“…metaphor is the basis of all language and thought, as it is of all religion.” — Thomas Cahill, The Gift of the Jews
“Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition.” — Jung
“All descriptions of reality are temporary hypothesis.” — Buddha
A Native American Ojibwe elder once told me, “Pick a path; pick a path; you’ve got to pick a path.” At the time, I did not fully understand the importance of a path and the power of its rituals. There are a variety of paths which one can choose to arrive at the destination for which we are all bound. Most are grounded, and well-worn – etched in the collective psyche that honors and builds on what came before. Yet before this choice occurs in earnest, many of us must heal our past acquaintance with religion and the specific inculcation of it in our childhood. I came to see this in my own experience of spiritual awakening. Raised in Catholicism, I never fully embraced it, but its impact reverberated for years. As much as I wanted to ignore it, it was a deeply entrenched part of me. I tried to put it out of my mind. To me the feminine was barely visible, and Jesus had been co-opted, the poster-boy for the religious far-right.
After I experienced Light rushing up my body and all its ramifications, I began experiencing a variety of psychic phenomena, not the least of which was a vision of the resurrected Christ ascending, angels all around, except I was Christ. It was Christ, and I was Christ. We were one in the same. I was startled and taken aback. I was raised that this was blasphemy and, having rejected Christianity and uncomfortable with even the word God at the time, I was mystified to be witnessing such a sight. I had no place in my mind to interpret this scene and was not ready to embrace it; so I ignored it. Several years later I realized that this “ascension into heaven” was a metaphor for transcending ego through the Christos (integration), the one with which my psyche was familiar.
What I realized over several years was that the energy coursing through me after my awakening needed a path – a route undeterred by my ego-self’s fears and mis-perceptions. This is what the stories that make up the belief systems of major religions and indigenous peoples are all about; without such a path, havoc can ensue. Our thoughts and beliefs give form to light and shadow and rituals concretize them. These thoughts and beliefs are so powerful, so instrumental in creating our life, that without a conscious path our clouded unconscious can have free reign. This unconscious is also connected with cultural and human archetypes, both positive and negative. To the extent we are “in the dark” about our inner motivations, our hurts, biases, judgments and resentments, to that extent will we sabotage our intentions and desires and get in real psychic trouble on the mystical journey. When we encounter spiritual phenomena in our own psyche, we need a contextual road-map for these experiences of the unknown, one that can take us from here to there. Belief systems provide this, as do spiritual/meditation practices. Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed, Mary, and other masters of world religions transcended ego consciousness to became the Christos, the Light that forges a bridge to the Divine as described by sages and mystics. Their teachings show us the way. So too the spirit and animal guides and totems within the belief systems of indigenous peoples provide their shamans with protection and guidance on the path.
At the time of my own experience, it felt to me as though some boundaries were opened or dissolved with this SAL. Although difficult times are a cleansing part of any deep, experiential, spiritual path, I think things may have been easier for me had I been practicing a belief system. I also didn’t know anything about the highly sensitive, empathic nature that I had, nor had the research been conducted or the term been coined at that time. This sensitive nature was super-charged as a result of the SAL and had I a path to deal with it appropriately, it might have been less of a struggle . One example of a need for a path that I experienced came shortly after my SAL. It was suggested by someone early on that I “lay hands” on others because energy was flowing. When I did so, I began to feel and physically express their emotion and its symptomatic cause. Interesting as this was, it often left me confused and overwhelmed. Although I’ve never felt “laying hands” was my calling, my good intentions and intuitive empathy were marred by a misplaced sense of responsibility for other’s lives and suffering. Over time it was depleting me, and I became physically and emotionally exhausted (increasing my cortisol among other things). This was an example of a physio-spiritual manifestation of what can occur when the authentic power of the feminine is repressed personally and culturally, and we meet other’s needs at the expense of our own. Although this was part of my clearing/purifying process, a rooted path may have moved me through it quicker – mitigated some of these problems and addressed some of my distorted ideas (see “The Battle Within” and “Open Your Heart…” papers). Also, it was pointed out to me later on, by someone very familiar with kundalini, that I shouldn’t have been laying hands at this point of my awakening anyway. The energy of a SAL needs a long period of time to be integrated without undue stress.
I began to recognize the need for a path and that the knee-jerk reaction I had to Jesus and my Catholic upbringing must be healed. Fear and judgement would only hamper the awakening process and had to be addressed. I began this healing by simply acknowledging the need for it. I studied and learned much from Native American, Buddhist, Hindi, Judaism, the Tao Te Ching, new thought, and other paths. This also helped me to accept and appreciate that all major religions held similar core beliefs and that their stories are metaphor based on historical reality, and seemed to evolve from past belief systems, era after era. It was the intolerance of dogma, patriarchy, and literal interpretation that didn’t suit me. A year later, unplanned and while reading a novel, I felt an inspired urge to put pen to paper, and to my surprise, out came a simple interpretation of the Christ story that combined east and west and brought in the Divine Feminine. It was as if I’d pushed a button and initiated a computer program in my mind that wove together the religious input of my youth and the spiritual awareness I’d gained from my recent readings to formulate an outcome acceptable to my psyche. And so it was. It brought a deep peace to a difficult struggle of belief that was just below the surface, unknown to me. It taught me that I needed to acknowledge the spiritual heritage that went back for generations in my family and integrate it in all I’d learned. I identify the essence of God with the light of consciousness and found a metaphoric way of expressing this experience of the Divine in the 21st century. As Peter Russell notes, “For spiritual development to be acceptable, it must be reasonable. It must make sense within the current world view…a reformation of the timeless wisdom in a contemporary context.” Life became a mystical journey, experiential and experimental.
Whether we retain the faith of our childhood, reinterpret it as I did mine, or choose a different path altogether, it behooves us to heal any negative effects of the religion in which we were raised and learn to honor their truth, and the truth which exists in all the major teachings – from Goddess traditions, indigenous peoples, world religions, and new thought. And because the Christian tradition, rooted in Judaism, is woven deeply into the very fabric of our culture and its archetypes, each of us, regardless of belief, must find a peace of our own making with it. We may have ignored it and thought it no longer effected us. Usually it still does. Many of us don’t become an integrated whole without healing any negative issues we may have with both our religious upbringing and our Christian culture, and then choosing (or returning to) a grounded path that provides a bed on which the Great Mystery may rest, a road-map that gives form to the Light that wishes to be acknowledged in each of us.
© 2001 * Barbara Atkinson
