Writer Dylan Morrison

Many of believe the lie that safety comes through certainty. Especially those of us who’ve had an encounter with the Divine and don’t want to lose it. We tend to be quickly absorbed into a mindset that seems to fit our experience. Those who appear to provide the answers that we crave tend to be the fundamentalists of a religious or spiritual tradition. It doesn’t really mater what the brand – certainty is for sale, promising to eternally conserve that which cannot be conserved.

It certainly appears to work for a while, but very quickly our experience and its dynamic energy soon fade to be replaced by the doctrinal truths or certainties of our particular fundamentalism of choice. Such truths are presented and revered as the guardians of God, those who won’t let us down in the storms of life. And yet they often do. For the very storms can be a result of the beliefs themselves.

The levels of stress among fundamentalists belie their belief in a God of peace and abundant life. Life is reduced to Darkness versus Light and every effort must be exercised in remaining on the side of Light. That’s why fundamentalism promotes the idea that life is a battle, one in which we shall remain standing if we only stay within its belief system and related communities.

However, eventually life and, dare I say, the Divine, blasts our fundamentalist Linus blanket apart, as we sink into the despondency of lost certainty. And yet, it is at this point that Divine Love may once more invade of emotional world and touch us with a touch that needs no belief.

Presence is just that ~ Presence. A knowing that we are not alone, even as our previous beliefs and sacred tenets like shipwrecked on the shore of our unbelief. It’s at this point that we realise that belief systems are not synonymous with knowledge, for such knowledge lies outside the realm of thought. Rather, it is a gut feeling, an overwhelming sense that everything is OK and that we are loved.

Now many of us were introduced to the God of our experience before we settled for the one of belief. It is in this dark place of nothingness that we once again sense Source hovering over the surface of our disillusioned psyche-soul. Out of the chaos of lost belief comes a living walk with One who cannot be pigeonholed into our fundamentalist boxes. Walking in the garden of Innocence we find a new helpmate – trust. Sent from our inner world this sensory one leads us on the paths of communion, the walkways of Presence. Trust knows nothing of fundamentalism, that cheap clone who promises to keep us to the end. No trust is the real thing. The energy from within that shapes and models our experiential world of form. As we trust, our outer world conforms to the Divine blueprint and we fly free as children of  a Great Love. The safety of Divine Flow replaces the ever stressful mind games of our previous fundamentalism.

Life is to be fun and enjoyed in the flow-freeing Energy of the nameless, I Am that I Am. Only as we let go of fear and ego birthed belief are we truly safe in a space-time world held together in the Divine Matrix of the Logos/Tao. As a recovering fundamentalist I can’t remember too many fun days in the daily battles of my previous dualistic psycho-spiritual settings. No, I guess fundamentalism might help us all in getting out of a hedonistic Egypt, but not so good in promoting the enjoyment of the Milk and Honey of our inner Promised land.

Fly free my friends, fly free.

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Fight Or Flow

In my old Charismatic days, everything was a fight. Although God was on our side there was an almost equally opponent in the shape of the Christian take on the Satan, one who opposed our every turn. Now it proved to be a real roller-coaster type of way to live life. All the good stuff came from Father, Son and Spirit while all the nasty stuff came from the dark Enemy. We could live in blessing as long as we kept our wits about us and keep up our guard against a wily and bad natured Foe.

Of course this chess-like take on one’s space-time existence was exhausting, very exhausting! And of course to live on the battlefield of life warranted the back-up of fellow brothers and sisters in arms, viz. a bunch of dedicated warriors known as a good church. On our own we’d more than likely get clobbered by the dastardly one, in a fire-brand fellowship of Charismatic believers the opposition didn’t stand a chance, particularly if we prayed, fasted and tithed as was the good Lord commanded.

Of course it didn’t really work out. For many brothers and sisters fell off the rails in many and various ways. Yet, there always was an answer, albeit an ever diminishing one, to the comrades falling at our side. The Devil was a powerful foe, a roaring lion seeking those whom he desired! Stoicism reigned within the good band of brothers and sisters, heavily disguised as Christian discipline and commitment.

