4 August heading back across Ohio (California, here we come!)
Here’s a neat little geography trick I learned about the state of West Virginia. Hold your right hand up with the palm facing you and all your fingers tucked in. Then stick up your middle
finger (don’t worry, God likes this trick too) and extend your thumb with as much curvature as it will allow, like you are hitchhiking, except keep it held in close to your index finger, so the space between forms a small “V” where they meet. Got it? That is exactly what the state looks like on a map, from your wrist up. West Virginians use that to tell people where in the state they are from. (I learned that from a WVU student who made pizzas at the place where I worked on the boardwalk in Ocean City.)
Today I was at a truckstop near the top knuckle of the middle finger, just east of Wheeling. Inside one of the bathroom stalls someone had written with thick permanent black marker “Kill Niggers” and “Die Niggers.” The first thing it made me realize is how oddly out of place it seemed in my world. For whatever reason –and several are possible—I have not seen nearly as much race-based graffiti in truckstops and warehouse restrooms and the like as I used to see, say, five years ago, or nine years ago when I first got into the business. Are we getting less overtly racist as a society, and this is just one barometer? Most conversation that I’ve heard that strikes me as intelligent says we definitely are –that you cannot compare the racial climate of today with that of the Jim Crow-era South or the Boston school bus desegregation clash-period of yesterday without making ridiculous hyperboles—but that we are far from having arrived in MLK’s “dream” state. Hence, one can go a lot longer between encounters with racist messages in public places than one once could, but when one is brought face-to-face with a race hatred that lives today, the ache in the soul is still the same.
Seeing messages like this used to make me furious, and I’d wish I could hunt down the protozoan that wrote it and learn him a thing or two about tolerance. Now it sort of makes me laugh; my soul has grown accustomed to the aching and besides, what else is there to do? But I could not let the messages stand; someone else might come along after me who doesn’t get the joke. So I went out to the truck and got my own black marker. I could have just blackened out the messages, but that would be stifling free speech and depriving someone else of the opportunity to have their conscience pricked as mine was.
So I just decided to take the level of conversation in this bathroom stall up a couple notches. Beside “Kill Niggers” I wrote “Oh please, that is so 1860s,” and beside “Die Niggers” I wrote, “Mr. Caveman, please try to find your frontal lobe before you hurt somebody. I’ll give you a hint: look directly between your eyes. Peace and love (in symbolic form), Hermit Crab.”
* * * *
(The next day—by the way, I gave up my California load to someone who needed it to go home, so now I’m headed for “Joe-jah”)
This whole episode with the graffiti has got me thinkin’: maybe I should start my own sloganeering campaign. Come up with some good Christo/metatheistic sayings and spread them around bathroom stalls wher’ere I go. I was writing and typing all day and haven’t spent too much time on this, but I have one to start with: “God loves you. Period. Deal with it.” Cuts right to the chase, doesn’t it?
It puzzles me why we think it is any more complicated than that. Is it because we find ourselves so unlovable? If so, doesn’t that say more about the way we limit our own ability to love and accept, than it does about our deserving to be loved by an infinite Spirit that does not face those limitations? Do you follow me on this? It is a real problem that we experience ourselves as being separate from God and undeserving of God’s love and forgiveness; this is a serious issue that religion tries to address. But what I’m suggesting is that the answer is not to say, “Well let’s find out what we need to do or whom we have to worship in order to receive God’s forgiveness.” The answer is to stop seeing God as an infinite projection of our finite humanness, realize this means we’re making absurd assumptions when we start to talk about who is forgiven and who isn’t, who is saved and who isn’t, and (if you are Christian) accept that if Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross covers any of us in our frailty and sinfulness, literally or symbolically, then it must cover all of us. You cannot put a boundary around God’s infinite love and forgiveness without making it finite, something other than God. Something very human…worldly.
I mean seriously, is there anything that reeks of pride more than telling someone, “I’m going to heaven and you’re not”? Could you truly rest in peace and enjoy the pleasures of heaven while anyone of your brothers and sisters are roasting in hell? If you could, then I pity you, I truly, truly pity you, and I pray that God will let me help you.
