Stay On The Beam!

The value of any religion is the degree to which it connects us with who we are and the life that is our life to live. The spiritual life is the life that is unique to us, the life we are called to incarnate, bring forth, give birth to within the physical world of normal, apparent, reality. The spiritual ground of our existence, is the truth of who we are which demands expression in the world of physical existence. We are to do what brings us forth! Religion that is helpful helps us find the path with our name on it, helps us find the way that leads to ourselves and the life that is ours to live. Religion that is not helpful conceals the way, blocks the path, tells us it knows best, cuts us off from ourselves and assimilates us into the norms and the corporate mind of the religion.

All religions have their rules to live by. Jesus speaks of those rules when he says, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees (& Mama Gurus)!" There are no black footprints! There is no blueprint! There are no shortcuts to the life that is your life to live! The only rule to live by is: STAY ON THE BEAM! Joseph Campbell says, “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off of it.” The only thing to know is when we are on the beam and when we are off of it.

When are you "on the beam"? What gets you off of it? What pretends to be better than the beam? What competes with the beam? How are you going to live in the time left for living? What are you going to do with your life? What is LIFE for you? How much will you LIVE? How will you LIVE within the context and circumstances of your life? These are essential spiritual questions.

We don't need organized religion to help us answer these questions, to help us to stay on the beam, but we need the church as it ought to be! Those who help us look, listen, know, do!

I'm your Mama (Guru)! Listen to me when I say: “DON'T LISTEN TO ME! LISTEN TO YOU!” Learning to listen to yourself is the heart of the spiritual journey. Who helps you hear what you have to say? To whom do you talk in order to hear yourself speak? In order to speak the truth that must be said, heard, lived? That person is, those people are, the church for you. Your church is the people in your life who help you stay on the beam. That is the "soul" purpose of the church, keeping folks on the beam!

Spirituality is not about what you think or believe but what you do. How you live. How well you live aligned with the life that is your LIFE. You cannot do what someone else (the Mama Gurus) tells you to do. Your spiritual practice is living YOUR life! Our LIFE is our spiritual practice. We practice LIVING until we get it down. And practice it after we get it down because we love it, because it is life for us.

What constitutes LIFE for you? How does the way you are living assist the experience of LIFE? Prevent it? How must you change the way you live in order to LIVE? These are essential spiritual questions. What are you going to do to do what is yours to do? To do what has, is, LIFE for you? When will you take up the work of being who you are, of doing what is yours to do? What do you intend, what do you mean, with the life you are living? How closely aligned is your present life with the “beam,” with the life that is your life to live? These are essential spiritual questions. Who helps you ask and answer them?

Our lives are self-adjusting, self-directing, self-correcting internal guidance systems when we live them with time for observation, reflection, examination and exploration. We have to take the time to listen to our lives, to listen to ourselves speak about our lives, to find the images that reflect our lives and listen to them. We are generally unaware of the images and symbols that carry the meaning of our lives and can point us to that meaning when we allow it. But, we are all aware of our symptoms. Symptom must become image! We have to sit with our symptoms and allow the image to immerge and speak or move, to say what it has to say, to show us what it would have us see. This sounds crazy, but it isn’t crazy. It is spiritual. It is spiritual work to listen to our images, to hear what they have to say.

We have to avail ourselves of the guidance that is available to us if we would find our way to the beam, to the path, with our name on it, to the Holy Grail, to the life that is our life to live. This means listening to our body’s response to our experience and finding the images which interpret and express the meaning of that response so that we might commune with our intuition and instinct and STAY ON THE BEAM! Amen! May it be so!