CHAPTER 1
MY STORY
I was raised Catholic and had a very active and faith-filled prayer life as a child. I believed in God. I lived out of my heart. I believed in something greater than me. I believed in magic, miracles, and that if I had the faith of a mustard seed, I could move mountains. I believed the stories in the Bible. The spirit world was real. And the material world around me was animated with that spirit. I believed that if I could put my whole heart and belief into something, it would come true. I believed in the underdog — that a person with nothing but a true heart could win the day.
But somewhere I lost those feelings. I started to trust my mind more than my heart. Instead of relying on my faith, trusting the universe and keeping my heart open, I became skeptical and relied on logic, rationality, and science as my primary guideposts for decision making. As I grew older and became more "educated," I began to doubt the existence of this spiritual world where God, miracles, and magic existed. In fact, the more I learned in school, the weaker my faith became until I came to believe that it was simply irrational to believe in a spiritual realm of reality. I began to explain away religion as an opiate of the masses, a creative-coping mechanism, a psychological crutch. I focused on the negative side of religion. As such, I ran away from it and I threw the baby out with the bathwater. I couldn't differentiate between the baby and the bathwater. I thought it must all be bad. I started living out of my head and not my heart.
My logical mind came to think that believing in God or a spirit world was stupid and foolish. As a result, life became desolate, having all the magic, miracles and mystery removed from it. I arrived at that dark place because of my desire to figure everything out with my head but also, and perhaps more importantly, because my heart had been broken, and I didn't know how to mend it. My early romantic relationships didn't work out and I was deeply hurt by a friend — normal things that happen in life and especially during the adolescent years. But my reaction to it made it worse. Somehow, I subconsciously thought that living out of my mind instead of my heart would keep the hurt at bay and make me happier. I closed my heart so no one could hurt me. What I didn't understand was that closing my heart also kept beauty, love, and God at bay. As a consequence, I became depressed, clinically depressed, and I didn't know how to heal or help myself. I lost hope. I became so depressed that I considered suicide.
I was nineteen, lost, and heartbroken. I didn't know where to turn. In my depression, I started praying. I asked for help. For months, I prayed for help and guidance. And the God of my childhood came to save me. At the moment I seriously considered suicide, a voice gently said, "My precious, precious child, it's now that I'm carrying you." I was instantly overcome with an intense feeling of unconditional love. Immediately I knew I was forgiven and deeply and passionately loved. It remains one of the most magical, transformational, and powerful experiences of my life. At that moment, my life changed. I was redeemed. And ever since, I have had a passionate belief in something bigger than me that is incredibly loving, something I call God. Magic, miracles, and mystery swept back into my life.
This experience of God occurred in my heart. It was a feeling. It was not a thought. It was feeling the presence of love — deep, abiding, and forgiving love. It was instantaneous and powerful. Hearing the voice was a peak experience — it was a spiritual high. It was moment of comfort, a moment without effort or doubt. It was a moment of union with God, when I felt that there was nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. It was like reaching the top of a mountain. And it stayed with me for a long time. It was an intoxicating feeling of bliss. The feeling of the being in the presence of God did not stay with me permanently though. I did not forget it, but I couldn't feel it all the time.
I wanted to feel it again. So I went on a journey to find God again. That journey led me around the world. And I found God everywhere. I found him, that is, I felt the same sense of pervading love, in many religious traditions. I found him in Japan at a Shinto Shrine as I watched people deeply in prayer. I found God in Hong Kong as I felt the peace of people doing Tai Chi. But most of all, I found him in India in his fierce form as the destroyer Shiva.
