Earlier this week I was listening to an interview with the religious scholar Jeffrey Kripal. I’m a big fan of Kripal’s because he’s one of the few academics taking the more disreputable corners of the spiritual scene— psychics, past life rememberers, PSI researchers, UFO experiencers— seriously. While all the other eggheads are off re-interpreting Buddhism as a kind of tech-bro secular neurohacking, perfectly rational and unthreatening to the exclusively materialist status quo, Kripal is not afraid to get weird.
At one point the interviewer, Terry Patten, asserts the standard spiritual advice given in meditation, to ignore any abnormal phenomena like spiritual visions and messages that inevitably arise in prayer and meditation as they are distractions from the goal of enlightenment (if you are Buddhist) or Divine Union (for the Christians).
Kripal turns the tables and asks, (to paraphrase) “If a person has a profound experience like a pre-cognitive vision, something that later turns out to be true, why would we ignore that? Why would we say that doesn’t matter?” He then makes that point that most of what we now recognize as the “great spiritual traditions,” stemming from either the Abrahamic ( Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or Eastern (Hinduism, Buddhism, and various offshoots) are shaped primarily by male experiences and particularly a sublimated male desire found in monastic expressions.
His believes, based on his experiences in Catholic monasticism, that this desire is primarily homoerotic, and while that may be true— reading a little John of the Cross or Bernard of Clairvaux would certainly support this— in my experience, there are plenty of heterosexual men drawn to the ascetic renunciation of desire; I know because these are primarily the types of men I tend to date or be friends with.
This ascetic path of renunciation is not without merits. If we look at the long sweep of human history, it seems pretty clear that unchecked male desire has often been responsible for a great deal of violence— war, rape, colonization, etc. From this perspective, we can see ascetic spiritual practices that redirect desire toward a disembodied ground of being as an evolutionary adaptation that curbs the most dangerous excesses of human wanting.
But to lionize asceticism as the only true path toward spiritual growth and awakening ignores the fact that desire is itself the primary driver of evolutionary growth; none of us would be here without it. If it sometimes must be contained and redirected toward the spiritual, it nonetheless has an entirely good and necessary role to play in the realm of material earth and bodies; it is Hildegard of Bingen’s Viriditas, the erotic life force that creates lush green forests, rushing rivers, and all living things on the planet.
I first learned Centering Prayer, a form of meditation based on the medieval Christian classic The Cloud of Unknowing and heavily informed by the mechanics of Zen, in 2011. By 2013 I was practicing regularly, about 45 to 90 minutes a day, and I began to have pretty trippy experiences. I felt all sorts of energetic currents coursing through my body, like lightning shooting up my legs or zapping out my spinal column at odd intervals, causing me to twitch and jerk like a dancing robot running out of batteries. A woman ran out of a pizza shop as I passed by on the street to tell me how bright and shining my aura was. I had a very clear and detailed vision pop into my head one day of a very specific man, complete with insights about his character and motivation; I would end up dating him 6 months later. A very insistent inner voice directed me to walk up a mountain, despite my resistance, I ultimately obeyed and helped to rescue a man who had fallen and broken his neck.
When I asked the meditation instructors what to do with all these experiences, they gave me the same line Patten advanced to Kripal— just ignore it, it’s a distraction from the real goal of mystical oneness. But something in me couldn’t let it go. I felt that what was awakening in me wanted to be put to some use, and I longed for someone to teach me.
The thing about psychic experiences, PSI phenomena, and the like, is that they are not just concerned with spiritual experiences in and of themselves. They don’t seek to rise above the world and merge into some undifferentiated unity, rather they turn spiritual awareness back toward material purposes. An intuitive or precognitive experience may give you valuable information about your path in life, or warn you away from danger. Messages from dead loved ones or ancestors tell us that our lives matter, that we are not entirely erased when we pass on, that the dead still value the realm of the living and embodied. Certainly one can be carried away by these supernatural experiences and lose all touch with reality, as people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders often are. But managed properly, I find these experiences are supremely practical and helpful for life here on earth.
When I finally did find a teacher who taught me to manage the energetic flows of viriditas (aka prana or chi) in my body, and to cultivate quality relationships and messages from the spirit world while eliminating the noise, it was because I listened to a whispering deep in my heart, a desire that kept pulsing and burning despite my attempts to listen the the sane, sedate, respectable monks and meditation teachers . I woke up one morning with a dream pointing me to Puget Sound and I moved to Tacoma; within a week I had met her.
The year I spent in a Psychic Mastery program (not something I ever thought in a million years I would do) was one of the most difficult and best years of my life. I learned that I was capable of more than I ever thought I was. I learned to be authentic about who I was, even if it seemed crazy to others. I learned to see through a lot of the bullshit stories I was telling myself. And most importantly, I learned to listen to trust myself and the wisdom of my heart’s desire above anything else.
The path of the renunciate has its place, but it’s not one I could ever follow. I had to follow my unruly longing to become something weirder and wilder than the good little Christian girl I was raised to be or the placid Bodhisattva I was aiming for.
All of this is a quite roundabout way of telling you that I am speaking on this idea of desire as a path toward spiritual growth next week on the Shift Network’s online Mystics Summit. There are many well-known spiritual names speaking, people like Kabir Helminski, Mirabai Starr, and Matthew Fox as well as some very cool newcomers like Tada Hozumi and Sophie Strand, talking about animism and ecology. Some of my friends, Gareth Higgins, Mike Morrell, Mickey Scott-Bey Jones, Tripp Fuller, and Carl McColman will be speaking as well.
It’s free to watch within 2 days of broadcast, though you can upgrade to get all the recordings. My own session is going to be broadcast at 2pm on Wednesday, 8/17 and I hope to see you there.
"While all the other eggheads are off re-interpreting Buddhism as a kind of tech-bro secular neurohacking, perfectly rational and unthreatening to the exclusively materialist status quo, Kripal is not afraid to get weird..." THIS IS HILARIOUS and accurate!
More to the point -
I've been really enjoying reading your work and reflections, RB! You're an articulate writer and your unique contributions to the greater conversation is very timely and needed!!
I also took a listen to the recommended podcast. It's encouraging to know he's helping represent the future of spirituality in his realms of influence.
I love this following of desire and the possibilities of where it can lead, which are beyond anything we could conjure with our own will. I've also had similar occurrences - a bunch to follow a bird in the woods, which led me to some hikers in need of directions , for example.
Are you familiar with what is known as the "Left-hand path"? It's along the same lines - in opposition to spiritual paths focused on the transcendence and renunciation of our physical existence and desires, it's an embracing and celebrating of the material plane and the fulfillment of our desires for the same purpose of spiritual enlightenment. As you can imagine, It's been given a bad reputation through the centuries that follows it still today. It's not exactly what you're writing about here, but there's definitely some parallels.