The veils are thinning. The spirits of the Dead are with us. 

Let us pray to the Saints and pray for the Dead, that God's infinite love and mercy will forever sustain them in their transition from life to life eternal. 

Let us understand our frightening depictions of Death not as fear caused by Death but fear caused by the unknown. 

Let us seek to pray for those who have departed and those who are departing. 

May we call to mind the changes that happen in the external world as well as the ones in the internal world. 

May we show others a better way. 

May we be the change we wish to see in the world.

Be blessed in the Name of the Holy Trinity, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Steve

One of the Sufi teachers I used to follow had an interesting statement regarding surrender to God. He said something like this: 

"Before surrender, nothing is more difficult. After surrender, nothing is easier." 

This lines up pretty nicely with what I said last week about "trusting in God." But one thing to note about the process so far is that this starts somewhere in the unconscious mind and then works its way to the conscious mind, not the other way around. 

We make the decision to trust God- and then that decision begins to reverberate from the inner worlds into the outer worlds. 

In spirituality, so many things work this way. Our wider society is affected by massive shifts in the Collective Unconscious that eventually make their way into the various social occurrences and paradigms. It's truly an amazing thing to see happen if you know how to look for these things. 

There's still great difficulty in attempting the ego to just "let go and let God." Yes, this statement sounds trite and ridiculous in the face of the modern world, and sometimes, it is said in a trite way, but we're really not discussing it from that perspective here. There's a point where the ego-personality's interference (as opposed to relaxing) is only going to cause more issues in the immediate and long run. 

Another mistaken notion about "surrendering to God's will" means for the person to surrender to the established Biblical interpretation or teachings of a particular denomination. I'm also not talking about that. 

Let us reflect on these things.

In Christ,

​Steve

Last night, my husband and I had a date night. This included watching the new movie of Dune. Being late to the game, I knew next to nothing about the Dune series, had not see a trailer for the movie, and had no idea what I was in for. 

One of the first aspects of the movie that became apparent to me was the Messianic narrative. (I'm not going to spoil things for anyone; this is just an aspect the movie that appears pretty quickly.) The Messianic narrative is also featured a great deal in the Harry Potter series, Star Wars, and ​The Matrix series. 

That got me to thinking- how often is this particular narrative used? Frequently enough to appear in several major motion pictures in the modern era, at the least, and those are just the ones that came to mind! 

In the world of religion and spirituality, and especially among those on the Christian path, there's a good bit of discussion about how old the Messianic narrative is. Did the particular stories that we attribute to Jesus of Nazareth exist in other world cultures and traditions? Were those stories simply added to the life of Jesus? How old is the narrative of the Messiah, really?

This topic can easily lead into a quagmire of sorts, the kind where people accept the evidence that backs up their own positions but dismiss contrary evidence for not fitting their preconceptions. 

The Messiah narrative is perhaps an extension of the Journey of the Hero, and the Journey of the Hero may in turn be a mythologizing of battles and circumstances in which one person happened to get incredibly lucky and strike the right blow or figure out the best way to help a population in need. 

So from one perspective, of course the Messiah narrative is older than Christianity and Judaism, but from another perspective, the concept that it is the soul of mankind that is being delivered may be quite a new thread.

Let us reflect on these things.

In Christ,

​Steve

Sometimes, trusting God can be difficult. 

There's a lot of cliches built into the concept of "simply have faith" and "simply trust in God." There's a whole lot people who are disappointed in the long run, though perhaps in the short run such sentiments are capable of sustaining the souls of the suffering.

I can fully admit that my ability to trust God isn't nearly as strong as it should be despite the abundant evidence handed to me time and again. That's a pretty bold statement to make, yet I've seen some near miraculous (and perhaps outright miraculous) things happen.

There's an interesting point- when the miraculous does occur, does it truly feel like a miracle? Or does it feel perfectly natural? 

Some people with near-death experiences have claimed that the supernatural world seemed more real than the everyday world of the living, that this world is as a dream by comparison. So it would follow that the "supernatural" experience feels perfectly normal and natural in its state.

I think God can found in the ordinary. I think things can flow wonderfully and be happy. This is what we must trust. Suffering must be put to an end. Let us find the greater trust in ourselves.

In Christ,

​Steve

From a young age, verses in the Bible discussing wisdom always drew me in. The personifications of wisdom in particular drew me in, and of course, I wasn't entirely sure why as a kid. There are numerous times where wisdom is spoken of as a person and sometimes even speaks. 

