I begin new blog in this corner of the internet. You have to excuse me, English is not my first language - it is Finnish. - I love to write, but I have noticed that my spiritual way of life, and religious attitudes seems to bother more "normal" people, and I am tired in it.
I feel that just the fact that I meditate, and take things that happen in my soul, or imagination as part of reality, makes people uneasy. They may say, that I am crazy. And I feel hurt by this. And people get upset, when I tell about my visions, and dreams, and about phases of samadhi.
There seems to be some kind of mold, of "normality", where you should fit yourself, to be considered a human being. I never could do this. First of all, I never grew up. Others grew to be serious, and adults, I still remain a child at 43 years. I never became a man, but always was considered a boy. I never had ambition for success, or career, or wealth. Because of this, many people look down on me, and think I am inferior, or have failed in this life.
But when I look at "normal" people, how they seem to put almost all of their energy to relationships, marriage, family, career - and how they relax in their spare time, watching ice-hockey, football, and taking alcohol regularly, I can not feel envy, or that I'd missed something. And often I notice that play subtly with people's expectations, and make myself a clown, just to see their reaction. I may, for example exaggerate my poverty, or let them understand that I suffer from loneliness... or I can play with their homophobia. Or psychophobia; I can reveal a bit of my stream of consciousness, and use surreal language, and they will be convinced that I am mad. Or then, I can play that i am normal, and behave like everybody else.
The Holy Fool: "The yurodivy (Russian: юродивый, jurodivyj) is the Russian version of Foolishness in Christ (Russian: юродство, yurodstvo or jurodstvo), a peculiar form of Eastern Orthodox asceticism. The yurodivy is a Holy Fool, one who acts intentionally foolish in the eyes of men. He or she often goes around half-naked, is homeless, speaks in riddles, is believed to be clairvoyant and a prophet, and may occasionally be disruptive and challenging to the point of seeming immorality (though always to make a point)." - Wikipedia
Of course, this has come naturally. I never wished to "join the circus", and never planned to become a trickster figure. It just happened. In the beginning, all I wished, was to experience the Mystical Experience, and that's how I came to charismatic Christianity. I was so young at that time, and I had no religious background. After some months, and having experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit in congregation, I went in to read about Sufi saints, and read some of them to my Christian brothers... They didn't like at all. And it didn't help when I tried to explain that there is really no fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam. (They both have mystical spirituality)
I was always like that. No boundaries. Flying there like Jonathan Livingston Seagull in wide open sky. After some embarrassing situations like that, I discovered that organized religion might not be for me. I was a mystic. I don't know why it was like that, but I had the first spontaneous religious experiences when I was about 3 to 4 years. My parents were normal, secular middle-class people. I remember I prayed prayed a lot. I was afraid of dark, that was a motivation, I think. And I got answers, I felt Light in my heart. I could see the Light. It comforted me. And somehow I felt it comes from God. So, I naturally had a belief in God. I was basking in His Light, so there must be a God.
I never told about these experiences to anyone. Perhaps I sensed that people would not understand. People never understood: even when I went to yoga, I think they just thought it's my ego making these things up. In yoga, was little bit same as in Christianity; they stressed the conversion. The Christians had life before Christ, and then after the conversion. In yoga, they had similar myth, they called it the self-realization. They have been living in darkness, and then they converted into neo-Hinduism. before they were bad, and sinners, and blind. Now they were good, and reborn. I thought this is silly. I never felt like that. I never had anything before/after -feelings. I was all time the same. I learned few more tricks, my meditation grew more deep, I learned to accept myself, but it was gradual process, not a sudden conversion.
So, I felt I am in limbo, in-between. I can not be a believer, nor can I be a secular person. I felt just different from others.
Later I talked with people a lot, as I am quite a social person, and people gave me different opinions and advices. The atheistic-minded people tended to believe that such experiences are symptoms of schizophrenia, or a thing called kundalini-psychosis. The religious people said that powers of darkness had lied to me showing false light in my flesh. They said that religion is about faith, not about experience, which is Gnostic nonsense. That is how I discovered that I am a Gnostic. Of course I read much about psychology, and about these psychiatric disorders people were speaking about. I found it to be quite interesting, and kind of fell in love with Jung. I also read about Qumran and Nag Hammadi texts.
It puzzled me greatly, that every religion seemed to have an enlightened person, who had begun the system, and in theory they had mystical concepts, such as Tabor Light, or Visio Dei Beatifica, and talk of mediaval mystics, but in practise experiences were strictly condemned. All religions seemed to be antignostical. Even yoga was antignostic on practise.
Together with this, I felt that in religious groups there was unspoken requirement, that men must be of very masculine type. Effeminate men, like me, were considered to be unspiritual and unreligious. I was there, trying to mix effeminacy, with mystical religious experiences. Very out-of-place everywhere. People seem to think automatically, that lack of masculinity means homosexuality, or transsexuality, or that you are unsure of your sexuality. But it wasn't like that. I just didn' t have the male-ego. Soon I grew absolutely tired in all this religious stuff, and distanced myself from it. But I could not go back to secular world either, so I found myself meditating in forests. I climbed the mountains, explored the caves. I spent nights in forest, in meditation. It was great. Finally I was able to concentrate on meditation. When I was alone, I was free. Nobody condemning me there in forest. Only God, and He didn't seem to condemn.
Me, in granite cave, Finland - autumn 2008
I tried to tell people about my meditations, but strangely, I got hostile reactions, or so I felt. I became to realize that this is not yoga, not Buddhist meditation, not Zen, not Tao, not Sufism, this is not anything. It's just me, meditating in forest. It's the actual experience in itself. One seeker, Andrew Harvey has called it the Direct Path. I believe in it. Finally, when meditation has become steady, you need no outside teachers, no congregation, no sect, no group.
In the beginning, yes. I believe I could not have learnt to meditate in this life, if I hadn' t met a guru. I was so stuck in my chakras. I even didn't know which direction I should put my attention in meditation. (You need to fix it upwards, towards the heaven) I also learned to control my speech. I realized that we live in secular world, and one can not go on blabbing about the spirit to people. I got so strict in this discipline, that even if someone was confiding to me about spiritual issues, I didn't speak a work about my belief. I just shut myself completely. I was hurt so many times, that I didn´t wish to go through it again.
But often it feels weird, living a rich spiritual life, and not being able to talk about it to anyone. Not to anyone in this planet. Isn't that a too heavy burden? Can't I write, even a little.... Please, God...
