THE FIRE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT I had always wondered what had happened that we do not see the powerful spiritual people today in Christianity that had existed at the beginning of our faith. If you read the gospels it is quite obvious that the Holy Spirit was bouncing around all over the place, miracles everywhere in the early Christian community that we just don’t see today. The first Christians could not have done these miracles without the Holy Spirit’s full power behind them and the full power of the Holy Spirit cannot be developed without the cleansing of the soul’s whole spiritual body. An old testament prophet might have written something obscure like: The lamp stand must be purified with fire before the full power of the spirit will enter the temple. Let’s put it this way. The spiritual process is nothing but a cleansing process. The spirit cleanses the obstructed pathways in the spiritual body and creates new pathways in the physical brain and body so that our individual consciousness can become open to infinite consciousness. Using another metaphor, the process of opening the centers of consciousness in the head with contemplative prayer could be compared to the spirit cleansing your face and opening your eyes to god with a not to uncomfortable wash cloth. Cleansing the whole spiritual body with the fire of the Holy Spirit could be compared to the Holy Spirit going over your whole body, including your face with a scrub brush. There literally is that much of a difference in the two processes. This point in my spiritual journey where my experiences with the Holy Spirit diverge so drastically from most if not all of today’s contemplative prayer community. When John the Baptist spoke of the one coming who would baptize with fire, I believe he was referring to Jesus’ ability to initiate the fire of the intense cleansing action of the Holy Spirit in his disciples. (Matt. 3:11) The fire of the Holy Spirit, called kundalini in yoga, is a concentrated form of the Holy Spirit located at the base of the spine in the spiritual body. It is most closely associated with the heat that it generates as over the years it rises up the spine cleansing the whole spiritual system, eventually bringing enlightenment and the potential for developing the full range of the gifts of the spirit. I believe that Jesus awakening of the fire of the Holy Spirit in his disciples was why early Christians were so much more powerful than those Christians practicing contemplative prayer today. When we Christians lost this tradition we lost the full power of the Holy Spirit from our faith. The fire of the Holy Spirit can be awakened spontaneously from meditation as we have seen in a few very powerful saints over the last two thousand years but usually it is only awakened by being baptized in the spirit by a spiritual master of this tradition, which is how it was awakened in me. In other words the master has to have experienced the fire of the Holy Spirit cleansing his spiritual system in order for him to have the power necessary to awaken the fire of the Holy Spirit in the disciple who has become ready to start the same process. Baptizing a disciple in the Holy Spirit is what yogi’s call shakti-pat but few who receive shakti-pat have put in the years of preparation necessary for kundalini to awaken from it. There are a myriad of books on the kundalini process. If you are interested in the exact structure of the spiritual body they will be a good read. I believe my experience with shakti-pat and the resulting rising of (kundalini) the fire of the Holy Spirit through the spiritual body and up the spine has been classical if not all that typical in our modern society. This experience with the fire of the Holy Spirit is what the next set of lessons is about. Fine, you want to experience the flowing of the Holy Spirit up the spine and your spiritual director doesn’t have a clue about what the fire of the Holy Spirit is. There are breathing exercises you can use to encourage it to flow. Although a number have written to me about how quickly they have started feeling sensations and the actual flow of the Holy Spirit, in my own experience, even after ten years previous meditation, and practicing the exercises for an hour or two each day for a year, there was absolutely nothing for that first year. It was not until after that first year that the movement grew and started to compound. My point is don’t get discouraged. SPIRITUAL BREATHING EXERCISES As I just said, I had practiced contemplative prayer exclusively for about ten years before practicing the spiritual breathing exercises that I now use. Individual consciousness is carried by the flowing of the Spirit and it is the flowing of the Spirit that opens the centers of consciousness in our spiritual body. As I have said earlier, the vast majority of those who practice contemplative prayer exclusively only open the higher centers of consciousness located in the head on their path to realizing Gods presence. This is fine and the realization is exactly the same awareness that the mystic achieves when all the centers throughout the spiritual body are opened. But those who do open all of the centers of consciousness in the spiritual body have a greater flowing of the Holy Spirit and thus a greater ability to help others through the Holy Spirit’s gifts. When the upward flowing of the Holy Spirit through the spine begins within a person they become more than a teacher of words. They in varying degrees begin to radiate the Spirit of God: Just as the sun radiates a light and a heat that can be felt by those who will only choose to step out of the shade. The point is that the breathing exercises encourage the flowing of the Holy Spirit up the spine which will be felt and can help others when the flow is strong enough. Throughout the history of Christianity, most of the healing and spiritual work has been accomplished through the flowing of the Holy Spirit but this is not to say that helping others through the flowing of the Holy Spirit is the highest form of spiritual help. It is not. But it is usually the easiest for the mystic or saint to grasp. To postulate from the viewpoint of infinite consciousness, that is to speak as the word of God would probably be considered the highest form of spiritual help. The Orthodox branch of the Christian church has used the same form of breathing exercises for encouraging the flowing of the Holy Spirit for at least fifteen hundred years. Since about five hundred A.D. there have been written references to their methodology. I do not know how much before that time the breathing exercises were practiced in the Orthodox Church but not written about. I have talked with a few in the Orthodox church who are practicing the original breathing exercises taught and I have been told that the original exercises are quite effective. Although I was never able to learn their exact method, not being in ”their house”, the statement below does give us an idea of the technique used. “You know, brother, how we breathe: We breathe the air in and out. On this based the life of the body and on this depends its warmth. So, sitting down in your cell, collect your mind, lead it into the path of the breath along which the air enters in, constrain it to enter the heart together with the inhaled air, and keep it there. Keep it there, but do not leave it silent and idle; instead give it the following prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.’” Works of ST. NIKODIMUS AND ST. MAKARIOS Breathing exercises are the only practice that some mystics ever use to achieve enlightenment. They seem to be especially well suited for our Western way of life. We are all too busy. It is very hard for us to find a quiet place for devotional time. And then to sit down and actually try to quiet the mind is very difficult for many. Practicing the breathing exercises gives the mind something active to focus on and they can be practiced with almost any kind of noise going on in the house. Actually, in the beginning weeks, months or whenever you can’t get your mind to quiet down while practicing the breathing exercises, it can be helpful to play some devotional music quietly in the background. Something that moves you emotionally is best. Devotional music will grab the mind and as it encourages devotional states within you, at the same time these devotional states are encouraging the flowing of the Holy Spirit. Gregorian chants or spiritual music of any sort will do. (IF PLAYED QUIETLY IN THE BACKGROUND) If your mind seems overly active and you can’t get it to quiet down, try this. Unlike the breathing exercises, music should not be played during contemplative prayer as the mind needs to be still and undistracted. With a little practice and time you will not want even the music in the background while doing your breathing exercises. Usually, the breathing exercises are most effective if practiced for short periods (a half hour or so) a number of times a day in conjunction with contemplative prayer. Actually, given enough years practice, the breathing exercises and contemplative prayer seem to merge. Eventually we are drawn so deeply within doing the breathing exercises that breathing seems to stop, the mind stills and we simply rest in Divine Consciousness. Like contemplative prayer, the most important aspect of doing the breathing exercises is the very gentle but continuous looking out into the infinity behind the darkness of our minds for deeper and deeper levels of Divine Consciousness. I had read about and had tried a number of breathing techniques from several sources. One of the techniques I adapted for my own use. It seemed like a natural extension of how I had spontaneously found the Holy Spirit and so I went with it. I like to associate the way I practice the breathing exercises with Jesus’ statement at John 4:14. “But whoever drinks the water I give him will never be thirsty, no, the water I give shall become a fountain within him, leaping up to provide eternal life.” After daily practicing the breathing exercises for a short time, I began to experience the first signs of the Spirit flowing up my spine and into my head. In the previous ten years of contemplative prayer this had never happened. Daily continuing with the exercises, over the years, the upward flowing of the Spirit has become more and more intense; actually becoming like a fountain of life giving water as it has flowed throughout my nervous system. A personal note: There is a tremendous amount of difference in the activity of the Holy Spirit that is necessary to bring a person to enlightenment between when a person only does contemplative prayer and only opens the two highest spiritual centers of consciousness in the head and when a person does the breathing exercises and in the same amount of time opens all of the spiritual centers throughout the spiritual body. Some practicing contemplative prayer only, seem to have a difficult time relating to the descriptions of the sometimes intense and usually frequent activity of the Spirit in those doing the breathing exercises. About these periods of activity: With others who cannot relate, it is best to practice silence as a virtue. THE EXERCISE Sit quietly and if it is comfortable for you, mentally, use the word “FATHER” as you inhale and mentally, grant me thy "PEACE" as you exhale. There is a reason