Father Thomas Keating & the Vanishing Point

Back to 2016! Is anyone still doing this contemplation, meditation, sitting still stuff? I mean with all the spinning and whirring of AI and the cascading technological advances occurring daily, why even bother?

The interesting thing is this: As our understanding of the science of the cosmos advances, the reality of a creating, nourishing, and sustaining cosmic force is becoming more and more evident as well. In fact, as we’re advancing, we’re not moving away from the reality of a driving energy or intelligence ordering our world and the universe, we’re sailing directly toward it. Soon, the distinctness between science and spirituality will disappear in a vanishing point. They will become the study of the same thing. Quantum wave theory, the unified field, the vibrational quality of positive and negative emotions, all these things have already been proven to exist.

The question is becoming: How do we let these new understandings impact and transform our lifestyle choices and world views? Father Thomas Keating considers these kinds of questions in a fascinating Buddha at the Gas Pump interview, and his insights are very refreshing. Once the abbot of a Trappist monastery, Keating is an active participant in the Interspiritual movement and an advocate of Centering/contemplative prayer.

When asked to define God:

There are as many ideas of God as there are people; the word is a label and it would would be nicer if we had another word for God; is-ness without any limits; I am-ness without any other pronouns; God has aspects beyond reason; how do you comprehend infinite justice and infinite mercy, you must open your consciousness to a synthesis of the two and transcend a rational concept of god; God is in everything without being limited to anything; dynamic and expanding; God is change itself which is what’s changeless about God.

On an evolving cosmology:

Christian cosmology is patriarchal and limited by the culture it was formed in; it just doesn’t work anymore; theology needs a new cosmology; the dynamic idea of god which evolutionary cosmology has provided in the past 50 years is a revelation of a higher power, one in which we’re immersed and engulfed in, so we don’t have any identity outside of the evolutionary process; creation is not a one-time event; religion has to listen to science because science is giving us up-to-date revelations about who God really is and developing a cosmology that can support union and unity with God.

On consciousness and globalization:

Perhaps we’re at a critical evolutionary level in our time, in which a new general level of consciousness beyond rational is emerging; the capacity to understand reality intuitively may be beginning to happen around the world; the globalization of the world could be an opportunity to allow these insights into reality to be revealed at one time to large numbers of people; insights that can’t be reached on the rational level because the ration level of consciousness is limited.

On Centering Prayer and Contemplation:

Meditation is so important because it’s probably the most direct access to our deeper levels of consciousness; beyond the ego-ic self is a Self that we don’t usually access without something like meditation; by sitting long enough the dust begins to settle, and you begin to see more clearly; the deepest level of consciousness is God consciousness manifested in our uniqueness as a human-being.

Centering prayer can be adapted to any tradition and to someone without a religion; it has been taught in prisons, when other men saw their friends being more calm and peaceful, they ask to attend the classes, then those men begin experiencing more peace and calm, however, you can’t persuade people to do this.

If you’d like to learn more about the specifics of practicing centering prayer/contemplation, listen to the interview (recommended if you’re not Christian) (specific instructions are towards the end of the video), visit Contemplative Outreach, or read Keating’s book, Open Mind Open Heart.

I've embedded the video here for those who would enjoy watching it!

On Tuesday, I’ll be introducing you to a contemporary Muslim mystic.

Mysticism: A Psychic Gateway

Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness was published in 1911 and is considered a classic. The book is divided into two parts: 1) a general introduction to mysticism and 2) the necessary stages of organic growth through which the typical mystic passes”.

I tackled it. At 500+ pages, it’s dense, and while her writing is not as difficult to read as the mystics of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, her way of expressing herself is dated. Underhill is not a spare writer. I didn’t read every word. I couldn’t. In places, quotes of recognized mystics are 75% of the text. I skimmed over those.

