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FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned
from Joseph Campbell: The
Myth
of the
Great Secret
III
GAY
SPIRITUALITY:
The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the
Universe
SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with
wonderful "aliens" with an
Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:
A
Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods
THE FOURTH QUILL, a
novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with
the
Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams
CHARMED
LIVES: Spinning Straw into
Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with
Steve Berman and some 30 other writers
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT
SECRET:
An
Appreciation of Joseph Campbell
IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE
SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey
Unpublished manuscripts
About ordering
Books on
Gay Spirituality:
White
Crane Gay Spirituality Series
Articles
and Excerpts:
Review of Samuel
Avery's The
Dimensional Structure of Consciousness
Funny
Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"
About Liberty Books, the
Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996
The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
A
Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality
Why gay people should NOT Marry
The Scriptural Basis for
Same Sex Marriage
Toby and Kip Get Married
Wedding Cake Liberation
Gay Marriage in Texas
What's ironic
Shame on the American People
The "highest form of love"
Gay Consciousness
Why homosexuality is a sin
The cause of homosexuality
The
origins of homophobia
Q&A
about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness
What
is homosexuality?
What
is Gay Spirituality?
My three
messages
What
Jesus said about Gay
Rights
Queering
religion
Common
Experiences Unique to Gay
Men
Is there a "uniquely gay
perspective"?
The
purpose of homosexuality
Interview on the Nature of
Homosexuality
What the Bible Says about
Homosexuality
Mesosexual
Ideal for Straight Men
Varieties
of Gay Spirituality
Waves
of Gay Liberation Activity
The Gay Succession
Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian?
The Reincarnation of
Edward Carpenter
Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium
Easton Mountain Retreat Center
Andrew Harvey &
Spiritual Activism
The Mysticism of
Andrew Harvey
The
upsidedown book on MSNBC
Enlightenment
"It's
Always About You"
The myth of the Bodhisattva
Avalokitesvara
Joseph
Campbell's description of
Avalokiteshvara
You're
Not A Wave
Joseph Campbell Talks
about Aging
What is Enlightenment?
What is reincarnation?
How many lifetimes in an
ego?
Emptiness & Religious Ideas
Experiencing experiencing experiencing
Going into the Light
Meditations for a Funeral
Meditation Practice
The way to get to heaven
Buddha's father was right
What Anatman means
Advice to Travelers to India
& Nepal
The Danda Nata
& goddess Kalika
Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva
John Boswell was Immanuel Kant
Cutting
edge realization
The Myth of the
Wanderer
Change: Source of
Suffering & of Bliss
World Navel
What the Vows Really
Mean
Manifesting
from the Subtle Realms
The Three-layer
Cake
& the Multiverse
The
est Training and Personal Intention
Effective
Dreaming in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven
Gay
Spirituality
Curious
Bodies
What
Toby Johnson Believes
The
Joseph Campbell Connection
The
Mann Ranch (& Rich Gabrielson)
Campbell
& The Pre/Trans Fallacy
The
Two Loves
The
Nature of Religion
What's true about
Religion
Being
Gay is a Blessing
Drawing Long Straws
Freedom
of Religion
The
Gay Agenda
Gay
Saintliness
Gay
Spiritual Functions
The subtle workings of the spirit
in gay men's lives.
The Sinfulness of
Homosexuality
Proposal
for a study of gay nondualism
Priestly Sexuality
Having a Church to
Leave
Harold Cole on Beauty
Marian Doctrines:
Immaculate Conception & Assumption
Not lashed to the
prayer-post
Monastic or Chaste
Homosexuality
Is It Time to Grow
Up? Confronting
the Aging Process
Notes on Licking
(July, 1984)
Redeem Orlando
Gay Consciousness changing
the
world by Shokti LoveStar
Alexander Renault
interviews Toby
Johnson
Mystical Vision
"The
Evolution of Gay Identity"
"St. John of the
Cross & the Dark Night of
the Soul."
Avalokiteshvara
at the Baths
Eckhart's Eye
Let Me
Tell You a Secret
Religious
Articulations of the
Secret
The
Collective Unconscious
Driving as
Spiritual Practice
Meditation
Historicity
as Myth
Pilgrimage
No
Stealing
Next
Step in Evolution
The
New Myth
The Moulting of the Holy Ghost
Gaia
is a Bodhisattva
The Hero's
Journey
The
Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016
The Gay Hero Journey
(shortened)
You're
On Your Own
Superheroes
Seeing
Differently
Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil
Allah
Hu: "God is present here"
Adam
and Steve
The Life is
in the Blood
Gay retirement and the "freelance
monastery"
Seeing with
Different Eyes
Facing
the Edge: AIDS as an occasion for spiritual wisdom
What
are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?
The Vision
The
mystical experience at the Servites' Castle in Riverside
A Most Remarkable
Synchronicity in
Riverside
The
Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis
The Techniques Of The
World Saviors
Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby
Part 2: The
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Part 3: Jesus
and the Resurrection
Part 4: A
Course in Miracles
The
Secret of the Clear Light
Understanding
the Clear Light
Mobius
Strip
Finding
Your
Tiger Face
How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated
Joseph
Campbell, the Hero's Journey, and the modern Gay Hero-- a five part
presentation on YouTube
About Alien Abduction
In
honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke
Karellen was a homosexual
The
D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance
Intersections
with the movie When We Rise
More
about Gay Mental Health
Psych
Tech Training
Toby
at the California Institute
The
Rainbow Flag
Ideas for gay
mythic stories
People
Kip and Toby,
Activists
Toby's
friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
Harry
Hay, Founder of the gay movement
About Hay and The New Myth
About
Karl
Heinrich Ulrichs, the first
man to really "come out"
About Michael Talbot, gay mystic
About Fr. Bernard Lynch
About Richard Baltzell
About Guy Mannheimer
About David Weyrauch
About
Dennis Paddie
About Ask the Fire
About
Arthur Evans
About
Christopher Larkin
About Mark Thompson
About Sterling Houston
About Michael Stevens
The Alamo Business
Council
Our friend Tom Nash
Second March on
Washington
The
Gay
Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the "Statement
of Spirituality"
Book
Reviews
Be Done on Earth by Howard
E. Cook
Pay Me What I'm Worth by
Souldancer
The Way Out by Christopher
L Nutter
The Gay Disciple by John Henson
Art That Dares by Kittredge Cherry
Coming Out, Coming Home by Kennth
A. Burr
Extinguishing
the Light by B. Alan Bourgeois
Over Coffee: A conversation
For Gay
Partnership & Conservative Faith by D.a. Thompson
Dark Knowledge
by
Kenneth Low
Janet Planet by
Eleanor
Lerman
The
Kairos by Paul E. Hartman
Wrestling
with Jesus by D.K.Maylor
Kali Rising by Rudolph
Ballentine
The
Missing Myth by Gilles Herrada
The
Secret of the Second Coming by Howard E. Cook
The Scar Letters: A
Novel
by Richard Alther
The
Future is Queer by Labonte & Schimel
Missing Mary
by Charlene Spretnak
Gay
Spirituality 101 by Joe Perez
Cut Hand: A
Nineteeth Century Love Story on the American Frontier by Mark Wildyr
Radiomen
by Eleanor Lerman
Nights
at
Rizzoli by Felice Picano
The Key
to Unlocking the Closet Door by Chelsea Griffo
The Door
of the Heart by Diana Finfrock Farrar
Occam’s
Razor by David Duncan
Grace
and
Demion by Mel White
Gay Men and The New Way Forward by Raymond L.