for using these two words. The sound of the "ah but more like uh" deep in the throat, and the "eee" high in the throat, stimulate two different nerve pathways along each side the spine, causing the circulation of the Holy Spirit in these two pathways which eventually causes the Spirit to rise up through the center of the spine. Further on in the vision of Zechariah (YOU MAY WANT TO REREAD THAT PART OF THE LESSONS), he talks about these two channels along side the central channel of the lampstand (The Spirit in the spine), Zechariah writes: "What are these two olive trees at each side of the lampstand?" and again I asked, "What are the two olive tufts which freely pour out fresh oil through the two golden channels?" Zech. 4:11,12 This of course, is where he is describing his vision of the spiritual body while he was in a intuitive consciousness dream state. Jewish mysticism has always been pretty close mouthed about such things, so I do not know what they called these two channels in our spiritual body but in yoga the two channels are called the Ida and the Pingala and the central channel in the spine is called Sushumna. I repeat, there is no difference in the human anatomy of a yogi and a Jewish prophet, a Buddhist or an atheist. The mystics of each religion have always looked at the same spiritual anatomy of the soul and describe what they see in their own terms. For instance, the mystics of some of the American Indian cultures had described these centers in the spiritual body long before having any contact with the rest of the world. Before you do anything, you might want to gently practice creating the "uh" sound deep in your throat as you inhale and the "eee" sound up against the roof of you mouth as you inhale. Don't be dramatic. Both sounds are done very softly. The breath flowing up against these two nerve areas create an up flowing and down flowing of the Spirit in the spiritual body as well as the physical. Remember that the physical body and the spiritual body impinge on each other at various nerve centers throughout both bodies and just as a mental activity like contemplative prayer influences the physical body, a physical activity like the breathing exercises will influence the spiritual body. Only at death will the physical and spiritual be separated. Also, do not be confused about another point: Neither of these bodies is the soul. There are many sheaths around the soul but that is out of the scope of these lessons. OK, you have gotten the "uh" and "eee" sound down. If it is comfortable, breath through your slightly opened mouth throughout the exercise. In order to stay inwardly focused, it is best to keep your eyes closed or half closed. Do not strain but try to use full intention throughout your practice. Use your imagination until you actually feel the flowing of the Spirit. Then try to use your full intention to keep it flowing. As you do the exercises, imagine that you are like a fountain with the Holy Spirit welling up from the base of the spine, flowing up into your head. (It will.) The exercise goes as follows. Softly creating the "uh" sound in the bottom of your throat and saying "FATHER", (Or whatever you are comfortable with.) slowly inhale, imagining and intending that you are drawing the Holy Spirit up from the base of the spine, through the center of it, into and filling your head with the Holy Spirit’s light, vibration or peace. There are three aspects of doing this that are important; imagination, intention and attention. First imagine that the Holy Spirit is resting at the base of your spine. (It is.) With as much intention as is comfortable (without physically straining) mentally reach down, grab hold of it and as you inhale, slowly and evenly pull the Holy Spirit up through your spine. The Holy Spirit will go to where you attention is, so it may help to move your attention upward along your spine as you inhale. This need be no more than being aware of specific areas of your spine as you inhale. Just before the end of your inhalation, (and do not fill your lungs with so much air that you are uncomfortable) as you feel or imagine the Holy Spirit rising into your head, intend and or imagine that the Holy Spirit is spreading throughout your head, filling it with light or sound or peace. This helps open the centers of higher consciousness located in the brain. Next, with breath held for half as long as your inhalation, gently without straining, look behind the darkness of your mind for the Holy Spirit, the light of the Christ or the light of the Father. Look into as deep a level of Divine Consciousness as you can. (There is only Divine Consciousness. Even if we are looking in the darkness of our own minds, we are still looking into an individualized aspect of the universal mind of God.) What the universal mind is and does is another aspect of Divine Consciousness that is beyond the scope of these lessons. Next, exhaling, equal in time to your inhalation, creating the soft "eee" sound at the roof of you mouth and (If you are comfortable with it) mentally saying grant me thy “PEACE”, imagine that you are falling deeply into God’s arms. Imagine the Holy Spirit washing over your body like a great wave or an over flowing fountain, flowing down the spine and throughout your body, filling your body and mind with light, sound or peace. Next, with your breath out for half as long as your exhalation, (Which is the same length of time you have held it.) imagine that you are resting in the Holy Spirit’s arms. (Which you are doing, even if you don’t know it.) This is one complete breath. Actually it is much easier to do than to explain. With your next breath try to fall a little deeper into the Holy Spirit and God’s arms and so on to the end of your devotional period. If your mind becomes still then stop the breathing exercises and rest in that awareness. Let the Holy Spirit reveal or do what it will. When you leave the intuitive calm and your mind becomes active again, continue the breathing exercises. The breath that I have just gone over is how it is done correctly when we actually feel the Holy Spirit flowing and we are able to maintain a good degree of depth in God's arms as we are doing it. This will come but it probably will not be for a few to a number of years. Until that time it will be much easier to get deeper inside and maintain it if we take a few (at least three) breaths at the end of each breath to fall deeper and deeper into God's arms with each catch up breath at the bottom of the main breath. These catch up breaths will be just like your contemplative prayer breaths. After doing the catch up breaths, you will be deeper inside, your concentration will be better and as you inhale you will be much more effective in pulling the Holy Spirit up through the spine into your head. Even after twenty years of doing this breathing exercise I frequently take a few breaths at the end of each breath and sometimes that is the only way I practice the breath for the whole period. Doing the catch up breaths makes the exercise much more of a spiritual and helps keep us more inwardly focused. In the beginning of learning this breath, it might be easier to practice parts of the exercise and then combine the parts, rather than trying to practice everything at once. If you need healing, as you exhale, using the phrase “Father "uh" grant me Thy healing "eee”, imagine that the Holy Spirit is washing down through your body to that ailing area, restoring and healing it, washing out the illness from your body as you give the illness over to God's hands.. With your breath out, FEEL and BELIEVE in the Holy Spirit’s healing power. These exercises are much more powerful than you might think and miracles do happen, frequently. I repeat: Do not strain. Make your breaths even and comfortable but with full intention. The length of time for each completed breath varies with each person; usually between fifteen to thirty seconds and if you are using the catch up breaths in your routine, even longer. However much time you spend doing the breathing exercises, if you can, spend the same amount of time in contemplative prayer letting Divine Consciousness settle in. For many of my full time working years my schedule had been one half hour of spiritual breathing followed by one half hour of contemplating Divine Consciousness, done three to four times a day. On weekends it would usually be one hour of the breathing exercises followed by two to three hours of contemplative prayer done the first thing in the morning. After retiring, three to five hours of devotional exercises done first thing in the morning is an excellent devotional schedule. Please try to remember that one breath done with full attention, intention and imagination (without physical strain) is worth ten to twenty breaths done with your mind off somewhere in one of a myriad of fantasies that the mind is so prone to get lost in. There is a tremendous amount of difference in the activity of the Holy Spirit between when we are HERE doing the breathing exercises opposed to when we are doing the breathing exercises mechanically with our minds somewhere else. The Holy Spirit follows your attention, intention and imagination so concentrate all three of them on the exercises as you do the exercises. THE SPIRITUAL BREATH AND STRETCH I have given a description of the breathing exercises first because I wanted to get that procedure clear before discussing the exercise that I actually do the first thing each morning. It is a variation of the breathing exercise that I just went over that I call the spiritual breath and stretch. With it added, my routine will normally be one half hour of the breath and stretch followed by one hour of the breathing exercises followed by one and a half to two and a half hours of contemplative prayer, done the first thing in the morning. Do not get the impression that just because you are doing something physical that the breath and stretch is not a spiritual exercise or that it is not beneficial for you spiritually as well as physically. This exercise is extremely beneficial in both areas. There are two basic reasons for this. First, almost all of the spiritual energy that flows through your body flows through your spine to get there. Realize that the physical and the spiritual are tied together. The whole of Hatha yoga and Tai Chi are based on this principal. While doing the breath and stretch, your attention is on the spiritual while you are gently stretching the spine. By gently stretching the spine while keeping your attention on the spiritual, you are greatly enhancing the flowing of the Spirit up through the spine, thus increasing the flowing of the Holy Spirit throughout your body. Second, on the purely physical side of things, if you could only do one exercise that would help keep your spine flexible throughout the whole of your life, especially important in your later years, THIS WOULD BE THE EXERCISE. If you are two years old or one hundred two years old, if you have no spiritual experience or if you are fully enlightened, resting in the continuous awareness of God, never needing to meditate, this exercise is the one spiritual exercise you should still do each day. (My opinion) There is nothing new under the sun. I have not invented any of the spiritual exercises that I practice. With a myriad of variations, all of what I do has been practiced since the first time there