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Podcast Transcript - S2EP18 - Spiritual Contraction and Growth

Podcast Transcript - S2EP18 - Spiritual Contraction and Growth

Click link for Podcast Page As an American, just reading the word contraction in the title of this episode makes me twitch a bit. We don’t like contraction, we like expansion and growth and reaching new heights. But as I expressed in a previous episode through the comparison found in the study of expertise, without contraction, there is no growth, no matter how much one pushes and pushes. There’s both a push-up and a push down. There’s both the crunch forward and the crunch backward and if you’re only focusing on one side of the equation, then you’re only halfway there. The same applies with the general idea of the expansion of the mind as found in spiritual texts. So much emphasis on the expansion of the mind and the broadening of horizons when it comes to mental-spiritual ideas, yet hardly ever the emphasis placed on the contraction of those ideas to solidify into a focus, so that expertise can occur. Not that I had any concept of such things, I just happened to have read and studied a bit on the science behind expertise after my experiences in 2018 and saw the similarity to what I had done regarding spiritual and religious texts and ideas after my Dissolution Experience. I’m fairly certain I went through a little bit of book burning and it’s at this point when several of the books I used to have on my shelf suddenly vanished. And this is incredibly not like me to do. Someone gifted me an illustrated hardcover copy of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in the second or third grade and I still have it in perfect condition. Getting rid of books is not something I do, but I’m certain the reason I don’t remember the names of the works I had read at this time is because they were all tossed into the trash heap. I didn’t even want to sell them, didn’t want to donate them to a used bookstore or anything since I didn’t want to pass onto others those books and ideas that had led me to my stupidity in the idea of self-divinity and self-godhood. Having so thoroughly been thrashed by the love of God to experience what existence without Him was like, any and everything that I felt had led me down that road was quickly discarded. Thus, the expansion of the mind phase was over and the spiritual contraction, or Desert of the Soul, began. Now, I was obviously leaning towards the Catholic Church at this point already, whether I know it or not, but obviously since I was still dabbling in these various spiritual phenomena type things, much like as I said I experimented on the idea of self-divinity versus devotion to God and chose self-divinity for the briefest of moments, so too was I one foot in and one foot out of the Catholic Church at this point. But that was soon to change. A few months after this experience, I was now engaged and since we wanted to get married in the Catholic church, we started going to the rite of Christian initiation classes that prepares adults for receiving whatever sacrament they may lack, confirmation on her part, first communion and confirmation on my part. Even though I’d taken communion in the Episcopal Church, it’s not recognized by the Church, so I had to go to the Church as somewhat of a newbie. I’d at least been baptized Catholic as a child by my parents, so I didn’t have to do all of that. You need to have all the sacraments to get married, or scratch that, I think one person has to have all the sacraments and the other has to at least have been baptized if I remember correctly since the Church does recognize baptism from some if not all of the many fractured sects of Christianity. I’m not sure off the top of my head how they determine that, but I didn’t need to go through the entire course of becoming Catholic since I was essentially seen as a fallen away Catholic having been baptized Catholic as a child. Anyway, the Catholic church has this little thing called an engaged retreat they send soon to be married couples to get a crash course on marriage that shatters all illusions of happily ever after of the Disney sort and gives it to the couple real and straight up. That may sound harsh, and it’s meant to be, since marriage is a serious thing, and one should know to the depths of their understanding at the time what marriage is really all about along with why one is getting married in the first place. I may have spoken about some of this already so if I’m repeating myself, I do apologize. As long and as in depth as my memory goes, I sometimes can’t remember what I ate the previous day, so forgive me if I repeat myself. The marriage retreat happened to have been at a monastery run by the Carmelite order of monks, and if you’ve heard me say my patron saint is St. John of the Cross, now you know why and when it began. If you don’t know what a patron saint is, it’s a saint you choose at confirmation, that you either identify with or have received spiritual inspiration from or something to that degree. My reasoning was because of the spiritual butt-whipping I was receiving once I started reading St. John of the Cross’s works and how eerie his words were since it was like he’d peered into my future and had just been writing down every lesson I was going to need to know when I finally came across his works. The opening talk on the first night of this marriage retreat just welcoming everybody was probably the harshest opening and let’s get serious right away talk I’ve ever listened to in a conference-like