Now I know what was going on. We're not merely discussing wisdom as an abstraction but rather Wisdom as a very real spiritual power/being to which we can relate. Often we use the name "Sophia" in this case. The Hebrew word is chokmah, which we then see reflected in the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism as well. 

My copy of The Jewish Study Bible points out that part of these verses are read when the Torah is being returned to the ark during a Jewish service, and the Rabbis tend to read "wisdom" in these verses as specifically referring to the Torah itself. 

The Jewish Study Bible also references those things which Wisdom holds in her hands as potentially referring to iconography seen in Egypt where the monarchs would hold items symbolizing things such as long life and prosperity in their hands. 

The Kabbalistic symbolism also seems to stand out in referencing the Tree of Life. 

The more exoteric interpretation here would be something like, "Following God's Laws leads to happiness." Any given exoteric Christian church would probably give us something like this- following God's Rules leads to God's Blessings, end of story. 

However, from a more esoteric point of view, we have something very different being said: one can experience a substantial underlying reality that then causes one to be happy. 

Let's also consider what the verses are telling us above: they're not suggesting that precious jewels and metals are worthless (that is, the suggestion here isn't that owning things or having ​beautiful possessions is a bad thing) but rather that Wisdom is superior even to those things which we typically value and find to be beautiful. 

Let us pursue both wisdom and Wisdom in all things. 

In Christ,

​Steve

One of the most interesting aspects of spiritual development is that of "spiritual sight." Perhaps this may better be described as a kind of "spiritual knowing," though I think there are often visual components that appear in our minds to help us better understand the experience.

Oftentimes in Christianity, we hear of "spiritual blindness" and such, and it's interpreted in a kind of metaphorical fashion: "spiritual blindness" translates to "not acquiescing to our conceptual framework of Christianity as the Ultimate Truth." 

But the spiritual blindness is something much more immediate and real- there's a very real kind of unseen realm(s) that we cannot perceive without dedication to meditation and specific kinds of training. 

This is so important for mystics to understand, but in truth, this is important for virtually all Christians to understand. Christianity is mysticism. Christianity can't truly be separated from mysticism except by distortion and misunderstanding. 

There are finer points that can be argued- and indeed, have been argued- about the relationship between Jesus and the Christ and so on, and I'll leave those arguments up to theologians who are competent in both reasoning and mysticism, as I've chosen to focus on the mystical path forward. Perhaps one day I'll be able to circle around to philosophy and theology and separate what's real from what's not, but I'm not there yet.

Until recently, I would've not paid attention to the concept of spiritual blindness and darkness, but meditation has definitely shown me there's more out there and more going on at any given time than most of us are aware of.

Let us continue to dedicate ourselves to Christ and to meditate on the Divine.

In Christ,

Steve

Here in Virginia, the weather changed drastically over the past few days. 

We had been lucky to have a month or so of temperatures that hovered in the 70s and 60s, a pleasant coolness that was great for walking. 

Then, last Saturday or so, the "change" happened. We had a rainstorm, and when I went to walk my dog, I could tell everything was "different." The storm had brought with it that evening "new spirits." The atmosphere outside had changed, both physically and metaphysically. 

The haunting spirits of the autumn have finally arrived here. The first true coolness since the spring is here. Nature has declared a fall, and a fall it shall be. 

But the change in the spiritual energy is what has my mind blown. I've watched and waited and tried to figure this out for the longest time: why haven't I connected to this energy for so long? Why wasn't I aware of it more directly, as I am now? 

The answer, of course, has to do with meditation and expanding of spiritual faculties. Somewhere, I always knew these things were going on, and now, I have the developed awareness to experience them more directly. 

May your awareness be expanded. May you experience the Divine and the Divine Seasons more directly.

In Christ,

​Steve

As we near All Hallows' Eve, let us take a moment to pray for the Forgotten Dead. 

This prayer is taken from catholic.org.

In Christ, 

​Steve

Praying the entire rosary daily might be difficult for some people- even people with time on their hands. 

Prayer is ultimately about directing energy. And if one's prayer isn't intentional or isn't sincere, then there's a chance that one's focus and energy will wane. 

It's better to pray a little out of true devotion than to pray a great deal and become annoyed with it. 

The abbreviated version of the rosary that I pray is a single decade a day. The prayer order looks something like this:

1. Opening prayer on the crucifix 
2. Our Father on the first bead
3. Three Hail Marys on the next three beads, followed by the Gloria Patri and Fatima Prayer
4. A brief recitation of the five mysteries of that day's rosary
5. The Our Father on the next bead
6. Ten Hail Marys, followed by the Gloria Patri and Fatima Prayer
7. The Salve Regina

After concluding, I dedicate the graces of the rosary to someone in need. It isn't much, but it is something, and I'm much more game to pray the rosary daily by doing this. 

