Monthly Archives: April 2010

Finding My Community Divinity

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The community I seek consists of a diverse mix of persons. In the past I have acted as a diplomat covertly assisting and initiating movement in the place where image is substance. It was gratifying. That time has past and I have a new appointment. As I work this blog I am beginning to have a clearer sense of what it might be. I am being refreshed as a forest after a long-awaited rain. The new appointment would then be the new growth.

Contentment gives rise to appointment and it can be kept. I have been content with my discontent in that I have been discontented. I did not so much seek this out it is more a way I have found myself. It is from a lack of movement . Being static on my path. There were other concerns in my life that established a priority. I have met those concerns and am happy with my success. I am now finding the means to reconnect the divine state. To walk in the human community and the world where image is substance simultaneously.

It is a new and unfamiliar way. I was quite content with my covert diplomacy. Working in the shadows discreetly was a lot of fun. It seems I must shed some of the discretion. Certainly this blog has done that, I remain anonymous here but am far more exposed than at any other time.

The movement is great. Clarity and contentment are beginning to lubricate what is bearing.

The Mystic Tourist

Divine Inspiration

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My last post was inspired by a comment from Ron Krumpos. It was the first thing to come to mind and it worked. Thanks Ron. Finding a post topic is usually more involved than that. I use divination to decide what to write. What is divination? It is a contemplative decision-making process. I like to use a Swing Rod, but I do not have to. It is a type of dowsing rod. It is a way to be objective and it works.

I use divination to decide or consider most anything. I think we all do this to varying degrees. I am just deliberate about it. I first consider if I will even write and then I consider what to write. It is typical for me to have no idea at all and I wonder if I can even do it. I drain my mind and search for a word or phrase that gives me a positive response. Contemplation. Once I discover a topic I divine its title. At this point I am generally still dumbfounded as I have yet to consider it except to arrive at a topic. I continue this process throughout and then I publish my post. I am as surprised as anyone by what I write.

This particular post is one that I have given prior consideration but that is a rare exception. I am just now sitting and divining the next word. When I started this post I was happy to find something I had already considered to write about. It feels a little easier than eking content from vapor but it is the same process.

Of course I am familiar with the things I write about. I usually have no idea what it will be before it appears on my laptop but I think about this stuff all the time. I write about my experience, my life. What I do and have been doing for decades.

I am enjoying it and hope you do too.

The Mystic Tourist

Absolute Confidence

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In the often murky landscape of image, the place where image alone is present and perceived, confidence requires openness. It is usual for people to react to the landscape of image by shutting it out. This begins a lifelong devotion to ignorance and ignorance always produces denial. I am not suggesting anyone should jump into this place and master it. Getting through life without having to interpret this stuff is the norm. Different people have different things to do. That is great, perfect, wonderful. Just as others do not have this to do, it is what I have to do. It is not the child’s complaint; ‘Do I have to!’. It is what I have and so I do it.

The act of shutting things out never works, it alway shuts things in. We shut in the very thing that we would shut out. The door we use is ignorance and the lock is denial. We go about our life pretending things are different than we know they are. Many people do this without compromising themselves. Grappling with this stuff is just not something that concerns them, it is not what they have to do.

There is much marauding in this land of image and that can be frightening. It is typical to react with the sword of ignorance, the shield of denial, and, the door is shut. To wander this land and discover its richness, openness is confidence. Ignorance and denial are pretend and so we only have to let them go and then they do not exist. The unpleasantness discovered here finds no place without a door to shut it in. What is absolute is true and what is true is absolute.

Truth, Compassion and Understanding are absolute. That truth is absolute is obvious. Understanding and compassion are absolute because their measure is singular and absolutely sufficient. There is compassion enough for all and anything can be understood. These single nothing out as being more or less deserving, their measure is singular and all-encompassing. It is in what is absolute that we have a room without doors or even walls. All are deserving of understanding and compassion. Their presence requires openness.

It is this openness that is confidence. Absolute confidence.

The Mystic Tourist

Mystic Perception Actual Seeing

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Perception has as much to do with choice and disposition as it has to do with the actual perception of what actually is. Disposition and choice serve to cloud our mind or clear it. The discernment of our environment is always inclusive. We do see it. Mystic perception, for me, involves the realm of our environment that is image. Observable structure and relationships, the texture of place that is image. In considering such things as image perception, a neutral mind-set is indispensable. Our inclination to see things as we want them to be can only be defeated by our will to accept things as they are. I must accept that what I observe that is image, is just that. It is not owned by my opinion or interpretation.

Perception is usually distant from its aspect that is image. We are too busy to concern ourselves or otherwise occupied. For me this realm is what occupies me and keeps me busy. My perception is such that I am always sensitive to it. It is largely disposition that determines the images I see. Neutrality nurtures clarity of perception. Allowing my disposition to be charged with destructive qualifiers, anger resentment blame etc, draws to me that which clouds perception. All image is actual. The images seen are determined by where I choose to be.