Rigoglioso
The
Dimensional Stucture of Consciousness by Samuel Avery
The
Manly Pursuit of Desire and Love by Perry Brass
Love
Together: Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication
by Tim Clausen
War
Between Materialism and Spiritual by Jean-Michel Bitar
The
Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion by
Jeffrey J. Kripal
Esalen:
America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal
The
Invitation to Love by
Darren Pierre
Brain,
Consciousness, and God: A Lonerganian Integration by Daniel A
Helminiak
A
Walk with Four Spiritual Guides by Andrew Harvey
Can Christians Be Saved? by Stephenson & Rhodes
The
Lost Secrets of the Ancient Mystery Schools by Stephenson &
Rhodes
Keys to
Spiritual
Being: Energy Meditation and Synchronization Exercises by Adrian
Ravarour
In
Walt We
Trust by John Marsh
Solomon's
Tantric Song by Rollan McCleary
A Special Illumination by Rollan McCleary
Aelred's
Sin
by Lawrence Scott
Fruit
Basket
by Payam Ghassemlou
Internal
Landscapes by John Ollom
Princes
& Pumpkins by David Hatfield Sparks
Yes by Brad
Boney
Blood of the Goddess by William Schindler
Roads of Excess,
Palaces of
Wisdom by Jeffrey Kripal
Evolving
Dharma by Jay Michaelson
Jesus
in Salome's Lot by Brett W. Gillette
The Man Who Loved Birds by Fenton Johnson
The
Vatican Murders by Lucien Gregoire
"Sex Camp"
by
Brian McNaught
Out
& About with Brewer & Berg
Episode One: Searching for a New Mythology
The
Soul Beneath the Skin by David Nimmons
Out
on
Holy Ground by Donald Boisvert
The
Revotutionary Psychology of Gay-Centeredness by Mitch Walker
Out There
by Perry Brass
The Crucifixion of Hyacinth by Geoff Puterbaugh
The
Silence of Sodom by Mark D Jordan
It's
Never About What It's About by Krandall Kraus and Paul Borja
ReCreations,
edited by Catherine Lake
Gospel: A
Novel
by WIlton Barnhard
Keeping
Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey by Fenton Johnson
Dating the Greek Gods by Brad Gooch
Telling
Truths in Church by Mark D. Jordan
The
Substance of God by Perry Brass
The
Tomcat Chronicles by Jack Nichols
10
Smart
Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives by Joe Kort
Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same Sex Love
by Will Roscoe
The
Third Appearance by Walter Starcke
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann
Surviving
and Thriving After a Life-Threatening Diagnosis by Bev Hall
Men,
Homosexuality, and the Gods by Ronald Long
An Interview
with Ron Long
Queering Creole Spiritual Traditons by Randy
Conner & David Sparks
An Interview with
Randy Conner
Pain,
Sex
and Time by Gerald Heard
Sex
and the Sacred by Daniel Helminiak
Blessing Same-Sex Unions by Mark Jordan
Rising Up
by
Joe Perez
Soulfully
Gay
by Joe Perez
That
Undeniable Longing by Mark Tedesco
Vintage: A
Ghost
Story by
Steve Berman
Wisdom
for the Soul by Larry Chang
MM4M a DVD
by Bruce Grether
Double
Cross
by David Ranan
The
Transcended Christian by Daniel Helminiak
Jesus
in Love by Kittredge Cherry
In
the Eye of the Storm by Gene Robinson
The
Starry Dynamo by Sven Davisson
Life
in
Paradox by Fr Paul Murray
Spirituality for Our Global Community by Daniel
Helminiak
Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society by Robert A.
Minor
Coming Out: Irish Gay Experiences by Glen O'Brien
Queering
Christ
by Robert Goss
Skipping
Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage
The
Flesh of the Word by Richard A Rosato
Catland by
David Garrett Izzo
Tantra
for Gay Men by Bruce Anderson
Yoga
&
the Path of the Urban Mystic by Darren Main
Simple
Grace
by Malcolm Boyd
Seventy
Times Seven by Salvatore Sapienza
What
Does "Queer" Mean Anyway? by Chris Bartlett
Critique of Patriarchal Reasoning by Arthur Evans
Gift
of
the Soul by Dale Colclasure & David Jensen
Legend of the Raibow Warriors by Steven McFadden
The
Liar's
Prayer by Gregory Flood
Lovely
are the Messengers by Daniel Plasman
The Human Core of Spirituality by Daniel Helminiak
3001:
The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
Religion and the Human Sciences by Daniel Helminiak
Only
the
Good Parts by Daniel Curzon
Four
Short
Reviews of Books with a Message
Life
Interrupted by Michael Parise
Confessions of a Murdered Pope by Lucien Gregoire
The
Stargazer's Embassy by Eleanor Lerman
Conscious
Living, Conscious Aging by Ron Pevny
Footprints Through the Desert by Joshua Kauffman
True
Religion by J.L. Weinberg
The Mediterranean Universe by John Newmeyer
Everything
is God by Jay Michaelson
Reflection
by Dennis Merritt
Everywhere
Home by Fenton Johnson
Hard Lesson by James
Gaston
God
vs Gay?
