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Into The Desert

October 2, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Into The Desert

Into The Desert

Sometimes the only place for recovering religious junkies to go is the desert, far from the somewhat maddening crowd of religious and spiritual discussion, the marketplace of conceptual takes on Ultimate Reality.

Many of us have been so over-stimulated by religious or spiritual thought that we have to pull back from the psycho-spiritual games that are commonly played out in their respective worlds. Yes one can have too much truth, or at least too much perceived truth. Our poor wee brains eventually go into shutdown mode in order to maintain our sanity.

This I believe, is the reason that so many religious and spiritual seekers eventually put the shutters up and move on into a more normal state of being, a place where the confused dust of inner turmoil can settle once more on the journey home.

Playing our theological and esoteric mind games, our ping-pong matches of Socratic discussion  can be great fun for a while, but eventually the soul screams, ‘No more!’.

Strange as it may seem, it’s at this point that we are closest to finding the One who lies behind our psycho-spiritual desire. Yet, we are gently asked to take a detox journey, one far from the hustle and bustle of established religion and East-West gurus.

Our destination is the desert, that inner place of aloneness where all true Friends of Divine Love have pitched their camp at one time or another. Here the discussion and arguments are stilled with only God and our inner Self for travelling companions. Thankfully Divine Love doesn’t bombard us with a multitude of words nor indeed Bible verses. Those days are over. No, we have been led into the wilderness where nothing gets in the way of true communion except the dregs and remnants of our previous take on reality.

As we lie there, shattered and contemplating the healing touch of atheism, or at least that of agnosticism, we sense  a gentle Presence wrapping itself around us, One initially without words, One content to just be in the company of burnt-out humanity, the scorched soul of religious and spiritual war games.

This desert, this place without the outer support structures of certainty and belief, is strangely our closest port of call to the Transcendence that we call God. For here, bereft of our religious drug of attack and defence, we lie open to the gaze of One who fills All in All. We are seen for who we are; human beings who really haven’t a clue about what makes us  tick or indeed what makes the Divine tick.

Here man shall not live by words alone but by every Breath of Spirit that wafts around our tortured Self, the battered victim of the religious quest and its salesmen, the spiritual experts. To be honest such experts are as screwed up as the next man; they only disguise it with their beatific smiles and got it together body language.

Here we get a chance to touch base with Source, to let our Transcendent Parent come within, in the overwhelming glory of Immanence. Here in the desert our life changes, for time and eternity, whatever that is. When the desert has done its thing in the river of Divine purpose, it releases us back into the crazy world of man, even that wackiest of worlds, the hearts and minds of our fellow seekers and believers, those caught up in the psycho-spiritual twister of belief.

Divine Love isn’t afraid of deserts.

Are we?

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Saints and Sinners?

September 25, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Saints and Sinners?

Saints and Sinners?

Hi folks!

Here’s a somewhat bizarre chapter from my book ‘The Prodigal Prophet’

It’ll let you see why I write and where I’m coming from!

x Dylan

SAINTS AND SINNERS?

‘Shortly after our holy laughter experience, Brett Hill, a world-famous tele-evangelist healer, rolled into town. It puzzled me that many of these professional evangelists were now visiting the Province with their show-biz crusades. Where were they during the height of the Troubles when the faithful needed their super-charged faith? Could it possibly be the number of affluent Christians in Northern Ireland that attracted them in our newly found time of peace? Surely not, for these men of God always claimed that their Divine boss had issued them their marching orders.

Brett’s organization had taken over the majority of rooms in Belfast’s leading five star hotel, he himself staying in its renowned Presidential Suite for security reasons. Apparently our itinerant friend regularly received world-wide death threats. I could nearly understand why.

Zan wisely wanted nothing to do with Pastor Hill, neither his particularly flamboyant preaching nor his holy roller road show. The opening night saw me, a solitary pilgrim, heading off alone to Belfast’s Odyssey Arena to register for the once in a lifetime event. Things didn’t start well.

“Sorry sir, you can’t take my bottle of water into the auditorium. It’s a danger risk,” ordered the burly security man.

“How come?” I innocently enquired.

Back came the insightful reply. “Sir, you might throw it at the esteemed speaker whilst he was on stage,” he answered with a tongue-in-cheek twinkle in his eye. I later discovered how close to the mark my security friend was.

Zan had forced me to leave my wallet at home so I felt smugly safe as I took my seat for the three hour show. Strangely though, only half the arena was full, the empty seats having been hidden behind large, black drapes.

“Probably not good for one’s TV audience,” I surmised.

You either loved or hated this guy, so I guessed that the conservative Northern Irish believers had given Brett a wide birth. Apparently most of the attendees were from the Afro-Caribbean churches of Manchester and London where the healing evangelist was almost idolized.