Before leaving the US, I was carrying guilt. I felt guilty for many of the choices I had made and I didn't know how to forgive myself. I had translated most of my religious training into a list of rights and wrongs. I was very clear that my actions were less than they should have been. I also knew, based on the experience of the voice, that God loved me. Hearing the voice alleviated a lot of the feelings of guilt and unworthiness, but those wounds were deep. A line from a song spoke to me, though I didn't know why:
Oh Mount Kailas, uncover me; Come my restoration, wash my body clean I've been walking along a crooked path Where the walls have fallen and broken me in half
These were the days before internet searches and I lived in rural America. I didn't know what Mt. Kailas was. I asked my religious studies professors and consulted my dictionary of religious terms, but did not find any reference to Mt. Kailas. Then, while praying to my Christian God in the library of a ship headed to India, I found a reference to Mt. Kailash. It is the mythological home of the Hindu God Shiva. The book went on to explain that Shiva is one of three primary Gods in Hinduism. There is a creator, a sustainer, and a destroyer. Shiva is revered as a destroyer. And destruction, death, and endings are viewed within the context of time as spiral — not linear. This was powerful to me. Although the same spiritual truth exists in the death and resurrection of Christ in the Christian tradition, at twenty I couldn't see that. I had to see the divine power of destruction, death, and endings from another perspective.
The divine continued to lead me in India. I wanted desperately to see the Taj Mahal, but I couldn't make it happen. I didn't have enough money. So I settled for a pre-planned group trip in Southern India, outside of Madras. I didn't specifically know where I was going — I was just traveling with the group. While sitting on a bus and praying my rosary, the tour guide explained in a thick Indian accent that we were arriving at Kailasanathar — a temple dedicated to Shiva and to Mt. Kailash. It was magic. God, my Christian God, lead me to Shiva and to Mt. Kailash to experience deeper forgiveness and to understand that endings also have divine origins. The felt sensation of love was the same as when I heard the voice. The names and the mythological stories were different, but the love was the same.
I returned home to the United States a firm believer in God, but a firm believer in a God that speaks many languages and has many names. As deeply as I knew the Christian God of my childhood spoke to me and saved me from suicide and depression, I knew that same God also bore the name of Shiva, who recreates the world after he destroys it. I had the same heartfelt inner knowing of the presence of God when I encountered Shiva in India as when I heard the voice of my Christian God in America.
When I came home from traveling, I didn't easily fit back into the rich Catholic tradition I'd come from — nor did many people understand my newfound experience. As passionately as I believed in God, I also had to be honest that I believed in other gods too, gods that the religion of my childhood did not affirm. Therefore, although I had my belief in God back, I still didn't have clear spiritual guideposts. Most traditions give guidance on how to follow their particular tradition. Finding guidance when you believe multiple traditions are true was more elusive. So I kept searching.
I found a teacher, Hal French. He was a smiling, joy-filled person. I had read about enlightenment, a state of continual peace and joy. Hal seemed to radiate that constant joy. I began studying with him. I studied with him academically, but he soon became a spiritual mentor. He was a pluralist — someone who believes that multiple religions have truth. Hal taught me how to meditate. He studied Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism and taught me that enlightenment can be found in the present moment. Hal sat in meditation daily for years. Whenever I asked for guidance, his advice always came back in some way to meditation. No matter what the problem, he encouraged me to sit, learn to be still, and find the joy in the present moment.
I studied religion academically; however, I realized the academic study of religion was not at the core of my interest. I was interested in spiritual practice, in personal transformation, and healing within the context of not just one religious path but many. My academic study of religion provided me an avenue and a basis for validating and studying multiple religions. And it gave me the concept that there are many paths up the same mountain.
CHAPTER 2
Many Paths up the Same Mountain
During my time in the academic study of religion, I studied with a perennialist philosopher. Perennialists believe there are many religions that lead to God (or truth or enlightenment depending upon the vocabulary of the tradition). Perennialist philosophers say that revelation comes from one source (God) and that the religious traditions of the world have developed around those revelations. They say that revelation occurs regularly, and it has created the religious traditions of the world. Perennialists believe that true revelation comes from one source — the same source. Revelation from the same source creates rings (religious traditions) around the source (God) like ripples radiate in a pond when a stone is dropped in the water.
While the religious traditions that develop differ, I believe that the essence of religion, the inspiration, is the same. However, after the original inspiration, religions become human institutions. The human religious institutions that are created are often less than the inspiration and have a negative side. But the source of inspiration is the same among religions and that source is connected to the deep experience of love I felt when I heard the voice and visited Kailasanathar in India. When we get into the spirit of inspiration and love, the outside trappings that separate us fall away and we are left with the same essence.