I encourage people to do what spiritual practices they can, and never mind if you do everything perfectly all the time. 

In Christ,

​Steve

Why are there so many of us who are drawn to the various expressions of religious iconography around the world? Why do so many of us see the holy and the Divine in the differing traditions and gravitate toward, well, almost all of them? And then why are there people who cringe and shriek at the sights of such? 

I tend to think of people who are drawn to various religious expressions as seeing something deeper in the tradition; we're connecting to the archetypes reflected throughout the world. There's an inner alignment, and the alignment is illuminated, whether through spiritual practices or grace and for whatever reason. 

Sacraments are one means by which this alignment and illumination occurs.

Sacraments are sometimes defined thusly: ​

​The sentence can be read in multiple ways; in one way, the sentence can be understood that the sacrament is merely a ritual done externally that reflects the interior grace given by God. 

From another perspective, we can understand the grace is being given through the sacrament by God. 

I attempt to be practical and recognize that both perspectives are meaningful to people, and that the ultimate mechanism may be beyond description. 

That being said, one interpretation could render the sentence to mean that the sacraments are extra but unnecessary, whereas the other reading emphasizes the connection of God, grace, and the sacrament.

While I take the position that God works through whatever means necessary, it would be a disservice to suggest that the sacraments aren't extremely beneficial. It's the difference between trying to cross the ocean in a  small boat versus a state-of-the-art luxury cruise ship. You can technically do it, but you're in for a bumpier ride. 

To return to the original point, the sacraments both align the inner archetypal world and illuminate that world. We're able to see it reflected in the external world. The interior and invisible grace becomes known to us throughout the traditions of the world's religions. 

So embrace the alignment. Embrace the sacraments. Allow your soul to be illuminated, and let your light shine to the world.

In Christ,

​Steve

As we approach All Hallows' Eve, the Shadow side of the Collective Unconscious (especially in Christian cultures) begins to churn and move, and increasingly, the Shadow becomes manifest and apparent in our love of creepy and spooky things. 

Watching horror movies isn't just a matter of having fun or a good time or what have you; it's also a method of relating to the personal and cultural Shadow. 

My husband has been watching a lot of slasher films. These can be pretty freaky, and they affect me more now than they did when I was younger. 

Anyone who has spent any amount of time watching scary movies knows that some of the older films that were meant to be scary now look incredibly cheesy. The fear factor disappears when everything is bad special effects and overacting that's incredibly obvious by today's super special-effects standards. 

But the super special-effects also create their own problem, which is sometimes, it's just too much, and that creates a separate kind of cheesiness. 

Some people can't handle scary films. I get it. Truly, I do. The supernatural tends to terrify me less than the more realistic but unlikely situations. The supernatural doesn't tend to mess with me too much, and for that, I'm thankful. 

Let us embrace the Shadows and not chase them away. Halloween will arrive soon. Let us relate to God through Halloween. 

In Christ,

Steve

Leonardo's painting of The Last Supper is one of the first spiritual images to captivate me, one of the first I was shown as a child. 

This painting, or a replication of it, hung in the house of the woman who babysat from the time I was born until I started kindergarten. While I didn't understand it fully or didn't necessarily have the mental capacity to fully appreciate its significance to Christians, I did frequently look at the painting and contemplate it in my own child-like way- the way children do this with anything. 

Of all the religious imagery I encountered in my childhood, this is the one that stuck with me. There's something truly fascinating about it, something alluring. 

And this is true of religious paintings across the board. In our current world, art is often thought of as "merely decorative." Art is considered a frill, an accessory, but not a necessity. Art isn't considered essential. 

This is possibly rooted in the sense of excess people sometimes encountered with various churches in which precious jewels and metals were used to construct things while people in the streets starved to death.

Reality, however, is always more complicated than this, and we can't forget that; there are enough resources in our world to both feed all the people and beautifully design and decorate our buildings. These things are not the zero-sum games some would have us believe they are. 

Art, whether it be paintings or statues or what have you, influences the mood of the environment. Something non-verbal is conveyed. 

There's a very different atmosphere in churches that contain statues and paintings and stained glass, for instance, than in churches that eschew these sorts of things. 

Art has also been beneficial to people who were illiterate in times past. Something can be conveyed and remembered by  an image when one cannot write words. 

Next time you see some kind of spiritual art, or any art, pause and contemplate it, and try to find God in it, always remember that God is good. 