The book is largely a defense of/argument for mysticism. Where it excels in it’s clear statement of the purpose/or result of mysticism:

“Modern psychology, in it’s doctrine of the unconscious or subliminal personality, has acknowledged this fact of a range of psychic life lying below and beyond the conscious field.”

“Certain processes, of which contemplation has been taken as a type, can so alter the state of consciousness as to permit the emergence of this deeper self; which according as it enters more or less into the conscious life, makes man more or less a mystic.”

“The mystic life, therefore, involves the emergence from deep levels of man’s transcendental self; its capture of the field of consciousness; and the ‘conversion’ or rearrangement of his feeling, thought, and will—his character—about this new centre of life.”

I agree with that. In fact, reading it gave me a lot of clarity about my own drive for practicing meditation: accessing my subconscious/unconscious to expand my ability to experience and respond to the world. I’d never really zeroed in on it quite like that before.

Initially agnostic, Underhill was an intellectual, and a prolific writer of novels and poetry. She takes a decidedly psychological approach to her analysis of mysticism. Because of the period in which the book was written, her analysis, though welcomely simplistic, is effective. She stresses that love, passion, “conation”—will stimulated by emotion—drives the mystic, “for passion rouses to activity not merely the mind, but the whole vitality of [the person].”

This is important point because mysticism is an adventure of direct experience, not an intellectual undertaking. One of Underhills most forceful arguments is that the mystic is mistakenly perceived as passive.

“The ‘passivity’ of contemplation … is a necessary preliminary of spiritual energy: an essential clearing of the ground.”

“… the act of contemplation is for the mystic a psychic gateway; a method of going from one level of consciousness to another. In technical language it is the condition under which he shifts his ‘field of perception’ and obtains his characteristic outlook on the universe.”

“It remains a paradox of the mystics that the passivity at which they appear to aim is really a state of the most intense activity: more, that where it is wholly absent no great creative action can take place. In it, the superficial self compels itself to be still, in order that it may liberate another more deep-seated power which is, in the ecstasy of the contemplative genius, raised to the highest pitch of efficiency.”

From everything I’ve seen and studied in regard to the lives of mystics, contemplation infuses dynamic life.

At times, the piousness of Underhill’s writing is not appealing. The line she draws between magic and mysticism is amusing. Magic is the application of the occult for purposes of personal gain, while mysticism is wholly selfless. I can’t follow her down that road, because everyone is pursuing whatever path they are pursuing with some hope of something. While a mystic might appear, or claim, to pursue a path of selflessness, deeper analysis would reveal the fruits accruing to the mystic as a result of their devotion or practice. After all, altruism is highly admired and can be the source of endless accolades and praise, and "helping" others can make you feel good.

Underhill also makes a distinction between the artist and the mystic, which I think stems from her insistent divide between the spiritual and the material. A divide which I don’t see.

She disagrees with William James “four marks” of mysticism, for which I applaud her, and presents her own four qualities of mysticism:

1. True mysticism is active and practical, not passive and theoretical. It is an organic, life process, a something which the whole self does; not something as to which its intellect holds an opinion.

I agree.

2. Its aims are wholly transcendental and spiritual. It is in no way concerned with adding to, exploring, re-arranging, or improving anything in the the visible universe.

I disagree. For me, if you’re mysticism is not somehow manifesting on this plane of existence, it’s somewhat worthless.

3. This One [the Transcendental Reality, or the Divine, as I like to call it] is for the mystic, not merely the Reality of all that is, but also a living and personal Object of Love.

I disagree. I think it can be and/or.

4. Living union with this One—which is the term of [the mystic’s] adventure—is a definite state or form of enhanced life … It is arrived at by an arduous psychological and spiritual process—the so-called Mystic Way—entailing the complete remaking of character and the liberation of a new, or rather latent, from of consciousness; which imposes on the self the condition which is sometimes called ‘ecstasy,’ but is better named the Unitive State.

I agree that some form of ultimate union is the state of equilibrium that the mystic seeks.