The work I am doing as the Mystic Tourist is clearing my mind. It is a project I have been angeling for, for some time. With mysticism one is confident in the path, that wherever I am, I am where I need to be to get to where I am going. Providence assures the constant presence of the components of success. I might have chosen some other thing but what I fell into is this. It is acting to calm and clear my mind. My desired perception is being restored.

The Mystic Tourist

Exodus / Spiritual Life Beyond Religion

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Have we arrived at a new Exodus? Have we found the honesty to abandon our faith and restore our confidence directly in God, in what is true? I think many of us have. We have reached an understanding. The fear mongering, hell and damnation, and the shallow promise of Gods favor bestowed on the few, has left us disenchanted, empty-handed. We are looking for something different but not something new. The honest truth. Ordinariness has value. The secular community whose quest is truth understands that you do not have to be born into, or join a special club, to know God. Truth. There is no sacred ceremony that makes one worthy. God is not held accountable to us by our good deeds, by a contrived rite or a ritual.

What is true affects us all in equal measure and none escape it.

Gods word is not fixed to a page by the hand of man and then administered by a special court. Nothing could be more obvious and we all know this truth. People do deny truth and pretend things are different then they are. That can not and does not change what is true or our knowledge of it. If I have not already done so, in some prior post, let me set the record straight. Being a member of a church does not preclude a person from knowing the truth embracing it and bringing that embrace to bear in ones community. People of truth are needed everywhere and that is where you find them.

Let us each decide for ourself where and how the truth is best served and bring that to bear where we are. The truth requires no proof or convincing, as no one can escape it, it represents itself. We only need to nurture it within ourself for its value to gain notice. Truth is not captured by the valueless purchase of right and wrong. It is omnipotent and omnipresent. It suffers no injury and knows no harm. It is its own proof.

The Mystic Tourist

Temporal Urgency Durable Being

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Against the background of  eternity and known existence what is a single lifetime? Does it even have a measurable value; is it enough to be measured? Purpose and value. How do we know or measure such things? I like to think that it all alludes to an underling value. That our experience has the durability of existence. We have a temporal experience that imparts urgency and importance due to its brevity and its appointment, our lifetime, creates a point of focus by which what is, might be appreciated. We have been organized into what we are by what actually is. There is nothing missing from what does add up to, what we are, and we add nothing to what is. We are as important as we are unimportant and there is a value whose durability sustains us. Can we understand such things? The fact of our existence proves that we do. Without understanding there is no capacity to organize oneself into existence.

We have no option to change who we are. In other words what actually is, is not different due to what we think about it and the aspect of our person that is who, is fixed. How we are is as a separate reality, and, we have the creative authority to do as we will. It has been my observation that we can direct how to represent who. It is the concentration of person that is considered enlightenment or a divine state. It is a condition that is grossly overstated and misunderstood. I think there is a value to bringing this divine state into the human community as a statement of ordinariness. There is nothing extraordinary about it as it is only unusual for people to do such things.

Let us get ordinary and simply be who we are. To hell with how unless it is who. It is the who of our how that actually exists. Who is not dependent on our temporarily. It is what actually does exist.

The Mystic Tourist

Secular Mysticism Integrity and Credibility

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The wealth and resources of community is primarily what religion has to offer. That is my opinion. Religions do support the community that is their membership. The success of  one member is shared with the group and credit is then assigned to God. People like to wear religious symbols. These symbols fashion a bond between like-minded people who then network into a community of broader support. Credit is given to God. We see this in politics, business and social networks. Religions form powerful communities and then share their resources with their members. This is but a slice. There is a great diversity within religion and true generously and compassionate outreach are often part of the mission.

The good works and community support of religion complicate departure from it. For me these human networks that facilitate the prosperity and success of the network members is the incentive to leave. It seems disingenuous to form powerful organizations able to lend support and facilitate opportunity and then credit God as the benefactor. The concept, that if you believe certain things, usually unquestionably, and join the group, the ensuing benefits are then proof of Gods favor due to your religious commitments, has a certain vacancy. A vacancy of credibility. Of course God is not absent from religion. It is the character and definition of God presented religiously where Gods absence is noticed. It is God, self-definitive, self-expressive, that dominates my life. I believe that whatever is true has a durability, a strength, that is omnipotent.

This why I am a secularist. I relish the integrity and credibility of confidence in God absent the institutions of human design. I am confident only in God.

I believe there is a greater value in pursuing this than the personal value to myself. Otherwise I would not bother. I prefer to be without notice, to keep my experience private and hidden from view. That however compromises any hope of satisfaction and fulfillment. It is a choice on my path that leads nowhere. I am sure there are others who want this discussion and so I am here endeavoring to bring it about.

The Mystic Tourist