Oliver B. Greene does not want all the “evil” people around him to be saved along with him. Well guess what, friends…it’s not up to Oliver B. Greene! It’s not based on his mind-numbingly narrow interpretation of the scriptures! And it’s not up to me either!
But if you ask me what it means that we have a mountain of first-hand, anecdotal, experiential evidence from all around the world that there is a Supreme Being Who radiates holy Love throughout creation and doesn’t get worked up over our foolishness and ingratitude and welcomes us with “open arms” when we turn our minds to face I AM –even if this doesn’t occur until after the death of our body—I say it means we’re already in heaven, brother! (or sister) And I’ll give you a great big bearhug because I love you so much! (Yeah, even you Mr. Greene! C’mon over here, ya big lug!) And there’s no point in discussing who’s here and who’s not! There’s no point in debating when the Kingdom of Heaven will come and what it will be like. It is here right now, and it’s like this! This is the Messianic Age friends! Wake up and enjoy it! And if it feels this good now, I can only imagine what it will be like when we are unattached to our bodies!!! When “your” Spirit is the entire Being and not just one point of reference.
If you have concluded to this point that what I’m saying is an open invitation to be as evil as you want to be in this world, because there is no threat of hell hanging over your soul, then I’m sorry but you’re not paying close enough attention to the preceding chapters, and you might want to go back and start over.
By promising me the Kingdom of Heaven now, while I live, and by suggesting in so many different ways that the more I am willing to sacrifice myself and love others, the more pure that experience of Heaven will be, now, God is calling me to a far higher standard than an external morality that points toward a debatable future can reach. This is God’s “narrow path,” and what God says to me is essentially: “The further you will come along this path, the more you subject and submit yourself to its experience, with ever greater clarity you will see that I AM the experiencer, and the less you will need to lean on yourself as a feeble crutch.”The inevitable result, when followed through to completion, is a dissolution (read also “abnegation” or, yes, “crucifixion”) of your limited and finite sense of self –the same process that is called for by all of the world’s major religions.Only now the experience is direct and immediate –not attached to symbolism or even words and concepts—and therefore inscrutable, not subject to debate. When you see God’s true face, you will not have to wonder if you have seen it: you will know. And if you are not attached to symbols, words or concepts, you will have no reason to doubt the experience of the Kingdom of Heaven of others who came to it by “different” paths –which, incidentally, is why people like Hafiz say they cannot call themselves “a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.” In following the narrow path to its completion, we trade our self that can be labeled any one of these things for a greater Self that incorporates them all.
(In using the concepts of “self” and “Self,” I am speaking the language of the Vedanta, which is where I needed to turn to understand the Christian experience I was seeking. I mean to establish this in much greater detail when the time comes, but for now I will put forth the realization that freed me from so much doubt and misunderstanding of the reality of Christ: the Christ/Messiah that we worship and pray to and seek to align ourselves with, and the Vedic “Self,” are one and the same.)
The narrow path makes internal requirements on my external behavior, many of which go beyond the morality expressed by the Western Orthodox Church. Yes, it includes everything in the Sermon on the Mount, but I also perceive other subtle admonitions that are as personal as my name. For instance, I believe that God wants me to never watch a minute of anything like “Survivor” or “American Idol,” and to pay very little attention to the front-page section of newspapers; God wants to address my addiction to trying to bond with images of women in states of undress, but I AM also wants me to temper my recent infatuation with Scarlett Johansson, especially with her character in Lost In Translation, which was not the least bit pornographic. (I mean, God knows she’s gorgeous, and God also knows why I agree. But Scarlett is my sister, and all my sisters are gorgeous in God’s eyes, so gawking at images of Scarlett in movies or magazines or on websites distracts me from my responsibility to see all my sisters as beautiful –she can’t be on the pedestal I’m putting her on without creating a lower status for all of my other sisters who deserve my admiration. In other words, God wants me to see Scarlett Johansson as Special, but treat her as Nothing Special…but if God ever ordains for me to meet her and get to know her personally, now that’s a different story [mischievous grin and wink]. God wants me to spend most of my time at the wheel in contemplative silence, not distracting myself with music or radio chatter; God wants me to put down my note- book and put away my thoughts when I walk into a ballpark or a basketball arena or a hockey rink, and let that be time for pure enjoyment of the crowd and the thrill of the game.