Underhill acknowledges that the nature of mysticism, as an individual endeavor, precludes a repeatable path. I agree. We all meander in our own way toward the Divine.

“The creative impulse in the world, so far as we are aware of it, appears upon ultimate analysis to be free and original not bound by the mechanical: to express itself, in the defiance of the determinists, with a certain artistic spontaneity.”

As I said, I didn’t read the whole book. But what I did read of Underhill’s work helped me clarify my own understandings of mysticism and validated my own path, despite some of my disagreements with her conclusions.

Tuesday, I’ll be sharing on the subject of an unlikely mystic.

Mining the Mystic Gems

My second discovery that arose from following a meandering path through Youtube videos, websites, and other various internet resources, to a plethora of books was the numerous women mystics of medieval Christianity.

Years ago, when I was being shuttled to Sunday School and church, bible studies and youth groups, No One, I mean No One! ever once mentioned a single woman mystic. Crosses arms over chest, frowns, and stamps foot. Why not?

These women are fascinating. They were rebellious. Independent. And strong. But in very constructive ways. Being female, I find their stories inspiring; they leave me with a hundredth-monkey feeling.

You know the story about the monkeys washing their sweet potatoes? No? Well, monkeys didn’t always wash their sweet potatoes before they ate them, but when the hundredth monkey did, simultaneously all over the world, monkeys began washing their sweet potatoes!

Hmmm … not sure where I was going with that, but …

Long before Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own, these women, who weren’t supposed to speak in church, comment on scripture, let alone seriously contemplate or develop theological ideas, sought, created, and discovered lifestyles in which they could spend time alone with the Divine. And out of this space they thought and wrote about their individual and direct experiences of God.

Hildegard von Bingen and St. Claire of Assisi birthed new religious orders. Mechthild of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, St. Therese of Avila, and Therese of Liseaux authored works describing their contemplative journey, their personal experience of uniting with God in their interior lives.

Innovative trailblazers, they lived detached from the normal relationships that shaped the lives of their mothers and sisters. For an independently spirited young girl or woman, perhaps the convent and a quiet “cell” of her own appeared like a haven. Perhaps watching their mothers and/or older siblings become worn down—or even die—after multiple births, the domestic role did not appeal to them.

Adaptable, creative, committed, determined, and resolute reformers, 500, 1000, 1500 years ago they constructed theologies where God’s love was central, as was the perspective of the Divine as feminine and/or maternal.

Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings --
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.—Mechthild of Magdeburg (English version by Jane Hirshfield, Original Language German)

“Excluded by church law from active ministry in the church, women were more likely to spend long hours in contemplative prayer and to have the kind of visionary experiences that can result.”

This contemplative prayer was a central aspect to their spiritual growth, a practice that transformed each woman, imbuing her not just with the inner strength to travel her own inner byways, but to do so in truly constructive and reformative ways. “… remember that practitioners of mental prayer represented a marginal population within the church. They were regarded as subversive …. Contemplatives, who claimed to have direct, unmediated experience of God, and not necessarily during the Mass, constituted a distinct challenge to the church insofar as it was centered upon ritual and run by male priests.”

Each of these women had to carefully tread the path between their intuited truth, being called out as heretics, and reconciling their experience of the Divine with a corrupt and powerful Church. In Spain, home of Teresa of Avila, the Inquisition instigated by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand burned and imprisoned for life those who it judged strayed from the church’s doctrinal teachings.

One of the biggest obstacles to studying these women’s works is the mixture of orthodox language and sensationalism that often sounds unfamiliar and overwrought to the modern ear. However, “… the use of orthodox language to describe their experiences was a basic skill of survival” when faced with a world seeking to condemn the spiritually wayward. So be warned if you approach them: the religious verbiage is deep. But there are gems to be excavated, if you’re willing to take on the challenge of mining them.