Is it any wonder many of us moved on to agnosticism or indeed atheism after such collateral damage? Spouses, kids, health and dare I say it, mental health were all casualties of our heady religious zeal. So as you may guess, I’m no longer a great fan of fundamentalist dualism and its permanent war footing. As the walking wounded leave by the back door, many new young recruits pile in through the front door willing to lay down their lives for Jesus. Sadly, they probably will, though not in the manner suggested by the Nazarene. So, am I just a disillusioned sceptic of sceptics? Well, no! I’d better explain.

Today I’m a believer in the supremacy and all-encompassing reach of Divine Love? How come? Well, I’m not really sure except to say that I suspect Spirit Source has had something to do with it. Re-encountering Presence back in 2004 proved to be the power-wash that cleared out the last vestiges of my old thinking. Today, I’m a flow man rather than a Charismatic guerrila fighter.

I see the Satan of Christianity as the energised desire matrix that locks us into inter-personal rivalry and violence. A much more subtle foe than the   devil I used to tackle in my zealous youth. A product of ego attachment, this Satan is defeated, not by resisting but by disengagement. The darkness of our fascinations with other is only dispelled as we bask in the Light. Such a Satan hates to be ignored, one reason that it so easily operates within religious systems that hold it in a paranoid reverence. When it’s observed for what it truly is and set aside for the all-pervasive Ocean of Divine Love, it wilts and dies. Only ego in its fear-fuelled flights of fancy can reactivate and energise our expelled foe. The creative power of Divine Love is all there is. No other.

So how come evil appears to stalk the Earth, within the Cosmic Dome of Divine Reality? A big question and one that has baffled minds greater than mine for past millennia. May I humbly put forward a wee hypothesis. Divine Love has granted a measure of its creative power to the human psyche-soul. It’s the artist who paints our perceived space-time reality. When fractured and wounded in its ego form, this power is not withheld, but allowed to run riot until we come to our senses and return to Ultimate Reality. No matter how much human ego and its Satanic network of desire fights its corner, it is destined to ultimately fall and fail. All things in heaven and on earth will eventually bow the knee to  Source, the One from whom they’ve come. All power will be handed back to the Tao/Logos the personified governing principle of Reality. As a river returns to Ocean so all will flow Homewards.

So, as light and darkness appear to come our way in 2015, let’s get some Divine perspective. Both are part of the River that carries us into the heart of Love. The sooner we realise this the less darkness will manifest in our daily lives. At the first hint of psycho-spiritual dusk, lets ask ourselves why ego is reactivating its gloomy creative process. Returning to Core Self, our inner spark from the Divine Fire, will restore peace in both our inner and outer worlds as we walk on the waters of trust.

Once we catch sight of this ageless truth, the stresses of permanent struggle disappear like the morning mist. Light will usher in its peace, and you will follow in the steps of the Nazarene into the realm known as the Divine Kingdom-Queendom.

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Fasting For Jesus

As I sit here in Carlucccio’s Italian restaurant, sipping my smooth, soya latte, my mind wanders back to post-Christmases past, particularly those when I was a signed-up, zealous member of a Charismatic Christian fellowship. Now, I’ve written all about my adventures there in my wee book, ‘The Prodigal Prophet’, but this morning I want to talk about our annual post-Christmas fast. I’d better fill you in with a wee bit of background first to set the starving scene.

Our church, or fellowship, as we preferred toc all it, was heavily into intercessory prayer. The founding pastors, as young students at Belfast’s Queen’s University, had felt such a concern for the Ulster Troubles that they prayed day and night for God to do something about the situation – for mercy I guess, realising that the dark tragedy was a symptom of a religious malaise that locked everyone into their cultural tribes and traditions. A lot of false gods were getting worshipped in acts of savagery and butchery that blighted the towns and countryside of God’s own wee country.

Anyway, as the years rolled by and we got more and more into a striving dualistic mindset, we adopted some weird teaching doing the rounds at the time. A teaching by Charismatic preacher, Derek Prince, which insinuated that God took our prayers more seriously if we prayed and fasted as a community. To dislodge the ancient darkness over the land would take lots of cries and supplications and more importantly less food.