I have to admit it, though, the choreography for the show was top class. Warm up, massed choirs and soloists led us solemnly into what was referred to as God’s presence. When things came to a crescendo, onto the stage walked the man himself wearing the whitest suit I had ever seen. Brett looked really holy and other-worldly with the assistance of his very effective stage lighting. Carrying a large bible, the evangelist worshipfully joined in the singing to make us imagine that he was just one of us, a fellow follower of Jesus. The presence of security men at the side of the stage, with wrestler style necks and visible earpieces, unnerved me though. In the increasingly emotional atmosphere I became slightly paranoid, convinced that these muscle-bound bodyguards were staring straight at me and my now empty water bottle.

After a little introductory chat, Brett got down to the real business of the evening – not the eagerly anticipated healings but the offering. Before the meeting I’d sensed that I should chat to a pleasant middle-aged couple in front of me. Natives of Ballymena, the Bible belt town of Northern Ireland, George and Thelma had watched the slick preacher on religious TV. As the offering appeal began I made my apologies to my new acquaintances.

“Sorry, guys, that’s my cue for a visit to the restroom, my chance to escape.”

“Why?” they queried, looking extremely puzzled, as I scurried off without reply to the supposed security of ‘The Gents’.

As I sat pensively mulling over the events so far, I couldn’t believe my ears. Brett’s slick sales pitch was being piped into the very restroom.

“No escape for the wicked,” I sighed to myself.

The fervent financial appeal dragged on for ten or fifteen minutes. It was the most manipulative use of scripture that I’d ever heard, and I’d heard some good ones in my time. Obscure verses from Proverbs and the Prophet Isaiah were the misinterpreted missiles armed with Brett’s subliminal message for the faithful. “Give God, or rather me as his collection agent, your money and He will heal you later tonight.”

A number of folk in the crowd had come diagnosed with terminal illnesses. This manipulation of the desperate made me angry. Isaiah and Jeremiah, both leading Jewish prophets, had written to warn people about this kind of nonsense.

On my return to the auditorium, Thelma turned around to give me something.

“Dylan, it’s the offering envelope you missed during your planned absence,” she informed me with a large grin perched on her face.

Having received my new friend’s gift, I slowly began to tear it up, declaring tongue-in-cheek “Thelma, I’m afraid I’ve left my wallet at home.”

Thankfully that prophetic act is one that I haven’t needed to repeat since. Incidentally George and Thelma are now two of my dearest friends whose own sacrificial faith journey I deeply respect. It’s not easy to challenge the religious sectarianism of one’s own tribe in the buckle of any Bible Belt.

After two hours of warm-up we finally got to the healing part of the evening. Brett’s vetted sick climbed the stage steps escorted by those burly security men. My heart went out to these dear folk as they looked for their cures at the hands of ‘God’s anointed servant’. With a dramatic wave of the arm and a sometimes not so subtle push, the assembled hopeful fell like flies to the stage floor. I wasn’t impressed, though, having read articles on the effects of mass hysteria during my wilderness years. This guy was pure show business, with the main emphasis on business. If Spirit had healed anyone on a lasting basis that night, it was surely out of compassion and not a validation of the superstar’s performance.

“I think I’ve seen enough,” I concluded as I hurriedly left the arena before the end of the show. Feeling deeply discouraged about the state of our entertainment-based religion I headed back home to my wife and my wallet.

http://www.amazon.com/author/dylanmorrison

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Masks

September 24, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Masks

Masks

Do we really know those closest to us, indeed, do we really know our Selves?

We generally walk around, bumping off our fellow humanoids like the ball in a pinball machine, whilst falling for the masks  they wear in the somewhat whacky world of human interaction. Like actors in a grand Venetian drama we strut, or rather, stumble around the stage of life in a relational stupor.

So are we all devious little creatures deliberately hiding our true self to those without?

Surprisingly, I believe not, for most of the time we’re not aware of which of our repertoire of masks we’re actually wearing!

May I suggest that our masks are initially the personalized projections of others upon us. Let me explain.

The Shadowlands reality of this space-time world, is, I believe, merely a perceived reality. A flat 2-D impression of a mystery filled 3-D + Source Reality. The human brain for all its marvelous complexity is actually reductionist in nature. Bombarded with a storm of incoming external and internal stimuli it draws a simplified sketch of our present state of being; one that helps us to maintain a functioning level of sanity in the swirling ocean of impulses called life.

In other words perception is the interpreter of our reality. This explains why I believe someone to be a scoundrel whilst another believes them to be a saint. Our perceptions, our decipherers of external stimuli are clearly on different settings.