were any mystics on this earth. Probably every mystical order on this earth does it's own version of the breath and stretch. In yoga, this exercise would be considered a variation of what they call the maha mudra. All that I have tried to do is to take the spiritual practices that have worked best for me and discard all of the fluff and unnecessary ceremony while maintaining the spiritual value of the practice and that is what I have tried to do with this exercise. THE EXERCISE If you can sit on a firm bed or on carpeted or padded floor with your legs out in front of you and still do the breathing exercises, you can do the breath and stretch. It is that simple. The breathing technique is almost identical in both devotional practices. You inhale the same. You use the same imagination, intention and attention in both practices. You hold the breath the same. You look to Divine Consciousness the same. You exhale the same. The only thing different is that you are adding a very gentle stretching of the spine to the exercise. For the first few weeks, it might be best if your legs are just slightly bent and are about a foot apart as they are stretched out in front of you. After a few weeks or when it is comfortable for you, bring your legs together, knees together and while being perfectly comfortable, keep your legs as straight as possible with your feet pointing upwards. One the physical side this gives greater benefit to the stretching. Now, as you comfortably sit with legs outstretched, hands in your lap or your normal position, perhaps, holding your rosary in one hand to count with or not, inhale (UH) just as you would in the regular breathing exercises, imagining the Spirit rising up from the base of the spine. Remember, the rhythm and count are the same. Hold your breath just as you normally do. Look to the Spirit as you would in the other breathing exercises. Start to exhale (EEE) as you would in the other breathing exercises, Looking out into Divine Consciousness and feeling the Spirit washing over you and down the spine to it's base. How to do all of this has been explained previously. It is exactly the same. I do not need to explain it twice. As you exhale and you imagine or feel the Spirit flowing down to the end of your spine, that is your rear end, as you continue to feel or imagine it flowing to your feet, gently bend forward and at the same time gently reach out towards your feet with your hands. Just as if you are going to touch your toes. (I have found in my own experience that if I wait until feeling the Spirit at the base of the spine before starting the bend forward, I feel a greater flowing of it.) Now, I said GENTLY bend forward and GENTLY reach out towards your feet for a reason. This is a spiritual exercise. It may have beneficial physical qualities but it is a spiritual exercise non the less. There are plenty of people who can touch their toes who do not have a clue as to what the Holy Spirit is. The purpose of this devotional practice is not in touching your toes but in gently stretching your spine while your attention is on the Holy Spirit. The combination of those two factors is what makes the practice effective. The physical side effect of course is that you will have a flexible spine throughout the whole of your life. (Barring injury or illness) OK, your breath is out and you are resting in the Holy Spirit: Inwardly you are looking out beyond the darkness of your mind into the infinity of Divine consciousness as with the regularly breathing exercises. You are gently bent forward only as far as is completely comfortable. You hands are outstretched towards or if you are really limber, beyond your feet. That is the completion of your first breath. You may only be bent forward a couple of inches and that is just fine. On your next breath perhaps you will be bent forward two inches and an eighth and so on until the end of the exercise. Doing this devotional practice each day, over the next weeks, months and years, you will become more flexible than you have ever been in your life and feeling an increased flowing of the Holy Spirit. At the end of your stretch, while still comfortably bent forward, hands still outstretched, keep looking into Divine Consciousness while taking a few regular breaths to catch your breath between stretches. (That is, breaths like you would use doing contemplative prayer; looking deeper and deeper into Divine Consciousness with each.) With each breath allow yourself to relax further and very gently bend forward further. As a natural consequence of the exercise, extend the period of time between stretches where you catch your breath, allowing yourself to be lifted higher and higher into Divine Consciousness at this time. It happens naturally anyway. As the Holy Spirit begins to flow into the head we are naturally drawn deeper inside. At the end of each stretch while comfortable bent forward, if we take a few breaths going with this flow of the Holy Spirit we will be drawn into periods of profound silence and expanded awareness. I have found that if I allow myself to go with this flow, I will be naturally drawn into extended periods of silent contemplation while bent forward doing this exercise. For me, this position is extremely comfortable to meditate from and often I meditate from this position when doing silent contemplation anyway. If you do not have at least the same depth in resting in the Holy Spirit as with the regular breathing exercises, you are being to physical. If you are over filling your lungs with air, you are being to physical. This is a lifetime spiritual practice, not an exercise to bend like a pretzel next week. Next breath: Slowly inhale, doing everything as you would in the regular breathing exercises but as you do this gently pull you hands back into your lap and gently sit back up into the erect beginning position. Please be aware that your inhalation and pulling up of the Spirit through your spine is the most important aspect of both breathing exercises. It is far to easy to forget this as you sit back up in the breath and stretch. I repeat, take special care to be aware of the upward flowing of the Spirit at this time or you will lose the effectiveness of the exercise. Continue the exercise as described earlier, gradually bending and stretching your spine a fraction further with each breath. That's it. That's the whole of it. The breath and stretch exercise has all of the elements that are needed to progress on the spiritual path and stay flexible throughout our lives. It helps keep the spine flexible, gently stretches the back muscles, helping any problems there. It stretches the large muscles in the legs, helping with any problems there and helps keep the shoulder joints working smoothly. It encourages the flowing of the Holy Spirit and brings us into periods of deep silent contemplation of Divine Consciousness. Especially valuable for those new on the path, it keeps the mind occupied, giving it something physical to concentrate on while at the same time taking us deep within. To me, it is the perfect devotional routine, especially for those with little time, for those who are having trouble quieting the mind, and for those who want to stay flexible throughout their lives. I guess that's about everybody. I am of a devotional nature and during this exercise, I do one additional thing for keeping my attention on the spiritual. At the end of the stretch, bent forward, looking out into infinity, arms stretched out, I imagine that my hands are reaching out to God. Works for me but then maybe I am getting soft in my older years. If the breath and stretch exercise is practiced steadily, it may not be to many months before some start noticing and increased flowing of the Holy Spirit into their hands. It seems to be a natural occurrence of being bent forward before God with outstretched arms, looking into the infinity of Divine Consciousness. You may even feel your hands becoming tingly or perhaps hot. No need for concern, it is just the Holy Spirit flowing through them and it is possible to help others through this increased flowing. When healing, (laying on of hands) imagine the Holy Spirit flowing from the infinity of God out through your hands. This is how helping others through the flowing of the Holy Spirit is done. When helping others with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit does not come from the individual but through the individual from the infinity of God. God is where one's attention should always be. Having said this, let me make clear that developing this gift of the Holy Spirit is not why you are doing the breath and stretch exercise. Impressing our friends with any gift of the Spirit is not the path of Christianity that Jesus would have us follow. It is the path that our egos would have us follow. A gift of the Spirit, if strived after for itself, is nothing more than spiritual materialism. It is the innate joy of the presence of God as soul that is the peace that Jesus gives. This is "teleios", completeness for the soul. Everything else is just stuff we go through and or are given in our journey to experience God. THE HEALING BREATH AND STRETCH I have noticed that the variation of the breath and stretch exercise that I am about to go over has done more for enhancing the flowing of the Holy Spirit through my hands than any other exercise I have ever done. In conjunction with the other two healing exercises that I have previously discussed or by itself, this exercise can be used to help heal an illness or injury within ourselves. As with the other two exercises, its effectiveness is dependent upon the depth of our contact with Divine Consciousness. It is for this reason that if you need healing, it is best to start with the regular breath and stretch and then near the middle or end of the exercise, when you are deepest inside, to switch to the healing breath and stretch for the rest of your devotional period. I do myself and recommend for others to do the breath and stretch for a half hour, the first thing in the morning, every morning. So if this is your schedule also, if needed or wanted, you might consider taking the last five or ten minutes of it for this exercise. Except for the movement of your arms and hands and the visualization that accompanies it, everything is the same in both exercises. It will help your concentration and the effectiveness of the exercise if as you inhale you mentally repeat (Father) and as you exhale you mentally repeat (heal). Let's start at the bottom of the breath, when you are bent forward, taking a few breaths, getting deeper and deeper inside with each exhalation. With your next breath, as you inhale and start to sit up, feeling or imagining the Holy Spirit flowing through your hands, take your hands, palms facing your body, almost touching each other and as close as possible but not touching your body and feel the Holy Spirit washing over and through each part of your body as you bring your hands up over your legs, then the trunk of your body, then over your face and head, at the end of your breath letting them stretch into the air above you like the opening of a flower. As you do the whole of this breath, imagine that the Holy Spirit is flowing from your hands over and through your body, washing out any illness, injury or disease and that at the end of your breath when you open your hands like an opening flower that the