by Jay Michaelson
The
Gate
of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path by Jay Michaelson
Roxie
&
Fred by Richard Alther
Not
the Son He Expected by Tim Clausen
The
9 Realities of Stardust by Bruce P. Grether
The
Afterlife Revolution by Anne & Whitley Strieber
AIDS
Shaman:
Queer Spirit Awakening by Shokti Lovestar
Facing the Truth of Your Life by Merle Yost
The
Super Natural by Whitley Strieber & Jeffrey J Kripal
Secret
Body by
Jeffrey J Kripal
In
Hitler's
House by Jonathan Lane
Walking on Glory by Edward Swift
The
Paradox
of Porn by Don Shewey
Is Heaven for Real? by Lucien Gregoire
Enigma by Lloyd Meeker
Scissors,
Paper, Rock by Fenton Johnson
Toby
Johnson's
Books on Gay Men's Spiritualities:
Gay Perspective
Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us
about the
Nature of God and
the Universe
Gay
Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated
by Matthew Whitfield. Click
here
Gay Spirituality
Gay Identity and
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness
Gay
Spirituality is now
available as an audiobook, beautifully narrated by John Sipple. Click here
Charmed
Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling
edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman
Secret
Matter
Lammy Award Winner for Gay
Science Fiction
updated
Getting Life in
Perspective
A Fantastical Romance
Getting
Life in Perspective is available as an
audiobook narrated by Alex Beckham. Click
here
The Fourth Quill
originally published
as
PLAGUE
The Fourth Quill is
available
as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie
Moreland. Click here
Two Spirits: A Story of
Life
with the Navajo
with Walter L. Williams
 Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click
here
Finding
Your Own True Myth: What I Learned from Joseph
Campbell
The
Myth
of the
Great Secret III
In Search of God in the Sexual Underworld
The Myth of the Great
Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.
This
was the second edition of this book.
Toby Johnson's
titles are
available in other ebook formats from Smashwords.
|
Andrew
Harvey
Excerpted
from an
interview with gay writer, mystic, guide Andrew Harvey on
 MyOutSpirit.com, conducted by Tom Cummisky.
"The more we
see gay people emerging with this kind of broad generosity of soul and
wild commitment to transformation and profound love and compassion for
all beings and justice for all beings, the more the fears of the
straight community about gay people will be healed."
"As victims of separation and victims of division and as victims of
unbelievable cruelty, it is up to us to really manifest the kind of
compassion, the kind of all embracing understanding and the kind of
commitment to love that will truly transform others. Take the
darkness we’ve been given and transform it into golden light."
Read
the whole interview below
(copied from MyOutSpirit)
Harvey
has a new book on spirituality as activism, titled THE HOPE: A GUIDE TO
SACRED ACTIVISM.
Find the book at
Andrew
Harvey's website
Toby Johnson comments
on the interview:
A wonderful
statement by Andrew Harvey:
Spirituality not as rejecting the world, but as saving the world.
The natural evolution of
consciousness leads us to understand the human religious impulse to be
not about adhering to strict purity taboos and rules and restrictions,
especially about sex, OR about believing in certain mythological
doctrines, but about living in such virtuous ways that the problems and
suffering in the world clear up in the course of evolution itself AND
that human beings come to understand the world's mythological heritage
as metaphors, not dogmas, that are clues to the nature of consciousness
and of our oneness with "God." World changing, world saving, world
serving activism flows naturally from the realization of who we really
are at the level of spirit.
The goal of gay
spirituality, I think, is to find for ourselves--and to assist other
gay people to see--how our homosexuality can be understood as a clue
and an operative practice to experiencing that oneness with "God." The
goal of the spiritual life is to experience being in heaven now.
Meditation and spiritual practice serve to reveal this transcendental
reality; they transform experience so that the world DOES appear and
BECOMES heaven now. For gay people spiritual vision sees how the styles
of gay life can be perceived as--and thereby transformed into--clues to
heaven.
Gay spirituality, for
instance, sees that a frivolous whimsy of gay life, like drag (from
Radical Faerie-style genderfuck to stage drag and serious female
impersonation, from Halloween costume to personal effeminacy) resonate
with age-old myths of androgynous, bisexual gods and cross-dressing
shamans.
Gay patterns of free and
anonymous sex resonate with the mystical poetry of the Sufis and of,
specifically, St John of the Cross whose poem "On a Dark Night" is
about discovering that the man he has had anonymous "park sex" was
Jesus--for all of us, mystically, we are Jesus and Avalokiteshvara and
God-incarnate to one another, and should behave so!
The gay encounter with AIDS
in the last decades resonates with myths of asceticism, voluntary
suffering, mystical substitution and self-sacrifice for the salvation
of others--by both the "victims" and the caregivers.
Talents of gay personality,
like style, design and artistry and, perhaps even more important,
sensitivity, compassion and drive to service, show us the virtues we
can and should cultivate for our spiritual growth. Our gayness gives us
a perspective on life and cultural convention; we understand the world,
other people's lifestyles AND religious tradition from over and above;
we should strive to be visionaries and world-transformers. Our
attraction to same rather than opposite potentially makes us less
distracted and obsessed with duality; we are blessed, if we want to be
so, with clues to nondual vision.
The work that Andrew Harvey
is doing is so important because it demonstrates--both to the gay world
AND to the world at large--the evolution of religion and spirituality.
This is in line with the great tradition of homosexual and
gender-transcending prophets, seers, idealists and spiritual guides.
And Harvey reminds us that our spirituality must resonate outward from
us to save the world. This is where the evolution of consciousness is
taking us all as Earth/Gaia wakes up and we all see heaven now. And, I
think, it's a gay thing to point the way.
This is how we, as gay
people, give good service by being openly gay AND by transforming what
it means to be gay so everybody understands us not as sinners but as
saints. This is how we become saints. Spirituality IS self-fulfilling
prophecy IS activism in service of humankind.
Toby Johnson, author Gay Spirituality: Gay Identity and the
Transformation of Human Consciousness
Andrew Harvey gave an
address
to the LoveSpirit Festival in London, Oct 26, 2013 on the gay mystical
experience. Toby Johnson was honored to be invited to follow in
Harvey's path and to give a LoveSpirit address in 2014.
Here's the full Interview copied from
MyOutSpirit for preservation
A Third Fire
Rev. Tom Cummiskey for MyOutSpirit: Your new book is called THE
HOPE: A GUIDE TO SACRED ACTIVISM. Between war, the economic
downturn and the difficulty of ongoing struggles for equality, justice
and human rights around the world, it’s a challenging time to be
hopeful. Where do we find the strength to hope?