Huston Smith, a renowned scholar of religious studies, introduced me to the idea that the religions of the world are the "wisdom traditions" of the world. In my study of Hinduism, I read that there are many paths up the same mountain. The Upanishads, ancient sacred texts from India, say, "Truth is one, seers express it in many ways." Perennialism espouses the same philosophy — that multiple religions arise from the same divine source (many paths) and that the practice of each religion leads the practitioner to the same mystical place (the top of the mountain). That is, I found in both Hinduism and perennialist philosophy a validation of my personal spiritual experience that multiple religions have truth.
Perennialist philosophy explains that some people must believe that only their religion is true in order to activate their faith. But other people must affirm the truth and efficacy of multiple religions before they can believe any religion is true. I found my truth in the latter. I struggled to believe in religion when I could not engage my analytical mind. And my analytical mind struggled to accept the exclusivity of religion that so many orthodox and fundamentalist religions promote. How could my God punish someone who had never even heard of the name of my God? How could they not go to heaven? Before I could earnestly allow myself to believe wholeheartedly, my mind had to find an acceptable answer to that question.
Diana Eck, a professor at Harvard, told a story of two Jewish men in Japan during WWII who went to a Shinto Shrine. There they saw a man who was obviously fervently in prayer. One man said to the other "Is our God listening? If not, what does that say about our God? If he is listening, what does that say about our religion?" I always had a similar question. And that question, without an answer, helped to give rise to my doubts about religion and God. It was not until I made peace with the fact that multiple religions have truth that I could submit to the spiritual discipline in any of them.
To receive affirmation that many paths are true enabled me to believe again. And it enabled me to engage and begin to align my analytical mind with my heart. There is a quote from Galileo that says, "I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who had endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Or said more simply, I do not believe that God would give me this mind and expect me not to use it. I agree. In order for me to fully engage my heart, my analytical mind has to come too.
The perennialist philosophy goes on to state that you can judge a tree by its fruit. That is, one should judge the validity of a religion (the tree) by the type of people it produces (its fruit). There will be some false prophets and religions. While many traditions are revealed from the same mystical, loving source, not all religions or spiritual teachers may come from the true source. Therefore, you must have a method for judging if a tradition is aligned with source or not. Perennialist philosophy advises to judge religious paths by the travelers they produce. If a religious path produces good, holy, loving people that you want to emulate, it is a valid path. If a path produces terrorism, bigotry or hatred, it is not a path that leads to the God who spoke to me.
Finally, the perennialist philosophy states that although multiple paths can lead to God, it is important to pick a path and practice it. The way I understand it is, to really develop spiritually, you have to submit to spiritual discipline. And because of the natural rebelliousness of the human spirit, you need to commit to a path and the discipline that comes with it if you really want to grow spiritually. That discipline and the idea of submission was hard for me to accept; however, I have come to appreciate the truth in it because growth often comes from doing the hard work that is so easy to avoid if you let yourself out of it. I still don't practice just one path. My journey has been enriched by studying the wisdom of many traditions. But I have tried to pick consistent sources of spiritual discipline and to submit myself to them – even when they tell me things I don't like.
For me, that has been practicing the religion of my childhood, Catholicism, the practice of Tantric Yoga and Goddess spirituality. My Catholicism has stayed with me. It is my foundation. My father God of the Catholic Church is the voice I heard that saved my life, and the prayer, ritual, and beauty of the Catholic Church have always spoken to my soul. However, part of my spiritual development has been to supplement my original religious tradition with the wisdom from other faiths. In my experience, this study has been additive. For example, the Yoga Sutras, an ancient text describing how to attain peace of mind, convey spiritual knowledge in a very organized and analytical way, and that works well for me. The text speaks to my heart and makes sense to my analytical mind.
Yogic philosophy can enhance any religious practice. The techniques described in Yoga philosophy and meditation can be used as a supplement to other spiritual disciplines. The Yoga Sutras are a straightforward description of how to tame the mind, and as such can be used in conjunction with any other spiritual path. Many of the techniques presented in this book are based on the foundations of Yoga philosophy and meditation.