illness is being washed out through the top of your head and that you are giving this illness to infinity. Arms raised to infinity, keeping this visualization in mind, hold your breath only as long as is completely comfortable. If you have trouble keeping your arms raised or even if you would like to get more movement through you shoulders, as I need to do for an old shoulder injury, it is just as effective to let you arms go almost full circle, at the end of the breath letting your hands rest on the floor on each side of you, upturned to the sky. Next breath: As you slowly inhale, take you hands back full circle if they were resting on the floor, or if they were raised like the opening of a flower over your head, bring them together as if grasping the Holy Spirit from the infinity above you and as you bring your hands in front of your face (palms now facing you again) again feel the Holy Spirit flowing from them, washing out any illness from each part of you body that they are being lowered to. NOTE: Do not start bending forward until your hands are about to touch your legs. When your hands are at leg level start bending forward with your hands going out over but not touching your legs, all the while imagining the Holy Spirit washing out any illness in them. At the end of your exhalation, imagine that any illness is being washed out through you feet into infinity. As your arms are outstretched beside your feet or legs, turn your hands up to the sky and take a few breaths, going deeper and deeper into Divine Consciousness with each breath. That's it. As with the other exercises, it is a lot harder to describe than it is to do. Keep in mind that it is the depth of our connectedness with Divine Consciousness that determines the effectiveness of the exercise. With each breath, take as many catch up breaths as you need to stay deeply inside. To help keep the Spirit flowing smoothly through my body, I do ten minutes of the healing breath and stretch every day at the end of twenty minutes of the regular breath and stretch. I believe its' effectiveness is similar to that achieved from doing a short period of Tai Chi which is also designed to keep ones body in tune. AN AFTERTHOUGHT It is hard for some people to understand and I have talked to a few who never did understand that just because a mystic can heal them self and others does not mean that that is what they want to do for them self. Not infrequently a mystic will have accomplished what they want in life, done what they needed to do, written what they needed to write and because they are ready to go, just watch a life ending illness play itself out to the end of the material body: Which reminds me of a story about a saint in South America. It has been a long time since I read about him so I hope I am not too far off the mark. If I am, someone will always write and straighten me out. Anyway, there was a saint who lived in a monastery in South America. This is a true story by the way. Living next to the monastery was a farmer with an old crippled dog. The farmer got tired of the dog and shot him to death. Later, seeing the dead dog, the saint felt compassion for it, resurrected it from the dead and took it in. Years later, the saint came down with the Spanish Flu and passed away. The point? If the saint could resurrect a dog from the dead, he could have healed himself from the flu if he had wanted to. Moral: Just because a saint dies from some common illness does not mean that they were not very powerful in life. BAPTISM BY THE FIRE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT Elisa had Elijah to teach him and to pass on the flowing of the Holy Spirit. The apostles had Jesus to teach them and to pass on the flowing of the Holy Spirit. The Church Fathers had the apostles to teach them and to pass on the flowing of the Holy Spirit. St. John of the Cross was taught by St. Teresa of Avilla who had the power of the Holy Spirit. It can be done on our own but it is a much easy and faster journey when we have the wisdom and power of an advanced spiritual mentor to help us.. I had been practicing contemplative prayer for about ten years and the breathing exercises for a couple of years when, a new friend told me that when he was in the presence of his teacher, who happened to teach the same breathing exercises that I was using, that he felt the movement of the Spirit within himself. Although not of my religion, that year I went on a week’s retreat to see the teacher. At the end of the week, the teacher blessed all attending by placing his hands on each person’s head, (and I would imagine) silently willing (there was no fuss or public emotional display of his abilities) or asking the Holy Spirit to come into their lives. I thought it was going to feel like lightning or heat or light or something great. But not nothing! I had averaged two to four hours a day in devotional time for twelve years. I had averaged five to six hours a day in devotional time for the last year and a half and still I left the retreat feeling very disappointed that I somehow had not properly prepared myself for the meeting. But when I arrived home and started my regular devotional routine, the wind of the Spirit that Ezekiel and other prophets allude to, began blowing throughout my body. The Spirit would concentrate upon very specific areas along my spine and into my head. During one devotional the Spirit seemed to rise up through my body like a river; bending my spine backwards into a gentle curve, holding me like this for a few minutes. As it continued to flow upward the Spirit flooded into my eyes making them spasm mildly. During each devotional and even during the rest of the day storms of the Spirit began flowing through me. When the Spirit flowed into my heart, it was as if my heart had been set on fire. It would burn and burn. I have read of the saint’s referring to the fire in the heart. Now I knew what they were really talking about. The heat felt is from the intense cleansing action of the Holy Spirit. As it clears obstructed pathways within the physical nervous system and spiritual body we may feel heat throughout. The baptism by the fire of the Holy Spirit and the rising of it up through my spine was the beginning of a new stage in my spiritual experience. After a couple of months of the activity that I have previously described, I began to feel heat at the base of my spine. Over the years I have felt this heat slowly rise up through the spine opening each center of consciousness that it has passed through. I do not know how common my experience with this particular pattern of movement of the heat of the intense cleansing action of the Holy Spirit is but for me the heat has moved up the spine in a fairly consistent and very specific way. On and off during the day and especially during my devotional time, I would feel a diffuse heat at a specific point, this pattern starting at the bottom of my spine. I will have felt the heat like this for two to three years, then for a number of months the heat will seem to spread throughout my body as if building pressure and on and off during the day it will have felt like I am running a low grade fever. Eventually, the heat will break through the center of consciousness on the spine that the Holy Spirit had been working on and I will feel the heat move up the spine to the next center where it will start working at that point for the next couple of years. This basic pattern has continued over the years with the intense cleansing action of the Holy Spirit eventually coming to work within the middle of my head. It is from this kind of direct personal experience that I have based my opinions on the circles of light of Ezekiel and the visions of some of the other prophets. You might think that the Spirit would choose special moments of devotion or significance to make its most dramatic moves but that is not my experience with it at all. It was thanksgiving day and I had just finished my third helping of everything I could hold. This is just one of those wonderful traditions we all need to do at thanksgiving. Completely stuffed and content, I went outside by myself and sat on the porch for just a few minutes. I must inject here that I knew it was coming sometime soon. I could feel the spot of heat building at my throat and I had been running full body heat on and off all day long for a few months. Everything I have ever read on the subject has always said that heavy food just kills the spirit’s activity, so it wasn’t like I was looking for anything at that moment. As I sat there, my sinuses cleared with the air flow becoming perfectly even between the two nostrils. Now, that’s a good sign that the Holy Spirit has just started to enter the central channel in our spiritual body and is moving up the spine. I began to feel the movement of the spirit through the center at the throat. First, it spread out into my ears and then it poured into my head, feeling like some kind of an electrical storm. It then flowed into my eyes causing them to spasm mildly. Well, that’s how I sat for the next few minutes, filled in the stomach and filled in the head. The Holy Spirit has been concentrating on working in my head since that time. I don’t know how it is for others but I have never had to guess what the Holy Spirit is doing or where it is working. I do not know that this pattern of movement is the usual. Perhaps it works with each of us according to our needs. Most people that I know personally have had gradual openings of the centers and cannot always tell what’s going on. The heat doesn’t always start at the bottom spiritual center. A student writes: "I do the breathing exercises for half an hour. After a while, the breath penetrates just below the navel, and it produces a broad diffuse heat. Even with my attention on the base of the spine, basically nothing happens there. This appears to be inconsistent with your suggestions." Answer: "The Holy Spirit will start working with each person where it needs. I first felt the heat at the base of the spine but it makes little difference where it starts. It is great that the Spirit is working with you. lmr" Of course not everyone is going to feel heat. I had been practicing the breathing exercises for a few years but it was not until I had gone on retreat and was baptized in the Spirit that I began to feel the heat from the intense cleansing action of the Spirit. There are numerous other sensations that may be felt as the Spirit flows through the various spiritual centers that are much more typical. We need not be alarmed by any of it. The work that the Holy Spirit does with us is a cleansing work. It cleanses our spiritual and physical systems in preparation for the direct experience of the deep things of God and eventually Divine Consciousness as soul. Another student writes: " I have been doing the breathing exercises coupled with contemplative prayer for about a week now. As I get into about 10 minutes, I start to have to cough. I don’t have a cold and I have never smoked, nor do I work in a particularly polluted area, so I don’t think that is causing the cough. It can be very intense at times and then all of a sudden I get this jolt like feeling run through my entire body. It leaves me feeling like I’m electrified and considerably larger than I am. Does this sort of thing happen to others as well? A couple of times, after the jolt and while I feel