Manifesting from the Subtle Realms



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Toby Johnson's books:

Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc.


Finding Your Own True Myth - The Myth of the Great Secret III

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III


Gay Spirituality

GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness


Gay Perspective


GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe


Secret Matter


SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan


Getting Life

GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:  A Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods


The Fourth Quill

THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil




Two Spirits
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams



charmed lives
CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers


Myth of the Great Secret


THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell



In Search of God


IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey



Unpublished manuscripts


About ordering


Books on Gay Spirituality:

White Crane Gay Spirituality Series


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  Toby has done five podcasts with Harry Faddis for The Quest of Life

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  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"


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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


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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


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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


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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


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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



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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


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The Hero's Journey


The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016


The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)


You're On Your Own


Superheroes


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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?


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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


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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


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The Secret of the Clear Light


Understanding the Clear Light


Mobius Strip


Finding Your Tiger Face


How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated


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Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey, and the modern Gay Hero-- a five part presentation on YouTube


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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


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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"


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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 cover
Gay Perspective

Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us about the
Nature of God and
the Universe


Gay Perspective audiobook
Gay Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Matthew Whitfield. Click here







Gay
Spirituality cover
Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness



gay-spirituality-audiobook
Gay Spirituality   is now available as an audiobook, beautifully narrated by John Sipple. Click here








charmed lives
Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman







secret matter
Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated







Getting Life
Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance





Getting
Life in Perspective audiobook
Getting Life in Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Alex Beckham. Click here 






The Fourth Quill

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE




johnson-the-fourth-quill-audiobook
The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here






Two
Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams




Two Spirits
audiobookTwo Spirits  is available as an audiobook  narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click here






Finding Your Own True Myth - The Myth of the Great Secret III
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
In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld










The Myth of the Great Secret II

The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.

This was the second edition of this book.




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Toby Johnson's titles are available in other ebook formats from Smashwords.



We are God expressing divine creativity


the-death-of-the-mythic-god
I’ve been reading Jim Marion’s The Death of the Mythic God. I have been moved and occasionally “inspired” by his presentation of a modern, post-mythic mystical interpretation of the meaning of God and religion. Central to his discussion is the notion that we individualized human beings are all incarnations of “God” and that what “God” means is the universal consciousness that underlies all experience and gives rise to the world of appearances. Marion offers an evolutionary, staged theory of human development—both of the species (i.e. the planet/Gaia) and of the individual—using the models of Ken Wilber, based in the traditional esoteric wisdom of the five levels of energy vibration; Arthur Koestler, coining the word holon to refer to the “Janus-faced” hierarchy in which all things are made of wholes which, in turn, are parts of other wholes at the next level up; and Christopher Cowan and Don Beck, using a color-coding system to elucidate the subtle distinctions between levels of consciousness.

To link to this book at amazon.com, click on the title: The Death of the Mythic God: The Rise of Evolutionary Spirituality

Those traditional esoteric vibrational levels are: physical, etheric, astral, subtle, and causal; beyond these is the nondual Source itself which is mythologized as God. All of us are vibrating on these levels, including that of Source, but are seldom aware of it. Spiritual development consists, in part, of bringing these vibrations (and concomitant “powers” and abilities) into consciousness so that we participate in the whole universe-creating process knowingly and intentionally, instead of unconsciously and as “victims of circumstance.” Just holding this model in mind, perhaps in meditation, as Marion’s writing evokes, brings a sense of joy and wholeness. (The book is a spiritual experience in itself.)

In describing the subtle level of creativity, Marion, who is a Roman Catholic who now complements the spirituality of his upbringing with the insights of Religious Science and Science of Mind, explains the technique of manifesting what one needs. Here’s the explanation of the self-fulfilling prophecy at the level of karma I referred to earlier in questioning how the vow of poverty transforms itself into abundance and freedom from want.

In praying for something [like rain], what we are actually doing is declaring to God (the sole power underlying the laws of the universe) that we lack whatever it is we want. We are saying, in effect, I lack rain. God hears and accepts that affirmation of lack by us, the cocreators of the universe, and makes the lack come true. No rain comes. No healings come. No money comes. We have created lack versus abundance.