These are just a few off the top of my head, and when I write them down they sound like laws but I honestly don’t feel them as such. Laws only exist when they are put into words, and their purpose is to control behavior. What I’m talking about are something more like guideposts: arrows pointing in a certain direction that tell you “the narrow path goes this way.”By their nature, most of them are spontaneous, because they have to be. To live in the present requires constant adjustment to new situations. Picture water running down a mountain stream, seeking as it always does the lowest place: it does not plan in advance how it will go around the next outcropping of rocks or a thick grove of well-rooted trees. But it knows instinctively where its “heaven” is, and nothing distracts it from spontaneously responding to the obstacles it encounters on its path. Human beings are not very much like mountain streams; our complex nervous systems cause us to perceive far more distractions --in the form of abstract thoughts, memories, plans, etc—than water has to face in its extreme simplicity. But the reality of God makes it possible for the human to cultivate a semblance of water’s spontaneous response, and this is through the observance of what I am calling guideposts. A guidepost, you could say, is like the voice of God saying, “This is your way home; come home to Me.”
Laws are entirely different. By their nature laws are preordained, and they must be intellectually perceived and understood in advance of the situation in which they are to be applied. There is no spontaneity in the law. It is also inherently dualistic; you are either abiding by the law, or you are not. If you are, there will be a reward –in the case of secular law, this generally means you will be left alone, unmolested by law enforcement. And if you are not –if you get caught, which in the religious realm is supposed to be a given—there will be punishment. When people refer to a “carrot- and-stick” mentality or philosophy, this is what they mean. This is the basis of all law.
Within the Christian sphere, churches that operate with and teach a carrot-and-stick philosophy are called “legalistic.” These churches appeal to large numbers of Christians because it is merely an infinite projection of the mentality with which we were raised. We are all familiar with the carrot-and-stick approach to life: when we abide by the rules we are given, we are rewarded, and when we don’t, we get a whuppin’, or a detention, or a bad grade, or a demerit, or a “write-up,” or a termination, or incarceration, or a penance, or alienation, or exile, or excommunication, or capital punishment, or the ultimate stick: damnation. But there are also many Christians who were drawn to the religion because they sensed that Jesus taught a way of responding to God that went beyond the carrot-and-stick mentality of his contemporaries. Even the most impartial reading of the gospels plainly shows that Jesus Christ was no legalist. As I said a couple chapters ago, and maybe just now am getting around to clarifying, Jesus sought to fulfill the spirit of the law by releasing us from the letter of it. (And Paul seemed to agree: “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” II Corinthians 3:6) He turned our attention away from external laws and directed it inwardly, toward the guideposts of God. His love was spontaneous –freely given, freely received—and so was His obedience to the Father. Jesus was a master guidepost-reader, and thus he was able to serve God with as much single-minded focus and reverence and submission as anyone who ever lived.
People who sense this gravitate toward churches like ACF, which claim to be a safe haven from the legalism that may have haunted their previous church experiences, or kept them away from the fold altogether. To its credit, ACF is a very non- legalistic fellowship; some, I gather, would like it to lean more toward the law in its practical teachings, but I don’t think that is where our pastor’s heart lies. I think I feel more comfortable there than I would at other Christian churches, because I sense at least some openness to the notion that the letter of the law killeth, and a quest to know the true Spirit that giveth life.
But in their unquestioned allegiance to –and fairly literal interpretation of—the theology of the Bible, ACF holds firmly to the biggest stick of all: the threat of eternal damnation.Do you see how the specter of hell hanging over a person’s soul makes accepting Christ into just another law? This type of Christianity wears a gentle, loving face (“Come, let Jesus into your heart, and let Him guide you and show you God’s great gift of love…”) but has a cold, sinister backside (“OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!”) Or, for those of you familiar with the seat belt public notice signs along highways in some states: “Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, because we care…AND IT’S OUR LAW!”