electrified, I cannot breathe at all. I try to inhale but I can’t. I am not able to hold my breath that long normally and would be gasping for breath after a short while, but at this time I feel no need whatsoever to breathe. At no time during the whole session do I feel any fear, pain of panic, do you know what this is?" Answer: "Some people have throats that are more sensitive to the breathing exercises than others. If this is the case with you then take a tablespoon of olive oil before doing them. It coats the throat and solves the problem. From what you have described, I do not think that that is what is going on with you. With the movement of the Holy Spirit that you describe, you have probably stimulated the center of consciousness at the throat. It is not a problem. I have had the same mild choking sensation happen to me when the Spirit has flowed intensely in that area. It will clear up after a while and perhaps come back on and off. The Holy Spirit will work where it needs to work for each of us. The physical body sometimes has reactions to this work. That seems to be what you are experiencing. To the next question. When the Spirit moves strongly enough and or we are deep enough inside during contemplative prayer or the breathing exercises, we become extremely relaxed and our bodies need less oxygen. In addition to this, the Holy Spirit refreshes the body and we do not need to breathe but a fraction of what we normally need to breathe. Keep up the good work. lmr" And another student writes: "Dear Mr. Richardson, I am currently experiencing some difficultly, and am hoping that you may offer some insight. First some background. I have had a renewed devotion to the Spirit in the last couple of years and have been practicing daily prayer and meditation within the last year. I have experienced the Spirit rising up through the center of my body opening different centers of energy. The process for me has involved an attention and focusing on an area of consciousness within my body. In meditation I would focus on this area, feeling the pain and other blockages leaving to be replaced by a new lightness. Then at some point, usually centered around a key insight, there would be a great release and I would always be moved to tears by the overwhelming joy I felt. Answer: "Of course it is impossible for me to say exactly what any sensation is long distance but you have pretty well described the spiritual process as I have experienced it. Even when it doesn't feel like it at the moment, any movement of the Spirit is a blessing. The stronger the movement the stronger the blessing. You have mentioned a key aspect of the process; relaxation. I recall a period in my life for several weeks, a number of years back, that I nicknamed my weekend nausea. I would work all week with all of the tensions involved and be fine but as I would begin to relax mentally during the weekend, the Spirit would start flowing more forcefully than I could easily tolerate and I would generally be totally nauseated for the whole period. On Monday the tensions of the job would be back, the Spirit would stop flowing so forcefully and I would be fine again. It is not the Spirit that makes us sick. It is our inability to handle the flowing of it that makes us sick. It is not always that easy to distinguish between being sick with the Spirit and being sick with some illness. I have always had a problem telling the two apart. Over the years I have been able to look for the subtle differences but even with that I can't always tell. If you start running full body heat it feels very much like the flu. The Spirit will flow and you may be totally "spaced out" like an allergy problem. The Spirit will flow in a specific area of the body and you may be convinced that you have a strained muscle of worse. I could go on and on and on and as you have read in the lessons, in the beginning of experiencing these things, I had gone to the doctor to see if there was something physical to it. How does a person tell the doctor the Spirit is beating up on them lately? They will want to put you away somewhere and have done so with some who did not know what was behind their sensations and lost or never found the proper perspective of it all. Helping people to understand or at least look at the process with a little larger perspective is one of the main reasons I have written the lessons. I have always felt the flowing of the Spirit was a blessing but If it all gets a little much we can shut it down a little bit. Tension kills the flowing of the Spirit. Just get into a heavy argument with someone and see what happens to its flowing. You will be instantly back to the physical wondering where the Spirit went. Bad or really heavy food draws the Spirit to the physical to digest them. This only seems to help a little. Focusing your attention on family and friends, that is family activities, helps. Probably, the best thing for stopping the flowing is strenuous physical activity. That works wonders. I have used all of the above. You will have to see what works best for you but try to let the Spirit flow as much as you can handle it. After all, the path is not the goal, the end, the realization of the presence of God is the goal. The shorter the time period getting there, the better. One thing that I want to stress is that this intensity that you are currently feeling will not be permanent. The Spirit seems to work in cycles and there is usually a long period of relative little activity followed by a short period of intense activity, just as you have described and back to a long period of inactivity again. It is easy to be discouraged when the cycle turns and nothing seems to be happening in our spiritual lives. Let it all come and let it all go but in the middle of everything always keep your mind on God and BE STEADY IN YOUR PRACTICES. Hope this helps and let me know how you are doing." A lady writes: I have enjoyed your writings and thank you for them. I am writing to get some feedback as to whether you have known others in my situation and do you believe your exercises might be of benefit. You mentioned in your lessons that the average person could not withstand the (FULL) intensity of the Holy Spirit. That if this were to occur before the nervous system was ready there could be health problems. I believe I have had this occur. About 12 yrs. ago I had an inner calling. It was, ........you must decide whether you want to be born, twice. I said yes but without any clear understanding of what I was in store for. I experienced what seemed like two different energies. Or they may have been one on a higher state of consciousness. One coming down my crown to my heart. The other from the base of my spine upward. Once way beyond my crown. Other times into my head and brain. There were many times I felt engulfed in love. I am devotional in nature also. These energies are not as noticeable now unless I relax or think about them.
Answer: I wish I could give you a cut and dry answer about what would solve the problem but I can't. It may not seem like it but you are blessed to have this kind of attention from the Spirit. (Just ask the 90% who meditate and can't seem to get any movement of the Spirit) The heat is not illness. It is simply a physical reaction to the friction caused by the flowing of the Spirit beyond our nervous systems' ability to handle it comfortably. The same is true of the feeling out of balance. This can feel very much like an allergy problem where you feel totally (spaced out.) I have talked about both in the lessons and if you want to reduce the flowing of the Spirit, you might want to go over that lesson. In order to maximize the flowing of the Spirit and get the most benefit from it, I will normally do the most physically active part of my devotional practices first, (the breath and stretch) ending in the least active and most subtle exercise last. (contemplative prayer or just sitting in the silence) If the flowing becomes uncomfortable, you might want to try the opposite, ending with your tai chi. The physicality of tai chi coupled with its wonderful ability to even out the flowing of the Spirit throughout the body just might be the answer you are looking for. Actually, it is for the evening out effect that I do the (healing breath and stretch) for a few minutes after the regular breath and stretch. But tai chi is a longer, more active spiritual exercise that will probably do you better. The goal is the direct experience of God. In my own practices I have always felt that whatever I had to go through to get there was just stuff I had to go through to get there. I do realize though, that each of us has to go at our own pace and each of us has to determine the degree of uncomfortableness we are willing to tolerate in God's cleansing process with us. Remember, the Holy Spirit is not the reward for anything. The Holy Spirit is the tool that God uses to cleanse our physical and spiritual selves to prepare us for the direct experience of HIM. The direct awareness of God as soul is the reward. Everything else we experience is just stuff of little importance (in the long run.) Anyway, try something physical like tai chi or hatha yoga or my healing breath and stretch exercises directly after meditation and see if it helps even out the flowing of the Spirit through your body. lmr Twenty some years ago now; the first year after the intense flowing of the Spirit began in me I had a very similar situation to the lady who wrote the preceding e-mail. I would do my regular devotional routine and the Spirit would start flowing into my heart. My heart would start burning and I couldn't get it to stop. there would be so much energy that the burning would go into my lungs and couldn't even take a comfortable deep breath. My devotional routine was mostly the breathing exercises at the time and it would get so bad that I could no longer do them. I would stop my devotional routine and in a week or so the flowing would subside, I could take a deep breath again and would continue my normal daily spiritual routine. My lungs went out on me six times that first year. The last time for nearly a month. I went to a doctor and he could find no physical reason for it. I was determined to press the flowing of the Spirit to the limit and was not about to cut back one bit on my exercises. In my naivety I figured that if I could keep up this pace, keep the Spirit this active, I would probably be enlightened in short order. So I called the yoga monastery where I learned the breathing exercises and asked for diet instructions to be written back to me for handling the heat and discomfort. I had read somewhere that adding clarified butter to the diet would help. Instead of a letter, the monk in charge of the spiritual practices of the rest of the monks at the monastery, a brother Adonay or something like that called me on the phone. I do not know what his position is called but this monk rested in continuous non-duality, continuous Christ consciousness. It is a blessing to ever even get to talk to someone like this. Few of the greatest mystics that we all have read and admired ever attained continuous non-duality. He was ever so kind but was quite blunt about my situation. He said that I was not yet spiritually advanced enough for the hours of my routine and that if I didn't cut back on it I would permanently damage my nervous system. So much for my