"It is Love calling to love;
and the journey,
though in one sense a hard pilgrimage,
up and out,
by the terraced moment
and the ten heavens to God,
in another
is the inevitable rush of the roving comet
caught at last, to the central sun....
Like gravitation,
it inevitably compels
every spirit to its own place."
- Evelyn Underhill
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As part of this practice, I also developed the above Interspiritual Peace Mandala with the words of the Interspiritual Peace Mantra and symbols from each tradition set within a mandala pattern created by a dear friend of mine, artist Maja Apolonia Rode.
The Interspiritual Peace Mantra and Mandala can be found at the Interspiritul Peace Project web page.
"It's all God in Drag!" I first heard this phrase from Ram Dass while attending one of his spiritual retreats. All of us laughed deeply when he delivered the phrase with his perfect spirtual/comic timing. I laughed so hard I almost cried while the ripples of my laughter mixed with the chills of feeling like I was hearing a profound truth.
Over the years this phrase has often helped me to surrender into the Divine Flow of life by reminding me that whatever is happening is perfect as it is and I just need to be fully present to it.
So many times in my life I have been re-minded of this truth. So many times I have had experiences that seemed bad, horrible and/or traumatic, only to find out over time that they were part of a greater arc of experience that almost always brought about growth and blessing.
At that same spiritual retreat Ram Dass expanded on this idea of "It's all God in drag" by telling the following story:
There once was a rancher who had a beautiful stallion. He loved this stallion and pampered it with love and attention. One day there was a great storm and the stallion broke free and ran off into the mountains. The rancher and his family all sat around the hearth and bemoaned their bad fortune. The old grandfather merely sat in the corner and whispered a soft and whimsical: "ah-so."
Three days later, after the storm had passed, the stallion returned. As he galloped into the coral, three wild horses followed him. The rancher and his family were overjoyed at their good fortune. Of course, Grandpa just smiled and said "ah-so."
The ranchers' eldest son asked if he could learn to break in one of the wild horses. His father began to teach his son, when all of a sudden the wild horse threw the son across the coral. The son broke his hip and laid in bed in dire pain. The family huddled around, grumbling about the great misfortune. Grandpa gently held the boy's hand and whispered once again…"ah-so."
The next day a great army came to the village and took all able-bodied young men. The ranchers' son was spared. All eyes looked to the grandfather, who just smiled wisely and said…"ah-so."
Ah-so...Oh-Gee...It's all God in Drag!
Many years ago, while I was backpacking through Europe, I began to notice myself falling into two distinct patterns of experience. One pattern seemed to consist of periods in which everything flowed smoothly. Things would unfold effortlessly and seemed to work out perfectly. I would meet people who would point me in the right direction where I would in turn meet others. I would have the sense that I was in the right place at the right time and that there was a grand intelligence guiding me. All the elements of my life and the life of those I met seemed to be in some kind of beautiful synchronized orbit held together by some strange unseen force ... and life felt rich and full of "original gravity."
Then, suddenly, I would find myself in another pattern of experience. Everything seemed to go wrong, and I was out of the flow. I sensed that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Places I wanted to see would be closed or inaccessible. People seemed distant and cold. I felt isolated and alone. Every step was an effort, and I felt out of synch with everyone and everything.
Slowly I began to realize that there were certain thoughts and perceptions that seemed to precipitate and support these two different patterns of experience. A surrendering of my plans, expectations, and past memories preceded the periods in which I experienced a sense of flow and effortlessness. During these periods of flow I would tend to be totally in the present moment. I seemed to naturally accept things and people as they were. The periods in which I experienced everything being out of balance seemed to coincide with planning, expectations, and/or following a past idea, suggestion, or desire. A flood of past memories and future concerns also marked these times.
The qualities of my flow experiences were very similar to those described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his writings on flow (1990; 1993; 1997). These qualities include the loss of self-consciousness, a sense of being part of some greater entity, and an altered sense of time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993). This experience of flow is "... like being carried away by a current, everything moving smoothly without effort" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, p. xiii).
At first I tried to manipulate myself into having these flow experiences, but that only seemed to send me farther into the other experience. I began to see that each pattern of experience was related to the other. My periods of flow seemed to come from the surrender produced by the culmination of the frustration of the "out of the flow" experiences.
When I finally surrendered to the whole process the rest of my journey was filled with miracles and blessings. I felt guided at every step by a loving and compassionate force beyond my comprehension. Though I had explored spirituality and caught glimpses of this force prior to my trip, none of my previous experiences compared with the combined depth, magnitude, duration, and everyday integration of my experiences in Europe.
When I returned from my trip overseas I was unable to retain my deep and continual connection with this force, yet somehow I felt as though I had awakened from a deep unknown sleep. Everything seemed different; old familiar people, places, and experiences had a different quality to them. It was as though my center of gravity had shifted.
It is a disturbance of the equilibrium of the self, which results in the shifting of the field of consciousness from lower to higher levels, with a consequent removal of the centre of interest from the subject to an object now brought into view: the necessary beginning of any process of transcendence. (Underhill, 1961, p. 176)
Before my journey, my life was centered on career and finding romantic love, with short excursions into the realm of spirituality. After my experiences in Europe, the center of my life seemed to shift toward becoming the best human being I could become, and to find a way of reconnecting with the experience of Divine Flow. I began to explore, more deeply and earnestly, the world's spiritual and religious systems for knowledge and practices that could aid in my journey. And ultimately, I was lead to a process of self-reflection and self-inquiry to deepen my quest to understand this strange and wondrous experience of being in the Divine Flow.
*Excerpt from Original Gravity: A Personal Narrative Theology Inquiry into the Experience of Seeking, Receiving, and Following Divine Guidance by Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.
Renewal by CsuriMany years ago I traveled to London for the first time and met a sixty-year-old British postal worker in the Duke of Wellington Pub in Soho.
He bought me a bottle of barley wine and told me it had a very good original gravity.
I asked him what he meant by original gravity.
He explained that it was the British method of expressing the strength of a beer.
He winked and said I should always make sure I’m partaking of strong original gravity.
As he spoke these words he seemed to momentarily transform from an intoxicated postal worker into a sparkling-eyed mystic.
In my mind, the phrase original gravity blossomed into a metaphor for living life to its fullest, and over the years it has become the catch phrase for the state of being I aspire to attain in my life and through my work in creative expression, education, spirituality, research and healing.
*Excerpt from Original Gravity: A Personal Narrative Theology Inquiry into the Experience of Seeking, Receiving, and Following Divine Guidance by Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.
Original Gravity, as I have come to use it, refers to that original force that attracts and holds all things together: It is Michael Murphy’s true gravity, "…a universal force, an ethical imperative, and an overwhelming spiritual experience…the omnipresent "heart power" or "feeling-force" that permeates all things" (Murphy, 1972); it is Ken Wilber’s Spirit-in-action, the Eros "…that moves through you and me, urging us to include, to diversify, to honor, to enfold" (Wilber, 2000); and it is Jean Gebser’s inner commission that points beyond us and is the driving force behind all healing and transformation, and the evolution of consciousness,
Whichever way we may live, we need to remember that we are also lived by an authority or a power for which there are many names. And, above all, we must remember one thing, namely that whichever way we live, we follow, whether we know it or not, an inner commission that points beyond us. – Jean Gebser (Feuerstein, 1987)
