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Spirits in Spacesuits - A Manual for Everyday Mystics

by Sean O'Laoire

265 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-1220; ISBN 1-55395-505-6; US$19.95, C$23.00, EUR16.39, £11.47

Spirituality has oft been reduced to just religion, religion further reduced to mere morality, and morality ultimately reduced to sexuality. This book is not about how to be "good," nor even "religious" but about being "mystical" - the only reason for the experiment that is life on planet Earth.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book This book is a spiritual guide to the mystical core of the ancient scriptural traditions. It will help its readers cross-fertilize the great spiritual teachings of the East and the West, and, also, let seekers with a Christian background reclaim their own tradition. It comes from the tongue of a story-teller-priest who spent his childhood steeped in the mythology of Ireland and another 14 years immersed in the folklore of East Africa. Science, psychology, history and humor are all part of this beautiful tapestry. Read it and see that there is a Buddha sitting in meditation upon every water lily and Christ consciousness at the core of the entire Earth-experiment.

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About the Author Seán O'Laoire is a Catholic priest, ordained in 1972. Born in Ireland, he was awarded a B.Sc. degree (major in Mathematics) from the National University of Ireland. He spent 14 years in East Africa working in Education, Agriculture, Preventative Medicine, Famine Relief, and Architecture and also with physically disabled children. He is multi-lingual and has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in transpersonal psychology. He is a co-founder and the Spiritual Director of a group of Bay Area Catholics, called "Companions on the Journey," who are attempting to find "a new way of being truly catholic." He is, also, a Licensed Clinical Psychologist with a private counseling practice in Los Altos. He lectures and conducts scientific research on the effects of prayer, and has his findings published in three different research journals. In 1984, while living in Kenya, he wrote a book entitled Ukweli Ni Nini? (What does Truth Mean?).

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Sample Excerpts

INTRODUCTION

I come from a story-telling culture. My grandfather, "Daddy Jim," was a "Seanachaí" (the traditional Irish storyteller). I spent 14 years living in East Africa, among story-telling peoples. My greatest hero, Jesus of Nazareth, was a storyteller. Understandably, I wanted to become a storyteller myself.

This book is a collection of stories, fleshed out into mystical theology. It doesn't read like a book of written teachings, because it wasn't composed in written form. It is the transcripts of oral presentations to very-much-alive audiences, the members of the Companions on the Journey, a spiritual community based in Palo Alto, California.

The book retains that storyteller quality, though the more annoying mannerisms of which the ear, but not the eye is so forgiving have been edited out. There is some repetition both within and among the homilies. This is done purposefully. I believe that a good story should be at once an entertaining and a learning event. If all a person wants is entertainment, then the movies are a better choice. If all a person wants is learning, then feel free to buy an unabridged dictionary. The reason Jesus was perceived as preaching "Good News " was that his stories were both good (appealing and entertaining) and new (involved learning and discovering). For the main part, homilies and sermons tend to be neither good nor new, but simply boring and reheated leftovers. Instead of Good News we got mostly Old Hat.

An essential part of learning is repetition. Sometimes, this needs to be done formulaicly, using the same words or phrases exactly (like a mantra). At other times, employing new images, metaphors and stories for the same concept, idea or experience best does it. I mix these two techniques both within a particular homily and among the homilies.

My single greatest intention, however, is not to entertain, not to teach new concepts, not to moralize, but to challenge people into having their own personal encounters with the transcendent. Wisdom traditions, East and West, once their advanced-soul founders die, inevitably reduce spirituality to religion, and then, reduce religion to morality. I am not interested in trying to make people "good," but in encouraging them to become mystics. Morality is to mysticism what the alphabet is to Shakespeare. The churches keep drumming the alphabet into us; they don't seem to experientially know anything beyond that. For the person, however, who discovers Shakespeare, the alphabet (together with grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation) will take care of itself.

May you discover the mystic within you!

Seán ÓLaoire

 

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10

We See Things As "We" Are

Zen Buddhism has a saying, "The water that the cow laps up becomes milk and the water that the snake licks up becomes poison." In modern psychology, you might paraphrase that and say that we don't see things as they are; we see things as we are.