ego. (One more time.) When I cut back on my routine the problem never happened again. Now many years later I am doing more hours than what I had to cut back on then. It all works out in God's time for us not in our time for us. This might be one of the hardest things to learn. It has been for me. THE NATURE OF INNER GUIDANCE The other side of becoming open to the Spirit is becoming open to visions, inner guidance and a whole range of unusual sensations. People who have not experienced visions, inner guidance and sensations etc., often think that such things come with a full set of instructions included within them but it’s not like that at all. The highest form of intuition is to know by knowing. A mystic will have put their attention on something or someone and they just know it or them as a part of themselves; more than most of us might know ourselves. They know what they have put their attention on, head to toe, skin to bones, mind to soul, often past, present and future. The great mystic Chuang Tzu had put his attention on a butterfly and for a while did not know whether he was Chuang Tzu looking at a butterfly or a butterfly looking at Chuang Tzu. This is an example of how a mystic might now by knowing. When Jesus picked his apostles, it was with the same type of knowing placed upon each of them. I am sure that Jesus knew each of his apostles more deeply than they knew themselves. Advanced mystics will use this same method when investigating "the deep things of God." The visions and voices that most mystics experience before coming close to attaining Jesus' level of awareness are of a much lower order. The uncertainty over the nature and meaning of this lower order of intuitiveness is one of the reasons that it is so much easier to have an advanced spiritual mentor to gently guide the way, to give a little insight and stabilization when we are being pushed around by the Spirit or when having moments of intuition that would seem to lead a person in the opposite direction of where their common sense would tell them to go. In the beginning of these things happening, it is very easy to become convinced that we are someone special that God is either punishing or has sent to save the world, when the truth is that in some way our own subconscious desires are influencing our awareness. There is a very basic truth that everyone becoming open to the Holy Spirit should have imprinted in their mind. THE HOLY SPIRIT GOES WHERE YOUR MIND GOES. When we become open to the Holy Spirit, it will try to bring about those things in our minds that we desire to happen; both consciously and subconsciously. The great mystic's will always be careful with what they fantasize because they know that the Holy Spirit is going to immediately set the wheels in motion to bring the fantasy into fruition. It is one of the basic spiritual laws for the soul. On a much lower order, it is not too different with those just becoming open to the Holy Spirit's influence. The only problem is that the novice on the path does not have the same amount of control over their mental processes. The result can be that suddenly there is all of this new found power in the novice's thoughts that is pushing them all over the place trying to fulfill their subconscious desires and the novice doesn't have any control over what is happening. After putting my lessons on line I have received a few hundred letters a year, literally from all over the world, with a surprising percentage coming from people who have started becoming open the Spirit and are in various degrees of distress over the experiences they are having. When becoming open to the Spirits' guidance or having inner experiences that are totally out of our concept of what we think is supposed to happen on the path, it is much too easy to think that, "I'm going nuts, I am chosen by God to save the world, I am being punished by God, I am possessed by demons, I am more special than everyone else, I am not as good as anyone else" or any combination of or all of the previous or even worse their priest has convinced them of one of the previous. Invariably it is none of these things. Almost certainly the person has become somewhat open to the flowing of the Holy Spirit and they are totally surprised and caught off guard by the new power in and subsequent force of their subconscious minds. A student writes: "Thank you so much for answering my e-mail so promptly. One more question I would ask of you. Ever since this started in 1991, I have felt as if I am now sharing my physical body with someone else. I can actually feel it. Sometimes It feels like hands inside of me, sometimes like a snake, sometimes like an animal or insect. It only stops when I am asleep. It scares me so much that at times I think it must be a demon or evil spirit. Other times I think it is part of the dark night of the soul. Can you enlighten me on this matter? Thank you," Answer: "Every single thing you have mentioned, over the years, I have felt. Feel blessed not cursed or possessed. It is the Holy Spirit flowing through your nervous system. It sometimes takes a long time to become accustomed to the flowing of it. Have you ever gotten a spider web caught in your face and your whole face feels creepy and tingly. Its like that. Your nerves have a reaction to the sensation of the web against your face. Same thing with the flowing of the Spirit. As the Spirit opens up new path ways within you, you are going to feel movements of energy throughout your nervous system exactly as you describe. It is a good sign that the Spirit is continuing to work with you. Be grateful whenever the Spirit works with you. It is a blessing. Yours in the Spirit, even when it feels creepy, lmr" You cannot blame the Holy Spirit. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do: Take the soul to where it wants to go in life. In regard to the whole of creation, the Holy Spirit is much more of course but in relationship to the soul, the Holy Spirit is its enabling force. When the soul starts to become open to it, THE HOLY SPIRIT WILL TAKE YOU IN LIFE TO WHERE YOUR MIND DWELLS, consciously and sometimes with much drama, subconsciously. For the soul seeking the truth of existence, this is the most important law in the universe. Keep your mind on God and as free as possible of unfulfilled desires and the Holy Spirit will have a much easier task in taking you to the higher reality and you will have a much easier time of it emotionally. Realize that although the Holy Spirit is a wonderful presence, it is not a person sitting in front of you that you can query with intimate questions. The Spirit may reveal broad sweeping visions as to the nature of reality and then leave the process of daily living to each of us to work out as best we can. It will give us a general direction to follow and then leave us to work out the details. The Holy Spirit seems to have no regard for our ego problems. After we have become open to it and then should turn our backs on its direction, it has no regrets in ripping one’s heart to shreds. But realize that it is not the Holy Spirit doing this on its own. It does what it does through our own subconscious, conscious and super conscious desires and fears. At times I have wondered if there was anything left of my heart to tear apart but with the passage of time I have come to realize that nothing has ever happened in my (OR YOUR) inner life that has not come from within myself (OR YOURSELF). PLEASE Keep in mind: NO SOUL IS MORE SPECIAL THAN ANOTHER SOUL. NO SOUL IS CHOSEN BY GOD TO DO ANYTHING IN THIS LIFE THAT IS NOT CONSCIOUSLY, SUPER CONSCIOUSLY OR SUBCONSCIOUSLY ALREADY IN ITS MIND TO DO. THE NATURE OF THE FLOWING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT Knowledgeable mystics know that the Holy Spirit is in all faiths and that it can be bestowed upon us from the spiritually advanced of any faith. It is impossible to be grateful enough to the person who brings the fire of the Spirit into one’s life; no matter their or our faith. At least this is how I feel about the person that I had my initial experiences with. On the other side, finding the spiritually advanced in any faith is hard enough but even when found, few who go to see the spiritually advanced have life changing experiences. Some feel nothing different and leave doubting the teacher’s abilities. Some have minor experiences. It is as St. John of the Cross wrote. Illumination is not dependent upon the ray of light. The Holy Spirit is given freely to all by the spiritually advanced. Illumination is dependent upon how well YOU have cleaned YOUR WINDOW; how well YOU have prepared your soil for the planting of the seed of the Spirit. Even a saint who can raise the dead will not be able to initiate the flowing of the Spirit in someone who is not ready or is unwilling for it to happen. When the Holy Spirit starts rising up through the spine in someone, people who are sensitive to the Spirit are naturally going to feel it and will be drawn to those they feel it from. However, the first thing I want everyone to understand is that this does not mean that those experiencing the flowing of the Holy Spirit are in anyway more special than anyone else or chosen by God for some special task in life. The second thing I want everyone to understand is that until a persons consciousness is stable the flowing of the Holy Spirit is not going to be stable. There will be periods when it seems like the Holy Spirit could fly like lightening from one's hands and other periods when so little of the Spirit is flowing it will seem like you have been abandoned. Such is the way of the spiritual path. With this next set of lessons in mind, I would like to share a few of my own experiences. It has been a couple of decades now since the initial experiences of awakening of the heat of the Spirit so by now I should have come to have a fairly good perspective of the flowing of the Spirit within myself and over the years, the reaction of others who have felt movements of the Spirit within themselves when close to me. Upon returning home from retreat and being in the middle of all the initial activity that I have previously described, I was also attending a class on the comparative study of the bible and the gita, the most sacred of the Hindu scriptures. At the end of the class, we would all hold hands an offer a prayer. After a few weeks, I began to notice that a lady attending the class would always make sure that she would be holding my hand at this time. She would almost push people out of the way to make sure of this. Finally I pulled her aside and quietly asked her what was going on. She said that she was sensitive to the Spirit and wanted to avail herself of it flowing from my hands: That she had never felt it in anyone that strong. All that I knew was that my hands would get very hot at this time. This was the first indication that I had ever had that there might be an outward manifestation that others might feel of the inner flowing of the Spirit that I had begun to feel. Now, I want to stress that as far as I still am aware, there was no sudden change in my consciousness. I had not suddenly become a saint or something. Before this, I had always thought that one would have a gradual evolving consciousness that others might begin to feel over many years of increasing spirituality. It just doesn't always work that way. Without any noticeable