Christian Yoga

Part Eight

by Tony Crisp

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The Time of Becoming

Although there are stages in your flowering; although there are experiences you pass through, like the cleansing and the wilderness, all this comes about because you continue to remain open to that invisible yet felt influence that came to you when you dropped the preconceptions and limitations of your mind and heart. Out of this emerges the potential being you held within you from birth. This flow is continuous if you remain open to it. The following account describes a meeting with this power, and what can come of it.

I felt as if I were falling down a long hole, like Alice in Wonderland. The observing part of me understood that I was dropping backwards through my whole life. At times I seemed to bang into things, or bump off things, and these were the painful times in my history. At one point I wondered if I were experiencing some sort of healing regression, but I only touched the events of my life as I fell back.

Eventually I came to rest. It was wonderfully peaceful, and even my thinking had stopped. I didn’t have any feelings of having a body or shape. I simply existed. Again the observing part of me wondered if this was the womb, but it quickly became apparent, or I knew, that this wasn’t the womb, it was the basic level of my awareness, how it felt to be before thinking and speech. I began to feel afraid as I realised that if I dropped any further back I would cease to exist. Then I knew the fear was unnecessary as every time we go to sleep we drop back into the condition where we lose any sense of personal existence, yet we emerge none the worse the next day. So I let myself drop.

Suddenly I was aware that something held me. It was the process that had grown me from seed in the first place. My ego had not created me or grown me. But now this deep part of me was unfolding me again, like a plant opening. I felt it was the very source of life itself, and it cared for me and had grown me from a tiny seed in my mother’s womb. I guess this is what people call God, and I understood that we each have this force at our centre. As I watched it working in my body and life, I had a clear sense of it communicating with me. I understood from it that if I opened to it each day, if I surrendered to its action each day, then it would grow me to a fuller life and realise itself in me. Things, qualities or talents would unfold as I was grown. This felt like a holy gift, that the mystery of life would live in me and know itself in me, and when this happened others would find shelter and strength in my life.

As this account suggests, you must remain open to this influence from the core of your being. If you do, then there is a flowering of things that were latent in you, and eventually the mystery at your core will know itself in your life. You will wake up to the mystery you are. It is this that the gathering of the disciples suggests. It has the double meaning of following the impulse of that love and unfolding that is emerging, the discipline or training of that – and also the emergence of the various aspects of you, the disciples.

The confusion of discipline

Looking back at some of the disciplines of past Christians, especially the ascetics and monastic orders, it is obvious there is great confusion about what opened ones conscious self to the spirit. They often seem, when they describe flagellation and extremes of abstinence, to have looked at the letter rather than the law. In Buddhism there is a saying that there is a finger pointing at the moon, but most people look at the finger and forget that it is the moon that is being pointed at.

In the case of disciplines necessary in Christian Yoga, the method is secondary to the aim. Rebecca Beard, who was a regular medical doctor, but became a healer recognising the place of the spirit in the sick persons life, says of this discipline:

The noon meditation was difficult for many reasons. I found it difficult to sit quietly while the potatoes burned. A friend lived with us who did some of the cooking. When she put the potatoes on and forgot them, I could hardly resist going to the rescue when I smelled them burning. To be able to say, ‘There are other pans; there are more potatoes; there is only one kingdom of heaven; seek ye the kingdom of heaven; seek ye the kingdom FIRST’ was real discipline.

To understand the place of discipline on this path, you must remember base principles. It is the ‘discipline’ of the Virgin Prayer that allowed the birth of a new sense of the divine, of the wider life. Nothing you can do can MAKE that happen. You open by dropping preconceptions, rigid opinions, fixed ideas or beliefs about God or yourself, and trust the Mystery at your core to do its work. You let go or goals or aims and learn to stand naked before the unknown. What happens is a natural process of growth and unfoldment. You can help it by remaining receptive and observant, but you cannot create it yourself by effort or force.

What happened with some of the strange forms of 'spiritual exercises' used in the past, was that at some point the ego, the willpower, swooned. A sort of fainting took place. In that moment the person experienced something of the spirit. Unfortunately they took it that the flagellation or fasting had produced this. All they need was to 'faint' to 'swoon' by taking on the virginal attitude of mind and heart.

Also, it is unfortunate that a great deal of information about being ‘religious’ or spiritual suggests that it is only by being ‘good’; by following certain rigid moral principles; by controlling appetites and desires; by killing out any sign of badness in you, that you can attain real spirituality. This is a completely false direction, a sort of cul-de-sac of your potential growth. All these are efforts of your personal will. They are all means of self control. At your core you are an eternal and wonderful being. Disciplining your external personality will not transform it into the potential you hold within. What is necessary is to allow that potential to emerge, to grow. Goodness is then a natural part of you, not a disciplined behaviour.

Do you have to be ‘good’ to reach heaven?

When a baby grows toward childhood and youth, we feed it with nourishing food, with a variety of experiences and opportunities to explore possibilities. It learns to walk as it’s body and mind become capable and interested in walking. There is no need for punishment or huge processes of discipline to make this happen. The same with learning to go to the toilet. Although many people try to train their child to use a potty, the child will do this quite naturally as it matures to the point where it is easy for it to control its bladder and bowels without enormous stress and fear of not pleasing its parents.

The unfoldment of your potential does not come from ‘self-development’. It emerges as it is allowed to grow. The evil or darkness in us falls away because the beauty and ease in you grows; because you grow in wisdom and insight, not because you forcibly control yourself to be different.

However, this attitude of allowing growth needs to be balanced by something else. Sometimes we are so controlled by fears, by habits, by anger and bitterness so that we cannot allow the inner growth to start or continue. A man’s dream illustrates this:

I was in a prison cell with two other men. We ate, slept and defecated in the cell. I was standing at the bars of the cell, and had the impression of having been in the prison for years. I was shouting and cursing the people who had put me in the prison, full of hate and self-pity. Suddenly I realised that my years of shouting had availed nothing. The only person who was upset by it was myself. I was the victim of my own anger and turmoil.So I began to drop the attitudes and was free of them. Years went by and one by one I dropped other habits of emotion and thought with which I had trapped and tortured myself. I realised I could be totally free within myself.

One morning I woke and sat up on the mattress on the floor that was my bed. The last ghost of inner entrapment fell away. A fountain of joy opened in my body, pouring upwards through me. So intense was it I cried out. The cellmates called a warden. They stood looking at me as I experienced a radiance so strong I felt as if I must be shining. I was aware my joy poured into them, although they thought I was mad. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Christian Yoga Part Nine