Meditation Practices For A Funeral

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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Unpublished manuscripts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

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

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

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 Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness

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

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:

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.

At a funeral

I attended a funeral recently. It was a lovely and moving event. But I was disappointed in the focus of the service and content of the priest's talks. While there was certainly a linking made to the life of the person who had died, most of the priest's talk was about the Church and what the Church believes about death. He told stories about Jesus and the Apostles, even the minor disciple Cornelius, but he didn't talk abut the important things in the life and beliefs of the man we had all gathered to honor.

I think we would have liked to hear what our friend thought about death and afterlife and God, rather than what the Church teaches. It would have been nice to have had a friend or partner of the deceased read a statement of what he believed.

Maybe we ALL, therefore, need to write a Credo.

See What Toby Johnson Believes.

I propose that a funeral ought to include a reading of the deceased's Credo, especially a statement or summary of what he believed about death and afterlife.


And I'd like to propose two meditation practices as samples of what might be incorporated into a funeral or memorial service.

The first is a practice of positive intention for the deceased's last moments.

The second is a practice of sharing the grief for the death AND transforming sorrow into bliss.

1) Assisting the deceased to have a happy death—and preparing for our own.

    The occasion for gathering is to say goodbye and commemorate the life of the deceased. At least mythologically, we might imagine that our participating in the psychic vibrations that surround his passing might entrain with his vibes and so actually influence his experience.
    So let us imagine how he died.

    Let’s hear about the actual conditions surrounding his death: Was he awake? Was he in bed? Was he standing in line at the bank? Was he in a car crash? Was he happy that day? Was he feeling healthy or feeling ill?

    Then let us imagine what his interior experience was like. Realizing the pain in his chest was a heart attack, perhaps, or realizing that he was bleeding to death and so would soon be passing beyond personality.

    Let us imagine him realizing he is dying and realizing that this is a great moment in life and so one not to be afraid of or freaked out by. So that he can say “Wow, here it comes. I've been waiting for this. I have no regrets. Life’s been great.”

    Let us imagine him relaxing into death without any fear, and feeling like the mythical “tunnel of light” is opening before him.

    If he has had the good fortune to have a loved one with him, perhaps the loved one has had the presence of mind to guide him through the passage, saying “Go to sleep to being [Name] and wake up to being God. Remember, go into the light. Don’t be afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of. Let go of ego, wake up to cosmic consciousness. Fall asleep to being [Name], wake up to being God. Don’t be afraid. Go back to cosmic consciousness. It’s OK. We love you.”

    We can say those things to him now in our imagination. As we do, we assist him in his passage AND we train ourselves for our own inevitable passing.

---

Aldous Huxley's wife, Laura, said these words to him as he was dying:

"Light and free you let go, darling; forward and up. You are going forward and up; you are going toward the light. Willingly and consciously you are going, willingly and consciously, and you are  doing this beautifully -- you are going towards the light -- you are  going toward a greater love -- you are going forward and up.  You are  going toward a greater love than you have ever known. You are going toward the best, the greatest love, and it is easy, it is so easy,  and you are doing it so beautifully."

---

    Let us imagine him rising beyond self and returning into the Ocean of Bliss like a drop of water falling into the sea.
    Remind him “You’re not a wave, you’re water.”

See Ram Dass's story

    Only the wave is dying as it hits the shore. The water flows on and on.

    Remind him, in our minds, Death is only a transition back into the greater life. It’s only ego and memory that are passing into the past. Life flows on within you and without you.
    Visualize him rising into the light and being absorbed in the infinite brightness, dissolving into eternity, letting go of time and sequence.

---

Read a description of a death from The Fourth Quill
"Going into the Light"

---

2) Sharing in the mourning AND transforming grief. (Modeled on the Tibetan practice of tonglen.)

    All of us here grieve the passing of our friend. That grief is especially intense for the deceased partner and beloved. Let us share his grief by participating in it, spreading it through the souls of all of us, transforming it into bliss--for ourselves, for the beloved and for the deceased himself.

    Let us feel the sorrow in our hearts. We will miss our friend.

    Let us be especially aware of how his partner must feel. What a loss!

    Imagine the sorrow as dark smoke, perhaps like smoke from incense, or fumes from a blown out candle. Imagine the smoke filling the room. Breathe in the smoke. Relax and be aware of your breath, and be aware of breathing in the black smoke, so that the mental space inside your body becomes dark and choked with the smoke. Keep breathing it in till the inside of the space in your body is as dark as night.

Then visualize a lightning flash – the lightning bolt of enlightenment:  vajra.

The vajra scepter is the stylized solidification of a lightning bolt. Tibetans thought when lightning struck the ground it congealed into a diamond. So the vajra is both lightning bolt and diamond – both images of enlightened mind.

    Enlightenment is the realization that ego is phantasm in consciousness, a ripple in the greater consciousness field of the Earth and of the Sun. What has passed is really no more than a transitory illusion.

    Let us see that we are all but momentary corruscations of brilliance, flashes of light caused by the clashing of the streams of karma and intention and love that create human consciousness and individual human life.

    Let us see the lightning bolt as the reminder of that wisdom: “You’re not a wave, you’re water.”

Read Ram Dass's story about the wave

    In the bright flash of the lightning-- cutting through the darkness and cutting through time to illuminate an eternal moment--let us visualize the smoke and darkness changing to bright colorful lights, like flowers in spring or like the flashing of sunlight off the surface of water, shimmering and beautiful, warm and relaxing.

    Let us see our grief--and especially the grief of the deceased’s beloved being shared by us all--be transformed into joy for our having known [Name] and bliss in our own experiencing of being alive and of being alive in the world in which [Name] was also alive and which he changed by his loving presence.

    Let us share the beloved’s grief, turning the grief and mourning into a joyful experience of the poignancy of consciousness.

    Breathe in the smoke and darkness of human sorrow and suffering in the transitoriness of time, let it be transformed in the lightning bolt striking into your heart and congealing into a diamond, and let it become joy for life and bliss in the eternity of consciousness transcending individuality.

Read about Toby Johnson's experience of "Tonglen" as a tourist in Varanasi.