So when we make up our mind about someone we’re doing so on the basis of our perception of them. In other words we’re creating a mask or persona for them, one that we place upon them every time we meet up. We regularly relate to them on the basis of the mask.

As the other reads our relational response to their mask they will conform to their perceived role in one of two ways. They will play along with our scripted role for them or they will rip off the mask and break off the somewhat unreal relationship. Let’s face it, much of our human interaction is role play, the adaptation of our Self image to the perceptions of others. This built up and somewhat manufactured Self is none other than the ego, the me in which we take refuge from the threat of further rejection and psychological pain.

The abused wife is willing to play the role of victim until another role is graciously offered to her by another director, one far away from her violent leading man, on another stage of self- perception.

So is there really anyone lying under our historic collection of projected masks?

I believe so.

Under the make-up of our social self lies an embryonic image, one placed in the depths of our being by the Creative Director of our human drama. This image is marinated in Divine Authenticity; it’s the real deal; the reflected image of our Source Love. To have this Self revealed, often through the painful stripping away of ego masks is true freedom and a homecoming of the most intimate kind.

The Nazarene, that mask-less prophet from another Stage, calls us into such a freedom. Mentored into the ways of Divine Love, we can finally touch base with our true Self; One that doesn’t require the imprisoning applause of the audience without.

http://www.amazon.com/author/dylanmorrison

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The Nazarene

September 11, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

The Nazarene

The Nazarene

People wonder why after all my experiences, both good and bad within evangelical Christianity that I don’t ditch the Nazarene for good and just become a deist or theist. Some suggest that I should become a Buddhist, Hindu or New Age guru and have done with it.

I must admit that some days, having just encountered the harshness and judgement of a supposed Jesus fan, I do consider taking such an existential leap. It’s very difficult at times hanging in there with a somewhat dysfunctional gang of folk who’re toxic to one’s psyche-soul. And yet when I’m about to jump, Yeshua usually pops into view, in the hidden caverns of my mind. One also alone and wounded by the religious barbs of believers in the God of Israel, the Nazarene stands and calls me aside.

‘Now you understand my brother, now you understand’.

I can’t leave one who has been so misunderstood and misrepresented by the tribe who go by his name. Thankfully the Galilean isn’t franchised to those dysfunctional expressions of the Christian faith that kill through their words and pseudo-superiority. Yeshua bar Yosef isn’t contained in a belief system, no matter what the guardians of cultural and theological boxes tell us.

No, the Nazarene is free and offers his followers freedom from ego that many haven’t yet taken him up on. The ‘taking up of his cross’ isn’t some macabre act or death wish but a rapturous call to freedom. Only ego suffers. As we  let it fall into the ground and die, we shall find a new Self step forward to take its place. The hidden treasure that’s lain buried under the topsoil of ego and its fearful ways.

The Galilean is seen by many as a quality controller, a ‘Lord’ who sits on high and keeps a beady eye on our religious observances. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Spirit Breath of the back to life Jewish rabbi is dancing among the sons and daughters of man. A liberator here to liberate, even from the oppressive power of his supposed religion, and all others to boot.

For many within Christendom, Yeshua is the blood sacrifice that paid for our sinly dysfunction. This in my earlier Evangelical incarnation was my raison d’être. I owed ‘this bleeding saviour’ the haunted one who looked at me suffering and sad, hanging on his Roman gibbet. ‘It should have been me up there,’ I reasoned, following the standard Evangelical line in disciple motivation. Claiming to victoriously deal with guilt my take on the Nazarene’s brutal demise would only increase guilt in the hidden depths of my being, driving me to ever increasing levels of religious ego devotion and zeal.

Today I no longer follow such a path, the one that leads to a debt paid Calvary. Instead I see the Nazarene teaching the masses on the flower filled hills of the Galilee. ‘You’ve heard it said, but I say unto you….’ brings me hope and new life. I guess the Nazarene is still speaking these words to his followers but who is listening, in our modern sermon saturated marketplace of seminars and DVDs. In short, I still identify with this Jewish son of Yosef, son of God, mainly because of his authentic spirituality, one that pierces through the ego defenses of my religious and social self.

Certainly the death of the Nazarene is radically important in its declaration of what God is not. Not a violent Supreme Being, one obsessed by blood and back payments, but One who has experienced mankind’s scapegoat experience as the wounded Lamb of Innocence. The bloody Roman execution of Yeshua shocks us out of our cultural God view and into a new, upside-down awareness that our morality systems are really killers in disguise.