setting. By the end of the night, three couples, each with crying members, had gotten up and left the retreat since the opening talk centered entirely around the reasons why not to get married and in particular, why not to get married in the Catholic Church. The one I distinctly remember that immediately caused a couple to get up and leave had to do with getting married in the Catholic Church because it’s the only way mom and dad would pay for the wedding. Not a good reason to get married in the Catholic Church. I think another of the reasons one couple left was because they wanted to get married in a beautiful church and were basically trying to fake being Catholic so they could get married in the building they wanted. Not a good reason to get married in the Catholic Church as well, and obviously both reasons are reasons that the Church has seen walk through her doors. Super-serious stuff though. Regardless of your religion or if non-religious, I highly recommend such a retreat, especially if you go to a serious one that deals with serious realities and questions and problems that will arise in marriage. It’s an easy and much cheaper way of determining if you’re ready to marry person X or person Y, rather than blowing a ton of money on a wedding only to divorce within the average three to five years later, with that average getting smaller year after year every time I come across such a news article. I think it’s mandatory now in the Catholic Church, but since some churches and dioceses don’t be following all protocols given out by the Vatican, if you are Catholic and preparing to get married and your church isn’t pushing for the marriage retreat, find and attend one yourself. Sadly, not every couple that stayed had every partner as interested in the retreat. I remember there was a breakout session where the ladies were kept in their chairs in the meeting hall while the men were chucked outside to work separately on questions within the little workbook they give you, and I remember I was already like two paragraphs in on answering the second page of questions and the guy next to me had his workbook under his chair and was just sitting there playing video games on his old Nokia cell phone, which was probably a silly little game on a terrible phone screen back in 2005. I wonder if that marriage lasted more than the aforementioned three to five years, even though married in the Catholic Church with its no-no on divorce? Anyways, the new spiritual experience that I experienced at this retreat was that of confession, or the sacrament of reconciliation. I remember I didn’t even know if I could do it since I hadn’t been fully confirmed yet, but they said it was required regardless of where I was at with all the RCIA stuff to complete the retreat. When I sat down with the priest-monk I remember I began with, “Hey I have no idea how to do this so you’re going to have to walk me through it,” since even though try as I might over those two days of remembering how to start the prayer from watching movies and such, I couldn’t remember the words when the time came. The only reasoning I have as to why I was sort of brain dead when it came to Catholic particulars was because of the infancy of knowledge regarding the differences of the Catholic Church to the entire umbrella Corp that is Protestantism, having blasted through the Bible and Dante so quickly that I didn’t extract the Catholic details at the time, and because even though I’d purchased and read and had re-read often these sayings of the Saints I’ve mentioned, I was more focused on how the book had been broken up thematically versus the voices that were being quoted without really a care as to who was saying it, or that all the quotes were from Catholic Saints and that it was a Catholic book hadn’t really registered in my mind. In fact, the only reason I bought it was because it had sections devoted to hell and the Devil, and like I said, after the near-death experience and Dante, I was very interested in knowing more about the Devil and hell and how to understand that part of the Christian religious experience because of the hellish imagery I had experienced. But I honestly didn’t care who was saying what since again, my modus operandi was to read any and everything I could find about the various subject matter I was exploring, not who was saying it. So, I had read various quotes on various topics from St. John of the Cross, but hadn’t actually read any of the works of St. John of the Cross. And my comments made to the monk/priest during this confession were quite hilarious, especially to him, and showed me just how off the mark I’d gone and just how much God once again needed to do and show me to get me back on the path that He was willing for me to follow kicking and screaming. Movies also always make confession to be an ultra-serious experience of penitence and chastisement, and though repentance is of course the goal, hearing the priest monk laugh at some of the stuff I was saying made the experience far more enjoyable and human than what I’d thought prior. I don’t remember the exact words of everything that I said but I sort of summarized all my drug use, porn and masturbation time, and told him of the near-death experience I’d had and what I’d seen, but even after the Dissolution Experience and after tossing out the New Age books I had, I was still sort of holding onto the idea of at least visiting these types of works at a later time and that they had so much more to offer me mystically and in teaching meditation than what the Catholic Church seemed