Chapter Two The Spiritual Equation

Every day millions of messages assault us on all levels. It is no wonder it is so hard to hear the quiet small voice of God lost among the clutter of the day. Kids yelling for help finding a lost book or toy. Spouses suffering from the toxic work environment. Televisions and radio blaring out messages from all over the globe about poverty, war, disease, crime and more. Sitcoms and soap operas dulling our minds with useless drivel. The waves of the internet calling us to surf and find that connection with like souls. The house and care saying repair me even if you can’t pay for me. Credit cards inviting us to spend, spend, spend. Advertising telling us that our lives are somewhat less because of nothing having this or that material item. Our bodies scream the pains that tell us that we are getting older and that we are vulnerable to raging diseases like osteoporosis, cancer, aids, heart trouble and on and on and on. Literally millions, maybe billions, are suffering a raging pandemic of depression which, of course, has called to the gurus of marketing to provide mental health facilities in even the most remote area. In spite of all the emotional and environmental toxicity a message of hope and connection with the divine is accessible to us if we can still the world long enough to hear it.

How do we will the world so that we can cleanse ourselves of all the superfluous messages of our internal and external environments and have a moment of peace to begin and an to complete that vision quest for the divine?

Commitment is the first key. If you commit you to finding that divine connection and passionately seek you shall find. Today, this moment, you need to take the time that is necessary to decide if you are going to begin the journey that will change your life into a richly detailed tapestry of harmony and contentment. For some it may be enough to say: OK, I am committed. But for most of us it takes a little more evaluation before being totally committed to the journey of a lifetime. Commitment is really a sign of faith and of belief. Because if you do not have the faith that you will succeed you would be a fool to begin your discovery of the divine source that will complete your life and giver everything that you do renewed purpose and beauty. For those who grew up in the fundamentalist Christian tradition this is similar to first response to a call to accept Christ into your lives. It is the moment in time and space when you clearly realize that you are no longer going to live the life of ordinary desperation. You are going to devote your life to your personal and spiritual development in this moment and in this lifetime. It is the now we must all come to if we are ever to discover the divine spirit available to each and everyone of us in this life and not wait till that future after life.

I really suggest that you take this step slowly and deliberately. Ask yourself some very important questions and answer them as honestly as you can. Even if you don’t know the answer you can still honestly say that you don’t know. The journey to the divine connection is also a journey into the self. You may not like all that you see at first but you will come to have tolerance for your weaknesses and appreciation for your strengths. You will come to see them as equal partners in teaching you about yourself and about the world and about God. Contrary to popular opinion setting upon a spiritual path does not mean that automatically everything in your life will suddenly become beautiful and fulfilling. The opposite is true. As you delve deeper and deeper into the mysteries underlying the reality that have chosen to be a part of you will see much that needs to be healed and redirected or re-framed and defined. For example, you might have though that you were selfless in giving into family demands only to discover that you were martyring yourself and actually preventing your family attaining growth and change by being the great savior so that you would not have to experience growth and change. You find that what you thought was supportive behavior is actually enabling your and their negative behaviors to continue. Many a member of Al Anon has had to face this horrible reality when seeking out ways to cope with an alcoholic spouse or partner. You may discover that even though you are financially successful in a particular business or career that this was actually avoidance behaviors so that you would not have to take the risk to do something that you really wanted to do but were afraid to try because you might not be able to succeed. Sometimes financial success is actually a process of settling for less. It is an individual matter and there are no cookbook formulas for discovering God and your divine purpose. The discoveries of other trail blazers can help you on your road to discovery. No one else’s experience with God really matters. No one’s words of encouragement matter. No one’s negative judgements of what you choose to learn and believe matter. No religion, philosophy, theology, development techniques matter until you commit you to the journey with full knowledge that it will take you the rest of your life to full discover all the ramifications and lessons of your journey.

Commitment will also take some reorganization and prioritization of your life. Unless you win the lottery, inherit a fortune, or are independently wealthy, you are still going to have to retain stewardship over the physical and material issues of life such as caring for a family, maintaining a home, providing financial resources for yourself. However, commitment means that you will give equal priority or even a little more weight to your quest for divine connection and spiritual understanding. It may mean that you will have to sacrifice some parts or activities of your life in order to give attention to what is truly the most important issue that faces in human. You will have a journey into the fourth dimension and conquer time and the way that you allocate your resources within that dimension.