I love this description of the mind rampant in contemplation/meditation; so much more poetic and vivid than the cliched dismissal of thought implied by today’s common term, “monkey-mind” (Oh, look,we’re back to monkeys!):

“This intellect is so wild that it doesn’t seem to be anything else than a frantic madman no one can tie down.”—Teresa of Avila

The spiritual devotions of these women were often extreme: fasting, poverty, denial of all things worldly.

But there are also prescient intuitions of scientific discoveries to come.

At the same time the spirit showed me a tiny thing the size of a hazelnut, as round as a ball, and so small I could hold it in the palm of my hand. I looked at it in my mind’s eyes, and wondered, What is this? The answer came to me: “This is everything that has been made. This is all Creation.” It was so small that I marveled that it could endure; such a tiny thing seemed likely to simply fall into nothingness. Again the answer came to my thoughts: “It lasts, it will always last, because God loves it.” Everything — all that exists — draws its being from God’s love.—Julian of Norwich

Through the discovery of quantum mechanics we now know that: If you removed the empty space from the atoms of all people, the entire human race could fit in the volume of a sugar cube—The Institute of Physics.

If you’re curious about these women and would like to read an introduction to their lives and work, I recommend Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics by Carol Lee Flinders. Excerpts from her book are indicated by the use of quotes in this post.

On Friday, I’ll share my personal favorite of these women with you.

The Illusion is That We are Not Loved

Eww. I inadvertently came across a troubling account of a popular spiritual teacher on the internet. I read the whole thing and even taking it with appropriate skepticism—it being one-sided and all—it left me feeling nauseous. One of the most disturbing aspects of “spirituality” is the teacher’s dark side. Whether the teacher is a New-Age pimp or the descendant of a revered Buddhist lineage or a smarmy Protestant tele-evangelist or a pedophile Catholic priest, spiritual teachers possess a dark side. Because they are human. And humans are both dark and light, from birth til death, we all cast a shadow. (Unless of course you’re Lily Dane … hehe!) Whether the teacher is ordained upon their own authority, anointed by a master (who was anointed by a master…), or blessed by a religious hierarchy, all spiritual teachers are human. Always a good thing to remember. Best not to sit at their feet.

Anyway … on top of that, I got halfway through Sri Aurobindo’s The Integral Yoga (which is quite long!) and was like, okay, enough already. I need to take a break from all these other people’s thoughts and ideas and get back into my own reality! So, this is going to be my last Sunburned post of the year. For I don’t know how long, more than a couple decades, I’ve taken the last couple weeks in the year to contemplate the year that is ending. It’s time for me to set aside researching, etc. and do just that.

I’ll leave you with one of my current beliefs (a newer revelation for me, and one I’m still integrating): The illusion is that we believe we are not loved. In truth, we are deeply loved by God, Our Creator, Source, The Cosmos, The Divine, THAT THING, whatever you want to call it. In fact, we swim in a cosmic soup of love. However, because we’re conditioned to seek love (approval) from our parents, siblings, friends, lovers, husbands, wives, children, teachers, bosses, etc., who will always fail at loving us perfectly because, well, that’s not their purpose, we fail to create a relationship with the source of unbounded love that is always available to us.

Our purpose is to manifest the truth of who we are individually. (Yes, that’s my current belief, and has been for awhile!) In that endeavor, we will love. But none of us will love perfectly. Best to remove that pressure from ourselves and others. And know that the more we are able to experience the love of the divine, the closer we will come to being the human we were born to be. (That at least, is one of the things I’ll be going off and contemplating for the rest of the year … and probably for a long time thereafter!)

Yes, the post on the Christian mystics is coming! Most likely in January. So until then, peace, love, and joy to you!

The Spiral Inward

I had my first spiritual shift when I was in my early twenties. After receiving some rather devastating news, the person I knew myself to be up to that point in my life simply fell away. It was abrupt, disorienting and disconcerting, like walls crashing down, and me left standing there, defenseless. When I turned out the lights and crawled into bed each night, a single blazing question haunted me: Why am I here on this planet?

