It is with more than a little trepidation that I make this posting!
I will endeavour to type from my heart as if I were talking in a heart circle holding the talisman and speaking my truth in love without any malice towards any of you.
I do not invite electronic responses to my contribution.
If you want to talk to me about it give me a call . Or catch up with me at Laurieston in September.
I am a man of Science and much of what Ted, Nigel and Dave have contributed in the recent skirmishes about Spirituality resonate with the Empiricist in me.
Ten years ago [having rejected my inculcated rejecting and invalidating Christian faith] I was feeling empty and joyless yearning for the spiritual baby I had thrown out with the religious bathwater of my youth. Unfortunately there was nowhere to go with this.
I learned to meditate and found that the skill of detaching from my many and varied streams of consciousness was an invaluable first step toward recognizing that 'I' constituted more than my brain's constant chatter.
I went on a 10-day silent retreat meditating 10 hours a day and became more skilled through practice without distraction.
Suspecting there was an important link between my sexuality and the path, which would result in the cultivation and sustenance of a spiritual life I tracked down a book of daily readings ‘The Essential Gay Mystics’, compiled by Andrew Harvey.
Reading a little bit of what a Gay Spiritual person had written every day helped. Because the contributors were Gay it helped to open my mind and to trust that I might find a way to reconcile my sexuality with some form of spirituality. The messages from these spiritual voices would not be barbed with homophobia.
At around this time I was also feeling that there were untapped and underdeveloped creative aspects of myself, which needed attention.
A friend suggested that I embark on the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron- a 12 week self help programme to help kick-start an Artist's blocked and shut down creativity.
Writing 3 pages per day and giving my inner Artist a weekly treat in the form of an Artist's date resuscitated my ailing creative spirit and I started to learn how acts of creativity are unscientific-ish expressions of my own uniqueness and vulnerability. By being brave enough to tolerate the potential for ridicule I started to feel a connection with something greater than me. As if the creativity didn't belong to me but instead flowed through me.
Then on another silent retreat I read Eckhart Tolle's 'The Power of Now’, which opened my awareness to my unhelpful habit of mentally residing in the past and future, and thus being unavailable to the most powerful moment we ever have in our lives- now!
In September 2009 I went on my first ECC GMW at Laurieston. It blew my mind and opened me up to how my sexuality could be an integral part of my spirituality [and how my spirituality could be an integral part of my sexuality].
Having ordered the book 12 months before I was finally ready to read 'Gay Spirit Myth and Meaning' [Ed Mark Thompson] and this consolidated a sense that my sexuality and spirituality could happily co-exist but there was going to be no convenient group, Church or religion to support or validate me. The support would need to be created because it hasn't quite happened yet.
I was lucky enough to meet and befriend a beautiful Witch who helped me to explore the hitherto Taboo area of Witchcraft. I attended a number of Pagan rituals and recognized that there was something very real, familiar accepting and human about the practice- and not a single human sacrifice in evidence anywhere!
My interest in Pagan ritual has been stimulated by attending 4 Faerie Gatherings and I've just finished reading 'Gay Witchcraft Empowering the Tribe' by Christopher Penczac which has certainly empowered me as a strong and solitary practitioner.
As a result of attending the 2010 Laurieston GMW I teamed up with a local ECCer here in Brighton [Big Love Ian-How's your Magic Boy?] and together we're working through 'Gay Spirit Warrior-an empowerment workbook for men who love men' by John R Stowe [a book I bought ten years ago when I first started to feel spiritually undernourished but which I never had the motivation to read]
I'm writing all this to highlight that for me, my sense of spirituality could never have materialized as the outcome of an intellectual email exchange.
What has the move from atheist to spiritual being required of me? At least a temporary suspension of disbelief, a real engagement of my imagination and quite a bit of persistence.
So if you're feeling sad, joyless and spiritually hungry try a scientific experiment.
In the true spirit of the scientist aware of phenomena unexplained by conventional wisdom, take that leap of faith, suspend your disbelief, risk feeling vulnerable, meditate, read, be creative for a few months and then step back and see if you can sense something spiritual going on in your life.
Maybe we could talk about the results of your experiment when we meet at Laurieston in September
:-)
If spirituality cannot be part of your consciousness please don't shout at me because it is part of mine. I have experienced life without spirit and it didn't suit me.
I love you
Timkerbel
