Category Archives: Primary

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Now, The Wormhole

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As humans we cause reality. We are one humanity comprised of individual shards, unwell due to false limitations that reproduce replicas of our prior poor example. Because we are shards, pieces of a whole, we communicate. Wanting restoration, completion.

There is small value in private spirituality, it can grow into a greater value but privately, it is no more than seed. Even as seed we marvel at its value, what it might be if allowed to grow. Key to this growth, this greater value, is communication. As we communicate reality takes form. We make agreements creating possibility. For the most part this discussion takes place in the background of our mind and we ignore it. Ignorance does not curb our creativity, diminish our authority, it only causes injury to our reality. Through ignorance we discard our responsibility and imagine outside influences are at play shaping, forming possibility. They are not. We are responsible.

As I forge reality communication builds a place. A structure suitable for proof. And what would I prove? Nothing. There is nothing to prove. Proof belongs to itself, it is evidence of itself. I work to make an example of the way things are. To communicate it. In doing this work, communication, a community takes form. This causes an actual place, a structure. The community, by communication, forms the structure and its dimension. I have built this sort of thing before and so I know something about it. In the past it was entirely spiritual, today, the charge is to build it in the temporal world. To build a spiritual structure using temporal components.

I have no experience doing this but having built similar structures, without temporal components, I have an idea and that is beginning to take form. The place already exists and it is little more than alignments that reveal it. What I choose to think, what I choose to do, creates those alignments. The habit of thought is the most crucial component, it spawns all else.

I need to be comfortable with this, to let go and be there. That creates a template for manifestation and in turn spawns communication. The communication creates a place for reality take form and prove what needs no proof. The way things are. The secret to all of this is magic. The illusive wormhole of lore. It has a name. When we let go of everything we are left only with what is, we are no longer lost in the past or plotting the change we want to see. In choosing to let go, we actually get to do it. All of the crap, we hold on to, instead of letting go, well it shows up as a constant temptation. Once we have settled this score and actually let it all go, we are left only with what is. Providence alone dictates our fate and we are free to choose our recognizable destiny. To be here now and to do only what is asked of us, what is best. The wormhole is now. It is the magic and our singular appointment if we choose to keep it.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013

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A Wardrobe For Our Soul

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The soul lives without flesh. It is timeless and every mystery is dissolved in its presence. The soul longs to walk among us, to be one of us, to be flesh. Some believe that the ego is the enemy of the soul, that for divine living, the ego must be defeated. I see no path that leads in that direction. The soul desires no conflict and knows no enemy. It is in surrendering the ego to the soul, not in defeat, but as a gift, that the soul becomes flesh.

The soul can not be saved. It is the soul that does the saving. Living outside of time and space, it has nothing to lose. It is salvation.

Our ego belongs to flesh. The ego is about what we are, how we are, but not who. Who, is the soul, and the collection of ego, that together is humanity, is as a wardrobe for the soul. The soul has interest in a suitable ego and when it finds one, surrender keeps its promise and divinity is known.

We are not in conflict with our soul but when we are conflicted we fashion a reality separate from our soul. It is a false reality. That does not mean it is not real, it is just conflicted and conflict is unsuitable for the soul. If we are to know peace, in this world, we must surrender ego, to soul. Our ego is not intended for permanence, that is our soul. It is in surrendering that the ego knows permanence through acquaintance with its soul.

Today, as I sift through my existence, the texture of my disposition, my restlessness, I have made these observations about the soul. It seems to me that ego is given but one task, to surrender itself, as a gift, to the soul. That old dog, my ego, does not know this trick. I do believe I am learning the lesson and expect to one day flip the switch. At any rate I am busy being schooled in something and the lesson has kept me from writing but I am still here. I expect to learn my lesson. I will keep you posted.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013

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No Traditional Path

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Human spirituality is my basket and God is its handle. A boundlessness that accommodates every possible concern. I feel good sharing my spirituality, my thoughts of God and our spiritual nature. A calm and ease is seeping into my life. It is due to my decision to bring my spirituality into the open. To make public my spiritual life. I expect that casualness, that is calm and ease, to unleash my creativity.