It is becoming obvious that the next dynamic in this journey is discipline. This has been a cornerstone for all religious seekers in all religions that I am aware of and seems to be a universal constant. Discipline over the material world strengthens spiritual muscles. However, the idea is not to become monomaniacal. We are questing for integration of body, mind and spirit. We are not material beings in a spiritual world. We are spiritual beings in a material world. Discipline over the material world will give us dominion over this reality so that we can evoke and manifest our divine nature. First is the commitment to establish dominion over the material in all dimensions and aspects. Second is the discipline to develop the obtainable skills to exercise this dominion.

Third, we must learn the nature of that which we were granted dominion over. In your transformation to full functioning spiritual individual, you will develop the power to understand and control your environment, and, most importantly, you. This control of the material has always been the purpose of magic to evoke the power of the divine within one’s self to obtain control or power over the external and internal dynamics of one’s environment. This means that we must clear ourselves of the illusion that we have about our world and about ourselves. We need to be clear sighted in our observations and interactions so that we may be more effective and powerful. I am not talking about control of others so that they bend to our will but control of self in our interactions with the world so that we create a world that is conducive to harmony with our spiritual self. Dominion carries with it responsibility. For example, you have dominion over the live of your pet and inherent in that dominion is the responsibility to attend to the needs of your pet’s physical and emotional well being. You are responsible to feed him, provide shelter in bad weather, to be kind and loving to him, to provide adequate medical care and in return he gives you unconditional love. If you fulfill your responsibilities to him and he bites your hand or attacks your children you find him a home in the country or have him put to sleep, or if you live in Los Angeles, you get him a puppy psychologist. Dominion is making appropriate and responsible choices and that means knowledge of that over which you have dominion. Back to the pet analogy, you might love chocolate and want to share this with your dog. But you know anything about dogs you know that chocolate is bad for dogs and in excess can hill them so you know not to give them chocolate. In accepting dominion over you, you need to know what is good for you, what is bad for you, and to take loving care to make responsible choices that enhance your well being and in exchange you love you unconditionally. Maybe unconditional love of self is the essence of discovering the divine connection within?

The final dimension of this process is wisdom. Wisdom is when we take the knowledge that we have learned through disciplines and commitment and apply it to our lives. In this case, it is spiritual wisdom. Knowledge does not become wisdom until it is applied and manifested. The process to spiritual understanding is very basic: Commitment + Discipline + Knowledge = Wisdom.

Making the Commitment

Unless you have a major life changing experience, the process of commitment takes some work. It may be that you are not ready at this time to commit the resources that it will take in your journey to spiritual development. Many cultures have built in a time for spiritual exploration and development for the general population who are not of the priesthood or of a religious order. In our culture, this is called retirement or the golden years. It is usually the last years before death that one takes the time to fully explore one’s connection with God. What a waste of a lifetime. All of our life needs to be our golden years and the time of being an elder should be a time of being a teacher of the young – sharing years of knowledge that has developed into wisdom. I don’t know about you, but it seems that we are living in a pretty spiritually impoverished world for the most part. It is possible for all of us to make a commitment to a spiritual prosperity consciousness.

Decide if you want to make a commitment. Analyze to what extent that you are willing to make your commitment. It may be that you want to start slowly and build your discipline over time so that you gradually take control of your world and your sped of travel on the path to enlightenment. There is nothing wrong with this choice of slow and steady. Each of us has our own pace of walking the walk of spiritual development. It would be wonderful if we could like Saul on the road to Damascus be struck by the light and transformed into Paul on of the pillars of the Christian church. That can be a very traumatic experience and very painful. You do not have to be crucified or suffer to be connected with the divine. You just have to be determined to steadily develop the skills and understanding that will make you aware of your connection and enable you to stay aware of your connection. Also, stop-outs from the walk are not back sliding. If your world overwhelms you with responsibilities, than sometimes you just have to do the work of surviving and being human. If for example, you make a commitment to your development that includes meditating on Saturday morning for half an hour, and your boss says that you have to work on Saturday morning that does not mean that you cannot continue your journey.