Instead . . . we must visualize what we want and “see” it coming into our lives. No doubts. Feel the rain, feel the healing, feel the green dollar bills in our hands and overflowing our pockets. Then, as Jesus taught us, we thank God ahead of time for making what we want come to pass, for, as Jesus said, God already knows our needs. God was merely waiting for us to take our own power as cocreators and create out abundance using the proper method of manifestational prayer. (p. 133)

~

This is the familiar account of how Science of Mind and affirmation practice explains the cocreating process and touts the possibility of manifesting what one needs.
rich-man-poor-man
I also happened to come across a TV docu-tisement selling a training in wealth development by Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki. His book is subtitled: “Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!” The idea is that wealth is at least as dependant on psychological set and expectation as on money-making techniques. Kiyosaki offers a lesson about thinking-rich that is a secularized version of the Science of Mind practice of manifestation from the subtle realms. The first principle is to think of yourself as rich instead of as poor, that is, to expect and believe in abundance instead scarcity, to act as if you’re as rich as you want to be.

This is a notion I encountered back in California in the 70s in Werner Erhard’s life-changing est.  From those days, I remember watching fellow est-graduates get themselves in debt and running their entrepreneurial enterprises into the ground by trying to act as if they were successful when, in fact, they’d just miscalculated demand for their services and blown their budget. I learned to be skeptical of that kind of naïve prosperity thinking.

You wonder why the “God” Marion is describing above is so simple-minded that He (or It) can’t distinguish between lack and need. When I pray for rain, God—or my own deepest unconscious—ought to be able to understand that I am affirming my need for water and sustenance, not my lack.

To be fair, est also taught the even subtler lesson behind prosperity thinking which is to choose things as they are. Then you’re participating in “God’s” act of creating, because the way things are is obviously exactly the way God’s creating them. And since you’re “God” in your own universe, what’s happening to you is exactly what God wants. “Be happy,” said Werner as a consequence of that realization.

The central teaching of est was the ancient Hermetic principle, expressed with cutesy modern klang association: What you resist persists, what you become conscious of disappears. The secret to prosperity thinking is to stop resisting (in Marion’s example, the lack of rain) and choose things as they are, then they’ll change automatically, i.e. they’ll “disappear” in order to be replaced with something else. What that something else will be is influenced, on the subtle level, by your intentions in choosing to stop resisting.

The secret power of not resisting is like the driving instruction to “steer in the direction of the skid.” Turning the wheels in the direction the car is moving allows them to gain traction so you can then steer out of the skid. And you’ll go in the direction you’re looking. Learning to ride a bicycle exemplifies this principle. The fledgling bicyclist who looks intensely and fearfully toward an object he’s afraid of hitting and then down at the handle bars trying to figure out with great effort how to turn them will invariably and seemingly uncontrollably careen right into the dreaded—and resisted—object. The expert bicyclist keeps her eyes on the road and effortlessly sails by all the objects alongside her path. You go (and unconsciously, automatically steer) in the direction you’re looking. That’s the secret of intentionality and creative visualization. That’s how you establish self-fulfilling prophecies, the details of which you don’t even have to know. “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t even know they were going to be,” said visionary mythologist (my teacher and “wise old man”) Joseph Campbell.

Kiyosaki and Science of Mind are right that psychological set and expectation are the way to establish self-fulfilling prophecies. But spending money as if you were the rich man you want to be can be just an exercise in resistance. What I describe earlier as religious poverty can be an exercise in relinquishing resistance. It refocuses the whole issue away from want and need and desire toward the goal of doing loving service for others without caring about things like money and wealth.

Marion goes on to write:

The entire universe already exists within us. When we manifest, we are simply God expressing divine creativity. We manifest for the same reason that God manifests, namely, for the sheer pleasure and enjoyment and creativity of it, not because we “need” anything. (p. 134)

That is, moving up a level to “causal consciousness,” we see that we are not separate individualized beings, competing with one another for resources and riches. We are universal consciousness manifesting love for life and consciousness itself, “God” bootstrapping Himself into being—as the universe—out of love. And that God exists immediately in the consciousness of each of us.