increase in spirituality, the Spirit may start flowing and others sensitive to it will start feeling it and there need be no change in attitude, no new holiness, no major shift in consciousness for this to happen. I have taught classes and had people call me, asking about the visions of light and electrical type sensations that were running through their bodies since they began attending the class. During those periods when the spirit has been flowing intensely, I have had total strangers come up to me asking about what they were feeling when around me. I had a minister come up to my car that I was meditating in and ask about the white light he saw surrounding it, a sales lady break into tears and totally lose it in the middle of selling me something, a lady walk behind me 3 or for times while I was sitting and come up to me and ask who I was, another lady just stand there looking at me and finally come up to me and tell me she had been waiting for someone like me to come into her life and many more experiences like this. These people knew nothing about me but had felt the flowing of the spirit and had asked about what they felt. I never tell anyone that these things might happen and most do not know what it is and why it is when it does happen. It is what it is and I see no need to make a big deal about it. I have been around long enough to know that this intense flowing that people fell is not me, just something I carry round with me occasionally. And I do mean occasionally because when the spirit is not flowing intensely, I might as well be a lump of clay standing next to someone. Until a person’s consciousness is stable at the end of the process the flowing of the Holy Spirit will not be stable. Understand, I’m not going on an ego trip here in relating these experiences. You just need to know that I actually do know from my own personal experience what I am talking about in this next statement. I know as one of the basic facts of my life and want to firmly stress that the flowing of the Spirit and the ability to help others through the flowing of the Spirit is not in any way an indication that the person with this ability is more special than anyone else, more knowledgeable than anyone else, more kind and understanding than anyone else, more spiritual than anyone else and especially not any more moral than anyone else. Read the above statement as many times as it take to sink in. Anyway, if you are progressing on this path and people feel things around you, get over yourself, it’s not you they are feeling. It’s just something you are carrying around with you occasionally. And if you have this wonderful charismatic teacher with special gifts who can’t get over himself, before putting your money or body on his alter of wonderfulness you need to step back and take a good look at what’s really going on with him. A FEW WORDS ABOUT TEACHERS So many of the preachers and ministers who are putting themselves out in front of the crowds, although healing and displaying gifts of the Holy Spirit or faking them, seem to have tremendous ego problems. Even those few who have directly experienced God, the enlightened or partially enlightened, have to relate through their own personalities and can be insensitive to others and even immoral while still displaying wonderful gifts of the Spirit. A student writes: My question concerns my brother------.He is quite charismatic and continues to demonstrate some extraordinary abilities witnessed not only by me, but by others. (Recently, when my brother and I were in an intense conversation about God while I sat in darkness. Suddenly, half the lights in my house went on simultaneously. It startled me, and my brother laughed, saying it was just the Holy Spirit and I needed to relax.)
Answer: Being open to the spirit and demonstrating its gifts does not mean that 1: A person has any more of an understanding of anything spiritual than anyone else. Thinking of the ego nature and ministers reminds me of a story about a great saint. The saint had a disciple who had been a thief and a general bad guy. To make amends for his past evils in life the disciple would sit out in the direct sun for hours to do his silent prayer and devotionals. Another disciple mentioned to the saint how wonderful the first disciples actions where. The saint was not impressed and stated that the first disciples mind was like a swinging pendulum and that only the disciples viewpoint had changed and not the nature of his mind. The point is that we need to be careful of those we put out before us or even close to us. If it was the nature of their mind to hurt or take advantage of people, or to indulge in some deviant behavior before their miraculous conversion, they are just as likely to use their new found faith to do the same. This is especially true if they have acquired or can fake some gift of the Spirit that they can use to impress others. So often those who practice on the surface of their faith only change their viewpoint by conversion but not the nature of what they do or who they really are under that façade they are wearing. I would like to make equally clear that just because the Holy Spirit is flowing in someone strong enough for them to help or heal others, it does not necessarily indicate a sign of them having the ultimate or even close to the correct knowledge of anything spiritual. I am reminded of a story of an early Christian saint who had great gifts of the Holy Spirit. The saint was convinced that Jesus was coming in his lifetime to destroy the evilness of the world and to convince everyone of the correctness of his convictions he (by the power and blessing of the Holy Spirit) raised someone from the dead. Well, by now the saint has been dead for over a thousand years and the world is still here, waiting to be destroyed. True story. Sometimes those open to the Holy Spirit but not fully enlightened may use it (consciously or unconsciously) in a completely arbitrary manor. We have all read the account of Isaiah calling down the she bear killing the children who were making fun of him. (Disrespecting a prophet, the scriptures say.) Or perhaps this account of Peter. “Another man named Amanitas and his wife Sapphira likewise sold a piece of property. With the connivance of his wife he put aside a part of the proceeds for himself: the rest he took and laid at the feet of the apostles. Peter exclaimed: ‘Ananias, why have you let Satan fill your heart so as to make you lie to the Holy Spirit and keep for yourself some of the proceeds from the field? Was it not yours so long as it remained unsold? Even when you sold it, was not the money still yours? How could you ever concoct such a scheme? You have lied not to men but to God!’ At the sound of these words, Ananias fell dead.” (Acts 5: 1-5) Three hours later, when Ananias wife came in, Peter (through the Holy Spirit) killed her in the same way. The Holy Spirit does not take this kind of action except through the personalities of individual souls who have become at least partially open to it. It may be true that it does not follow our rules of behavior but the Holy Spirit does not get its’ feelings hurt. People who are not fully enlightened get their feelings hurt. The Holy Spirit does not care how much money each of us gives to the Church. Only a Church officials care. These stories tell us volumes about mankind's relationship with the Holy Spirit and how it works through the personalities of those who open themselves to it but who have not yet achieved perfect clarity in vision. Both Peter and Isaiah must have been pretty crusty individuals. A student asked: "In your personal accounts, you described the Holy Spirit as being a kind of power that does not discriminate (the story of Peter in the Acts, etc.) could you elaborate a little more on the subject?" Answer: "The Holy Spirit does not have our limited concept of morality. From infinity, it is concerned about the major workings of creation and although it is the life force and power of each soul and does involve itself more intimately with each soul who becomes open to it, answering prayers, healing and gifts of the Spirit etc., it really does not become involved in taking sides in the relationships between souls. Individually, each soul, and both Peter and Isaiah are responsible and will feel the consequences of how they use the Holy Spirit. This is probably a bad example because it has no intelligence like the Holy Spirit but you can't blame electricity for either the good or bad that people will use it for. The point is that God is not a personality that gets involved in such small matters. He lets his children work things out between themselves. Everything is contained in God. Everything is an extension of one thing; God. From infinity, what is contained and what happens between the parts of the one thing is not good or bad. It is just interaction between the parts of the whole of God. All interaction is but the play, the dream of creation which no one will completely understand until full enlightenment; if even then." lmr Jesus rested in perfect clarity of vision and spoke as the Word of God. Perhaps I am naive but I cannot imagine Jesus using the Holy Spirit to hurt anyone, either because they where making fun of him or his position or because someone did not give every penny of their money to the Church. Even when confronted by a crowd about to stone him to death, Jesus used the Holy Spirit to create a temporary blindness in his attackers, giving him time to escape but harming no one. The fully enlightened rest so deeply in Divine Consciousness that they have no ego left to be hurt or to be puffed up in pride; which reminds me of another story about a great saint. The saint had an appointment and was walking from one village to another to make it. On the way he was confronted by a number of people who proceeded to thoroughly dog him out, calling him every name in the book, accusing him of every ill action ever conceived. The saint waited patiently while they vented but after a while broke in and said that as he had an appointment to make that he had run out of time but that after his appointment, the next day he would be passing by again and that they were welcome to continue. The point? The saint had no ego to be puffed up in pride or hurt. (The spiritual advisor) If you are a serious student of it, the first thing you should be looking for on this path to God is a spiritual advisor. Someone, even if they are younger than you, who is like an elder spiritual brother or sister. You should be looking for someone who has been practicing the methods you are using long enough to understand the unique spiritual process involved in your particular methodology. Each set of practices has its own set of sensations and experiences taking us to the one universal experience of the presence of God but you need someone who understands your methodology and is willing to listen to you even when you sound somewhat foolish, which you will. Your spiritual advisor needs to have the background and experience to give you practical advice as you need it. (The retreat) Go on a week’s retreat at least once a year and weekend retreat as often as you can. This is advice I should follow but because of family obligations can’t at this time. You will probably have to look outside of Christianity into yoga but if you look hard enough, here is where you can find someone who