You cannot fail if in your mind you keep coming back on track even when the responsibilities of life sidetrack you. And besides, you never know when one of the sidetracks off the path were not spirit directed lessons. Commitment is always the intent behind our actions. Commitment will always bring us back on course even when we stray into areas that we had no idea about when we entered them and were simply clueless that they were not good for us. Your commitment might be as small or as large depending on your nature as to see something good in every person you meet even it requires that you on faith and recognize the inner seed of God in that individual. Your commitment might be as great as to spend every moment of your day in the quest for divine insight as one who chooses to join a cloistered religious order taking vowels of poverty, service and prayer. Only you know the level of your ability and energy to make a commitment to your vision quest. Only you can make the commitment for you. Your parents can’t do it. Your spouse can’t do it. The government can’t do it. No church can do it. This is totally and absolutely your choice. There is no wrong choice. Every individual before they die will attend to this issue and seek answers. It is just that an aware search and aware self-directed education is ultimately the bringer of joy and harmony. Each of us has an unquenchable hunger for divine connection and purpose even the most jaded atheist or academically trained empiricist.

How do you begin the process of discovering your lever of commitment because you would not even be reading this book if you had not already made a tentative commitment to your own spiritual self-development. While you do not need to go away to a secluded woodland retreat to commune with nature, it would be peaceful and a help to clear the clutter of day-to-day life. You have the ability to find that quiet place deep within you that is peaceful and loving and connected with nature even in the midst of Manhattan or Mexico City. Every person needs a sanctuary – a corner of life or the mind that is quiet and conducive to reflection and heartfelt communion.

Close your eyes for a moment and let your imagination wander. Go back in time and space and possibilities. Picture in your mind that place in your heart that most represents quiet joy and contentment. For some it will be a secluded beach washed by a lazy blue ocean. For some it will be a wooded hilltop swept by the winds of spring. For others, it might be a pew where they prayed as a child next to their mother. Or it might be that big chair where you climbed up on your father’s lap and fell asleep in a knowledge of the safety and surety of the world. The, open your eyes and write down all the symbols that you have discovered. Is it the sound of a bird singing outside your window during an afternoon nap when you were three or four? Maybe, a special song evokes this feeling. It might be the smell of pine or the salty savor of the surf. It may be the searing feel of the hot sand beneath your bare feet. It might be the majesty of the full moon as the coyote cries in the night. Write down what you see and feel with each symbol. Then you can recreate that feeling with practice where ever you are. Buy an overstuffed chair at a yard sale. Play a tape of birds singing in the woodlands or the ocean crashing against the shore. Place a cactus on the table beside you. Manifest the symbols of your sanctuary in your environment. Create your own safe space to get reacquainted with the divine within you.

Chapter One Why God?

The moment comes when the son of God lies hanging on the cross which represents the intersection of the material world and the spiritual world and alone he must face that transition in to death. In our mythos, we look up knowing that after three days this son of God shall conquer death and rise from the grave transcending man’s ultimate fear – man’s ultimate reality. The bottom line of all religious experience is the hope, the wish, sometimes called the belief that a higher power than the frail human body will empower us with the ability to also conquer death. Each of us must ultimately hang on that cross of intersection between life and death, and give up the breath that innervates us, and face the ultimate unknown. Is there life after death? Quivering in fear, we each face the crisis that makes us call out: My God what has thou deserted us and left us to make this passage alone. However, the search for God will not help in this passage. Ultimately, the theist and the atheist dies alone.

That is not the sadness. The sadness is not to die alone but to live alone and with a sense of estrangement from the divine in our lives. Rather we should ask ourselves: Is there life before death? Most people who seek after the divine in their lives do so as a form of insurance against the ultimate reality of their death and a way to diffuse the apin when a loved one dies or a major disaster strikes the planet like a devastating hurricane or toperdo or tidal wives. When life presents us with events where we feel powerless we call out: Why, God? We listen in the silence for answers that don’t seem to come. In fact, in the face of extreme confrontation with our apparent powerlessness and mortality, we even ask if there is a God and if so why has he deserted us. We face the ultimate blasphemy: Anger at a God that can be so insensitive to our suffering. Or, what is more frightening the reality that in our lives that God may not be omnipotent because a good God would not allow us to suffer. Like orphans tossed out into the world, we cry out for our dead Father forgetting for a moment that we are alone in our moments of terror. Yet when the mourning subsides, the pain lightens, the dawn comes, and for the lucky, a seed of desire for a personal experience of God still exists. For the damned that seed dies – its life gone in the searing sun of a jaded reality.