For many of my friends within Mind, Body, Spirit circles may I respectively and humbly suggest that Yeshua is something more than an ascended avatar of the Divine. A manifestation of Divine Love and Wisdom for sure, but one who uniquely revealed the hidden nature of our righteous violence and its religio-politico networks. One roused from the grave in a way that no other spiritual Master appears to have been; a resurrection authentication by Divine Love of his character and message, one that would explode the lie of morality for all time.

So, in following the Nazarene may I suggest that we don’t follow a belief system, but a Living Presence, one that longs to walk with us along the psycho-spiritual lanes of life’s highway. Boxless and free Yeshua bar Yosef can well and truly look after himself without our help. He needs neither security cover nor fervent crusades to spread his touch of psycho-spiritual liberation and wholeness. All that’s required is an honest an open heart and even that’s given. Such hearts are often found in the most unusual of places.

http://www.amazon.com/author/dylanmorrison

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People Who Get Under Our Skin

September 7, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Hi folks

In this new mini Video chat, I looks at the problem of people who ‘get under our skin’.

How and why do they get there?

How do we subsequently deal with them?

x Dylan

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Fly Free

September 5, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Fly Free

Fly Free

Two Red Admiral butterflies have been visiting us on our balcony over the last few days.

They’ve brought much joy and pleasure to Zan and myself as we’ve quietly observed their paradoxical fragility and beauty.

Washing this evening’s dinner dishes I chanced to look out the kitchen window, only to see one struggling in an almost invisible spiders web on the side of the balcony.

The poor wee thing was flapping for all it’s worth trying to free itself, but all to no avail.

Immediately I ran out and pulled my new, little friend free from its web trap, yet some of the sticky strands remained attached and it still couldn’t yet fly properly.

Letting me hold it in the cup of my hand I broke the remaining adhesive web thread and off it flew, fluttering high above our home into the English evening sky.

Reminds me of the way Divine Love reached down and freed me from my religious codependency chains all those years ago.

I couldn’t have managed it on my own.

Dylan

http://www.amazon.com/author/dylanmorrison

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Body Stuff

September 4, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Body Stuff

Body Stuff

In my last post I looked at the tri-partite nature of what seems to be us, viz. body, psyche-soul, and spirit.

Today I want to talk about the body, that much maligned part of us that gets such a hard time from some streams of religion thought. So let me turn the tables on such a misperception of the our physical manifestation.

I guess that St.Pauls use of the term ‘the flesh’ has got us into this anti-body thing within the subliminal systems of much Christian belief and practice. I reckon that he was referring to the dysfunctional ego or wounded psyche-soul, but the Egyptian Ascetics quickly became the Model for authentic spirituality as they attempted to find God through the subjugation of the body and its supposedly evil desires.

Followers of the Nazarene have been plagued with this pseudo-gnostic take on the body  throughout the last two millennia, causing much self torment and pain along the Way.

I see our material form as a living tabernacle, a helper rather than a hindrance. When restored into the alignment of Spirit flow it becomes an invaluable part of our space-time experience, as much a part of Me as our psyche or spirit spark. It is here for a reason and not a mistake as some spiritual traditions would have us believe. Certainly it is limited and transitory but it is an invaluable friend as it carries our conscious Self through life.

One of the body’s greatest gifts to us is its early warning system. The central nervous system is an amazing phenomenon with its autonomic responses that kick in before conscious thought gets a chance to catch up. Such a wonderful early warning system can be a blessing and a curse, at least from our limited vantage point. This sublime sensory network of nerve endings serves a multifaceted purpose, one of the most important being the receptor and interpreter of outer and inner presence.

For those of us who have experienced an overwhelming sense of Other at certain times in our sojourn, the central nervous system has played an important role. The shivers or goosebumps that came out of nowhere, the changed breathing, have all been transmitted to our consciousness by our inner wiring. All our sensory feelings of Divine Love and Presence have flowed through our internal friend, conveying the safety of surrender to the Source of All.

However, the central nervous system is also vital for our survival and linked to our older animal instincts. Ultra sensitive to our outer world, our automatic responses to threat are triggered by our inner early warning system.

Here, I am indebted to the work of Dr Peter Levine and his studies on the parallels between animal and human responses to threat and subsequent trauma. Levine suggests that our autonomic reactions fall into one of five categories.

1) Arrest

When we stop what we’re doing and observe.

2) Flight

We get out of our threat filled environment ASAP.

3) Fight

Not being able to escape we decide that we have a fair chance of survival if we retaliate to the onslaught of our perceived threat.

4) Freeze

Our secondary body functions shut down, trapping our fight or flight energies in the central nervous system

5) Fold

Here we play dead, allowing the other to have their way with us in the hope of ultimate survival.