I didn’t know. Nothing made sense anymore. The conveyor built of my lift had broken down. While my peers pursued careers, relationships, and began having children, creating families of their own, I would sit tongue-tied among them. Until I stopped sitting among them at all, because it was simply too uncomfortable for all of us.

I was being pulled more and more inward. But I had no idea about how to proceed. Even so, I applied a blunt stubbornness to this seeming anti-drive consuming me. I say anti-drive because it didn’t appear that I was being driven toward anything, I was only being driven away from everything that I’d thought was normal up to that point.

For the person who I’d been, very focused, very linear, the experience was disconcerting. Everything I’d believed myself to be, every image I’d envisioned for my future, the people who’d formed the core of my life, were gone. No longer available to me. Because an inward force was pulling me away from all that, toward what?

I hadn’t a clue.

At that time, I experimented with returning to the religion of my youth. However, once again, it didn’t take. I floundered through 12 step groups, astrology readings, consciousness raising groups, psychotherapy, depth psychology, new age philosophies, yoga, varieties of bodywork … whatever held out some hope of helping me restore a stable center. Because, really, that’s what I was searching for. Born from sheer desperation, rather than any quality of saintliness or desire to be “spiritual”, I was seeking a stabilizing force.

At the core of that journey was a deep grieving for the loss of the relationship with my mother. The woman who’d taught me to pray at night:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

My mother and her family were steeped in religion. My father and his family were not. I was always blessed with seeing the merits of both arguments: The one for God; and the one for faith being only a fantastical pursuit which, in the end, would yield nothing.

That inner conflict has always set me at odds with organized religion. On the one hand, I’ve had my own personal experience of the divine (thus, ordinary mystic) but I’ve always found the attitudes of organized religion to be onerous, whether it’s been the use of guilt and/or fear as primary persuaders or the hypocrisy and hunger-for-power of its all-too-human practitioners.

The religious/spiritual landscape more often than not has left me feeling turned-off. Yet I’ve never been able to suppress this yearning, this hunger, completely. And I’m most centered, joyful and productive when I’m engaged with THAT THING, call it whatever you like. In my heart, and in my head, and in my writing, I call it many names: God, the divine, that energy, the infinite, THAT THING.

And yet, I tend to wander off the path.

About five years after my initial shift, I began to re-engage with the external world. The experience of the divine, my connection with THAT THING, eased from the center of my life to the periphery. It never went away completely, but nor did it consume me as it had for those first five years. My life unfolded, and it seemed that the “inner gold” I’d mined in those precious five years, kept me going for over two decades. I no longer searched for a spiritual home. And since I’ve never had faith in spiritual teachers—there are just too many horror stories of students being led astray and/or abused by all too human gurus and/or priests—I was content to muddle along my way, mostly on my own.

And then … (Come back for The Prayer Cycle on Friday!)

It FEELS LIKE a Spiritual Renaissance

If being spiritual is not being weird, it’s at least being uncomfortable. We’re so rational, savvy and technological. Everyone is so mesmerized by artificial intelligence that any open discussion about divine intelligence these days is viewed— at best—as cliched dated quaint trivial—at worst—backwards ignorant politically incorrect unenlightened; regardless, it’s a bullet on a “What’s Not Hot” list written decades ago.

We couldn’t care less who made us or why we’re here.

Wait a minute.

What’s this? All these articles about … gasp! Religion, Spirituality, and things otherwise Ethereal.

Computer Generated Spirituality by R. P. Nettelhorst I’d invite R2D2 and C-3PO to the church potluck.

Godman as Rockstar by Udhav Naig A guru paves a road to Hinduism through Bollywood.

Five Approaches to Interspirituality by Carl McColman I’d add a sixth, spiritual voyeurism.

Oprah Finds Reasons to Believe The same week she acquires a 10% share in Weight Watchers. Just sayin.