to offer when it came to meditation in particular. Somewhere along the way of blasting through the Open Mind Open Heart book about Centering prayer, since I think I read it in like five minutes since it’s a short work, I completely missed and honestly don’t remember how much it got into discussing anything of St. John of the Cross and neither did the prayer group I went to for however many months I went, discuss too much of anything other than the methods of prayer found in that Centering prayer book. The priest sort of chuckled and his eyeballs did that rolling around to look at his surroundings before asking me, “Do you know where you’re at?” “A monastery,” I responded. “Do you know what order of monastery this is?” “Carmelite.” “Do you know anything about St. John of the Cross?” The name rang a bell from the book of sayings of the Saints I’ve mentioned, and I tried to save face. “I read some of his quotes, but I didn’t know he was Catholic or a Carmelite.” He chuckled again. “You’ve had some serious spiritual experiences, I can tell. When we’re done in here, I want you to go to the bookstore we have and buy the works of St. John of the Cross. You will find and learn all that you are seeking regarding the depths of Catholic meditation and contemplative prayer.” Feeling like a dumbshit, but at least now a guided dumbshit with something new to read, I did as he suggested and went to the bookstore. I found the collected works of St. John of the Cross, looked around, was intrigued by the rosary and what praying the rosary was all about since it seemed to be a Catholic way of entering into meditation even though the little paper that came with it had a megaton load of words and prayers printed on it, bought a rosary, a small book about the rosary, the collected works of St. John of the Cross, a ten-pound bag of oranges since the monastery had orange groves and was on my merry little way. As was my usual case with reading, I began blasting through the text as I was also practicing and trying to remember all the prayers of the Rosary so I could pray it without reading off the little paper. I remember flying through the poetry in the first part of the book, zipping through the first sections of the Ascent of Mt. Carmel and then was suddenly stopped in my tracks when he spoke about needing to relinquish any spiritual visions that one might’ve had or received for the danger of the vision having come from the devil, especially if one’s gift of discernment hadn’t been developed yet. I don’t think he directly said the word vision, it’s some other term in the work that I can’t quite recall, but the point was that while in spiritual infancy, and especially if one didn’t have a spiritual mentor or director which I clearly did not and have not had, one that was unable to discern the good visions from the bad ones, or the ones sent by God or the ones sent by the Devil, had to simply do away with all of them for if there was any merit or benefit from a vision from God, then the merit or benefit would occur with or without the awareness of the individual since as a vision or impression or, geez, what was the term he used? Man, I can’t remember. But that the benefit would come regardless if it came from God, but if from the Devil, one would have to actively focus on it for any temporal benefit to arise, and actively focusing on it would require a loss of focus on the devotion to God and thus would take away from actual devotion and thus would become a stumbling block. So better to do away with any and all such mental impressions that seemed to come from the supernatural until discernment had been developed. As stated earlier, when it comes to these types of ideas, as soon as they strike a chord within me, I tend to instantly work on taking that to the ultimate level of understanding and comprehension that I am capable of attaining to. All he was talking about was like the benefits of prayer or the spiritual enthusiasm that comes while walking the path, but I took it to mean any and all spiritual gifts, including everything other than the hope, faith and love that St. Paul speaks of, such as speaking in tongues, discernment of speaking in tongues, healing of hands, prophecy, etc, and basically everything I’d been dipping my toes in for four years. And most importantly, though I didn’t see my near-death mystical experience as having been something given by the Devil, in time I would come to see this experience as the basis for my faith and that I would eventually have to let go of even this in my mind as that foundation for my belief in God to truly find belief and faith in God. Sounds strange I’m sure because how can one forget something so monumental having occurred in their lives? It wasn’t that I forgot about it, it’s more like I stopped looking at that experience as the reason why I believed in God, or that I stopped seeing that experience as the basis for seeing myself as a spiritual individual or as a mystic. That I began to detach myself from that experience and began to attach myself to the Catholic faith as a whole and to the prayer of the Rosary in particular. It may seem like praying the rosary would’ve been easy-peasy for one that had meditated for hours on end or had religiously fasted for three days on no food, but praying that prayer was the complete opposite of what I’d come to understand as meditation, or the emptying of the mind, or in yogic terms, leashing or yoking the mind so it stops jumping around like the monkey-mind they like using to describe the thoughts of one untrained. It was annoying like