has the power of the Holy Spirit: IF YOU ARE WILLING TO GET OVER YOUR BELIEF THAT ONLY PEOPLE THAT BELIEVE LIKE YOU AND GO TO YOUR CHURCH HAVE THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. If not, good luck to you. I have gone to a retreat about a hundred miles north of Atlanta. This is where the American yogi is that I have talked about. You can find information about him at www.csa-davis.org You cannot expect a personal relationship with any of those few spiritually advanced souls who are capable of baptizing others in the Holy Spirit. They have hundreds and sometimes thousands of students begging for their attention. Students who form or think they have formed personal relationships with the spiritually advanced in time, invariably go away with their feelings hurt. THAT IS NOT WHY YOU ARE THERE. What you can expect is to be able to go on retreat, relax and become open to the possibility of the Holy Spirit while on retreat and at the end of the retreat, when you are most receptive to it, in some kind of simple ceremony, have the spiritually advanced person put their hands on your head and silently ask the Holy Spirit to come into your awareness. This is what happened with me. This is what initiated the rising of the Holy Spirit within me and this should be what any other person should hope for on a spiritual retreat. I am referring to a spiritual retreat of course, not a health spa. For most any spiritual retreat, you will need to fly there, so why not take the time and pick the one that is most suited to your needs. Most New Age magazines have listings of retreats. Ask others on the path where they have gone and what they have experienced. Then call the retreat and talk to someone. Ask them to be very specific as they talk about their traditions and the schedule of events and classes offered. Ask about the person running the whole thing and what his background and qualifications are for do so. It's your money and your time. You need not waste either. Go on retreat and get your batteries spiritually charged. Find a spiritual advisor who understands your practices and has been around long enough to give you good practical advice. Be steady in your practices or the other two things will be of little value. A FEW THOUGHTS In the state of unity, in the garden, in the state of non-duality, there is no evil, there is no good. Everything just is. Everything is an extension of and a part of the One. In unity, there is no revulsion from or holding on to. As we tread the spiritual path, one after another our irrational fears and attachments start dropping away. It is the only way we can come to experience God directly. It may be hard for those who have not experienced this process to understand. Sometimes it is easy, sometimes not but eventually we learn or are forced to let go of fearing or holding on to things; earthly things, heavenly things, even God to achieve God. We come to learn that what we fear we become, What we can't let go of we serve. What we desire binds us and keeps us from living by the grace of God. It is not always pleasant but it need not be forced. Once we give ourselves to the Spirit, the Spirit will do all that needs to be done. It is the boat that carries the soul to the awareness of and direct experience of God. The heavenly realms are not the goal of those who wish to know God. It is of no value to be nonattached to the world and yet still attached to the heavens. We will have only transferred our attachment without solving the basic spiritual problem. How do we unfold the innate state of unity within us and stay in it. When our compulsions towards evil and also good have been totally burnt away by the Spirit we will have become fully Born Again unto it. Only by nonattachment can the soul see itself no longer separate from the whole (always holding on to everything) but as an extension of the whole (with everything already contained within us). “As long as a single passion reigns in our hearts, though all the others should have been overcome, the soul will never enjoy peace” (St. Joseph Calassanctius) I know that I have said that God does not sit in heaven looking down at the earth rewarding and punishing mankind like a petty Roman deity. I have nowhere said that we are not responsible for our actions or that we would not pay for our sins. It is only that we pay and are rewarded for our actions by a different mechanism than what most understand. God is far beyond the concept of personality and if I could describe God in understandable terms for the material universe, it would be as the essence of, the maker of, and the sustainer of natural laws. These actions are the role of the Holy Spirit in the material universe and all of the heavens. We, our children and our associates pay for our sins and are rewarded for our good works, not by a jealous personality in the sky but by God’s natural laws. We can abuse our bodies and destroy the genetic code that we pass on to our children and punish generations. We can pollute our environment and it will come back to haunt us and our children's children. Our parents sins are passed to us and our sins are passed to our children by the attitudes and prejudices that are taught to us from each preceding generation. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, as individuals, groups, nations, species and the whole of the earth. Let us not isolate ourselves from this world. Let us not create an us and them mentality in our religious practices. Let us not create our own little sect of those who “truly know.” Let us not pass the sins of our fathers and ourselves to our children by teaching prejudice and hatred. Do live in the world and by your presence, in small ways, make the world a better one than before. Quietly plant seeds of truth and watch, not force them to grow. Let us learn to live by the grace of God and not from ego sense. True happiness is to live by the all inclusive grace of God: To follow the natural laws of the Spirit, to move with the Spirits flow, the natural flow of life. To fight God’s natural laws brings disharmony into our lives. This is all that sin really is; fighting against the natural laws of living. It brings unhappiness and ill health to us and the world around us. We punish ourselves and this earth when fighting the natural flow of life and Spirit. We have and will reap what we and our forefathers have sowed upon the earth. I do not believe in following individuals who claim they are specially chosen to have experiences that no one else can have. I do not believe in following rigid beliefs without being able to directly experience whether these beliefs are true or not. All souls are innately the same in God. All that is known by anyone can be known by everyone. All that is knowable can be learned by your own personal experience. No one else's experience should be taken as the absolute truth. There is only one absolute truth, the Father and he must be directly experienced, not told. Although the truth is only found within ones’ Self, so often, someone will glimpse a small aspect of God within themselves and mistake this small portion as the whole. Thinking themselves specially ordained, they then go out and form a new sect. They conclude that they have the ultimate truth and that all other views of the same truth are wrong. It is not that people always try to deceive concerning their inner vision but that most do not have the spiritual experience to understand that each person has their own unique way of viewing the same truth and that only at the very end are subconscious influences overcome. I only expect you to believe one point in these lessons. It is that the Holy Spirit is real and not some abstract concept that only saints can experience and that in the form of the Holy Spirit, God’s hand is forever extended to you and me and everyone else on this planet and all manifest creation; to the exclusion of no one. Look within and determine for yourself your own personal truth. My observations of the Spirit my be totally different from yours and this is fine. God does not look at the contents of our beliefs but at the openness of our hearts. Eventually we will all find the one truth in God within ourselves, no matter what we believe along the way. Let us not be too discouraged by our own sins. As long as we live in a physical body, we will be influenced to a greater or lesser degree by its needs and drives. As long as we use our minds we are bound to be influenced by it’s emotions and misemotions. Try to realize that all it’s ramblings are not the real you: Just something the real you uses and does not have complete control of quite yet. Do not expect perfection from those on the path. Sometimes the Spirit expands our shortcomings so that we are forced to work through them. Those open to the Spirit are not immune from living. We all make many mistakes, even the saints, even the enlightened. St. John of the Cross has described the spiritual process as the climbing of a spiritual mountain, Mt. Carmal and in many ways it is. But the more years I spend in this endeavor the more it seems like filling in the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that is our life, our consciousness. We may have the flowing of the Spirit, wonderful visions or even gifts of the spirit very early on in our spiritual journey. But the very hardest and deepest pieces of the puzzle of our life may be waiting to the very last to be filled in. These pieces may be waiting to be filled in until after we have experienced Divine Consciousness directly and even after directly experiencing God, it will not be until all the pieces are in place that we will have the perfect clarity to see the whole, to rest in continuous non-duality. Until then, who has the right to throw the first stone? Who has the right to say their view of the truth is above anyone else's? None of us has or can pay for the experience of the Holy Spirit with gifts or deeds. If doing these things opens our hearts, then as a result of the opening of our hearts we will experience the Holy Spirit not because of the deed or gift. Also, the Holy Spirit is not a payment for belonging to a church, an organization or from following a spiritual leader. The Holy Spirit is God's most wonderful gift that is waiting for each of us to open our hearts to it. I do not care what religion we belong to, what we believe to be the truth or who we choose to follow; until as individuals, we open our own hearts to the gift of the Holy Spirit, we will never come to experience God within ourselves for ourselves. The state of the world's religions reminds me of a number of semi-primitive societies living on the same sacred mountain but separated by terrain and language. Each society has its own legends and sacred scripture about the mountain. Over the generations, each society even has had a few of its own who have climbed the mountain and have come back and described what they have experienced in terms that they think their own society might understand. Often someone will only climb part way up the mountain and even those incomplete experiences become sacred literature. People have been killed and wars have been fought over whose beliefs and scripture and saints are the only true ones blessed by the mountain. But they are all living on it and they are all blessed by it and the mountain only says one thing about it all. I AM THAT I AM. |