May I suggest that many of our supposed psychological or spiritual problems are in fact due to the experience of past trauma and one or more of the above autonomic responses. Simply put, the memory of trauma isn’t simply conceptual but a stored energy problem, one that cries out for release. Once the trapped bodily dynamic  is released the memories, lying within the psyche lose their power.

Perhaps many cognitive based counselling and therapy techniques are cases of putting the conceptual horse before the bodily horse. I wonder.

When I look again at Yeshua’s exorcism of the Gadarene demoniac I see an amazing release of pent-up energy at work, metaphorically described as a nearby herd of pigs rushing to their deaths over a nearby cliff. The result? One now sitting, clothed, and in his right mind, wishing to join up with the Nazarene’s motley band of followers.

The demoniac, nicknamed Legion, had clearly suffered trauma in his past life, a trauma that debilitated him to such an extent that he took to living among the dead. My theologian friend, Dr Gary Burnett, of Union Theological College, Belfast suggests that the demoniac’s childhood observations of historical, mass crucifixions in the Gadara area, those carried out by a retaliating Roman Legion, may well have been the source of  his painful psycho-spiritual predicament. An impressionable youngster who experiences the horrific sights and sounds of such barbaric killings can’t help but be traumatized.

But who knows? Gary’s ideas would certainly would tie in with Levine’s theory of trapped debilitating trauma; a trauma that was released by the demoniac coming into mimesis with the trauma free Nazarene.

The physical  manifestations of the exorcism process are certainly compatible with the shaking, tremors and involuntary limb movements of recovering, traumatized animals. Perhaps we’re more animal than we’d like to acknowledge in our concept based  world that we identify as reality.

In my next post I’ll look at how our stored traumas may give birth to the ego and its defensive postures.

http://www.amazon.com/author/dylanmorrison

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Inner Thorns

August 28, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Inner Thorns

Inner Thorns

It’s amazing how long along this path called life that it takes for us to begin to understand how and why we are what we are. Having spent over 18 formative years in organised evangelical religion I have to say that it didn’t help that much. It told me about a forgiving God, a sin cleansing Saviour and very little about me, the real me that is.

So here is my little effort to make things simpler for us all.

I believe that we comprise body, soul and spirit.

1) The Body

Bodies are truly amazing things! A living organism of compressed energy in which we appear to dwell. So closely are ‘we’ identified with it that it appears to some to be all there is. Yet I reckon that it’s only a home of sorts, albeit a highly complex and important one for our experience of soul and spirit during our space-time travels.

2) The Soul or Psyche

This mysterious ‘part’ of us is a psychic membrane of sorts, one that stores and absorbs all of our life-time experiences. It’s closely linked to the body’s central nervous system but isn’t identical to it. It is here that we feel the joys and pains of both our conscious and unconscious bumps with the energy of others. The collective memories and interpretations of our past mimetic encounters are packed away, determining our present position on the happiness spectrum of our present consciousness. Embedded here is our personal crown of thorns, the piercing wounds of word and action launched by other hurting souls

I reckon that if we were not in the body the soul would be obsolete. Perhaps our soul tapes are replayed at death for a final time before being wiped or stored away safely for future use! Who knows. Anyway it is here in this all singing dancing psyche-soul that our suffering does its thing. Here we feel the pain of rejection and non being, the results of the withdrawal of unconditional love. It is here that we have been stabbed in the back, it is here that we have hit back in reflex anger.

The soul is an extremely sensitive member of our triune-self. Indeed it is all about sensation and the interpretation of external data coming at us through the medium of the body and its myriad of sensors. The look of rejection, the furrowed brow, the smiling face; all are interpreted and stored away to enhance or destroy our inner sense of well-being.

Shockingly, most of us live here most of the time; this is to be ‘soulish’, to be a performing tight rope walker on the wire of human authentication; one who’s always up or down on the ever changing league table of Self acceptance.

3) The spirit.

This little Divine spark lies buried under the smothering canopy of psyche-soul. It’s always there, pulsating with the energy of Divine Love, the Source of Being from which we sprang pre-conception. It is our guide here in this sensory world of misinterpretation and illusion. The human spirit doesn’t have up or down days. It’s always constant in its ‘I Am’ nature, one filled with a non circumstantial joy.

The spirit waits patiently for Wisdom to lead us to our moment of enlightenment or awareness; the born from above experience of getting it for the first time in our earthly sojourn. The realisation that we’re more than our psyche-soul with all its inner recordings of outer experiences is a liberation indeed. To discover that we are more than this data-base of stored feeling is a life changer.

When we finally get a hold of this tripartite model of ourselves, it helps explain our inner and outer struggles.