At ACF this threat is mitigated somewhat, within the church community anyway, by the doctrine of “once saved, always saved.” The stick is thus removed when you walk through the door, sign your name on the dotted line, get that ticket stamped, go down to the river and be born again, and presumably it is all carrot from there. But the problem with “once saved, always saved” is that it in itself is just another doctrine, which means it’s debatable, which means it is subject to doubt. As you may remember from back toward the end of Part One, I described how debate over “once saved, always saved” can rage even within a specific Christian fellowship, let alone between them. Reliance on doctrine, therefore, because it is based in dualistic thought, will tend to produce a faith that is always battling against doubt, for one simple reason: dualistic faith cannot exist without doubt, any more than light can exist without dark, black without white, or right without wrong. It becomes the classic case of a snake trying to eat its own tail, the image used by the peasant in P. and K.
Some clever Christians work their way around this by incorporating and embracing doubt as a part of the divine drama, the adversary of a noble quest; others use a sort of Swiftian twist that embraces the uncertainty by calling it a necessary element of belief. (“I believe because it is absurd.”) Personally I have no problem with either if they work, ie. if they encourage the kind of single-minded focus on God that we see in the life of Jesus. But the only way that I can see the double-minded faith-doubt that so many Biblian Christians battle with being overcome entirely, once and for all, is the elimination of dualistic, carrot-and-stick thought.
“Exterminate all rational thought.” –William Burroughs
Maybe Ol’ Bill wasn’t as irreligious as we (or he) thought.
Looking back over this section, I see the potential for an artificial polarization that I’d like to diffuse rat quick (as they say in these parts): all seekers of God in all faiths have a combination of non-dualistic and dualistic thought in the core of their personal cosmology –without non-dualistic thought, you have no reason to think there’s a God; without dualistic thought, you have no reason to think there’s a you!—and thus respond to a combination of guideposts and laws. This includes every author of the Bible and probably even Jesus Himself, for how else could we say He was fully human? how else could He have rejoiced in the company of Mary and Martha, wept at the death of Lazarus or been moved to anger at the mob scene in the temple? The law could not be abolished in the realm of government without disorder and chaos, and the same is true within the spiritual realm –which is why I consider myself an “evolutionary” anarchist as opposed to “revolutionary.”
Thus the mystic solution is rarely if ever absolute, to the point where dualistic thought is truly exterminated. But that is where our selective attention actually helps us as God-seekers: we can choose to pay attention to the aspects of our self that embrace and encourage non-dual perception of God, instead of fueling the endless debate in our double-minded intellect; we can choose to look for guideposts, instead of being bogged down in the law; we can choose to accept God’s ecstatic presence in the here and now, instead of chasing the carrot and fearing the stick. By embracing the idea that there are choices beyond faith and doubt, the human being opens up to the possibility of the direct and immediate experience of God –the Garden of Eden revisited—and once you have experienced that, even for a moment, you will never be able to settle for anything less again in the spiritual realm.
The bottom line message of this chapter is this: no person or doctrine or law has the authority to separate you from the infinite love and forgiveness and presence of God. God knows they will try, just as the Pharisees called Jesus a blasphemer for claiming to be the Son of God and a criminal for healing on the Sabbath etc. When faced with the modern- day equivalent of the Pharisees in your church or synagogue or mosque or temple or just the day-to-day world, and you feel the weight of their claim of authority coming upon you, do what Jesus did: seek to neither fulfill nor defy their authority. If you fulfill, you are in their grasp and you will have to buy their program to get out; if you defy, you will have a fight on your hands and you will end up cursing your brothers. Do neither. Let their claims of authority pass like yesterday’s clouds. Courageously go about your God-given duty, and surrender your mind to no man and no machine, only to God.
I repeat: God loves you. Period. Deal with it. –HC Villa Rica, Ga.
