(Excerpt from book #8: No More Turning Away—-Breaking The Conspiracy Of Silence)
In a therapeutic relationship, the therapist attempts to create a bridge image to the patient’s innate healing possibilities. This bridge image is nothing more than an internalized representation of the therapist’s teachings, associated with and blended into the internal picture of the therapist, which eventually informs the patient of his/her better choices for making conscious, self-affirming decisions for their lives, in the absence of the therapist’s physical presence. In the positive, this also helps the patient with any attachment to the therapist, for when the therapeutic relationship finally ends, the patient still carries the image of the therapist and the teaching, which brings comfort in the therapist’s absence. Yet, it is imperative that the bridge be eventually discarded, lest the client just carry the bridge, the teacher and teaching, as an embedded narrative, which covers and obscures the natural light of pure awareness that being healed reveals. This therapeutic relationship has great potential for healing and, of course, in the negative, manipulation, and abuse if the therapist had not previously reached an optimal personal healing quiescent point. The therapist must have risen beyond their own need to be emotionally manipulative to be of help. And, the therapist must NOT become financially dependent on payments made for services by specific clients, or abuse is inevitable.
This same principle of entrainment or neuro-linguistic programming is involved with the spiritual teachings embedded within a student and guru in any spiritual teaching relationship. Often, just seeing the picture of the guru stimulates memories of the teachings transmitted over the course of the teaching relationship and brings a sense of warmth or comfort to the evolving student. The same potential for attachments form between guru and student, and the wise guru does not encourage emotional attachments, lest the student regress, and remain dependent on outside influences to affirm their own personal value. It is well known that popular gurus profit immensely from the imaginary or real services provided to the student. See Eckert Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Tim Robbins, the Bagwan Shree Rajneesh (aka OSHO), etc.,etc. You better have a fat wallet if you want big-name guides providing direction for your next spiritual step.
Finally, this same principle resides at the foundation of all religions. Within the Christian faith, where the practitioners attempt to embody the teachings of their prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, they worship mostly unread bibles, paintings, sculptured works, idols, stained glass panels, and statues of Mary crying, Jesus’s face miraculous appearing in cloud formations, their morning toast, or wherever their imagination creates a image similar to their most revered teacher. Yet, the teacher and Mary have been dead for 2000 years, so the student must be taught through other less enlightened teachers and their often disfigured interpretations of the dated sacred texts. And they try to teach the religious neophyte that this is one-stop shopping, and the practitioner is dependent on the church and its teachings for the rest of their lives for any hope for an eternity with the church’s distorted, though often sincere, images of God.
Jesus, his image and his teachings, were never intended to be utilized the way that so many churches, including those promoting “new age” and “new thought” understanding, now use him.. It is disgraceful that it is used to generate more income for the all too often corrupt leaders of the faiths. And, PLEASE, do not forget to tithe! Never mind that the Catholic church has more money than several countries. The more you pay, the happier that God, er, the church is! That pastor has a family to feed, too! Prosperity theology really has an appeal to the unhealed, greedy money accumulator within all of us, eh Joel Osteen, and 100 million others? Come on, open up the wallet of the parishioner in the pew next to you, and give like you always wanted to! You got to give to receive! The surest sign that God loves you is that you have a big, fat bank account, with a big spiritualized ego to match! Just remember, the size of your bank account, or the account of the church of your choice, is no direct indication of the presence of the Spirit of the Universe. It does indicate how well you have adapted to the Capital-lust economic system, however.
The object, in truth, is to also internalize the teaching vs. just internalizing the teacher. When we internalize the teacher, we have created an idol, and yet another break, or fragmentation, is encouraged within our consciousness. The average human being has over a dozen (though some are plagued with “legions”) or more fragments of self or “the other, or you” images, floating around in the unconscious parts of their self. These may be historical archetypal images, including God, the Devil, the Trickster, and other disowned and unconscious or conscious and celebrated parts of our awareness of our self, along with the distortions in judgements of “the other or not me”. If God is still speaking to us, rather than through us, we are not ready for the real Kingdom of Wholeness and its Sublime Universe of non-duality. Similiarly, if we are still plagued by the voices or the echoes of our unhealed past, we remain on the periphery of our true potential while still wrestling with hyperactive minds.
Either way, conscious or unconscious, healing is not possible until all of the exiled, disowned, and otherwise unconscious and conscious aspects, or images of self, and the misinformed judgements of “the other, or you” are integrated, or woven, back into the conscious fabric of our undivided being. You can tell how good of a job you have done by evaluating the sum total of your relationships with the outer world. If there is still a lot of trauma and drama with outer relationships, there probably is still work to be done on the inside, and/or it is time to “shake the dust off your feet” and move on to a new location.. You can also tell by how much negative self-talk remains. Whatever you imagine God to be, remember, God has qualities that incorporate love of self, love of the other, and the peace that comes with resting in the assurance that our creation, or all of our created images and narratives, point to the inherent goodness of life.