nobody’s business to have to repeat the same pattern of prayers over and over again with the only difference being in the day and the mysteries of Christ that were highlighted during each decade interval. Super boring and it became a super-boring chore to have to remember the pattern and every time I lost track of where I was on the Hail Mary count if I was praying it without the rosary in hand—like while driving—I’d have to start again from the beginning since I didn’t want to do less that what was required, but more, especially if I had lost concentration as a type of self-punishment or mortification. As a way of breaking the monotony, I bought the prayer book used for the prayer of the hours. I thought at least having different things to read each day would help with the monotony of how prayer and meditation was going so far in this Catholic excursion, but that thing was even more boring and monotonous than the rosary. At least with the rosary I could hold the thing and there was something tactile to the habit of rolling one bead after the other as opposed to this hours prayer book and its antiphons and canticles that seemed to be the exact same thing day after day. That form of prayer only lasted on a daily basis for like a year or so before my mind couldn’t take it anymore since by that time, I’d tried mashing the two together and found myself sitting there saying both prayers as fast as humanly possible so that I could be done and over with it and the entire process was still taking thirty to forty minutes to do every morning and night. As a side note, I would find out later the prayer of the hours is primarily meant for those in the religious life, like priests, monks and nuns and that was why it was so boring to me since I was trying to do that and the rosary in the morning and at night while getting to work or exhausted from work. Read the full article

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Episode 18 - Spiritual Contraction and Growth

Spiritual Contraction While Being Tested in the Desert of the Soul This episode speaks of the aftermath of the previous Dissolution Experience which was spiritual contraction. Every journey has a return. There is growth and decay. When one climbs a mountain, they have to climb back down. The same applies to the propaganda around expanding the mind (which is what I was doing endlessly prior to the Dissolution Experience.) One cannot expand the mind indefinitely and in all directions. There has to be a contraction or a focus for the expansion to take root. Expansion could be seen as the horizontal X axis and contraction could be seen as the vertical Y axis. Both are needed to truly understand and master something—anything—that one is pursuing. This applies to spiritual teachings, lessons, exercises as well. To constantly expand the mind and to never contract into a focus is to become an expert in nothing. But one has to choose to contract and focus on something and in this day and age, has become a challenge with so many different paths to take upon the journey of the ascending soul. Click Link for Transcript Timestamps: - Book burning after the Dissolution Experience (01:55) - This spiritual contraction is the phase I’ve called the Desert of the Soul (03:04) - Marriage in the Catholic Church (03:39) - Marriage retreat at a monastery (05:16) - Reasons why not to get married in a Catholic Church (06:17) - Sacrament of Reconciliation experienced during this retreat (08:21) - Realizing my exposure to the works of St. John of the Cross without realizing that he was a Catholic saint (09:41) - Purchasing the works of St. John of the Cross and a Rosary at a Carmelite monastery during my engaged marriage retreat which would be my study and practice over the next four years (11:53) - The reason to turn away from spiritual visions as taught by St. John of the Cross (12:33) - Finding true faith by ceasing to see the Near-Death Experience spoken of in episode one and two as the basis for my faith in God (14:29) - My initial reaction to praying the Rosary (15:47) - Difficulty in the Apostle’s Creed especially during Mass (17:25) - The only Hail Mary I knew at the time was Tupac’s (19:07) - Strange new reading habits forced into my mind while reading St. John of the Cross (20:00) - Reading was like taking Benadryl and would instantly put me to sleep (22:07) - Experiences of spiritual warfare (24:02) - It was during the reading and contemplation of St. John of the Cross that my book Lucifer Revealed was born (24:37) - Reading these works created the idea that I was being punished (26:16) - Finding that spiritual growth requires a testing phase when God hides His face which I’ve called the Desert of the Soul means one has actually gained progress along the path (26:54) - My timeline has me in the year 2008-2009 and something about these changes of reading and thought led to a sort of spiritual revival that didn’t last (29:32) - The spiritual revival didn’t last due to having entered into the Desert of the Soul where temptations occur (30:05) - I was too blind then to see the signs or didn’t want to see them back then (32:28) - When the pull towards writing began to wane (33:29) - After years of feeling like I hadn’t heard spiritual direction from within, I hear a small voice telling me to do the opposite of what I wanted to do (34:25) - What my book Lucifer Revealed lacked back in 2013 is the reason the inner guidance was telling me to shelve it versus what it is now: namely not knowing the form and image of the Vision itself (36:18) Leave a Tip and Support this Podcast!

