Self Improvement > Spirituality > Going Beyond - Freedom from Religious Hierarchy
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Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : Tony Cuckson
In my homeplace of Corrogue there is hierarchy. There is the hierarchy of two becoming one. There is “little me” and the Divine. Two lovers needing each other. Two lovers needing and wanting each other beyond all else. The two becoming the experience of at-one-ment. There is the experience of "little me" coming home to a place I have never left and can never leave. This is the place of the lover.
Lovers mistrust the hierarchical. Lovers are their own authority. Lovers do not need clergy, gurus, priests, churches, and temples in order to go beyond. Lovers only need life and the life of abundance. Lovers do not need belief. Belief, for the lover, is a prison. Lovers only desire to know the Beloved. Their longing is to be love. What to believe when you know you are love?
Hierarchy by its very nature is dogmatic and orthodox. Within hierarchy there are strata and there is the strategic. Hierarchy clings to the word and to the accepted creed. It is a fixed thing. Hierarchy abhors change. By its very nature it cannot flow. It is often over burdened by the law – the word. With hierarchy is the law and usually this law becomes the one way. This is what I call, “the institutional mind.” This institutional mind smothers the very thing it professes to love.
For many people the embrace of the hierarchical is a safe bet. It means you are not required to authorise your own knowing. You are not required to know the beauty of the eternal as a living experience. You can deny your uniqueness. You can give over the responsibility for your soul to another.
The institutional mind does not invite wisdom. Wisdom embraces metaphor, poetry and paradox. The institutional mind cannot contain paradox. Paradox is illogical. Paradox is heart centred. Fact and the literal is all that the institutional mind can allow. The institutional mind does not embrace the poet, the lover, the dancer and especially not the feminine. At least not for long. The institutional mind loves the fixed. It loves that which can be contained.
Hierarchy makes the lover’s heart ache for that which is higher. The holy longing gets quashed amidst all the words, all the ritual that becomes repetitious rather than joyous. Ritual becomes not a place of threshold but a key that locks that very door of threshold. The door to beyond is locked because hierarchy and the institutional mind lies to you. It tells you the Divine is beyond you. It tells you that life has meaning only beyond the threshold of death. It promises you a future it does not know. It promises you something that only the lover can know – the one courageous enough to go naked and alone into a place of unknowing.
Hierarchy and the institutional mind keeps you from being a lover. It ties you up in words. It keeps you from the real journey. Allegiance to any hierarchy can make you, over time, institutionalised. There comes a time when you cannot stand-alone. You cannot stand the experience of no-thing-ness that is beyond ego. You cannot go beyond what is fixed. You cannot go beyond the idea of God into the knowing of God.
The Divine loves you unconditionally. The Divine knows love through you and you know the Divine through love. You are both seeking each other. However, you have to go alone. Lovers always have to go alone. This is not a ménage à trois. You, as a lover, go along the path trodden by no other than yourself. You sing your own song. This is the song that only the Divine recognises. You are a unique vibration of the Divine. The Divine harmonises with you and is always in harmony with you. You will not find your uniqueness within the institutional mind.
You do not need institutions to tell you who you are. You do not need the prison of the known that is belief. Your soul longs to fly into eternal unknowing. It wants to fly into the ever creative becoming. It wants you to die in each and every moment so that love can be born anew within you. Love cannot be institutionalised.
We will as a species mature when we commit to authorising our own lives. When we commit to be who we are we will leave the safety of the institutional mind and enter real communion. There will be no one between the Beloved and you. When this happens you are graced. You are grace. You become the dance. We become at one with it all. The ego becomes a thin place. This is the thin place where you cross over into eternity. This is happening right now. It is always happening right now. This happening is heaven within.
When you honour your soul experience by refusing to allow any authority other than your own you will arrive at the homeplace of our heart. You will arrive at your birthright that is joy.
Joy is not essential within the institutional mind. Order is essential. This order is brought about by the orthodoxy of words. Within the institutional mind words often lose their essence. Lovers and poets cannot carry such words. They refuse to carry the burden of historical words that have been pulled up by their roots and made to fit the institutional creed.
Hierarchy likes the political mind. It does not like the heart of the mystic. The mystic within all hieratical organisations has always been given a hard time. Einstein had a hard time within the orthodoxy of science.
The mystic dances life. The mystic lives the paradox of life. He/she looks crazy. They love the flow of the unknown. You cannot tie the mystic to a creed, a book or a place. The mystic belongs nowhere and thus paradoxically the mystic belongs everywhere. They are the free flow of love.
As Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) the Sufi mystic reminds us: -
Love lit a fire in my chest, and anything
that wasn’t love left: intellectual subtlety,
philosophy, books, school.
All I want now to do or hear is poetry.
Translation by Coleman Barks.
From Birdsong.
A mystic is free of all institutional learning. They drop all knowledge. They are empty. They allow the Divine to pour through them. They know that life is enough. All through history the mystic has been forced to come into line with orthodoxy. Often this has been accomplished through brutality.
One of the most beautiful mystics was Jesus. He was a beautiful, crazy Divine filled, feminine, angry man who had one authority. This was his experience of at-one-ment with the source. This was not a creed. This was the living of love. This man of beauty was crucified. Romans or Jews did not crucify him. He was crucified by the institutional mind. This is the fixed mind that will not and cannot surrender to the beauty of unknowing. The institutional mind is still crucifying his teaching.
Come out of the prison of the institutional mind and into the circle of love! You need no other authority than that of your heart. You alone need to learn to trust it. It knows the place you long for and the place you have never left. To know this is to know that the blessing is already here. This is the blessing of knowing who you are. It is to know that you are beyond anything and everything. There is nothing that can contain you. You are the dance of forever enough.
© Tony Cuckson 2005
Tony Cuckson is a writer, storyteller and Anamcara. This Celtic term means “Soul Friend.” He specializes in providing insight for the spiritual journey, Blessings for YOU, words of wisdom and finding inner peace. Visitors to Irish Blessings Matter website and Tony’s Blog get the opportunity to develop a purpose driven life through articles, newsletters and other programs.
Get your free report called “7 ways to it’s a wonderful life” at http://www.irishblessingsmatter.com/, or go to Tony`s Blog at http://www.irishblessingsmatter.info/
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