All of my adult life, I have been fascinated by the fact that in his times there were so many different reactions to Jesus. As children I am sure all of us had the notion that if only we could have met Jesus or if only we had lived at the time of Jesus, there is no doubt that we would have totally accepted who he was and what he said. We find it very difficult to understand why people on meeting him and hearing him and watching him could have any reaction other than to follow him and to believe in him. But when we read through the gospels we see there is an entire spectrum of responses to Jesus. To meet Jesus was no guarantee of seeing Jesus. Even those who were close to Jesus really did not see him. The apostles saw Jesus as a meal ticket to fame. He was going to become king and they were going to become the main people in his parliament. That is what they saw when they looked at him.

Peter looked at him and puffed himself up with arrogance and pride. Peter was going to be the rock on which Jesus founded his system. Jesus' brothers and sisters, four of whom are named in the gospels while two are just mentioned without being named, thought he was crazy. In the gospel of Mark, Chapter 3:21 we are told, "They came to take him by force because they thought he was mad." As soon as Jesus began his public ministry, his family got really embarrassed about what he was doing. Finally, in the gospel of John, Chapter 7, his brothers taunted him, "If you are such a mensch, how come you are stuck in a little place like Galilee. Why don't you go down to Jerusalem and do your schtick down there?" They didn't believe in him, even his own family did not believe in him..

Judas saw him as a ticket to a fast buck. The authorities saw Jesus in various ways as a problem that had to be dealt with very quickly. Herod saw him as a source of amusement. The soldiers taunted him. How could anyone in the presence of such beauty, power, healing and compassion see anything except healing,beauty and compassion? But they did. And the question I have asked myself all my adult life is, how would I have been? In which camp would I have landed if I had been around at the time of Jesus?

So I have two main points today. Firstly, I want to share with you a dream vision I had on Easter, 1978. Secondly, I want to share a piece of creative biblical writing I did in Kenya in 1983.

In 1978, for two months, I was with a group of priests and nuns in Manressa House in Dublin, a facility run by the Jesuits to train spiritual directors. I was doing a two-month institute on spiritual direction. The first month of it consisted of a thirty-day retreat with the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. I had done this thirty-day retreat as a young man when I entered the seminary at age 18. Now at age 31 it was a totally different experience. Particularly when you get 40 or 50 people meditating in total silence for a period of thirty days, extraordinary things begin to happen. You tap into the group psyche and the group spirit. So there were many visions and many dreams for all of us during that period of time.

I remember in particular this one dream-vision. It is difficult to differentiate dreams from visions. In Hebrew, it is the same word. A dream is a vision you have when you are asleep and a vision is a dream you have when you are awake. God speaks equally powerfully through both. In this particular dream vision, I saw myself standing somewhere outside of Jerusalem. About 50 meters away there was a little post and a notice was nailed on it. People were leaving the city and they were reading this notice and then shaking their heads disappointedly and then going back to the city. Curiosity got the better of me. I went out to see what this notice was. The heading said, "Golgotha Entertainment Committee." Underneath it said, "We regret that because of a strike in the timber yards in Jerusalem, the crucifixions scheduled for the sixth hour today have had to be postponed. We regret any inconvenience this may cause our patrons and we wish you a very holy Sabbath on the morrow." As dreams will do, it shifted and it was actually Good Friday and Jesus was being crucified and there was a huge mob taunting and jeering as Jesus died in agony and despair. Finally the body was taken down and put in the tomb and everyone went home.

But on Sunday, Christ appeared in the temple preaching and people were absolutely astounded. They could not figure it out. "This was the guy we nailed and crucified. We saw him buried two days ago and here he is alive and well and preaching in our temple." The crowds began to follow him; on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the crowds got bigger and bigger. He was preaching with more and more power and more and more authority. So the high priest called a meeting and said, "What are we going to do with this guy? It's worse than before." They had their meeting and they determined that there was only one thing to do." We 're going to crucify him again." He was captured for the second time and dragged off to Calvary. This second Friday there was a huge mob; word had gotten around. This guy had been crucified and buried, had risen from the dead, and he's going to be crucified again. This is something! This is super bowl to the power of eight.