Andrew Harvey: We find the strength to hope that is not threatened by
external circumstances, when you discover the truths of the truths of
all the mystical traditions that all say with one voice that at the
core of every human being is Divine Consciousness and that the meaning
of life is to uncover and embody this consciousness. Rumi says
this most beautifully I think when he says,
“The Wine of Divine Grace is limitless. All limits come from the
faults of the cup. Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to
horizon; How much can it fill your room depends on its windows. Grant a
great dignity my friend to the cup of your life. Eternal love has
designed it to hold its eternal wine.”
That poem is six lines only and comes from his work the Mathnawi, but
it contains the essence of the essence of the instruction and
revelation and experience of all the traditions that the wine of Divine
grace is always pouring in every event. In pain as well as in joy, in
chaos as well as in order.
There is an alchemy of grace going on at every moment and that you can
come to learn this and the great boundless unconditional mercy that is
prompting it, the great unconditional love that is sustaining it, when
you go on the mystical journey and really experience the beloved
inwardly.
The “whole sky” he says is flooded with moonlight from horizon to
horizon, and what he is referring to is the experience that comes on
the path. And it comes to Hopis’ and to Yamamami’s and Buddhists and
Hindus and Christians and those of us who are independent mystics. And
when you have polished the mirror of the heart enough and you have the
experience that the entire universe is actually a manifestation of
blazing Divine white light--the moonlight--that all the stars and
nebulae and all the creations of nature are all energy condensations of
a light consciousness which is the Divine bliss, “knowledge awareness
consciousness,” and that which is the original blessing of the core of
every human being. And how much you can experience this depends
as he says, on the windows of your room.
Philipjohnson
If you have a room without windows this torrential light cannot come
in. If you have a room with only dogmatic windows, the windows
will be narrow and will only let a little of that light in. But
if you really pursue a wholehearted, whole soul, whole spirited, whole
minded mystical path of a universal nature then one day with the grace
of the beloved you will have a kind of Phillip Johnson house with glass
walls, and this light, revealing the sacredness of everything revealing
the holiness of the whole in nature your own essential union with the
Divine nature and the core of consciousness will flood your whole being
and you will realize the truth of the last two lines, “Grant a great
dignity my friend to the cup of your life. Eternal love has
designed it to hold its eternal wine.”
So the great hope is that enough people will take this tremendous
journey inspired by the mystics of all traditions at this terrible time
and uncover the radiance and passion and power of the Divine
Consciousness and start enacting it. The other great hope I think
is linked to that. And that is, that all those who discover this
consciousness, discover and uncover that its essential nature is love.
I once asked the Dalai Lama what is the meaning of life? And he threw
his head back and roared with laughter, “The meaning of life is to
embody the transcendent.”
To bring this great consciousness down into your mind, soul and body
and to start acting with the full passion, the full wisdom, the full
generosity, and the full tenderness and the full compassion of your
whole nature in reality to embody transcendent love consciousness in
acts of justice. This is the source of a very great hope because
when you do start working directly with the Divine consciousness you
are given the blessing of the Divine and some of the extraordinary
miraculous power of the Divine. And this extraordinary miraculous power
can effect very great and very surprising and very mysterious change
even in terrible circumstances.
Robert Kennedy said in 1966, "Each time a person stands up for an
ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against
injustice, he or she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing
each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those
ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of
oppression and resistance."
And Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas said, “Those who are united with the will of God can move mountains.”
So I think those two different facets of the same Divine revelation at
the core of human nature are what gives me hope. Pythagoras said,
“Take courage for human nature is Divine.” And at a time that is
as dreadful and challenging and menacing as this, the greatest courage
we need is to plunge into our Divine nature and start to live it out
with its fearlessness and truth and passion for justice on every level
and in every realm of the world.
MOS: How do you explain the difference between activism and Sacred Activism?
AH: I have a great admiration for all those who stand up for the
craziness of the world. I have a great admiration for all those who
realize that we are on a suicidal death trip and want to reverse as
quickly and as urgently as possible all the various addictions and undo
all the various systems of evil that are destroying human beings and
nature. But I have come through my own experience to understand
that both mystics and activists, as they are now, have serious and
limiting shadows.
The mystic shadow is an addiction to transcendence, an addiction to the
light—a forgetting of the responsibilities of mystic consciousness to
compassion and justice, and to cherishing and sustaining the real
world. So many mystics, especially in the new age, use their
mystical experiences as a kind of “subtle heroin” to sign-off from
responsibility to the burning world and justify their obscene passivity
and addiction to bliss experiences as great wisdom, which is great
blindness.
Many of the activists I know, and I admire their nobility and their
fierceness and their commitment, are also in their own narcissism and
shadow. This narcissism and shadow expresses itself as a divided
consciousness which is very often rooted in anger but projects the
unacknowledged shadow of the activist himself or herself onto the
demonic other, and that leads very often to messiah complexes, great
outrage, offending others by brutal condemnation of them, and
tragically, despair and burnout, in the face of the very exhausting
task of transforming the world so hell-bent on destruction.
So what I’ve come to understand is that this narcissism and these
shadows that afflict both the activist and the mystic can only really
be healed when the fire of the mystic’s passion for God is united with
the fire of the activist’s passion for justice to form a third fire,
which is Divine love and wisdom in action.
And when this third fire is ignited, the shadow of the mystic is healed
by the passion of the activist for justice. And the mystics’ temptation
to passivity and the mystics’ temptation to go off into the light and
forget the responsibilities of the world and not to put love into
action are healed by the activists’ passion for just action. And the
activists shadow of divisiveness, of burnout, messiah complexes etc is
healed by the mystical wisdom and peace and deep, deep union with the
Divine and deep union with the sources of strength the Divine can
provide.
So this third fire breeds a new kind of activism. It breeds an
activism that flows naturally and profoundly, and wisely, from deep
sacred consciousness, deep alignment with the beloved, deep surrender
to the will of the beloved, and deep opening on every level of the
being, (heart, soul, mind, and body) to the light and truths of the
Divine and to it’s mysterious will of transformation in reality.
An activism like this has four main characteristics that make it
pliable and supple to the Divine will and to the Divine power and to
the great, great strength of the flow to the being from the Divine.
The first characteristic is that it roots itself in sacred
practice. It really takes seriously the truth that is enshrined
in all the mystical traditions, that what makes an action in the end
most profoundly effective, both inwardly and outwardly, is the truth of
its compassionate intention and the wisdom that prompts it.