The river that flows through us, called life, can truly nourish us so that all that we do flourishes and brings joy. When the crisis and chaos that are a natural part of our existence comes, we will be strong so that we not only survive but that we prosper as we weather all the difficulties that come to humans. This is the divine gift that a personal experience with God can give us. But most of us are afraid to face ourselves much less God and we live in a world filled an undercurrent of fear and not of expectancy and growth. Afraid to look under the rocks and behind the closed doors of our minds for fear that we will find nothing or something that we will fear and hate even more than the secrets that which we do know – our fear of mortality and weakness. For some of us, we resolve this conflict by choosing to live by faith alone in some external deity that will ultimately take care of us whether promising us heaven, nirvana, or some other great happy hunting ground. We take the focus off our immediate being and focus on a dream that will come during that deep sleep or other euphemism that we use for death. We use God to avoid our reality. This does not mean that the dream will not become reality. That we will not become immortal when we die. That we are not immortal now. That God does or does not exist. The reality that we are avoiding is not death but life.

In the eastern religions, god or deity is seen as a representation of the ultimate source of all being. In the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition god or deity is seen as source. Personal relationships with source of all being – oour greater power – is a part of the dynamic of western theology and spiritual thought. When we don’t feel that sense of connection with the divine, we feel that we are missing something fundamental to our being. In fact, sin is seen and felt as separation from God. When we experience a feeling of estrangement we reach out to our conceptualized deity for atonement of our sins. We seek at-one-ment. To be one with God is our goal. And it is our hope that death will end our estrangement and we will finally rejoin the source of all being, God.

For many of us thinking about these issues now, we come from a primarily Judeo-Christian-Muslim ideation about God. Our symbols for the divine come from Sunday School, from Bible School, from readidng the Bible, the Koran, the Torah. For others of us, we may have branched out as our world became a global village and we explored strange new gods and goddesses seeking answers to that ultimate question of connection with the divine, Whether we looked the Tao of Physics, the Buddha along the Way, the Druidic memories of the Goddess, the teachings of the Great Spirit of our Native American ancestory, or a myriad of the masks of God as Joseph Campbell called them, we seek to see the face of Godd beneath the masks and symbols and rituals. We are looking for the transcendent intimacy of man and God. We have meditated, prayerd, tripped on LSD or other strange psychedelics, sat at the feet of gurus’s and priests, intellectualized, and desperately sought for meaning. We sought the peak experience... that spiritual orgasm where there is more question just a passionate knowing that we are one with the source. Some of us have been able to transcend the bounds of our material being and to know the divine intimately. We come back as shamans epiphany in hand trying to explain it to others and the words seem to escape us. When you become one with the infinite, it is very hard to explain it in a finite mind. We can only use metaphor, stories, and parables and that is what religion has done for mankind for as long as we have recorded time with our words and our pictures but it is still a representation – a drink of wine and a taste of bread rather than a true communion with God. However, it is thorugh the experiences of others, their stories of transcendence, that point the way to our own experience of the divine. Everyone must walk the walk alone – take a leap of faith that the path does lead somewhere. It is in the journey to God that we experience God. It is in the journey to God that we become God and that God becomes us.

We are all living in a material world. It is our expressions of our reality that allows God to experience our world. As man has evolved, so has the potential of experience with God and thus God is evolving with us. We, both man and God, are at the crossroads of our evolution. God will soon not be needed to heal the illness of man because technology will ultimately empower us with abilities that our primitive ancestors would have called god-like. For many of us we will see the day when natural disasters and acts of God (now called acts of Mother Nature now there is an evolution for you) will be potentially computer controlled bio-spheres. We have reached out and touched the stars and in time will touch other universes and realities and dimensions that we just dimly conceive at this moment in time. In Genesis, it is written that God gave man dominion over all the animals and the plants and the creatures of the earth. We are quickly gaining dominion over energy. We are gaining dominion over the ability to create new life forms. We are becoming god-like creatures. But if we were created in the image of God, we have always been god-like creatures.

Introduction

They are like trees along a river bank bearing luscious fruit each season without fail. Their leaves shall never wither, and all they do shall prosper.

