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Contact Us Table of Contents Search Site Google listing of all pages on this website Site Map Toby Johnson's Facebook page Toby Johnson's YouTube channel Toby Johnson on Wikipedia Toby Johnson Amazon Author Page  Secure site at https://tobyjohnson.com  Also on this website: As an Amazon Associate
I earn from qualifying purchases. Toby Johnson's books: Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc. 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
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
Gay ConsciousnessQ&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness What Jesus said about Gay Rights Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"? Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality What the Bible Says about Homosexuality Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men Waves of Gay Liberation Activity 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
Enlightenment
Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara You're Not A WaveJoseph 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
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 Money is energy and power. Money is life and vitality. Of course that’s not what most of us actually experience in modern America. Instead of as energy and potentiality and power, we more likely experience money as powerlessness, scarcity, and privation. Rather than as a source of freedom, money is the cause of our lack of freedom to do whatever we want. Instead of abundance--to use that occasionally annoying code word from the New Age quasi-religions--for most people money is limitation and threat. The abundance thinking, prosperity-oriented religions so often just work to remind us of our lack of money and, by extension, freedom and opportunity. Abundance, after all, is a quality of life experience, a feeling of being empowered and capable of making ideal choices, of having the wherewithal to follow your bliss. But the reality is that money itself is a quantity, not a quality. It’s something that there is a definite amount of, and if the amount is not being increased (usually by working or, at least, attentive investing) then it is automatically being decreased and devalued. But money is about numbers. Life, freedom and opportunity are about experience, something that cannot be quantized. Perhaps the trick is to learn to think of money as quality, rather than quantity. PovertyMy own experience of money and scarcity/abundance was indelibly colored by my early adulthood in Catholic religious life, specifically, by the vow of poverty. As a novice, we took what were called “novitiate promises” of poverty, chastity, and obedience for the one year and one day duration of the novitiate. Then as first-professed, we took “temporary vows” that were specifically limited to one year. But I was a devout and fervent young brother: while officially I was only committing myself for a short time, under my breath, and in my private prayer, I was enthusiastically reciting the “solemn vow” formula “for my entire life.”  Well, it wasn’t too many years after that that I read Joseph Campbell and Alan Watts and began to think of myself as more Buddhist than Catholic, and more gay hippie than anything else. And officially those vows slipped into my past as outmoded relics of a bygone age and a youthful adventure that had really been about escaping marital expectations. But being a hippie entailed a certain kind of poverty; living in San Francisco meant being reminded of the City’s namesake and his life of simplicity and “going with the flow.” Being part of the so-called counterculture included rejecting the “middle class values” of comfort, success, climbing the social and economic ladder, and being respectable. And so underlying all my radical politics and anti-Establishment activism, were those solemn vows that in some new—and not so Churchy—ways still meant something and still colored my life. Obedience, I understood, had come to mean being open to life and adventure, “following my bliss” as a way of obeying the promptings of my soul. Chastity, I understood, had come to mean placing sexuality in the context of spirituality and seeing divine love in the love of my partners, boyfriends, even tricks. And, most importantly, poverty had come to mean choosing meaning over riches and societally-sanctioned success. Chastity is the vow that gets all the attention: it makes monastic life seem so restricting. But it’s really just freedom from marriage and family. Obedience is demanded of everybody in modern society; everybody has to obey traffic rules, legal procedures, and especially job-related obligations. It’s no big deal and, in practice, in religious life, it is hardly ever invoked. Poverty is the vow that really characterizes monastic life. It’s the biggie. And that is because the vow of poverty is about making money a quality, not a quantity. Poverty is what makes Catholic religious life look appealing even now. And so I have been have been pleasantly amazed at how it created a self-fulfilling prophecy and relatively pleased that I made that vow “for life.” Here’s what poverty really means: in exchange for giving up private ownership in favor of common ownership and agreeing to live simply and at the same level as those in your community, you get total security, the promise of the community’s help in times of need, financial wherewithal to do everything you need to to fulfill your chosen life, often a neat to place to live (the Church has ended up owning some very interesting and wonderful buildings), and, most importantly, the freedom to choose a job and vocation that is meaningful without having to think about the salary. Poverty means never having to worry about money. Poverty means you can follow your bliss (so long as it isn’t too costly) and choose a profession because you want to, not because you have to. The financial details for how this has manifested itself in my life aren’t that important; suffice it to say thanks to family, I’ve ended up with a regular stipend that, if I live simply, is enough. And that’s allowed me to be a professional gay activist, a therapist, a bookseller, and a writer. These are not professions one gets rich in, but they are immensely fulfilling and they contribute to changing the world. Another way of saying that is that if you can live beneath your means, you can have everything you ever really need.  It’s an important question how self-fulfilling prophecies at the level of karma actually get to be established. I think it has to do with devotion to the ideas and “faith” in them. Part of it has to do with the paradoxical nature of the universe: to live fully, you must be willing to die; to escape suffering, you must be willing to suffer; to overcome, you must give up all resistance; to have everything, you must give up everything. Illustration from The Ascent of Mount Carmel by Saint John of the Cross The point of all this is that money seems to manifest rules and dynamics in the universe that, in spite of the seeming contradiction, turn out to be spiritual. This is a lesson gay men learn about sex. The society says sex and spirituality are inimical—and look at what a fucked up mess society has made of itself on account of sex. The whole gay spirituality movement is founded on gay people’s discovery of the error in the common wisdom. That same discovery seems to be true about money as well. Money need not be about luxury and riches and excesses and squandering. These are the errors that modern, capitalist, “profit-making” society ends up making and screwing up the whole spirituality of money as source of vitality and empowerment. The spiritual message is that living beneath your means and choosing simplicity for the sake of overcoming suffering--your own and that of the world’s poor--brings freedom and joy and surprising abundance. The message of consumer-driven culture, just the opposite, to live beyond your means more likely brings complication, dependence, and paradoxically the gnawing sense of scarcity and privation (and credit card debt spiraling out of control). Read Next: Manifesting from the Sublte Realms The Myth of the Wanderer ~
Also of interest: Toby Johnson's life in San Francisco in the 1970s Rainbow Flag 1978 & Living at 541 Castro St |
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.
Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. 