The second characteristic of such an activism is that it truly
surrenders its actions to the will of the Divine love and the hunger
for transformation in our world, and in so doing it becomes wise,
patient, generous, and compassionate, and feeds directly from the power
of the Divine so that it never runs out of energy. This is very
important.
The third characteristic of Sacred Activism is that it really takes
shadow work seriously. Both the activists and mystics I know
suffer from a lack of grueling and rigorous shadow work.
Mystics tend to want to drop the shadow and just think of the Divine as
the light, whereas in fact, the Divine is a dance of opposites of light
and darkness given what we call good, what we call evil, chaos and
order. And without really embracing what we call the dark side of
the Divine, you can never have an integrated experience of the
One. And activists that I know very often project their own
failings and their own unacknowledged shadow on others thus condemning
others, dividing themselves from others, and producing a rhetoric that
is so harsh that it puts off the very people that they want to
persuade.
A very good example of this is the way that the environmental movement,
for all its just knowledge of how we are destroying the planet has
failed to arouse the world because it uses very often a very divisive
and very angry rhetoric. And another example is the animal
rights. PETA’s philosophy is magnificent, but its practice has
alienated millions of people who truly love animals but are outraged at
the violence of the tactics that PETA uses. So, without this kind
of grueling shadow work in which everyone who does it comes to
understand that he or she is a conniver and a polluter in the
destruction of the planet, and someone whose secret thought forms keep
alive the systems of cold evil that are destroying the planet--without
realizing that we are all implicated in this--the truth of
unconditional compassion cannot be born. And, the skillful means of
understanding the deep motives of others without divisive judgment
cannot be engendered so that the deep ways of transforming yourself and
others cannot take place. So that is the third condition of
Sacred Activism.
The fourth condition of Sacred Activism that is really important is
that it understands, at the deepest level, that suffering and ordeal
and the smashing of the ego’s agendas and illusions play an enormous
part in the will of the Divine to create an instrument worthy and clear
enough to be an instrument of this energy and will in reality.
Very often nowadays, mystics are addicted to what I call “Mysticism
Light,” the marzipan mysticism of this grotesque New Age, which refuses
to acknowledge the necessity of a death into life that all the
authentic mystical traditions talk about. And activists tend to assume,
that just being right about the systems of cold evil will secure in the
end a victory over them. Both the contemporary mystics that are
addicted to a totally fake cheerful vision of the Divine, and activists
who are addicted to reason and a clear-eyed vision of justice as being
enough, are deluded--because the only thing that can transform the way
in which we are being and doing everything, is a radical transformation
of human nature.
And this radical transformation of human nature as all the great
pioneers of Divine human being have shown us from Jesus, to the Buddha,
to Rumi, to Ramakrishna, to Teresa of Avila, to all the great mystics
of our time, can only take place when people really risk the death into
life, the dark night of the soul, the stripping and burning down of the
agendas and illusions of the ego, and risk it in such a way that they
surrender their will to the Divine and go through whatever is necessary
for them to be clarified and purified of their false agendas as to be
born into the power and radiance and ego-less service of the Divine
self.
This is very important not only because it enables a human being to go
through a quantum leap of transformation, but because, and this is
crucial for our understanding of how activism of this kind can work in
the world at this moment, this purified ego, this ego in the service of
the self, the being that has been through this death and has been
resurrected in this Divine life, is a being that can be flooded with
the powers and wisdom and compassion and energy and passion for just
action that belongs to the love of the Divine and so can be enormously
more effective than any activist who has not been through such a
transformation.
An activist who has not been through such a transformation may very
well be highly effective, with great intelligence, highly decent, and a
very brave person. However, an activist who has been through this
transformation is someone far more powerful. He or she is a
Divine human being surrendered to the will of God, used as an
instrument of the will of God, radioactive with the grace of God, and
filled with the energy and power of God.
And I think that given the enormous challenges of our time – a time in
which the whole of humanity is threatened, and a time in which, in our
addiction we may have destroyed the whole of nature – what is called
for is a wholly new level of power. And this power does not
belong to the ego, it cannot be wielded by the ego, it cannot be
streamed by the ego and it can only stream through someone who has died
into life—someone who has gone through the dark night of the soul, into
the experience of the resurrection of Divine consciousness through the
death into life.
This kind of activist, this kind of being, is what we need—warriors of
peace, great armies of these kinds of activists to do the work that can
now, in these extreme circumstances, preserve the planet.
MOS: In Buddhism, a spiritual warrior who achieves enlightenment
and comes back to help others achieve it is called a bodhisattva.
Christianity has its saints. In Shirt of Flame, spiritual gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender activists are called “Sidhe,” after
the high faeries of Ireland. But whatever the label, we can all
effect change in many ways. Where do you see in the LGBT
community our need to acknowledge our shadow and even though we all
have an individual shadow, what are some of the most pervasive
collective shadows of our community?
AH: Well, I think that the deepest shadow is that all of us in the gay
community are still deeply stricken at very profound levels by the
patriarchal religions’ hatred of homosexuality. That in each of
them, in Islam, and in Judaism, and in Christianity, and unfortunately
also in certain aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism, we have been
condemned as disgusting and crazy and obscene.
When you add this condemnation of homosexuality to the general way in
which all the patriarchal religions have condemned the body, demonized
sex, then, what has been created is a vast internal shadow which breeds
self loathing, shame, rage against the body, hatred of ones sexuality,
and a kind of perpetual secret despair. This shadow is immense
and very destructive, and in my experience can only be healed by a very
profound experience of the Divine feminine and the Tantric glory that
that opens up. The blessing of the body, the blessing of
sexuality, the blessing of the whole of nature not as an illusion or as
doomed or as fallen, but as a manifestation of the splendor of the
creator, the splendor of the Father/Mother. That is the first
thing.
From this shadow stream four aspects of the gay community that I think need to be addressed very strongly, now.
The first aspect is that, because I think that because we have not been
allowed to believe in the holiness of our sexuality and in the holiness
of the desires of our love, many of us have given ourselves over to
mindless promiscuity which makes the birth of the authentic tantra
impossible. People tend to veer between Puritanism and
pornography, without anything in between. And the sexual
meaninglessness of the gay world is now a kind of epidemic where people
pretend to be living wildly liberated lives, but are in fact living
lives in which energy is being leaked off at every level, in lives
without any authentic connection. I’m not being moralistic about this,
I am just pointing to the dereliction of the work of authentic energy
that results from this concentration on meaningless sex.
