you want to.

And whenever you repeat the steps of your practice, the energy will flow. You can move it through your body and feel the Divine Presence lift your spirit and your mood to ecstasy. Or you can focus it in one chakra for opening, healing or expanding your awareness in that chakra. At first it takes a lot of effort. But eventually it becomes just the way you approach living, whether it’s lovemaking or problem solving.

Sometimes It’s easy to forget this, that is, that Tantra can fill you up on all levels– spiritually, emotionally, physically. Then suddenly you get a nice reminder… like a ten-minute full body orgasm.

Tantra Courses and Workshops (Beginning Tantra)

©2008 RKSilipo. All rights reserved.

The reality is that, even if you live in a major city where you might find a legitimate Tantra master (male or female) near you, your most likely first instruction will be a weekend workshop or short course, with a number of other people or couples. While many of these workshops are, at best, a good introduction, they can be, at worst, emotionally fraught, even damaging. These workshops and teachers need to be approached with the same kind of consumer awareness you would use to consider a major purchase and the same intuitive and emotional discernment you use to identify trustworthy friends.

So where do you start? Before you begin, decide what KIND of Tantra you want to study. There are two fundamental choices:

• NEO-TANTRA, the westernized version, uses Tantric techniques to help enhance, heal or change relationships, offering much the same approach and same kind of help that is offered by the thousands of self-help programs and books available, with the added element of the sexual aspects. This is what most people in the West know about and what they mean when they talk about Tantra, and what most choose to pursue.
  

• TRADITIONAL TANTRA, based on ancient principles, handed down primarily in oral tradition from teacher to student for thousands of years, has many branches, all proceeding from Tantra as a spiritual practice and way of life. It is a philosophy, a way of approaching living. There are branches that maintain celibacy, just as there are branches that include sexual practice.

Many teachers combine these two fundamental approaches, weighing in more on one end of the spectrum or the other. You need to decide what your personal path is and follow it. There is nothing wrong with trying a number of different teachers –in fact it’s a good idea– until you find the one that “clicks” for you.

After more than thirty years of pursuing Tantra, I’ve learned a few KEY factors to examine when you’re looking for a Tantra workshop or course to try.

• First and foremost, MEET the teacher before signing up for a weekend workshop. If a short (1-3 hours) event, titled something like “Introduction to. . .” or “A Taste of . . .” is offered, take it. Your monetary loss will be minimal if s/he does not offer what you want to learn. If there isn’t a brief introduction offered, arrange an appointment of about 20 minutes with the teacher. Be willing to pay a fee if necessary. It’s worth it.

Your objective is to determine whether you trust this person, whether you feel s/he can help you relax and experiment in a roomful of people, and whether you feel that the person has a real knowledge of the subject or is mainly blowing smoke. Unfortunately, at least half of the Tantra “experts” out there are woefully unqualified.

• Second, CHECK OUT the teacher’s claims about qualifications If their own teacher or organization is cited, contact them and verify your prospective teacher’s claims. If no credentials or instructors are cited, ask for the names of students who are willing to talk to you about their experiences. Do a web search on Dogpile (searches many engines at one time), and see what you can find about the teacher and his/her organizations.

If you can’t find anything, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the teacher is unqualified, but it might mean that s/he is not very experienced. This is all right, if you know it beforehand and don’t mind. Often new teachers are more careful, more meticulous and more willing to work with you individually. I started with an apprentice teacher, and it was a good learning experience for both of us.

• Third, AVOID inflexible teachers and programs. By this I mean, do not sign up for a rigid, stepped program that requires you to take courses in a defined sequence and denies you the opportunity to change the order, omit a topic, take a topic twice or otherwise digress from a pre-set series.

If you find a teacher or organization that is completely inflexible, ten to one they are more interested in collecting your money than in giving you appropriate instruction. A good Tantra teacher (actually, a good teacher of anything) assesses a student’s work and progress and gives the student appropriate challenges and instruction as the student learns. A good teacher can do this as well in a course with many students as in a course with two students. A teacher who offers a one-size-fits-all course and ignores individual students’ needs is either lazy or unqualified or both.

• Fourth, ASK QUESTIONS about the workshop. How many couples will participate? What material will be covered? Will we get individual attention? Will issues possibly come up? Is there someone there to handle emergencies?

In other words, find out if you will be comfortable in the environment of the workshop. In my experience, a workshop with more than ten couples is too big; but the fact is that many introductory or basic skills workshops have as many as 40 couples. What you need to think about is how inhibiting it will be for you to be intimate in a room full of people. Granted, each couple will be self-contained and self-absorbed; but Tantric practice, even in the beginning, can reveal things, to others as well as to you, that you may not recognize before you begin. So don’t waste your money by putting yourself in a situation where you can’t learn because you’re not comfortable.

• Fifth, YOU BEGIN WHERE YOU ARE in Tantra. If you are in therapy, if you have body issues, if you were abused as a child, if you overuse or misuse drugs (including tobacco and alcohol), if your marriage is in trouble— any of these can affect what happens in Tantra practice and be magnified or altered by it. If the Tantra teacher does not ask about these things when you apply to take the workshop, BEWARE.

A responsible teacher will want to know about any of these factors in your life. If you have problems, they go right with you to a Tantra workshop. If you’re “in a good space,” it is enhanced at a Tantra workshop. I’ve seen quite a few awakenings, both positive and negative, during Tantra practice. The workshop teacher ought to be able to address anything that happens.