Psalms 1

September 9, 1995 a dream message

Today’s world makes it very difficult to be a spiritual person. Values seem to constantly change as family, community, planet, perhaps the whole universe, appears to be in a state of constant flux. Roles are changing dramatically for women and men both as regards to relationships and as regards to self-expression. In a simpler time it was easier to follow the flow of the culture and the standard for religious expression whether one were Moslem, Christian, Buddhist, and so forth. But today, the standards for everything are changing. Individuation has become a prized attribute for personal expression while there are still norms that one must conform to in order to survive within the culture.

Up till this date, the common method for spiritual understanding and guidance was other directed. Buddha would sit under a tree until enlightened and then take the message to the community. However, Buds message of impermanence is reaching critical mass and individual spirituality is permutating into a new form. A form of spiritual self-development. And, for most of us, this change is very frightening. The old laws that governed our behaviors in our day-to-day relationships with man and God have fallen by the roadside and we re being forced to find new paths of spirituality.

In essence, the modern person in order to have a fulfilling life in all dimensions and aspects must create the skills and processes for a personal vision quest. We have found that when we follow the cues from the external world which speaks of material success several things happen. First, we become so caught up in the process of work that we lose touch with our natural spiritual teachers. In the past, the farmers and hunters and gathers could feel the earth beneath their feet, look at the changing cycles of the moon, hide in a cave to protect themselves from a raging storm and know the power of God and infinite patterns and continuity from a tangible primitive experience. Now we experience the weather from climate controlled cars and houses and work places. We see all the disasters on CNN and our shamans forecast the storms of the earth via satellite. Women’s reproductive cycles are controlled by little pills and not the moon. Children are deliver by C-section at the convenience of the doctor in expensive suites not by the rhythms of the mother’s body and a circle of loving family women.

However, God is not dead. He is just lost in the constant clutter of today’s technological world. Unfortunately, he does not have a night news show on cable or an email address. He exists where he always did in the souls and minds of man whispering in our dreams. Yet the soma of technology has deadened our ability to hear the message. But it is not because we do not have the need and desire to experience oneness with God. It is just that we now have the ability to communicate with God in a new way that we never had in the history of mankind except for an enlightened few. Each of us has the ability to become our own Guru... our own Master... our own Shaman.

Many today are seeking to rediscover that closer walk with God. We are flocking in record numbers to discover the ancient arts of our indigenous spiritual experience. We are paying exorbitant prices for the herbs that our great-grandmothers gathered in the near-by woods and brewed to heal the sick. We are listening to tapes of channelers and self-help teachers. We call our friends on toll free numbers looking for hope and messages from spirit. Many are trying to recapture the old walk by following the fundamentalists in all religions from Christianity to Wicca. But each of us in reality is seeking a way to hear the quiet voice of God within us which was there before the first fish swam in the waters of earth and before the next electron impulse flies along the fiber optics of our telephone.

As for me, I have known for thirty years or more that I was to be a missionary in the vernacular of the fundamentalist culture in which I was raised. My father used to dream of me going to the darkest continents of primitives and spreading the gospel. However, I have know that the gospel and he knew it and taught it was being reborn in a new and dynamic way – A way that was to light the way for the world to enter a new realm of spiritual discovery. I still see my work as a mission to the darkest realms of mankind which I now realize is that lonely place in the human heart where the flame of spiritual connection has dimmed and in thousands of cases has died out. I am here to help you, if you choose to do it, to rekindle the fires of hope and spiritual connection that is our heritage as humans. It is time to evolve our spiritual quest into this new century... a century of enlightenment.

On September 9, 1995 after more than five years of searching for the sign that I was ready to begin my mission and that the message would be revealed I had a dream. In the dream my husband, Mark, and his father, Tonio, had gone on a trip. Mark returned to me with a gift that he had bought at Value City Department Store. It was in the shape of a church window with an arch and it was edged in gold. As I opened the card, I knew that it was a card celebrating death and rebirth. At the bottom was written in gold: Psalms 1: I AM. I thought about this for several days. The dream imagery and message kept returning to me. On September 11, 1995 I looked up Psalms 1:

Oh the Joys of those who do not follow evil men’s advice, who do not hang around with sinners, scoffing at the things of God. But they shall delight in doing everything God wants them to do, and day and night area always meditating on his laws and thinking about way to follow him more closely.