It also explains the spirituality of Yeshua, the Nazarene, one sent to free us from the dominance of our wounded psyche-soul, the seared nerve centre of our daily life among the sons and daughters of Adam. The Galilean prophet-teacher taught about losing our psyche-soul’s dominance and finding it again under the liberating, healing flow of Spirit Breath.

“Whoever chooses to save his psyche shall lose it, and whoever will lose his psyche shall find it.”

Yeshua bar Yosef

Lots to talk about in future posts!

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Wisdom

August 20, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Wisdom

Wisdom

Please let me start with a bold and somewhat shocking statement.

There isn’t a shortage of Wisdom in the Cosmos.

‘Well it sure doesn’t look like it!’, you understandably respond.

Good point, but do let me explain.

The Created order, as far as the Hubble Telescope can see, was birthed by Wisdom. Not the wisdom of man, but Divine Wisdom, the Essence of Divine Love.

The Source from which we’ve come isn’t a dull impersonal force as portrayed in the movie Star Wars, but a vibrant, boundless Wisdom with a purpose and a plan.

Wisdom isn’t stupid. The mess that we find ourselves in hasn’t taken it by surprise. It knew all along what the consequences of its creative endeavours could be.

Wisdom still went ahead, knowing that we’d eventually get the message and return Home to its compassionate heart.

Wisdom manifests in many spiritual traditions although they foolishly attempt to domesticate and package it for the general masses.

Wisdom is free, crying out daily to the sons and daughters of men, runners in the rat race of acquisitive desire. Stuff doesn’t bring Wisdom; letting go usually does.

Wisdom loves to interact with its offspring, sitting them down and talking things through; revealing its priceless perspective on our earthly sojourn.

Wisdom usually hangs around the broken-hearted, those with an ear to hear, slowed down by the traumas of life. It’s words bind up the shattered psyches of despair and inner pain. Wisdom infuses Life, the Creative energy that set the stars in motion, into our shattered dreams of Being.

Wisdom takes us under its wing and frees us from the fool, the one within and the one without.

Wisdom sees the end game and not the quagmire that we’re presently drowning in. It’s confident that it can eventually set our feet on solid ground.

Wisdom is generally ignored in the affairs of man. It is more generally listened to by the daughters of Eve, those gifted with an inner hearing, those tuned into the Womb of Divine Love.

Wisdom is heard in Silence, that sacred space within that’s left when ego’s towers of Babel collapse and burn.

Wisdom never leaves us but doesn’t butt into our ego chatter, trying to compete with pain fuelled thoughts of danger and of woe.

Wisdom waits and waits and waits………until the time of hearing has come; that mystical moment when we hear the Voice of Source whisper in the caverns of our Soul.

Wisdom doesn’t gloat over the crash and burn of others, but reaches out its hand to still their inner storm.

Wisdom welcomes all to eat its Bread and Drink its wine; to fill ourselves with food of Soul, grown in the fields of Spirit Breath.

Wisdom or Ego?  The Voice of choice is ours to choose.

Wisdom waits.

But more of that in my next Post!

x Dylan

http://www.amazon.com/author/dylanmorrison

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Letting Go

August 18, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

In this mini video-talk I examine the gulf between ego and Spirit Breath on our psycho-spiritual journey called life. Suggesting that we let go of ego-dependency, I intimate that we’ll be surprised to find ourselves wholeheartedly supported by Divine Love.

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Contented?

August 14, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Contented?

Contented?

Let’s face it.

Many of us who claim to be spiritual folk aren’t actually content!

Under the veneer of our religious or spiritual masks, we are, deep down, very unhappy people.

No matter how orthodox or wacky our belief system, an inner angst keeps churning away in the pit of our stomachs.

For many of us this is the hidden energy source of our relentless psycho-spiritual work out on our treadmill of choice.

Millions of dollars, words, argument and discussion are spent on getting this little feeling to subside but all to no avail.

In other words we play a restless ego game and we flit from one spirituality to the next trying to find an inner peace and solitude.

Therapists, preachers and gurus love this little gremlin within all of us.

Why?

Well, frankly it makes them a living in the metaphysical marketplace of peace serums.

The only thing that gets us off our sleepy trip for meaning and purpose is a great big transpersonal crisis.

For Paul of Taursus it was getting knocked off his Pharisaical donkey. For some of us its a sudden death, an unexpected divorce, a terminal diagnosis or a mental breakdown.

Such events well and truly knock the egotistical stuffing out of us – our brokenness is laid bare before our eyes in a way that ego didn’t previously encourage.

In our darkness Something or someone comes along to touch and heal our pain. The time for religious or spiritual games are past, our masks lying faceless on the desert ground of our crushed psyche-soul.

The ego’s search for God or Ultimate Reality is over; Divine Love has called its bluff and knocked it off its psycho-spiritual treadmill.