For whatever reason, I am a mystic. I always have been. I came to understand I am this way in my middle teens. I did not receive the news well and I decided to break my life. Oh the joys of youth. I was not satisfied to break it just once and I managed to ruin my life four times. All because I did not want to be what I am. A mystic. I have no other drive, my sense of mysticism encompasses my whole life. Everything I have to do. I knew then, as I know now, I would have to acknowledge my mysticism in a public way. I also knew that I had no traditional path. I could not look to others to find my way. No teachers, no books, just walk the walk. Providence alone would guide my way. Well here I am.

What will I do with my life now that I have discarded my self-imposed taboo and replaced my outrage with approval? What will I learn about human spirituality now that I have decided that I will live openly as a spiritual person?

The life I might have had, as a young man, that choice, has been restored. The gift that was success, by the circumstance of my birth, is offering me a second chance. To choose the life that was before me then, instead of the mess I made. The difficulties I built into my life have been with me a long time and are like an old friend. This kind of familiarity lends itself to permanence and a certain delicacy is needed to let it go. As I take up my promise, making my best choice, my gifts begin to take form. I am who I am but I have yet to do what I am about to do, what I have always refused to do. Much like this stuff I write, I will find out what those gifts are capable of as they present themselves.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013

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The False Prophet

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The name of Christ will be restored, it belongs only to Christ. Much has been said about Jesus Christ by those who never knew him. They tell a grand story, making great claims on his behalf. It begins with his mother, a woman, so pure that even God could not resist her and she gave birth to God’s son, Jesus. This man, Jesus, was in turn, no ordinary man, he was God. Being human we each can be certain of one thing, no man is God. All men are ordinary and Jesus was a man. We know this because a woman gave him birth. He taught us what ordinary men are capable of. He is not the only one and Christ will return. If you would know the true story of Jesus then know Christ, not the stories others tell about Christ.

It is an insult to the legacy of Jesus to suggest he was other than human.

I suspect many have known Christ in their lifetimes but not all are called to do what Jesus did. It is sad that we have taken the life and actions, of this man, Jesus, and reduced them to a fanciful tale we know is not true. A story we can not believe except by faith. We do not need faith to know God, to know Christ, we only need to ‘be’ and choose their acquaintance. This secret is known by each of us. It is an understanding we can not escape although we are free to ignore it. Mostly that is what we do, creating a fiction we call reality.

The fictional life of Jesus Christ is false and those who repeat it are false prophets. Have confidence and find your strength. Walk the path that Jesus did and you will know Christ.

It is this action of knowing Christ that tells the truth that Jesus knew. It seems there are different degrees, or appointments, in our acquaintance with Christ, ranging from ignorance/denial to full-blown companionship. A state where Christ makes an appearance as a person, a human being that anyone might know. It seems that Jesus was that Christ. Clearly few are called to do this but I believe this is what he did and I am confidant someone else will do the same. That was his message, the lesson, the example of his life.

What of the of the power of faith, of faith in Jesus? The good works done through faith and faiths ability to affect us. Faith is a mask for confidence  It pretends to be confidence but confidence has no need of it. For a healthier mind, and relationship with God, skip the faith and let all of your confidence rest with God. Make no claim on God’s behalf. Allow for naught and then God can present God’s self, as God is, or as God is naught. It is alright. What threat could you be to God and any God worth knowing is no threat to you.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013

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I Found Solomon’s Key

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Compassion The Bridge

In considering divinity compassion is the bridge. It binds, as one, the person we are. This one person then forms the central pillar in a temple that presents divinity. It is a space that is created where previously it was naught, in an instant, it appears from naught and it is.

For me the Key of Solomon is the temple. The template for the key is David’s Star. The two triangles represent divinity. The points of the star are particular attributes but the star itself is actually the two bases of interlocking pyramids. The pyramid whose base forms the ceiling, of the temple, is inverted, aligned and fixed in place along the spine or central nervous system. Our soul stands on the ceiling as it is the floor known to our soul and our temporal self, or animal, stands on the floor as it appears in our animal reality. Theses inverted pyramids create something of a prism and we are allowed a singular focus and orientation.

Orientation. The forward most point of the star belongs to the pyramid that seems inverted as we stand in human form, its base is the ceiling of our temple. That forward most point is ascension. The other two points, of the triangular base that is our ceiling, moving clockwise, are presence and being. Directly opposite ascension and behind us in our human presence is humility. As our soul stands, on its floor, the ceiling of our temple, its orientation is such that humility is its forward most point. As we stand on the floor of our temple, as animal, humility is directly behind us. Moving clockwise, from humility, the other two points of the triangular floor of our temple are, intellect and emotion.