They are like trees along a river bank, bearing luscious fruit each season with out fail. Their leaves shall never wither, and all they do shall prosper.

But for sinners, what a different story. They blow away like chaff before the wind. They are not safe on Judgement Day; they shall not stand among the Godly.

For the Lord watches over the plans and paths of the godly men, but the path of the godless lead to doom.

I knew that this was a message from God that it was time for me to begin my work. How was I a going to be able to interpret this message and what it means to me and those that I am here to serve by sharing the message of spiritual self-development?

Simply the interpretation and meaning came to me as I quieted myself and listened to the voice of God.

First, the evil men’s advice is to listen to the message of the material world to guide our activities and direct our lives. We must learn to listen to the inner voice of divine spirit. We are to meditate upon spiritual laws and to follow the voice of God within us. If we learn to listen to this inner guidance and apply it to our daily life we will have fulfillment and joy in our lives. We will not feel that cold emptiness that happens when we have gained the world but lost our soul. We will prosper in all that we do and our lives will bear fruit season after season. Sinners are those who miss the mark in life. They aim only for the material world and ignore the spiritual. And even before we die, when we are spiritually impoverished, we are never happy, content or satisfied with our lives. The judgment day is the moment that one looks at one’s life and is alone. One recognizes that one is spiritually isolated from those who have connected with the divine which resides within and connects all beings in infinite oneness. God is within and our awareness and connection allows us to grow and prosper. If we refuse to listen to this small but infinite voice of God that lives within we are doomed forever to roam the material world which can become the path of the godless leading to depression, isolation, and emptiness – truly a hell on earth.

The good news is here. God is waiting for you to rediscover him and to experience the wonder, joy, and prosperity that is awaiting those who wish to experience their divine right to be the chosen ones. All are chosen, but few respond to the call. The spirit of God is now trying to speak to you and has led you to read this book and to re-learn the way of divine communication.

This book is based upon the way that I discovered the direct link with the infinite within myself. In many ways, you will be able to use the insights that I experienced to jump-start your own vision quest. For many of you, there will be techniques that you are already aware of but have not been using. For all of you, interaction with my writings will be a form of meditation upon the message that awaits within you – your special calling, insight, message from the divine.

Very importantly you must be aware that each of us interprets the messages from the inner voice through the filters of our own consciousness and symbols created by our own experience. Therefore, read, absorb, analyze and come to your own understanding. The old ways of laws and spiritual understanding being a ritual of blindly following doctrine written down in stone. The spiritual experience today is dynamic and changing. It is a flow of seasons and experiences. While God is infinite and every changing, the message of God has evolved as man has evolved to understand it. A thousand years from now as man continues his evolution so will the level of his understanding of the divine infinite. Let your spirit, mind, and body be filled with the light. It is the time of your personal illumination. An illumination that comes from your personal inner knowing and relationship with spirit. As you begin your journey maintain an open mind and remember God is too big for anyone religion.

For you are like trees along a river bank bearing luscious fruit each season without fail. Your leaves shall never wither and all that you do shall prosper.

Addendum

From September 9 to November 22, 1995 I was in a state of total emotion and chaos and as I worked and studied these ideas more deeply. I dug deep into the library looking at the works fo spiritual leaders, theologians and philosophers from both east and west. Always dancing underneath this search was a growing awareness that death was growing closer and closer and I could not shake the feeling of impending crisis. However, about November 18, I realized that the only way out of a storm is through it and I resolved myself to what was coming. On November 22, 1995 my father-in-law, Manuel Antonio Serna-Maytorena died quickly and, to everyone else, unexpectedly. But in the days following I realized how prophetic my dream had been and how important it is to live life fully. Rather than being in a crisis of disbelief, this became an opportunity to experience even more the value of belief in the face of the reality of man’s ultimate fate – death. The echo of death in our hearts, surrounds the call to life. And like the card in my dream that my husband and father-in-law brought to me, it is even more obvious than ever, that in this moment of life, we can each truly say: I AM. That is the ultimate reality for each of us. Tomorrow, we may not be but for now we exist and we must exist in joy and love and the expression of the total creative potential of being. In our hunger, our search for God, we can only quench it in our relationships and connection with the divine which can only be discovered within ourselves and in those that we love.