So what’s left after the dust of trauma and Divine invasion is over?

Only the contentment that comes from having ego painfully yanked off its inner throne.

After that we don’t need to look for or argue on behalf of anything; our God game days are over.

Silence takes over from our old metaphysical chat-lines.

The one who knows, knows; the one who doesn’t maintains the stressful search in the guise of piety or spiritual hunger.

Life is a lot simpler than we imagine!. Reality is our friend, not an enemy to subdue and overcome. Bump into it and Divine Love isn’t far away.

With our ego surrender comes contentment.

No longer any need to go to our psycho-spiritual gym to sweat away our inner angst.

Just be.

http://www.amazon.com/author/dylanmorrison

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Fear And Religion

August 9, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Fear and Religion

Fear and Religion

When angelic visitors unexpectedly turned up within the Jewish Scriptural accounts of Divine visitation, it seems to have been a pretty terrifying experience.

Why?

Well, by all accounts they were big, fiery, and definitely not human! Enough for their human host to nearly pass out with fright. Their old fight or flight wiring hadn’t a chance; instead the traumatized soul just froze with fear and collapsed in a heap.

So why the angel angle?

Well, more often than not the first utterance of the heavenly visitor was paradoxically, ‘Fear not !’

A bit late methinks but, I guess, somewhat reassuring to the wilted soul lying before them.

This has got me thinking.

God and His/Her sidekicks aren’t really into fear as a motivational emotion.

Fear stems from the perceived threat of annihilation and Divine Love doesn’t do that, having too much respect for the countless projections of its image in the sons and daughters of Adam, no matter how dysfunctional they are.

Yet, bizarrely we walk along our religio-spiritual path, subliminally motivated by this nagging fear of Divine rejection both here and in the reality beyond death.

Let’s face it, fear is more prevalent than trust in our day-to-day psycho-spiritual lives. It has been programmed into our central nervous system for survival but has gone into hyper-drive mode following our brushes with early life trauma, either real or illusory.

My premise is that much religio-spiritual belief and practice is conceived and birthed in the womb of fear. We believe in our heads that God has somehow forgiven us but deep within the darkness of our inner world we sure as hell don’t really believe it. Like an abusive parent we just don’t trust the Divine Father/Mother who might suddenly lash out at us after a session of normal family life.

Our early childhood experiences of parental rejection and overbearing physical and emotional  power makes it difficult to take Divine Love at its word. We live in a somewhat schizophrenic world comprising moments of protective belief mixed with the angst of subconscious fear.

Unfortunately we don’t have to have been around religious circles for too long before this schizophrenic nature of our faith life is reinforced. Like all of us, those who appear to Model the love of the Divine Father/Mother often have a dark side that only pops up under extreme pressure. With one swipe of a Bible text the trusting child-like follower can be sent into the religious equivalent of the naughty chair, or, more insidiously, wounded by words claimed to be Divine in origin.

Is it any wonder that so many folk drop out of such a religious environment; one that promises much but more often than not, reopens and deepens the inner wounding of pre-birth and early childhood. Frankly put, many leave to maintain their sanity. The overlay of spiritual abuse on top of the psychic tears of childhood, is too much to bear. The average God follower can’t handle this extra parental abuse in the guise of spiritual discipline or righteous anger.

The disillusionment that often follows this dashing of our God dreams within religious community is our protective shell against further rejection and pain. ‘Enough is enough,’ the wounded child screams out. ‘Who needs this stuff?’

Who needs it indeed?

True faith or trust is birthed in the healing Presence of Divine Love and nowhere else. Only Other can get into our psychic nooks and crannies where we hide from our past and present abusers. When we set our hopes of psychic healing on religious salesmen and their business-like pseudo-communities we’re making a big and painful mistake. Like a quick acting pain-killer the effect of our involvement will dull the inner pain for a while, but only leave us with deeper wounds for future healing.

So back to our angel friends!

‘Fear not Beloved of God, you Child of Divine Love. Arise into the wholeness of Being that flows from Source, the One who birthed you before the wounds of man etched their deadening pain on your innocence of soul. Let my touch extract the torment of those slashes on your infant psyche, rejections fused in womb dark days, the piercings of a tender heart that came from the innermost Mind of God.’

Have we met our angel unawares?

I doubt it.

May the Messengers of Healing Love invade the psychic fortress of our hidden pain, pull out the thorn of parental threat and lift us to our Spirit feet, to walk again in Eden’s Peace.

Trust not Fear.

http://www.amazon.com/author/dylanmorrison

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Chapterless Verse ~ The Poems Of Dylan Morrison

August 8, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

Chapterless Verse

Chapterless Verse

Hi folks

Are you into poetry?

