Years ago,
I heard of the old-fashioned-sounding phrase
"being slewn in the Spirit"
and wondered what it was.
I was shown pictures of people falling backwards -
a pastor had come down from a podium
and touched their foreheads.
I wondered -
"Did he push them" (It was always a he!)
If it was "real" I wondered what it felt like.
My desire to know "real miracles" fought with
my left-brain rationality, and I felt
fear, discomfort, yearning and despair.
I remembered childhood journeys to healers
for cures for my mother's post-polio paralysis,
(and then my father's crippling arthritis) and I again
experienced that odd mixture of hope and despair.
Along came Toronto Airport Church,
nobody "pushing" or touching this time, just
seemingly spontaneous giggling and shouting;
if you'd been passing by and happened to look in,
the temptation might well have been to
call the cops - "It's the Moonies again!"
I was disturbed and strangely longing,
all at once.
The desire for connection and bliss in me
were real enough - they had been there
since earliest childhood.
My way of connection,
the way I was "brought up" and evolved,
had been through music and (anglo-catholic) ritual.
Music allowed the much-needed
cosmic flights of imagination,
and ritual gave the "dance-steps";
by comparison, the dramas of everyday earth-life
seemed pale
(except when I was falling in love!)
All through my earlier adulthood
I secretly wished for that unexpected
"something cosmic" to "happen to me"
as though from "outside"
(like I believed falling-in-love was!)
I wanted to feel a miracle happening
in my own body.
(I've later understood this
yearning for personal Gnosis
is like wanting to go home
to the cosmic womb -
but the thought was not yet formed
in a way ready to be expressed.)
When my own inner chaos
broke through the walls of propriety
the need for real transformation
"whatever it takes"
led to a series of unexpected blessings
which would realize my longing
to experience God in my body.
In Sweden it's called Liberating Breathing,
(Frigörande Andning, see Wäxthuset)
others call it Source Breathing,
- there are many names:
perhaps this breath-journey is the
"being reborn" that Jesus speaks about when
Nathaniel visits him secretly at night -
whatever it may be called, this healing-by-breathing
is the body's own process that transforms
through incredible experience as
the Breath takes charge, a "glowing"
seemingly from without as well as within,
a sometimes traumatic journey into awesome Light.
It was these breath exercises
(Source Breathing can take many forms)
that were my first re-experiences of a bodily
Journey back to My Self,
and to Oneness.
Then came a time of Reiki attunements.
Initially, I myself didn't feel anything very much,
though my co-workers said they experienced
"deep warmth" coming out of my hands when I
put my hands on their shoulders.
It wasn't until I started doing Tantra
that I really felt the energy in my own body.
It was the final ceremony at the end of the first Tantra course -
I experienced a "tingling" so strong that I felt
the whole group would start to levitate!
There was a yoga experience soon after -
I suddenly heard the "inner fire" starting to roar,
ready to explode out of my head.
(I was on my own, so I shut it down.)
There have been many attunements since,
both formal and informal,
of varying degrees of intimacy and strength.
But the most recent, and perhaps,
strangest series of re-connections, have been
the most powerful, and yet the gentlest,
like a wondrous homecoming.
Some months ago,
for our own spiritual nourishment,
my partner Helen and I started to worship
in a local fire-hall (!) taken over
every Friday night by an "outreach church"*
And suddenly I had come home to a place
where the Spirit moves so that
no-one is easily left unchanged.
With my own eyes I saw how
people fell off chairs and started
laughing uncontrollably; and
not just people falling backwards, but
also how lives were being altered,
being transformed, and happiness was
to be seen radiating everywhere!
(Stand outside a church or a temple
as people come out - if you can't see
the radiance and the joy, would you
wish to join them?)
And then, one Friday, quite without warning,
I fell off my chair -
I just couldn't stop myself.
There was nobody preaching or talking,
no-one "leading us", it was as if I'd been
pushed by a cosmic wind from the side.
And it was so FUNNY!
(The previous week Helen hadn't been able
to walk to the bathroom when we got home -
we were in giggle-fits! -
she had to crawl there like a baby!)
So what is this?
Some would say that my earlier experiences
were to do with "the devil"
and now I'd "come home to Jesus."
My upbringing would tempt me to accept this view
so as to receive possible "outside approval."
Yet I know that there is no separation.
The Divine Source is in truth
undivided.
It is our experience which knows the "Un-nameable,
in so many ways,"
as the indigenous people say.
For myself,
I have experienced the healing power of this Force
flowing through me,
in churches, out of churches,
in privacy, in the open,
in dance, in music, in sweat-lodges,
in source-breathing, in tantra, in therapy,
in workshops, in meditations,
while ascending, while walking,
in so many ways,
and I know Her Presence.
When the Q'ero shaman
had finished buffeting me at the end of
the longest initiation I have ever experienced,
he handed me a celtic cross with the words -
"Meditate on this.
I heal through Jesus."
This was my lesson in Oneness.
And the Outreach Church, my lesson in
the Laughter and Joy of the Spirit.
Now I know why Helen and I
were moved to call our place of open-faith ritual,
Christal Temple Laughing Church.
As we allow the gnosis of God,
so we may find it more difficult to walk on Earth.
The temptation now is to get so "high" on this
that we forget why we came here...
My first shaman teacher said
"If you climb to the mountain peak first,
it is your job to show the others how you do it.
That's the point."
Ascension is not primarily about "flying away",
but about being in a space of such Oneness
that all people may "come home" to Source.
There can be no real homecoming for any of us
until all are on their way home.
And this includes
all those we thought we would prefer
to fight, to compete with, to damn
or to ignore.
Then we may truly see the whole body
as a Laughing Temple on Earth,
as we fall about, weak-knee'd in
ecstatic giggling!
All blessings
John O
*Bethel Outreach Church in Blockhouse, NS