I think another aspect of this shadow is that in the gay community
there is an epidemic of meth and crack addiction. And what is this
epidemic—but a manifestation of profound self-loathing. It is
absolutely terrifying to me, the amount of gay men and women I
know—mostly men, who are ruining their health and ruining their hearts
and ruining their minds by plunging in despair into addiction. And the
extent of this addiction makes quite clear to me that all these years
of sexual, so called sexual liberation, haven’t really gone down deep
enough to heal the self loathing and sense of isolation and sense of
meaninglessness and sense of desperation that unfortunately, we as
homosexuals have inherited.
The third shadow, I believe, that really needs to be addressed in the
gay community is that the great majority of the gay people I know have
suffered very deeply in their lives but the great majority of them,
because of the secret shadow of self loathing have never used their
suffering in deep enough ways to transform themselves. This
hatred of religion, which I can completely understand in most gay
people, because after all, the patriarchal religions have done this
terrible dirty deed on us, as we’ve mentioned, has unfortunately
prevented many gay people from understanding the crucial difference
between religion and mysticism, between the patriarchal dogmas of
religion and the incredible and all transforming power of the mystical
traditions.
So, the very people who need the direct connection with the direct
Beloved, beyond dogma, are prevented by their own wild and completely
justifiable rage at religion from using the pain that they have been
through to help them plunge into an authentic spiritual path, so as to
be able to discover the Divine consciousness that lives within them,
the holiness of the Mother aspect of God--the sacredness of their
deepest selves, which would be the most profound source of healing.
I think it is very important now to address the shadow in the gay
community and it is very important that those of us who are gay who
have taken extensive and intensive journeys into the Divine self to say
to all of our gay brothers and sisters, “Stop being hung up on the
craziness of the religions--we know that. That is given!
Turn to the great mystics, turn to the enlightened ones, and take
courage from them, and know that if you go on a journey like theirs,
what you will uncover is the great treasure of the Divine light
consciousness that lives within you. What you will discover is
that you are holy and blessed and filled with sacred energy at the
deepest level and this will change your life!”
The fourth great shadow of the gay community and this I think is very
serious and is a result of that primordial self-loathing and self
rejection that comes from this interjection of the madness of the ways
in which gay people have been thought of through history. It’s
astounding the apolitical nature of the continuing gay movement.
It completely astounds me that so few of my gay friends who are so
passionate about sexual liberation care anything about the liberation
of the poor or the liberation of the animals who are being tortured to
death or the liberation of the forests from the fires of our greed or
the liberation of the seas by pollution. You would have thought
that living through AIDS, living through millennia of oppression,
living through our own sufferings of the stings and ferocities of
patriarchy would have given all of us a much sharper, much more
radicalized sense of the oppression of power of all kinds, but this is
not the case.
The hedonism, the crack addiction, and the sense of inner alienation
that stems from that profound primordial shadow has also made most of
the gay people I know very apolitical and unconcerned with the fate of
the world and unconcerned with the political destiny of our culture and
unconcerned in any way with any form of activism, and this has of
course led to a massive disempowerment in the gay community, and must
now be addressed.
One of the things that is very depressing to me as a person and as a
teacher, is that I have been writing for 30 years as an openly gay
mystic, and now for 10 or 15 years as a gay radical Sacred Activist,
and nobody in the gay press has bothered with the work that I have
done, and no one takes seriously the works of other enormously
prophetic and important gay teachers such as Matthew Fox.
So that the people in the gay community who could reach out to gay
brothers and sisters, and say, “For God’s sake, let us use our pain,
and our passion and our hunger and our desire, and our understanding,
to become warriors of justice and peace and compassion in a burning
world,” the very people who could give the most inspiring message that
they themselves wrestled out the depths of their lives, are not given
any prominence, or any help from the gay media, which itself keeps
going all of the negative images of homosexuality and feeds the shadow
appetites created by that shadow I described. This has to change.
MOS: So, we need to have billboards in the gay community featuring
mystical traditions rather than the usual cigarettes, designer clothing
and vodka! I think too, that the level of concern in the
community has been primarily focused on rights and marriage and
equality in the workplace. Are there things that could have been done
differently within a spirit of Sacred Activism?
AH: Well, I think that if the gay community were true Sacred
Activists I don’t think that they would be so completely obsessed with
the issues of gay marriage and equality in the workplace, important
though they are. I think that they would put these issues in the
context of claiming complete dignity so as to be a voice of radical
transformation in the real world. I want everybody who wants to
be married to be married, and I totally support gay marriage, but if
marriage keeps going bourgeois arrangements, and smug contentments and
self-absorbed individualistic living as it so often does, it cannot be
the foundation for the kind of radical transformation that we now
need. And equality in the workplace is extremely important, and
protection of human rights is extremely important, but they are only
the means to the end of becoming fully empowered citizens with a fully
distinctive voice that serves justice.
So I feel that the importance of Sacred Activism for gay folks is not
to make them feel that they have been wasting their time on these
causes, but to ask the question, are these causes enough? What do
you feel about the burning down of the environment? What do you
feel about the fact that 2 million people live on less than a dollar a
day? What do you feel about the fact that women are still
oppressed all over the world? What do you feel about child
prostitution? What do you feel about the almost total domination
by the corporations by our government and of all forms of the
media? These are the burning questions. And what I am so
disappointed by is that gay people, in their search for their
legitimate rights, come across as spoiled and entitled and consumerist
in their vision of reality instead of placing their claiming of these
rights in a much larger, more powerful context.
MOS: I think about this happening on a small scale. I’ve heard of a gay
bar in Houston, which every year raises thousands of dollars for a
local public school for supplies and books. It’s a small gesture, but
it assists in realizing that there is life beyond us and it establishes
a connection to the greater community.
AH: Well yes, and it sends a marvelous message to a community
that is frightened of gay people, a message which says, “We are human
beings and we care about you! We are not just asking you to
tolerate our wild sexual habits and to let us be free and let us marry,
and let us have equal rights; we’re not just doing that because we want
those things, we’re asking you to give us those things, because we want
to be fully empowered to be of help, to serve you and be compassionate
citizens with you and to be your brothers and sisters.” I think
that sends a healing message to the community, and the more that gay
bars, and gay businesses, and gay movements of all kind can have this
all-inclusive, all-embracing compassion, the more power that they will
have in the world.