• PREPARE for a Tantra course. You’re not going on a holiday. You’re going to a place, both physical and emotional, where you can relax and learn. How much you learn is directly related to your ability to be open, objective and honest with yourself about whatever you feel, think and experience in the workshop.

Do some reading in advance. Take an extra day off from work the day before your workshop starts and take the time to relax, unwind, do extra meditation or reading, connect with your partner and generally drop the stresses that occupy us all most of the time. Be ready to relax into Tantric practice.

• Finally, RELAX, BE RECEPTIVE AND ENJOY THE WORKSHOP.

“Tantric Sexuality” – A Stunning DVD Course (Beginning Tantra)

©Ramona K Silipo. All rights reserved.

Over the weekend my husband and I

watched an excellent DVD beginner’s

course in Tantra. This is the first I’ve

seen (and I’ve watched many) that I

can recommend without major

reservations or qualifying statements.

The Beginner’s Guide to Tantric

Sexuality, written by and featuring

Leora Lightwoman and Roger Lichy, is a

good beginning for many reasons.

• The DVD is organized in six separate lessons which you can do in your own time, at your own pace.
• If you follow the instructions closely, you will have developed your own Tantric ritual to create your sacred space and to begin and end each practice.
• The exercises show you basic Tantric principles, and you learn by doing them. The focus is on doing and experiencing rather than theorizing or intellectualizing.
• The pacing of the lessons is good, giving plenty of time for you to try each element before moving on to another one.
• The design, direction and print quality are all excellent (unlike many Tantra DVDs and tapes I’ve seen which are amaeturish and seem to be shot by someone’s granddad with shaky hands). This is a beautiful film to watch.
  

The DVD is published in The Mind Body Soul series at www.newworldmusic.com

You can find out more about Leora Lightwoman on her web site, www.diamondlighttantra.com

On Christianity, on Mysticism – A Few Thoughts

©2008, Ramona K Silipo. All rights reserved.

A discussion about Christianity (whether or not, I mean) has been going on in Quaker circles here in England for years. In the last revision of Faith and Practice (the book of  queries and testimonies),  almost all references to Christianity were removed. When I first went to Strawberry Creek meeting, the meeting was described as Christ-centered rather than Christian.

Friends accept anyone into meeting for worship, and woe betide the meeting that offends the one single Bah’ai who might wander in one day. The issue is serious, that is, that Friends in general do not believe there is one exclusive path to God, and so do not judge other religions. But it is carried to silly extremes lately. (I think the fundamentalists and evangelicals have a lot to answer for. People shy away from saying  Christian because of all the negative and repressive connotations connected with the fringe elements.)

My definition of Christian is pretty simple: A Christian is someone who sees Jesus Christ as a teacher or leader, possibly God– someone whose life is an example to follow. Redemption, sin and all the rules are not the key elements. It’s wanting to be Christ-like that is the transformative thinking. If you follow Jesus’s example, you’re a Christian in my book. You may be a trying Christian, but at least you’re trying.

That’s part 1. Part 2 is, I love all the Jesus stories. They are whacking good yarns. Raising people from the dead, walking on water, making wine from water, accepting people as they are (including tax collectors and whores, among other societal outcasts) — all of those are great stories,  are every bit as good as anything the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen or C.S. Lewis came up with. Plus, in my view, it doesn’t matter whether he was “truly the Son of God” or not. If we do nothing more than follow his example we’re making an effort. As it happens, I do believe in his divinity. Whether he was more divine than Krishna or Buddha is another question, and, again, I don’t think it matters.

Oddly enough, the Christian mystics I know about are the Catholic ones, especially Theresa of Avila, who apparently had orgasmic experiences of Jesus (although we won’t find THAT word in any of the stories of her). I’ve always been fascinated by the descriptions of Christian mystical experiences, because they so often sound like sex as described in mildly pornographic novels. Is it all in their heads? Is it really a physical manifestation of the Holy Spriit entering their bodies? Is it delusions– and if delusions, from fasting or lack of sleep or other explainable reasons? Is it the Catholic Church’s so obvious masochism? What?

More seriously, mystical experiences are by definition unique and personal. No two people experience God in the same way. We are all imperfect humans, and we bring to any experience of God all the intellectual and emotional baggage we carry, no matter how genuine our intentions. Being open to being taken over by God is a pretty big order. Quaker meeting started the process for me; Tantra moved it forward very, very fast. Being able to surrender completely, even if only for a few seconds at a time, is an incredible grace. And the more you can do it, the more exciting and wondrous it becomes.

My favourite Jesus movie is Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. Willem Dafoe plays Jesus as a real man, with doubts and needs and secrets, not as a perfect godlike creature. I mean, his Jesus  obviously likes women (which none of the other Jesus actors seemed to portray). And the relationship between Judas, played by Harvey Keitel, and Jesus is close and loving (and interpreted by some hopefuls as homosexual, but I don’t see it). The apostles are very real too, bickering among themselves, all trying to impress Jesus. To me, showing these “holy” people as absolutely human, with all the fears and needs we all have, makes them MORE holy, not less. They were able to overcome those very human failings and follow this guy for three years. That’s a big sacrifice if you were making money, sleeping with women and living a life before he turned up.

For me, that is the point: the mystical takes you out of the physical world and into the inexplicable, but even more real, world of pure spirit. Even if we only have it for a few seconds, or once or twice in a lifetime, what a gift! That some of us manage to have these experiences at length or repeatedly, then actually to communicate them in human language, and to have people hear and understand and follow— well, that’s a great grace.

Enough. I’m nattering on and on. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, and it’s just spilling out.