The crowds came out in the thousands. They were ringed around watching this circus and some of them are convinced that this time, he is going to come down off the cross and clobber the enemies. They wait and wait until Jesus died the second time. They shook their heads rather disappointedly. He is put into the tomb for the second time. Then suddenly on the second Sunday morning word got around and someone said, "You know, this guy rose from the dead on last Sunday morning, wouldn't that be something to see it happen again?" They began to go out in droves to where he was buried. People came with blankets, six-packs and sandwiches ready to be entertained. There were semicircular rows of people around the mouth of the tomb waiting for this cataclysmic event to occur. Eight o'clock came and nothing happened. Nine o'clock came and nothing happened. One man went up and he put his eye up to the crack between the stone and the wall and as he looked in someone asked, "Is he there?" He said, "Yep, still lying down." Someone else said, "I'm going to give him a half an hour and if he's not out in a half an hour I'm out of here."

After a half an hour they began to drift away. After an hour they went off in droves. After an hour and a half there was no one left outside the tomb except myself, in my dream. I sat down disconsolately on a rock and all of a sudden there was this blast and out he came. He came over and he sat beside me. He said to me, "What do you think of that?" I said, "Pretty darn impressive." He said,"I don't mean the flash of lightning right now, I mean this whole thing that you've seen in your vision. What do you think of all that? In particular, I want to ask you a question. Who do you think disappointed me most in all of that?" I said, "I suppose it was Judas. Judas was one of the twelve and he sold you for 30 pieces of silver. I'm sure you must have been really disappointed in Judas." Christ said, "It wasn't he. Judas did what he did with a lot of planning and a lot of cunning. It wasn't Judas. Try again." I said, "If it wasn't Judas, it was Peter. Peter was the leader. Peter was the rock on which you intended to build your church. He arrogantly boasted that even if everyone else deserted you, he would never desert you. Was it Peter?" Christ said, "It wasn't Peter. Peter did what he did because he was afraid and I know what fear feels like. It wasn't Peter. Think again." So I said, "If it wasn't Judas and it wasn't Peter then it must have been the high priest. The high priest, allegedly the scripture expert, the leader of this spirituality, should have recognized who you were. He should have facilitated your emergence instead of killing you." And Christ said, "It wasn't the high priest. He did what he did and he stuck to his guns and when I rose from the dead he nailed me the second time. It wasn't he. "So I said, "I give up. If it wasn't Judas or Peter or the high priest, you tell me who it was that you were most distressed by." Christ said, "I will. It was the mob. Those bored listless people who just wanted to be entertained. They didn't particularly care whether I was being killed or rising from the dead, they just wanted to be entertained. All they saw in me was bread and circuses. They are the ones that disappointed me." Then he said to me, "When you wake up,I want you to look at the Book of Revelation, Chapter 3:15-16 and you will see what I mean." That was the only time in my dream state that I have been given a scripture passage.

So I woke up in the middle of the night and I read Revelation, Chapter 3:15-16. It is the message John was addressing to the Church in Laodicea and he says, "I wish you were either hot or cold. But because you are neither hot nor cold but only lukewarm, I will vomit you out of my mouth." In English, it is sanitized. It says, "I will spit you out of my mouth." The Greek word says vomit. "I wish you were either hot or cold but because you are neither hot nor cold but only lukewarm, I will vomit you out of my mouth." And I got it... Better to be a sinner, 100 percent passionately involved in my crime or my lust or whatever it is, or else to be a saint, but the worst state to be in is to be mediocre.

I thought of a second story in the scriptures. It is in the gospel of Luke, Chapter 7. It is the story of Jesus being invited into the house of Simon the Pharisee. He is not being brought in as an honored guest. They are trying to gauge whether he is really a prophet. They do not give him any courtesy. He is not given water to wash his feet after a dusty safari. He is not given a kiss. He is not anointed with oil. He is ushered into the dining room and they are lying around the dining room table and they are watching him and asking questions. A prostitute who had heard that he is dining there comes in because she has seen Jesus. She comes in and she does an unthinkable thing in the Jewish tradition, she lets down her hair. There are three things that should not be seen or heard in Judaism at the time regarding a woman, her hair and her feet and her voice. For this woman to come into the presence of this male group and let down her hair was the ultimate disgrace. She cried her tears on his feet and she dried his feet with her hair. Then she took an alabaster jar of precious ointment that she had probably got from one of her johns and broke it and poured it on his feet. Simon said to himself, "There's no need to ask him anymore questions. This man is no prophet. If he were a prophet, he would know the manner of woman who is touching him. She is a whore. I got my answer, he is no prophet."