MOS: What does that vision mean for already-established organizations?
For example, I could see LGBT community centers evolving into something
new. Should our community centers become hosts for what you call
Networks of Grace?
AH: Let me explain what Networks of Grace are first. I think it is
important that people have a very clear idea of why I am grounding my
vision of Sacred Activism in what I call Networks of Grace.
Networks of Grace are cells of between 6-12 persons who group around a
heartbreak, a profession, a passion or a local cause, who meet
regularly, to pray together, to infuse each other, to share each
other’s suffering and joy, and to hold each other accountable for real
work, real action, real service in the real burning world.
I had this idea because I was meditating for a long time on what I
think is one of the great questions of our time: “Why is it that the
dark and the despotic and the evil and the demonic find it so easy to
organize, and why is it that the good and the well-meaning are so often
so naïve, so disorganized, so lonely, and so unwilling to get together
with other people of like mind to do something real in the world.
And I studied the organization of terrorists, and the organization of
certain very fierce evangelical and right wing organizations, and I
realized that the core power of both terrorist and right wing
organization comes from their cellular structure—being organized as
cells.
Why, I thought, can’t those of us who truly want the birth of the
Divine humanity not come together at this moment in unpretentious,
synergistic, and mutually supportive as Networks of Grace (these are
the words that came to me,) so as to sustain each other, to help each
other, become instruments of Divine love together?
Then I remembered a conversation that I had with Deepak Chopra when he
describes what happens to a caterpillar when it dissolves in the
cocoon, as the gunge gets gungier, and as the whole body of the
caterpillar starts completely to decay, what wakes up in the gunge and
actually feeds off the gunge what are called imaginal cells, and when
they constellate together, they create the body of the butterfly which
actually breaks out. And then, as if by a flash of lightning, I
saw that Networks of Grace could be those imaginal cells that when they
constellate together all over the world could create the body of a new
Divine humanity that breaks free of this cocoon of greed, despair, and
paralysis, meaningless living and addiction that is now threatening
everything.
So on Thanksgiving Day this year, my Institute of Sacred Activism is
going to release a global network of Networks of Grace, a global
website, so as to enable people of all persuasions, and of all passions
and all heartbreaks, and all professions, to start forming these all
over the world so that people can start empowering themselves for
radical change: spiritually, intellectually and emotionally so as to
really start a grassroots revolution of Sacred Activism.
I think it would be absolutely wonderful if the gay community could
start in whatever way that was natural to it and in whatever
circumstances that they find themselves, creating Networks of Grace,
Networks of Grace that would have essentially four functions
specifically tailored for the gay community.
First of all the people who met in those Networks of Grace would really
pray and meditate together beyond dogma, and so to begin to get in
touch with the Divine beloved, the Divine consciousness that is the
source of the universe, the source of all revelations, and the source
of human consciousness. This is crucial because as we’ve already
discussed it’s because people are not in connection with this great
shadow of self-rejection that is still threatening everything.
The second thing that I think these Networks of Grace could do is to
really help gay people uncover this shadow that we’ve been describing
together—really start listening to each other’s distraction, listening
to each other’s struggle with addiction, listening to each other’s
constant battle with despair, self-rejection, self loathing, as well,
so that there can be a really deep exploration of these things, without
shame, without judgment.
In my experience, and I’ve actually participated in gay Networks of
Grace like this, when people begin to be honest about the amount of
self loathing they have, it does not lead to gloomy talk, but similar
to most Twelve-Step meetings, it leads to great hilarity and to great
compassion. This is very important because the gay discourse at
this moment is unbelievably banal and trivial. It is so important
in this Network of Grace that a much deeper level of shameless, naked,
confessional, and honest conversation occur because from that, great
truths can be born and great compassion can be engendered.
The third thing that gay people really need to start doing is to look
for ways to get together to develop new and broader, richer tactics to
secure the rights we need, and to go forward in this great battle for
gay marriage in a much larger, much more inclusive context. And I
think this is very important to start in these groups a conversation
about how to do so and to find ways to reach out to the greater
community in ways to start to heal the community’s fears and in ways to
make the community aware of a compassion that spreads to all people and
all animals that really educates the community of the real goodwill and
the real desire to help that is in gay people.
And the fourth thing that these Networks of Grace should really, really
address is other real causes that go beyond gay causes, which the
Network of Grace encourages the people who are in it to address.
For example, you might have a gay network of grace surrounding animal
rights. A lot of gay people I know have a very deep passion for
animals partly because we don’t have children, and I myself am a great
lover of cats and I could imagine a gay network of grace that would
deal with the problem of feral cats in the neighborhood, that would
work with prayer together, that would work with the shadow together,
which would work on getting an a more inclusive all embracing vision of
the gay community out to the community at large but that would also
specifically focus on a cause.
One of the things I have said in my book, and I really believe it, is
that the key to finding your mission in this burning world, is to ask
yourself the question, “What of all the causes that I care about really
breaks my heart the most?” Because, if you follow your
heartbreak, what you will find at the core of the heartbreak is a
fountain of burning and deathless passion that will never run dry as
Rumi says. When you find that fountain of deathless and burning
passion you also find an incredible empowering source of energy. So I
would encourage all these gay Networks of Grace not merely to be
dealing with the gay shadow and the gay pain and the gay rights issue,
which are of course extremely important, but also to focus on causes of
global concern in a local way.
If all of these different four aspects are brought together then there
is tremendous possibility for Networks of Grace to elevate and educate
and inspire and ennoble and absolutely focus the tremendous energy and
passion and suffering and understanding that is in the gay community on
the real transformation of the whole world that is really struggling,
in this nightmare of death, to take place.
MOS: And I think too that it is so critical that Networks of Grace form
in the gay community. I could join another organization, similar to the
cause, but it would not provide that inner healing that we are talking
about. It will not lead to that transformation not only for that
heartbreak, but for that inner transformation as well.
AH: And who can understand each other better than gay people? And who
can speak to each other more honestly than gay people? And who can
really share the real sufferings that what we go through and the real
victories of gay people? It would be a wonderful next stage for
the whole gay liberation movement to be a movement that liberates not
only gay people but others through coming together and sharing this
deep wisdom and healing and the pain and devoting their energy to not
just gay rights and issues but to those issues now that are threatening
the whole life of the planet. This is the next step of the whole
gay liberation movement I believe. The next step must be one of
Sacred Activism, or the suffering we’ve been through, all the wisdom
we’ve acquired, will be wasted in the meaninglessness of our addiction
and in our alienation from the world.