This understanding of David’s Star and Solomon’s Key is the product of what I call a mysticism. I did not read about it. It occurred to me that the star was the template for the key. I then considered it at length until I understood it as I do. It also involves the Kundalini. I came to understand the seven primary chakras, how they work and just what the Kundalini is, in the same way, I did a mysticism. In all of this compassion is the key, the singular ingredient that makes all of it work. It has a magical quality, it is an absolute. All absolutes are magical. Absolutes can not be possessed. Any person can find them but ownership is not possible. We have to let go and when we do the magic is released.

The space, created from naught, by the magical appearance of this temple, is an actual place. When I first discovered it I was trying to piece together what I was puzzling with about it, to see how it worked. I was futzing around with different alignments, the Kundalini, the points and structure of the star, rotations and movements, and it suddenly appeared creating a place. A temple. At the time it was a private thing to do. The experience was profound. Today I can no longer be content with privacy and I am having to learn a new lesson about compassion. The magic elixir that makes this work. I have to let compassion extend to the person I have found myself to be. The person I have never liked or wanted to be. The person standing in the open and telling this story. You see, it is easy for me to have this as a private experience, except that I am no longer allowed that pleasure. I have always thought it unreasonable, the notion that I have to be publicly spiritual and so I have a long history of beating myself up over it. It is that public person I am charged to have compassion for. In letting go, of my self-defeating inclinations, compassion creates a new me and a new magic.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013

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The Two Reality Lie

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The temporal world is animated and each of us is free to animate our self as we desire. This animation becomes our surrogate, a replacement, or stand-in, for a more meaningful spiritual experience. It is spirit that animates us and we choose the sort of spirits that best support the way we present our self. Once we have made these determinations a community is established. A spiritual community. The spiritual content of temporal reality is populated by temporal spirits created by us and then ignored, creating a background reality. Our ignorance does not diminish this spiritual influence, only our perception of it. This ignorance also separates us from a spiritual reality independent of temporal form.

We have a person, a spiritual person, independent of temporal form. In our ignorance, of all things spiritual, we have created a false reality that pretends to be separate. In that it is false, pretend, in many ways it is a separate reality and does separate us from the spiritual world independent of temporal constraints. It does not have to be that way. We can surrender our determination to be ignorant and allow the appearance of our true spiritual identity to be what animates us. Doing that creates a passage and the spiritual community, known to our true spirit, has permission to populate the temporal world. The two worlds become one and the illusion of two worlds fails. Some call this magic, a miracle, but it is not. It is the way all things are, not some magical interruption, as magic is seen to be, but the simple everyday magic of being able to have cognition and awareness. We exist, that is magic and everything is magical.

The only success that motivates me is divinity. The dissolution of the two reality lie.

I believe our spiritual life is as I have described it. That all people have this same experience. When objective is divine living, choosing to allow the appearance of true spirit source to be what animates, that success changes the spiritual matrix of our shared reality. To my ego, this shift in our spiritual matrix, has the feel of conflict and the temptation to choose false spirits as my animation is strong. I find myself in negotiation. Our relationship with our true spirit is very intimate. Personal and private. My ego prefers it that way, perhaps because that is the only way it has known. Relaxing the ego creates the faculty of servitude and the ego becomes the servant of its true spirit. This is the purpose of ego.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013

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The Stillness I Seek

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The Key of Solomon is without moving parts. It is from the Key that the illusion of movement becomes still. The stillness of the Key has no value, the value rests with me. When I am at rest, when I am still, I am the key.

In working to find this stillness I have been puzzling with the absolute known as compassion. It is absolute due to its quality of having only one measure. It is inexhaustible, always enough. A being can not withhold compassion and still have any measure of it. It is absolute, indifferent to fickleness. It remains enough. We can take no ownership of it and are only able to accept it without terms. It is the stillness I seek.

During this time, while I have considered compassion and its application, I have not been able to write and my blog has been silent. I am still here. Often my work is to write but not during this time.