Jesus is watching all of this play out and he says, "Simon, I have a question for you." "Ask it." "There was a certain rich man who had two debtors. One owed him a lot of money and the other owed him a little bit of money. But none of them could pay back. So he forgave both of them; let them off the debt. Who do you think is going to love him more?" Simon said, "Obviously, the guy to whom more is forgiven." Jesus said, "You are right. You see this woman. I came into your house and you did not give me even water to wash my feet. She has washed my feet with her tears. You did not kiss me. She has been kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil. She has anointed my feet with perfume. So I tell you Simon, her sins, and she has committed many, have been forgiven her because she has loved much. From the one to whom little is forgiven, little love comes forth."

There is a huge difference between a lover and a law keeper. The law keeper is the one who walks the middle path, no passion. This is what Jesus' biggest complaint was against the Pharisees. They had no passion for God. They had no passion for life. They were obsessives compulsively involved in keeping all 613 precepts of the Torah. There was no fire in their bellies. This woman had fire in her loins and fire in her belly and when she saw Jesus that energy went into love and compassion for Jesus. Jesus in some sense is saying, "You, Simon, are the one whom God vomits out of his mouth. You have no standing. You do not go to the right or to the left because there is no passion in you. All you have is law." It is the worst possible place to get stuck, to be stuck on the middle course where there is no passion in your life. Better to go out and paint the town red or decide to become a saint but this middle path works not at all.

I took that dream vision from 1978 and went back to Kenya and I worked quite a bit with the Jesuits doing directed retreats. In 1983, I had another vision and I wrote this down as a dialogue. I took two biblical characters from the New Testament and I just fused them together in a story that I made up. I wanted to illustrate for myself a very important teaching. It is this: that meeting Jesus was no guarantee of seeing Jesus. This is the story I wrote. I call this:

"When I Remember Zion"

He seemed somehow different. Not the normal importunate beggar thrusting a bowl in one's path and clawing with broken and dirt-encrusted fingernails at one's cloak. He seemed almost disinterested in alms as if it mattered little to him whether he ate or not. Beggars are one of the reasons I don't much fancy these trips to Jerusalem which are now much more frequent since my father's death and his bequeathing of the family's business to me. My recollection of Jerusalem has always been an impressive incense-clouded temple and a most unimpressive horde of fly-infested mendicants. Walking any of the main streets is a veritable running of the gauntlet. All manner of disfigured creatures obstructing one with mutilated and hideous limbs cursing earthly if ignored and grinning ingratiatingly if thrown a coin; a disquieting affair, really.

But this chap was different. Beneath the unkempt beard, emaciated face and pathetic attire was a deep and abiding wistfulness. Moreover, I seemed to recognize his face from long ago. I dallied a little too long in pitching my offering into his bowl and he looked up sensing that I was watching him. I knew then that I had met him before. He used to be the Synagogue leader in Capharnaum where my father took me to worship each Sabbath when I was a boy. Gathering my robes carefully about me I squatted before him and asked, "Are you by any chance Jairus once the Synagogue leader in Capharnaum?" A look of alarm dilated his gray eyes so that the white contrasted sharply with his brown weather-beaten countenance. I held his gaze relentlessly until he lowered his head in shame and whispered, "I am he." A memory of two noble, dignified men greeting each other each Sabbath flashed across my mind. For my father's sake, I proffered my hand and pulled him to his feet. "Come," I said, "tonight you lodge with me." We looked a peculiar pair as we made our way towards where I normally lodged. Other beggars eyed him, some with envy, some with admiration at his having found a patron.

After the evening meal, we sat by the fire. There were no other guests and his eyes glazed over as waves of melancholy memories swept through him. Without any bidding, he turned to me and he began to tell his story....

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