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Logos of Experience and Truth Podcast Transcript: Season 1) Episode 8

Transcript: Truth or Fiction

Welcome back to discussing the mysteries of the Logos of Experience in Truth. We’ve spent quite a bit of time dancing around the idea of truth itself over the past two episodes and though I don't want to get political on this episode, it’s certainly on my mind as it is with everybody else with today being the 6th of November 2020. I ended the last discussion hinting at further experiences regarding the spiritual rebirth, the baptism of the Holy Spirit in fire and the physical experiences that occur from this; that they are not just in the mind but are actually felt and experienced physically and how the experience of this leads one, and more specifically, has led me, to see an absolutely incredible beyond just faith and into actual reality truth regarding essentially everything in the Gospels about the life of our Lord Jesus, the Christ. Keep that in mind: physical experiences, not just mental visionary imagery, but physical. Now, yes, there's that obvious question.  “Well, aren't you a Christian?  Shouldn't you believe in this already?”  Well, yes, Mr. or Miss non-Christian.  But when does belief begin from non-belief?  And when does belief become true faith; and when does true faith become factual reality?  These are movements within.  The change, again, the stages of moving towards believing in something so powerfully that it enters or becomes fact and reality. As a mystic, as one that has experienced the visionary sights I've spoken of, along with mentioning the spiritual rebirth that occurs physically within the body, exactly as Christ said: from within, I am astonished at the truth of the stigmata experience, since from my eyes, my viewpoint, the depth of belief that St. Francis of Assisi and Padre Pio to name a few had in seeing themselves as disciples of Christ, in the physical sense, is utterly beyond astonishing: the merging of belief into reality. As a contrast for instance, I'm not a feeder of the poor.  I'm not a clothier of the naked.  I'm not a physical, hands-on type of Catholic Christian.  I don't act out my faith physically.  I'm an entirely mental inquisitive examiner of words and ideas and concepts.  The closest Gospel saying that resonates with me and what I seem to do and the works of faith I seem to follow, are found in Matthew 13:51-52. “Do you understand all these things?”  They answered, yes.  And he replied, “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven, is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the Old and the New.”  (Catholic World Press, 1997). Yet even here, like I said, I'm not an apologist or theologian.  I'm not even a philosopher I would say, since I'm not pushing anything new forward into any of these realms, just seeing them deeply for what they are through the lens of one that has had mental, internal, spiritual, intellectual, mystical experience which is why I didn't have anything occur to me physically beyond the spiritual rebirth from within, which is no slouch by any stretch of the imagination since I can literally tell you how, literally, how a virgin, the Virgin Mary could have, did, become pregnant by the Holy Spirit.  And yes, I will describe it in detail when I describe those peculiar physical sensations that course through the body that literally, not just a faith statement anymore, literally could impregnate a virgin, obviously if it's deemed by God, as was with the Virgin Mary if she had this same experience, which the Virgin Mary most certainly did.  Or at least, that's the conclusion I've reached for there's no other explanation I can give after contemplating the physical experiences that occur, and this, from the point of view of a man experiencing this. And though yes, Jesus does mention the internal spiritual rebirth in the Gospel of John to Nicodemus, and even though yes, renewal of the self, the mind, the soul, was incredibly important to Jesus, he also spent a massive amount of time physically healing, physically being a physician to those around him, which is what St. Francis and all those saints that have received the stigmata emulated at an exponential rate. Now I'm an intensely mental person, so though I had the mystical unfoldment and the testing by God in all of which I've paraphrased and will further explain the details over time, this was all internal and not physical, other than the spiritual rebirth by the fires of the Holy Spirit.  The physical, hands-on Christianity is as I've mentioned, my vocation in marriage, which I'll speak more about in a bit. This is what I want to get across right now and we'll dive further into this: the Saints belief in the emulation and identification with and alongside Jesus, specifically of those saints that have received the stigmata, their emulation physically was so powerful that it brought their faith in Jesus mystically into reality—the physical reality through their works and it was so in depth, so overpowering over and across their mind that it brought the gift of the Holy Spirit into the physical realm with the signs of the stigmata.  