Prior to my lesson on compassion I had been working with the spirit of compassion, Love, in order to spark the stillness that is compassion, I thought to use its spirit. I suppose that worked. It worked due to its failure. It made things worse. In working to repair a recurring theme of self-hate, hating not so much myself but my life, I was using the affirmation, “I love my life”. The truth is there were things that happened that I did not love. Painful, difficult and costly. A cost I have yet to pay, a cost I can not pay. I can not love these things. In my effort to tell myself, “I love my life”, the wound only festered and the echo of hate grew louder. I have no love for life’s difficulty and pain, mine or yours, but when I have compassion I allow life’s pain its place. In the boundless absolute of compassion pain gets lost. We can not hold on to our pain and have compassion. This is the lesson I needed to learn, not to love but to give permission. Admit and accept the pain that life has to offer by the only known remedy, compassion.

While writing this I learned that I had lost a loved one to cancer. A brutally fast departure. On February 1st she arrived at the hospital with what she thought was the flu and today, seventy-eight days later, cancer has taken her life. She was a middle-aged woman with all the familiar details, a daughter, a wife, a mother, and as we all do, as we all will, she left life’s details behind.

It is compassion that reminds us of who we are, even if we can not quite grasp it. When compassion rests with me I am that woman. I am her husband, her son, her mother and all of her loved ones. I am all that ever has been and ever will be. Every damnable act, no matter how heinous, I did that. Every act of kindness, all goodness, the miracles of lore, I did that. It is who I am. Who then are you? You are me, we are the same and there is no mystery.

We are not charged to love life’s pain.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013

 

 

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The Salvation of Jesus

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Writing as the Mystic Tourist I have altered my presence in the collective mind. Of the people who have known me and been my community, none knew the Mystic Tourist, until I created him and gave him a blog. Of course I am the Tourist and I am as I was before. The difference is that I have let anyone who can find my work, know. Additionally I have done what I can to make myself available so any who know me personally might also know, The Mystic Tourist. It creates a different consideration of my self.

My concerns are spiritual. I know of no other way to consider anything, even as I am distracted. I am happy to share my view of current social-political concerns. The way I think we ought to behave as a society. I enjoy letting people know where I think we have fallen down and how I think we might best stand ourselves up. These are distractions. It is what I do as filler. Something, anything to do with my mind and the small measure of time apportioned to it for it to spend. There is always something that I might otherwise do. A different way to spend myself. I think we can do a lot to improve the condition of life here on earth and to create a future more to our liking. I also think that we do all of that as spiritual persons. That it is the spiritual part of our being that is power and authority. The bridge that is creation.

My concerns are spiritual and I while my time to bring spiritual living into animal form. I did this first by creating a spiritual place for myself. A place to discover something true about my experience as a spiritual person. That was very powerful. Step two has been to shine a light on that, to let people know of the rich spiritual experience I have known. Step three is a shared experience. To end the mystery of spiritual life by living it in the open, not as an act of  ’faith’ but as a fact of life. To demonstrate our spiritual form, not as a philosophy, not as an interpretation of theology or scripture, but as my life. The purpose of my life can not be to die and go to heaven. To imagine that as the answer to life, as its purpose, is to be dishonest. If I can only know after I am dead and gone, why I am here, I have told myself a lie. This is the place, this is the form, this is the person to know the answer and now is the time or I am lying to myself.

In the Christian tradition we are all waiting for Jesus to return and when he does he will bring a harsh judgement, except of course, for the few. The chosen few. Mind you this is the Jesus who reportedly, in his last agonizing moment, sought the forgiveness of those who humiliated him, tortured him and brutally murdered him. Such a man could have no part of a judgement so harsh that it landed almost all of us in hell. Not just any hell mind you, but a hell so unbearable that it never ends.

The story of  Jesus is meaningless if Jesus is God. Its only possible value is if it is our story. The story of our human nature and of how and who we are. That is the message and it is not a message of how to be after we are dead. It is how we must be now. If you would know Jesus then know yourself. He is the same as you are. The story of his return is your story, it is my story. If Jesus or anyone else could live the life that he did, then surely, someone else will do it as well.