Spirituality and the Hookup Culture by Rachel Snodgrass Apparently, the rigidities of casual sex aren’t tantric.

Snapchat Spirituality: How Technology Can Be a Force for Religious Good or Evil by Jonathan Merritt Biceps and Dimples, and Jesus, oh my!

Let’s Stop Being Embarrassed by Spirituality by Jay Michelson A journalist does his mea culpa for writing a book about spirituality. Hugs.

Yeah, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I keep a lid on my own spirituality in my daily life, because:

• It’s really personal.
• It’s nobodies business what I believe.
• I don’t want to offend anyone.
• I don’t want to open the door to conversion, evangelization, or proselytizing. Really, I just can’t stand that. You know, you just sit there, teeth gritted, while they bear down on you with their quoted scripture. Like you’ve never heard it before.
• Since we constantly grow and change, but not necessarily at the same rate, or in the same direction, we’re not necessarily going to be on the same page. The conversation could get tricky.
• I don’t want to step in the shit of your self-righteousness.
• You’ll probably think I’m weird if you really know what I think about all this.
• I’m so over westerners ditching christianity for buddhism and then claiming they’re not religious. Dogma is dogma. Indoctrination is indoctrination. No, I did not just say that. But, if the higher ups are wearing robes …
• I’m so sick of women being 2nd class citizens in otherworldly paradigms that I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than listen to your tired-ass rationalizations for male superiority. I mean, really? Are you kidding me? YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT?
• No, I did not just say that, either.
• All of the above.
• None of the above.

Really, I’m okay with whatever you believe, as long as you don’t inflict it on me. And I’m okay if you don’t believe what I believe, because it’s very possible that what I believe will change. If not next year, then maybe over the next decade. I’m old enough to know that. I’ve lived it. More than once. Yes, I’m that old.

It’s possible that online affords us just the right amount of distance and anonymity to have the conversations that we don’t dare have in our bedrooms, classrooms, and work places. Check it out … all over the web … all over the world … people are taking advantage of cyberspace to engage in discussions, exchanges, musings, and outpourings about God/not god, the divine, the infinite—THAT THING.

It definitely feels like a spiritual renaissance.

Is Being Spiritual Being Weird?

I made the changes to my social media accounts and website to prepare for the Sunburned blog series on the evening of October 12, 2015. That morning, I realized a new moon was pending, so I searched Youtube for some insight. Astrology often gets a bad rap, and I’m not here to defend it’s limitations, but “on earth as it is in heaven” [the lord’s prayer, christian], “as above, so below” [hermes trismegistus, pagan] … a little spiritual riffing there, hehe … so, on occasion I enjoy listening to the astrological mystics.

And that morning, I stumbled upon this crazy, weird, and completely wonderful video created by Timothy Halloran of Rasa Lila Healing [rasa-lila roughly translates to "the dance of divine love”, hindu], which I’ve embedded below. And as I watched the video with a huge grin on my face—for sure—I thought yes … Yes … YES!

Because, unless you’ve been super busy and/or massively overwhelmed you’ve probably noticed “the times they are a changing” [bob dylan, singer/songwriter].

What was it about this video, on that morning, that so enchanted me?

Well, if I had to narrow it down to a single quality, it would have to be it’s exuberant weirdness! And if there’s one word I’ve fallen back on to describe myself again and again throughout my life it’s: weird. So … I felt a really special kinship with Timothy’s passionate call to embody [I’ll be creating a glossary with my current definition of spiritual terms along the way, soon …] our own special brand of weirdness, because …

"the uniqueness that makes us totally weird is our individual brilliance and we cannot suppress any of that if we truly want to live in harmonious relationships”

I totally concur with this point of view, and it was awesome to connect with such an impassioned expression of it on the day I embarked on a new endeavor … which might be considered: kind of weird!