Up until this point from what I've been able to gather, all mystical experience was of the internal kind, the philosophical kind.  But this, this was something new.  This is the body also being raised to that divine status we discussed in the last episode which is rooted in the physical ascension of the master, of Christ. For comparison's sake, this is essentially what Catholics believe is occurring a billion times a day with the Holy Eucharist and the power of the priest’s prayer when they say the blessing that essentially calls down the Holy Spirit to transubstantiate the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.  So, this concept shouldn't be a foreign idea to the practicing Catholic.  But as I stated before, these types of connections to the Holy Spirit can't just be for the religious persons and their vocation but also have to be present for married persons and their vocation which is what my journey of understanding seems to have been all about. I feel terrible that I can't actually remember if it was the priest during my marriage prep classes that said it, or the priest that married my wife and I . . . or even if I just heard it on Catholic Answers or something during this time, but I am about 95% sure it was the Father that married my wife and I that posed the challenge, question, reality and truth about marriage being a vocation and spiritually ordained by God. If you don't understand what this vocation business is, it just means that one’s faith is acted out or realized within their station in life.  And obviously in the Church, you're either a religious person: so, think priests, clergy, nun, Cardinal, Pope, or you are not, and are a husband or a wife, a father or a mother.  But that marriage itself is a ministry of faith.  It's just between two people, the husband and the wife, and any that observe or are part of it that are challenged and are changed by the manner in which the husband and the wife are married.  But that's in the external.  As I said, I'm a mental person.  So, while all of that was occurring, inner depth and contemplation about marriage was always occurring.  And it began at this nexus point. This is what the priest said, and it's never left my contemplating mind since.  He said, “that the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven are found in your vocation and that marriage should be treated thusly.”  And I've simply spent the last fourteen years of my spiritual journey trying to understand how this is so and when we get to the spiritual rebirth, to the blessing of the Holy Spirit and why Holy Spirit was feminine to me, I'll definitely provide many a theory on why this occurred and why this is also rooted in what we began to touch upon in the last episode: the mystery of the male and the female, the right and left, or the duality of physical nature and physical reality at its core, and that this male and female, or gender, the apparent reality of binary opposites that are endlessly attracted to one another, is at the basis and foundation of reality, which I already mentioned: the trinity of creation in the atom.  Of proton the positive, electron the negative, and neutron the base, or that which contains both charges and no charge at one and the same time—or the Father, and the Son is the proton, the Holy Spirit is the electron.  Or in the old way of seeing this binary duality: Apollo is the sun, or positive daytime energy, and Artemis is the moon, or negative nighttime energy.  Or the male, the sun, and the female, the moon. This exists inside of us as well and I will continue to unpack this though I've already given many hints regarding this depth inside of ourselves.  So keep this in mind, along with looking up the scriptures we've already mentioned from both Jesus and St. Paul that have to do with gender, and that in the Kingdom of Heaven, there no longer is gender, while there still is gender, for all are one in Christ and that this refers to and means much more than anything having to do with the external physical sexual gender just as I said that when mystical texts speak of nakedness, that this has nothing to do with external clothing. All of this talk about belief becoming real brings up what many, many books speak about nowadays.  Some with genuine wisdom, others not so much so: the power of thought itself to shape our reality.  Since in essence, that's what the saints mentioned achieved within themselves, that which brought about the stigmata: belief in Christ, in sharing in the cross, in the wounds of Christ by carrying one's own cross so powerfully that it manifested into physical reality. Read the full article