I guess the premise was based on some mystical verses in the Book of Daniel, that suggested that dark angelic forces would only yield to the angels of God if we did our bit on earth by fasting.

Now of course fasting has been a spiritual discipline within many religious traditions for millennia. I suppose starving the ego was taken literally, in societies where food was already scarce. Of course, the practice has many beneficial health benefits for both psyche and body, no doubt about it. But, like most things that are good in theory, our leaders turned our week-long January fast into a legalistic practice that any committed member was expected to do. Of course the pregnant wives, yes wives, among us were exempt as they were doing their bit by growing the size of the fellowship! But apart from them, we all were shepherded into giving up our daily bread for the first week in January.

I guess it never occurred to our leaders that it was usually the coldest time of the year. Second thoughts, maybe it had, for to fast in the frost and snow was surely more holy than desisting from food in the warmth of summer. Anyway, we’d all sheepishly comply and dedicate ourselves to God anew, in the hope of hearing what lay ahead for us in the year ahead and how we could bring closer the ever-promised, carrot on a stick revival.

Prayer meetings were held every night, as ashen faced souls gathered together with a mixture of optimism and religious fervour. Oh how we’d pray, and cry and sing and dance. An ancient African tribe would have been proud of the amount of holy sweat we put into our nightly rituals. And in the centre of it all was Jake, our lead pastor, a Moses-like figure that we’d all followed out of status-quo religion. Everything was always just over the hill, around the next bend, and we’d follow like lemmings keen to fall into the Promised Land of revival.

Now, when I say fast, I really mean that we gave up solid food for the week. Yet, the good news was that someone had made a pronouncement on soup! We were allowed soup or broth to give it a more holy sounding name. I’m sure the soup sales in our local supermarkets skyrocketed during the first week in January. Of course, we had soup eaters and soup eaters! The really devout only had a purely liquified version of soup, whereas those of us who cheated allowed ourselves the odd pea or lentil. What a bizarre game we played out on the stage of Charismatic religion.

After a week of fasting we’d all turn up at a local Methodist church, kindly lent to us by a sympathetic pastor, for the grand finale. Often, over a thousand folk packed into the little sanctuary for the big event. We’d dedicated ourselves in all sincerity to our God and we expected a return. Penny in the slot religious belief always expects the Divine to come through. So, we’s sing and sing and sing, listening for any prophetic words that would reinforce our take on the Divine Mind. And then of course, would follow the sermon by Jake, the man closest to God who’d given up more food than the rest of us combined. Delivered with charismatic authority, Jake would outline what he felt God had in store for us all in the coming twelve months.We sat intently, nodding our heads and taking our notes in case we missed anything in the Divine plan. We were getting our marching orders for the next year and beyond. And of course, orders they were, if not Divine in nature. Jake was telling us what he wanted us to do to promote his religious dream in the year ahead.

The gathering would go on for three or four hours before the last man stumbled out onto the streets of downtown Ballybrigg, renewed in spirit and raring to go. Funnily though, while Jake would return home exhausted by his labours, most of us young men headed straight for the local burger bar, for our days of fasting were well and truly over for another year. So much for denying the flesh!

So, sitting here with my now cold latte, may I concur with the scriptures that suggest we eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!

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I’m Not Myself Today!

“I’m not myself today’ is a strange wee self judgement. Our core Self, or spirit spark doesn’t change, so what’s going on? Well, it’s simply that a different combination of our sub-personalities have decided to show up today. Triggered by external events, often the impending approach of a Model Obstacle’s desire field, a new collage of our little ones is hastily projected for defensive purposes. Who we, or others, think we are is only a permutational image of psyche-soul splinters in the kaleidoscope of our inter-personal consciousness.

I wrote this wee update on my facebook page last night, not really knowing where it came from or what provoked it. I guess I must have been feeling a wee bit confused over who I really am. I wonder if you’ve ever felt the same? I guess if we were all honest we just don’t think about it too much as we prefer to drift along on the sea of life. Anyway, I thought I’d expand my thoughts a little in this new blog. Here goes.