The Self-Aware Universe
In the wonderful and mind-boggling book The Self-Aware Universe, subtitled: "How Consciousness creates the material world," physicist Amit Goswami presents these same ideas in the context of contemporary quantum theory. He argues that the only way to resolve the various paradoxes of this new and experimentally-convincing, if “counter-intuitive” model of the universe is to understand that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the material universe, but that the material universe is a creation of consciousness. He calls this model “monistic idealism.”

Goswami points out the problem with individuals thinking they can control the future by their intentions and quantum choices: everybody else is making choices too. The reason the world is in chaos is because all these choices are self-serving and conflicting. Drivers coming from different directions can’t all make the traffic lights green for themselves; one direction has to accept the red light.

alan watts
To explain this creative dynamic Beat-Zen philosopher Alan Watts offered the paradoxical expression “multiple solipsism”: we’re all creators of our own experience but we’re all operating within the context of each other’s creativity. We have to cooperate. And we can cooperate by seeing beyond the individuality of each solipsistic self.

The realization that comes with moving into what Jim Marion calls causal consciousness is that we’re all in this together, we have to cooperate with one another in how we create the universe so that it’s full of pleasure, enjoyment, and creativity for everybody, because we’re all really the same One Being. That is to say, we must align our intentions. That’s what it means to say “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Notice that familiar phrase has two different meanings. The one we usually hear is love your neighbor as much as yourself. That’s exoteric Christianity.
Janus
The esoteric meaning—and the much richer one—is to love your neighbor because he or she is yourself. Your neighbor is just you manifesting from a different perspective with a different history. We’re all the same Being. There is only One consciousness which is the whole universe and it exists, as a Janus-faced holon, in each and all of us sentient beings.



To link to this book at amazon.com, click on the title: Janus: A summing up




~


Jim Marion identifies the Source level—God—as non-dual. Non-duality is, at least as I understand it, at the very heart of gay spirituality and, indeed, gay consciousness itself. Because we challenge male and female archetypes and stereotypes, being able to be both dominant and submissive, insertor and insertee in sex, and blur gender role identities, being both (and neither) husband and housekeeper, desirer and desired, handsome and pretty at the same time, we live in world of experience in which the dualities are overcome and discounted as unimportant. Transcending the polarization of male and female, we also, at least potentially, can transcend the polarization of good and evil, human and divine, self and other, God and self.
mobius bodies

In part also because being aware of being gay necessarily entails introspection and self-awareness, gay consciousness naturally pushes us toward discovering our individualized consciousness as a manifestation of Source-consciousness. And we’re apt to appreciate the paradoxicality in finding mystical oneness with God through the realization and practice of a sexuality that religion has traditionally held to be the most heinous of all sins.

Non-dual also is the distinction between self and other. We’re all incarnations of the same One Consciousness. Thus we can—and even should—align with one another to intend the prosperity of all. We’re not (as so many dualist, straight men seem to perceive) in competition with one another.

This harmony of self and other (all men and all women are potentially lovers and comrades of one another) and self and God is the message of the gay spirituality movement. This “good news” would save the world.

So money and prosperity flows as all of us involved align together to intend it to flow. That’s no surprise. That’s exactly what we’d expect: it’s as obvious as it is esoteric. Money comes to you because the people around you want to give you money in reward for what you are creating. If you’re a plumber, it’s your ending the leak or repiping the old house that your customers want to give you money for doing. Your plumbing is your participation in “God’s” creating and maintaining the universe.

We’re all One Being. As you’re reading these words displayed on your computer screen, you are creating this movement, you are creating this article, you are creating this experience. This is your own work in the world. This is how you save the world. This is how gay men align with one another to share the wisdom of our always individual, but always united, spiritual quests.

Money, it turns out, from the spiritual perspective, is love.

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Toby Johnson, PhD is author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness. 

Johnson's book GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His  GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They remain in print.

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual qualities of gay male consciousness.

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