In Christ, 

Steve

This is a practice I highly encourage. I grew up with this practice, though I fell out of it with time due to the toxic elements of the tradition in which I was raised. The prayer I currently use is a traditional Catholic prayer. 

The Sign of the Cross is made prior to and after the prayer. According to some sources, the person reciting the prayer can make the Sign of the Cross over the food itself. I encourage all these practices.

Gratitude for one's food is something that shouldn't be overlooked, but it should also be genuine. There's no point in someone saying it if they don't genuinely have gratitude. That's a completely different life lesson one might learn at a different time, I think.

Grace before meals is a way to incorporate our spirituality into ordinary life and to infuse the food with the Divine energy, or at the very least, infuse our awareness with the remembrance that the food is already infused with Divine energy. 

There are many daily rituals we can do, including Morning and Night Prayers. We'll talk about these in another entry. 

In Christ,

Steve

This is a particularly beautiful benediction from the canonical Scriptures. In fact, once again Father Sergio has influenced me by sharing this online. The internet's a truly wonderful tool when put to good ends. 

There are so many other beautiful benedictions throughout the Epistles. The Epistle to the Romans ends with another beautiful one! 

​We can also understand the meaning from differing angles- this Benediction can be used as a standalone, for it ignites hope and reminds us that the Divine is the source of joy and peace, and we're offered the blessing and power of the Holy Spirit. 

We can understand it contextually, for the people to whom Saint Paul was writing, and their plight and the need for unity among them. 

There's also something mystical going on here (but of course I would say that), though I can't entire place my finger on it. Perhaps this has to do with the Benediction working to unite aspects of the fragmented self.

In any case, some verses from the Scriptures read like pure poetry. 

Now, we have to keep in mind that the original Greek may have taken on a warped meaning in English. This happens frequently; the tone and mood are lost, and we're left with a lofty-sounding phrase that wouldn't have been so lofty originally. Please keep that in mind.

Still, that doesn't mean we can't derive joy from our current experience; God is ever-unfolding, ever-generating. 

In Christ,

​Steve

I am the Soul
and also love am I.
Above all else, I am 
both will and fixed design.
My will is now to lift
the lower self into the Light Divine.
That Light am I.
Therefore, I must descend 
To where the lower self awaits, 
awaits my coming.
That which desires to lift
and that which cries for lifting
Are now at one.
​Such is my will. 

This is a prayer from Volume 1 of Adventure in Meditation​. 

Inspiration isn't difficult to find if you're an Aquarian Catholic. We can find inspiration in any source- a poem, a song, religious scriptures out of the Christian Tradition, and so on. 

That's because God is in all things. 

We're heirs to a particular tradition of Christian Sacramentalism- an effective, time-tested, mystically oriented system formulated through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit within the context of a particular culture milieu and passed down through the millennia. 

There are no doubt antecedents to our tradition; there are perhaps parallels in other traditions; there are also diverse and entirely unique methods appearing in other cultures and tradition. 

Our tradition is no less meaningful because of this. That we see God in the general but approach God in the specific does not cheapen or lessen what we do; rather, our tradition becomes all the more meaningful as something to celebrate, guard, and pass down to the next generation. 

That the meaningfulness of our tradition can be seen in other traditions unlike ours is a testament to the power of God, I think. 

We'll stay brief for today. 

In Christ,

​Steve

Yesterday, I had another insight. 

Something I noticed many years ago is what I call "spiritual delay." I'm unsure if this has been reference in the entries so far, but to summarize: that for which we pray and on which we meditate rarely manifests immediately, and thank God for that; can you imagine the devastation that would occur in a  world where anything and everything that popped into our mind suddenly came to be?

This is the warning that the 1984 movie Ghostbusters gives us using the image of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. Yes, it's a bizarre reference, but that someone couldn't hold their mind clear and managed to have such a terrifying experience is exactly what we're able to avoid. 

That doesn't mean that our endeavors are fruitless. On the contrary, the grace we receive from our prayers and such manifests at a later time- perhaps days later, or even weeks, but it does come to be. 

So then we must consider another thing- meditation is a form of receiving the energy necessary for these things to occur. Prayer and ritual are forms of activating that energy. Both aspects work together. 

To offer prayers, even traditional prayers, when one has deeply meditated is not to simply offer empty words but to activate all of the grace one has received in meditation. The prayers offer us a container through which to express the energy. 

The same is true for ritual. Sometimes energy is built in ritual, and that can be sufficient.

What's more sufficient is the building up of energy prior to a ritual and then adding that to the energy built during the ritual. 

This is a lot to absorb, so we'll leave this here. 

In Christ,

​Steve