Is there a real Me? Well, yes and no! Yes because there appears to be someone lying behind consciousness who watches our internal games with a pure and life affirming objectively. There is a Me looking on with a compassionate honesty at the games I play. This somewhat hidden but powerfully present Me, is a spark from the Divine Fire. It may even be based outside space-time, apparently dipping into my space-time consciousness from time to time! Religious and spiritual traditions have given this Self-Essence many names, but I’ll plump for the term spirit or breath – a breath of God if you like. We all have it at our core, even if the majority of us are totally oblivious to its presence. How come? Well, it lies underneath the constant storm of our psyche-soul and its little battalion of  defensive sub-personalities.

Now, some of us may not even be aware of these little guys and gals running around the fortress of self-perception. All we know is that who we are appears to change on a fairly frequent basis, depending on our external circumstances and internal pressures. For most of the time we are the sum of the little sub-personalities who happen to be on duty at the time. At a moment’s notice a new threat to our peace and sense of self may be picked up, and a quick change of personal is called for.

For every sub-personality that attacks us from another, we have a relevant soul-based defender, one who can protect our fragile sense of self. This explains how when the dust of a sudden attack has settled we wonder why we did what we did – in other words, what got into us! Actually nothing got into us, for our reactions were the automatic responses of our awakened resident defenders.

Now, I’ve written elsewhere regarding where this fragmented soul force has come from – one birthed by the crushing traumas of love withdrawal in the womb and early infancy, but here I want to be as practical as possible. I wish to consider our energy levels after such inter-personal skirmishes. Well, often we are totally shattered, feeling like we have gone 10 rounds with some heavyweight prize-fighter. And indeed, we have, for though small, the sub-personality, whether ours or another’s is a potent little scrapper. Originally we were designed to live in harmony with both God and man, before contagious mimetic desire birthed the chaos we presently navigate our way through. In this state of innocence, energy was high and peace a tangible entity – the afternoon stroll in the mythical Edenic Garden.

But now we live in the psycho-spiritual plains of desire where we all both predators and victims. It’s certainly tiring and we can only take it for a limited amount of time. Living by the manual of desire warfare does eventually take its toll as our internal sub-personalities collapse in a psychic heap – nervous breakdown by another name.

So, how are we to live and to live life abundantly. Well, the key is to get in touch with our observer Self, our spirit portal to the One without need of rivalry and warfare. Observing our internal fighters from the vantage point of spirit we can countermand our sub-personality tendencies to strike back. To engage in psychic wars is death; to observe from afar is to disengage and return to barracks. The gift of Will, can now come into play, bringing order and dignity to those wounded parts of Self, who foolishly perceive themselves to be our saviour. On a practical note, the more we can practice observation without engaging the raging sub-personalities of others the more we maintain our internal peace.

Of course, non of us have fully arrived and will let our little defenders sink their teeth into others from time to time. In such circumstances, the way of restoration lies in compassion and forgiveness for our overly zealous, central nervous system warriors and those of the other. In doing so we can return to the quiet equilibrium of just being and walk away. No-one was greater at this stuff, than the Nazarene, the One from Above who knew both his origins and final destination. “Father forgive them for they know not what their sub-personalities are doing.”

We too can say the same.

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The Fall

The Fall

Copper cauldron of a golden fire

Lies carpeted beneath these passing feet

At one with earth’s Autumnal mire

As darkness fades its deathly light.

Days long gone when glory shared

With trees so tall amidst the joys

Of summer’s sensuous flight.

A letting go, a death has come

To woods forlorn and fearful of mad Winter’s chill

This sea of colour’s last waved show

For all who walk with eyes to see

And ears to hear the dwindling gasps of life

I wonder if,

When this scribe’s time has come

To lay aside the glory of his days

And words and songs of spirit heart,

When Self, its fateful journey drifting down

To earth and dust from whence it came,

Will some one stand on me and see

The Light that passed my way on sojourned path?

Shall Source return to lift me up

To Garden fields of Golden Light,

Where I shall join those joined to One

Who hangs on wounded tree,

Where I shall bend in Spirit Breeze

On endless boughs of Tree Of Life

And taste and see

That All is well

That Time has passed and gone.

©dylanmorrison20/11/2014

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