MOS: I agree that in the gay culture, identity is important to a
degree, but then we have to go beyond that identity to transform
that. So in what ways is a gay identity helpful and sometimes
unhelpful?
AH: Well I think that a gay identity can be an enormous gift because I
think that all gay people have to, very early on, face the fact that
they are different. And that can be an enormous initiation into the
suffering of all those people who are afflicted under patriarchy:
women, the poor, animals, and it can breed a very deep compassion for
all beings and it can be an enormous help in authentic transformation.
The other aspect that I think can be very, very helpful for one’s
transformation as a human into a Divine human being, is that very early
on, a gay person has to choose the authenticity of love over power,
because they are given a choice. Either you are going to pretend not to
be gay, and get the goodies of a culture that despises who you truly
are, or you are going to risk being authentic about what you truly
desire and what you are truly hungry for, and face the contempt and the
sometimes ruthless destructiveness of that culture. If you can
choose love over power at an early age, you can begin the extraordinary
transformation from a human being into a Divine human being.
So, in those two ways, the way the pain and suffering of being
different can initiate you into a much deeper and unconditional
compassion for all beings who suffer in the same way, and choosing love
over power, it can give you very early on in your life, a very enormous
sense of your own potential strength, the strength of love, of the
absolute holiness and necessity of love and prepare you for the great
courageous transformations that all those, straight or gay go through
on the journey to Divine being.
I think the potential shadow of a gay identity is that you can confuse
your essential identity with your homosexuality. I don’t believe
that in the end that we have any final identity except that of the
Divine consciousness. So whether you are straight or gay, to
confuse your essential identity with your sexuality is a tremendous
mistake. One’s essential identity is the Divine-self
itself. So the danger of over-identifying yourself is that you
limit the power of your Divine nature. It’s an understandable
limitation when you’ve been so pressed for so long. But I for one have
never thought of myself as only and totally gay. I’ve thought of
myself as a human Divine being who expresses its human divinity through
my art, through my creativity, through my capacity for friendships,
through my love of cats, from the way I adore roses, and the voice of
Maria Callas, the music of Bach, and also of course through my
sexuality---and it’s a gay sexuality. But the essential self that is
expressing itself in all of those ways completely transcends any kind
of identification or any kind of description, or any kind of
limitation.
MOS: And it’s easy for anyone, gay or straight, to
over-identify with their culture and to buy into it to an extreme.
AH: Right. So somehow we have to evolve, we must now evolve as an
extension of the heroism of the gay liberation movement of the 60’s and
70’s, a new gay mystical language that says to all gay people, “Your
sexuality is powerful, and noble and holy just as heterosexuality is.”
But both gay people and heterosexuals have to go beyond these narrative
positions of who they are to discover who they essentially are—and that
is the Divine in human form.
Once this is recognized, we start acting from that innate divinity,
whether you are gay or straight, in ways of extreme, all-inclusive,
unconditional compassion and with a great passion for justice. And I
think the more we see gay people emerging with this kind of broad
generosity of soul and wild commitment to transformation and profound
love and compassion for all beings and justice for all beings, the more
the fears of the straight community about gay people will be healed by
the very splendor of their [gay people] presence and by the very truth
of their nature, and by the very effectiveness of their actions.
It calls not for a rejection of the more narrow rhetoric of the past,
but for a widening of it by the mystical revelations of the traditions
and by the call of Sacred Activism to answer this agonizing situation
by radical commitment on every level, to be and do what you must be and
do to be of real help.
MOS: We have to go deep within and work on our own healing
transformation in order to shine throughout the world as who we truly
are.
AH: This is what I am trying to model in my own life. I don’t
stand up as a gay teacher-- I stand up as a teacher—who is gay!
Just as Carolyn Myss and Marianne Williamson are straight, I am
gay! But I am not defining my teaching as gay; it’s a Divine
teaching, I hope.
MOS: Exactly—your teaching does not carry any labels or orientation…it’s for everyone!
AH: It’s for everyone! It’s for straight people, it’s for dogs,
it’s for animals it’s for plants it’s for stones, it’s for the air, the
wind, the fire, it’s for the threatened seas, it’s for
everything. I never pretend not to be gay. If it ever comes up I
express it naturally, I always talk about my marriage and my husband,
and all that, and I have never and will never allow anyone to define me
in a way that defines the revelation that is trying to come through my
work. Because it does not just belong to the gay community--it
has a very deep message that I’ve tried to give in this conversation to
the gay community. But I hope that Sacred Activism transcends black and
white, gay or straight, Buddhist or Hindu, and speaks to every single
human being at this moment and says, “For God’s sake, claim your Divine
truth, claim your Divine identity, go beyond the dogmas, go beyond the
separations, work out your salvation with diligence and start humbly
serving all beings, and start doing something real from your
heartbroken sense of the real worlds burning to death in the real world
to turn the situation rapidly around.”
MOS: You said by Thanksgiving your Institute will be launching
the Networks of Grace website. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if gay
community centers around the world could be meeting places for those
who are interested in animal rights for instance, or other burning
issues?
AH: Yes! It is very important to say to the gay community who
have a gay Network of Grace on animal rights—work on all the gay issues
we have described, but you can also work with straight Networks of
Grace on animal rights with great joy! There cannot be any more
exclusion, because in that exclusion you keep going sadly, the
separations that cause all the suffering.
MOS: Right, Right, It leads to separation and people wondering, “What are those gay people are doing over there?”
AH: Right. Have a gay focus because that can enable you to work
at great nakedness, to understand and also to heal the shadows we
described, but when you work, work with everybody who cares. Work
with everybody, even sometimes with Republicans, why not? If they
care about animals, work with them. And many of them do. We have
to be strong enough to go beyond all our categories and dogmas and
separations, otherwise we simply are going to keep them all alive in
ways that quite now are killing the world.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t attend to the necessary healing that the
gay community needs, it just means that we do not make that attention
to our healing an excuse for separating ourselves from others.
We’ve got to lead the way forward. As victims of separation and
victims of division and as victims of unbelievable cruelty, it is up to
us to really manifest the kind of compassion, the kind of all embracing
understanding and the kind of commitment to love that will truly
transform others. Take the darkness we’ve been given and
transform it into golden light.
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