Other issues Timothy addresses as he walks us through the astrological aspects occurring in the skies are: equality, the divine feminine and masculine principles, our need to listen to others’ points of view to evolve, and what it’s like to live on the edge of profound change.

In the end, he touches on another concept that is near and dear to my heart: Bridging. He addresses bridging on two levels: within the individual—the bridging of our highest spiritual ideals with our mundane, “selfish” desires; and within community—the bridging of the “unique autonomous individual, doing my thing in the world, and my thing that I’m doing in the world is simultaneously contributing to the benefitting of others”

This video is such a great share for kicking off Sunburned, because the essence of what I believe spirituality is:

“By giving my uniqueness I create harmony in the world”

Allow that to settle deep within you.

More Astrological Forecasts from Timothy

RasaLilaHealing

Thank you, Timothy for helping me kick off this series. Everyone else, take a 30-minute break and enjoy the dance of Rasa-Lila’s vibrant cosmic perspective yourself. I'll be back on Friday.

Why Sunburned?

Greetings, Fellow Travelers!

The end of Summer and beginning of Fall became an interesting time for me. When I settled in to write the final installment in Daughter of Light, there were a lot of questions on my mind as I reflected on the series as a whole.

If you've read Half Faerie and/or Half Mortal, you know that each has a distinct tone, and I intend for War & Grace to continue in that vein. The feedback from readers has also confirmed that each book is better than the one preceding it, and I'm determined that the culmination of Melia's quest doesn't disappoint.

So, I've been digging deeper. That exploration circled me back to the roots of why I began telling this story in the first place; and all the dreams, hope, and love that I've invested in these books since 2008. I want to honor and celebrate all that. Plus, I've made some fascinating discoveries along the way that I'd like to share. To that end, I'm creating Sunburned, a blog series about spirituality to accompany this last phase in my journey of writing Daughter of Light.

Why Sunburned?

Becoming sunburned in the physical sense results from being overexposed to sun-Light. Blistering and painful, tender reddening occurs.

It's not uncommon to become overexposed to religious and spiritual ideals, as well. Being subjected to doctrines and concepts again and again can feel like—and in some instances is—brain-washing. We run in the other direction simply to avoid the parroted language and uncomfortable emotions these kinds of experiences invoke.

On the other hand, spiritual experiences and realities can be mesmerizing. Perhaps, we forget ourselves and play on the beach of other dimensions too long. Losing touch with the mundane, we return to the every day with a different sort of sensitivity.

What about the "Great Awakening?" I haven't had one, but listening to the experience of those who have, the resultant burning away of mind and/or personal identity can leave behind an altered sense of universal truth that can take months if not years to integrate.

And since they speak directly to our inner life, when religious and spiritual ideals are false, they can cause inner damage akin to a burn. We shut down.

For the past two months, I've been immersed in discovering the abundance of spiritual resources available on the internet. It's left me wide-eyed. The internet didn't exist when I had my first spiritual shift. I was both lost, traveling without a guide, and determined, stubbornly and blindly throwing aside every voice except the one within.

But it was hard for me. So I'm thrilled to find that the beliefs I've thought about and questioned and grappled with so much of my life in private, the concepts that fuel my writing, are now being talked about and debated in a very "public square." And I looking forward to participating in the discussion.

Some of the many questions I’ll be exploring in Sunburned are:

• Is the internet ushering in a spiritual renaissance?
• Who are the new spiritual leaders and what are they teaching?
• What’s fueling this spiritual boom?
• How can these resources support our individual hunger for deeper connection, truth and union?

I’ll also be drawing from themes in Daughter of Light—specifically the spiritual nature of Melia’s journey and the evolution of consciousness as the essence of the Whole—and my own story to expand the discourse.

Please join me and be inspired to pursue your own truth as we tread the road to taking our Selves and our Beliefs more Light-ly.

Sincerely,
Heidi

P.S. If you haven't already, please participate in the POLL!