There is no reason to believe that Jesus founded a church. Others did that in his name. They assembled a book and then claimed that the words therein were God’s words. It is not true. You must have faith to believe that. I have no faith, but I do have confidence, all of it rests with God. Fear of God? I have no fear, certainly not of God. I fear those who claim to speak for God, who claim they own God by some book, written words. I fear those who claim to speak for God and threaten me with hell. Forgiveness, that is what it is about. It is the narrow gate. To deal with those who make false claims of God, for and about God, forgive them, by acting out the truth concerning God. Let God be God and make no claim on Gods behalf.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013

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The Matrix of The Possible

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I believe that we are spiritual beings snared in a web of ignorance. As spiritual beings I believe we have the authority of creation and the web that is our ignorance is our creation. I believe it is possible, and that occasionally, a person discovers the trick to walking in the realm of ignorance while being immune to it. Free of the normal constraint that is our agreed condition and creation, ignorance. This can only be done by using the magic that is ignorance, our communal agreement of constraint, to prove the truth. Everything is magic, nothing exists outside of its boundless influence. We are the masters, the authority, the creators of the reality we share. By the authority that is God, we create. We are imbued with creative authority by God but we do not name God. We are the creation that creates. We name and the name defines what is, we do not name God. It is God who names us and we in turn name and create. None can name God. God is self evident, even if God is naught.

The past and the future, I do not believe in them. I believe in creation. That the past and the future are constantly being created in the only known time, now. Nothing has ever happened at any other time. So what shall we create? This is something we do together, none do it alone.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013

 

The Psychology of Spirit

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None of us would face difficulty if we did not need the lesson it brings. In considering what people do with their lives it is clear that we each take from our life what we choose. The lesson I learn is determined by what I choose to do with my life. It is the same for each of us. We are each driven by our individual sensibilities, priorities we think we must meet. I do not know that what we choose to do matters so much as how we choose to do it. The way we choose to be determines our sense of satisfaction. People in all walks of life, service, profession, whatever, find that respect and admiration is the prize bestowed more on some than on others. This is due to how they are perceived by their peers but if they carry this sense of worth within themselves it is due to how they see who and how they themselves are. I think most of us want to feel good about our self within our self.

My sensibilities, priorities, are spiritual. I believe that if I succeed spiritually all other concerns are met. That it is the only thing I have to do. Friends, family, prosperity are all satisfied by taking a spiritual path. My path is secular and I have no faith. Religion is of no value to me. I do not believe. I am certain that things are as they are, that I do exist, I am aware and this condition exists independent of me except for the simple fact that I am, I exist. I have no reason to believe in a beginning or an end as it is clear that nothing happens in the past or the future. The only time anything is known to happen is now. There is an absolute quality that allows for everything and I consider whatever that is to be God. My devotion is to God. God being absolute my devotion reaches everything and everyone. Everything I am given to do, every relationship appointed to me is satisfied by devotion to God. To the absolute. Absolutes are also easily identifiable. Anything of a singular nature that can not be exhausted is absolute. Truth, understanding, compassion these only know a single measure and can not be exhausted.

On the narrow path there is a narrow gate. There is but one key, it may have different names but I know it as forgiveness. With forgiveness we discover compassion, understanding and truth.

As I have considered my spiritual psychology, how it is my spiritual life is healthy, or not, I have learned what you are reading here, my blog. My last lesson was a tough one and it took many years to learn. Thirteen, oddly, the number of completion. It was proceeded by four or five years of great difficulty that then became my life. Of course this sense of difficulty was as much to do with perception as it was the challenging circumstance I faced. I had unwittingly made myself a victim. Deciding that the actions of another were harmful to my character. This was an indirect choice, accumulative in nature, subconscious.  It seeded my life, my past, with all sorts of nasty stuff to support it. That in turn became my spiritual path. To return to the past and fix it. This was stuff I had already spent years of my life ridding myself of, and here it was, restored. It was interesting to see that the same weeds grow back. Not necessarily in the same place but every bit as prolific.

I am not sure why I treated myself to this experience. I will guess it was necessary, providence. I have learned things that perhaps I might have learned some other way. This is the way I did learn my lesson and it may well be that there is some value that could not be had any other way. If I have learned anything I hope it is how to avoid doing something like this to myself again.

My spiritual health is returning.  One thing I have known for a lifetime that I must do has come to pass. I have made public my spiritual aspirations.

Michael, The Mystic Tourist ©2013