There is no room for duality in truth. There is no room for The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost in Truth. There is only room for God seeing Itself, for God is omniscience. So, all past images, where relevant, just inform our present moment with their insight and wisdom rather than dominate and control our life experience, if we are to see as our Creator has created us to see, in the truth of who we are.
Each one of the images that we, or our culture, created in the past was to be yet another bridge to a new land, and potentially, closer to our truth, but often they were never completed, and thus continue to lead us astray, and to eventual dead-ends. Rather than just looking at Life through a revolving, hypnotizing collection of kaleidoscopic images, it is possible to achieve a vision where we are the unified wholeness of our healed Self, rather than unenlightened worshippers of some unknown, unknowable and unrealizable spiritual fantasy.
Social conformity attempts to maintain the rules of the teachings in a social setting. In a therapeutic setting, it is typically just a simple relationship between the therapist and the client, and the therapist establishes the majority of the rules of engagement, yet group therapy offers up a much more complex dynamic, where social dynamics become part of a healing intention. The guru/student relationship is similar to the therapeutic relationship, and parallels continue in the setting of an ashram, which is the community of followers. Christianity, and other religions rely almost exclusively on the social setting to practice and enforce tribal values, values that were once inspired by, and perhaps practiced by the originator of the faith.
There are over 2 billion human beings who claim to be Christians. Yet, as we see in America, to claim to be a Christian is to claim any number of differing and often conflicting ideals and values. The teachings of Jesus, especially the Sermon On The Mount, have been rejected by a sizeable portion of those claiming Jesus as their teacher. “What would Jesus do?” used to be an important question to those following his teaching, yet it has now morphed into “what can I get away with”, in the now disrespected names of Jesus and Donald Trump, while celebrating right wing conservative billionaire values.
So, in whose image have you created yourself?
Are you willing to let go of all controls of teachers, teachings, and their aging, corrupted images?
Are you willing to be healed, and made whole?
Free yourself of all idols, and images.
Free yourself from the ignorance of others, and social conformity.
Free yourself from religious hucksters, fundamentalists, and propaganda.
Free yourself!
You are the Teacher.
You are the Teaching.
You are the Taught.
You are, and that is enough!
What would Jesus do? Oh, that is an easy question to answer.
“Straight is the way, and narrow is the gate, and very few there be who enter in,”
And,
And Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold idols in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And he said to them:
“My house is a place of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves.”
And he said:
“It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier pulling a camel through the eye of a needle than bringing a rich man to the kingdom”.
And, he said:
“The things that I do, you shall do, and even greater things than I have accomplished.”
Umm, there might be a need for a lot of humbling experiences to bring a person to totally reject their current dysfunctional and materialistic course, but those millions of dollars are like a strong magnet to hold peoples’ attention away from true change..
We can’t buy a real stairway to heaven. We can’t even rent the steps to heaven either.
There is real work to be done, and Jesus, your guru, or your therapist can not do it for you.
If your headlights are dirty, you cannot see clearly.
If your mind is cluttered with illusion and materialism, you can not see clearly.
You are heading for the ditch if you don’t take care of your consciousness.
The image remains forever materialistic, a mere limited placeholder, or bridge, to our fundamental, culturally obscurred, infinite nature.
The chasm that exists between you and the other, which is another you, and between you and God is the image, and the nearly infinite narrative, that you, your family, your religion, and your culture created in ignorance and misunderstanding. That chasm is you until you see its unreality.
.Then, all that you see, and will ever see, unto eternity is the unified self, and its infinite expressions of its infinite loving creativity, which “you” are now a most conscious and active part of.
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“The finger pointing at the moon is never the moon”—Zen Buddhist saying
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“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper (Comforter) will not come to you. I will send him to you “—Jesus of Nazareth
God helps those who help themselves.
Do you get it now?
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Perfection
Perfection still lies behind all image darkened eyes
To look within ourselves without judgement is to find
The sublime surprise, of which all life is comprised
The divine energy that supports all life, including mankind’s,
With courage drought, from fear and illusion made naught
We move from materialistic shadows into spiritual light
The Kingdom once sought is the new vision caught
To overcome the fragments of self is to see with unhindered sight
A love all-knowing, supported by the truth that’s showing
With the Divine, we are destined to walk hand in hand,
In us, it’s growing, through us, it’s showing
A love for all life between space and land.
Our hearts entwined, with one soul divine
To this world we become a blessing immense
Though we pass this earthly way for one short mortal day
Who, with a spiritual healing experience, would dare dispense?