A while ago I started a wee page for my Irish poems.

Please do pop over and have a peep if you’ve got a few moments.

‘Likes’ would be gratefully received to keep our facebook masters happy!

x Dylan

http://www.facebook.com/ChapterlessVerseThePoemsOfDylanMorrison

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Elephant In The Room

August 6, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

In this mini Video talk, I discuss the subliminal role and destructive effects of imitative desire within faith and spirituality based groups : the elephant in the room which very few of us see and even fewer of us wish to acknowledge until it’s too late.

 

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The Terrible Twos

July 31, 2013 by Dylan Morrison ~ the Prodigal Prophet

The Terrible Twos

The Terrible Twos

Let me first make it clear that I love twins! My dad was one, although his brother died at childbirth. So I’ve a soft spot for them, these little reflections of creativity. In today’s post I wish to look at the rivalry that stalks us in our search for peace, attempting to shed a little more light on its origins.

Someone once said that we usually hate the folk who remind us of ourselves. Sounding ridiculous at first there may be a little more truth in the statement than first meets our eyes.

Let’s start with desire!

Desire is the psycho-spiritual fuel that propels us towards having something or someone. Where does it come from? Most of us reckon that it is generated in the human heart, born in the inner core of our being. I believe not. let me explain.

Desire is, I believe, a virus of sorts that we are infected by, a bug that is transmitted from another. If we had eyes to see beyond the appearances of human relationships we could perceive the desire lines that permanently flow between individuals; a complex network of pushes and pulls that never switch off  but constantly operate under the radar of the conscious mind.

I desire an object because someone else is desiring it; I do not desire it in a social vacuum. All desire is hence triangular at its most basic. Out of the corner of my eye I have absorbed the desire of the other, the opposite base corner of the desire triangle. as I attempt to reach the desired apex object common to us both. The race is on with one eye on the prize and the other on our new opponent in the dash for acquisition.

As we both push toward the desired goal, the race becomes all, the object rapidly disappearing into the mists of illusory happiness. At this stage both sets of eyes are firmly set on one another, the desire for victory having become the new race prize.

It’s at this stage that we have become the terrible twos, mirror images of one another, twins determined to kill of the mutual challenge of our psychic sibling. Such an engagement with our brother or sister is a function of our skewed or warped ego, that desire transmitter-receiver that scans the psycho-spiritual airways for the latest ‘must-have’ object and the one chasing it down.

This human dynamic was widely understood in many ancient cultures where twins were taboo and symbols of a potential violent struggle within the tribe or social grouping. Some societies even exiled one of the twins to defuse any future outbreaks of violent contagion.

Throughout the Judaeo Scriptures we regularly come across this warring brother syndrome, one included for our warning and enlightenment. Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, the two house sharing prostitutes who brought their baby for Solomon’s ownership judgement,  are  brutally honest exposés of familial rivalry, ones that result in violence, whether potential or actual. We are being shown how those in close relationship often end up fighting each other for metaphysical dominance.; the victor somehow absorbing the being of the vanquished when the fight is over; a conflict initially triggered by a mutual desire transfer.

When such a dynamic occurs within a faith or spirituality community it is extra specially tragic. The initial object is usually a desire to know God, or to be close to someome who claims to. Such a desire can easily morph into the subliminal driving force of a hidden struggle for victory over a fellow believer or devotee. May I suggest that under the charade of brotherly or sisterly love that the terrible twos is endemic within most metaphysical groups. Ego finds it extremely easy to justify its armed struggle stance regarding an other within the sacred setting, with God or Scriptures often press-ganged onto the side of the righteous.

Warring twin relationships often start out well with a level of mutual respect but often transform themselves as the level of desire is increased by either or both parties. The spiral of relational breakdown often takes folk by surprise. How can two who were once so close, now be at each others spiritual throats, a battle for Divine authentication and approval. Is it any wonder that so many so-called expressions of faith or spirituality exist within the psycho-spiritual marketplace? Is it any wonder that many defeated twins or shattered mirror images have walked away from the hidden but intense desire battles that pervade many religious or New Age groups. Of course not. Survival is a great motivator.

As we engage with others, either face to face, or dare I say it on social media sites, let us be aware of the desire dangers lurking within our fractured psyche-souls. Being mindful of our tendency to absorb the passion of another is half the battle; the other half being our own connection to the One outside Desire. The Spirit of the Nazarene, knows nothing of desire  except that all-pervasive energy known as the Will or Passion of God. Now that’s what we need to absorb, a liberating infection that will help us fly high over the battlefields of the Terrible Twos.

http://www.amazon.com/author/dylanmorrison

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