divining desireDivining Desire ~  exploring sacred eros

by Sequoia Thom





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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 - 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


Finding God

FINDING GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: The Journey Expanded


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Unpublished manuscripts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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  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 with a list of topics in Austin LGBT History


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


Advice to Future Gay Historians


Q&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness


What is homosexuality?


What is Gay Spirituality?


My three messages


What is Gay Perspective?


What Jesus said about Gay Rights


Myths, Salvation and the Great Secret with Rich Grzesiak


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


Psycho-Spiritual Development


The Gay Succession


Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian?


The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter


Queer men, myths and Reincarnation


Was I (or you) at Stonewall?


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


The Nature of Suffering and The Four Quills


You're Not A Wave



Joseph Campbell Talks about Aging



Toby's Experience of Zen



What is Enlightenment?



What is reincarnation?


What happens at Death?


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



A Funny Story: The Rug Salesmen of Istanbul



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



Drawing a Long Straw: Ketamine at the Mann Ranch


Alan Watts & Multiple Solipsism


How I Learned Chakra Meditation


Je ne Regrette Rien


Jungian Themes in Spirituality & Psychology



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Gay Spirituality


Curious Bodies


What Toby Johnson Believes


The Joseph Campbell Connection


A Surprising Dinner Party


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


Gay Relationship Rings: Symbols to Help Cement Our Commitment


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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


The Monastic Schedule: a whimsy


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


Sex with God


Merging Religion and Sex


Revolution Through Consciousness Change: GSV 2019


God as Metaphor


More Metaphors for God


A non-personal metaphor God


Jesus and the Wedding Feast


Tonglen in the Radisson Varanasi


The Closet of Horrors


What is Truth?


Fish on Friday



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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?


A Different Take on Leathersex


Seeing Pornography Differently


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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


My first Peace March


Toby Marotta & Sons of Harvard


Toby Marotta's Politics of Homosexuality


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People


Kip and Toby, Activists


Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.


24 Mandalas Hand-drawn by Geoffrey Graham


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 Bill


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


Our friend Cliff Douglas


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


In Search of Lost Lives by Michael Goddart


Queer Magic by Tomas Prower


God in Your Body by Jay Michaelson


Science Whispering Spirit by Gary Preuss


Friends of Dorothy by Dee Michel


New by Whitley Strieber


Developing Supersensible Perception by Shelli Renee Joye

Sage Sapien by Johnson Chong


Tarot of the Future by Arthur Rosengarten


Brothers Across Time by Brad Boney


Impresario of Castro Street by Marc Huestis


Deathless by Andrew Ramer


The Pagan Heart of the West, Vol 1 by Randy P. Conner


Practical Tantra by William Schindler


The Flip by Jeffrey J. Kripal


A New World by Whitley Strieber


Bernhard & LightWing by Damien Rowse


The Mountains of Paris by David Oates


Trust Truth by Trudie Barreras


How to be an Excellent Human Being by Bill Meacham


The Deviant's War by Eric Cervini


What Is the Grass by Mark Doty


Sex with God by Suzanne DeWitt Hall


The Sum of All the Pieces by Paul Bradford


All the Time in the World by J. Lee Graham


Jonas and the Mountain by Janis Harper


Two Hearts Dancing by Eli Andrew Ramer


Where's My Pizza? by Larry Armstead II


A New Now by Michael Goddart


Heavenly Homos, Etc by Jan Haen


The Erotic Contemplative by Michael Bernard Kelly


Our Time by Chuck Forester


Queer God de Amor by Miguel H. Diaz


I Came Here Seeking a Person by William Glenn


Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood by John D'Emilio


Ever After by Andrew Ramer


Meditation for Prisoners by Lewis Elbinger


Why and How the Clergy Lied by D.L. Day


Heavenly LGBTQ+ by Jan Haen


My Life As a Boy, Priest, Gay Man, and Artist by Jan Haen


Trailblazerrs in Love by Jeff Lutes


Daddy Lover God by Don Shewey


Coming In by Urs Mattman


The Shoes of the Fisherman movie with Anthony Quinn


Tantric Psychophysics by Shelli Joye


The Hidden Dimensions of Consciousness by Shelli Joye


Queer Callings
by Mark D Jordan


The Secret That Is Not a Secret by Jay Michaelson


Divining Desire by Sequoia Thom


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






Finding God
Finding God In The Sexual Underworld: The Journey Expanded

2020 Revised Version










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.


A Remarkable Lifestory



divining desire

Divining Desire ~ exploring sacred eros

by Sequoia Thom







  ‎   ‎ Tree House Publishing (May 22, 2024)

324 pages, kindle $2.99, paperback $36.65



Available from Amazon
Click here:
Divining Desire

Available from the Author's webpage — with links and samples
https://sequoia.wordpress.com/publishing/

5 stars

Description:

Is sex feeling flat?
    Does it leave you wanting more?
    Is your connection with spirit lacking passion?
    What does God have to do with sex?
    What does sex have to do with God?

What if you could connect them together?

Sequoia Thom, M.A., began asking these questions early. His strict religious upbringing created a painful internal split that drove him on a life-long quest to fathom the depths of both sex and spirit. He discovered that libido is like rocket fuel to open the heart and access the spirit.

After a decade of in-depth study of Yoga and Tantra, at age 35 he began 40 years of offering Tantra massage and workshops teaching men how to spread their powerful pelvic charge into full-body bliss.

In his deeply personal memoir, Sequoia shares all he learned over 50+ years on his transformational journey. He offers rare resources for your own transformation, so that you can:

  -  free yourself from any residue of sexual guilt or shame,
  -  deepen your connection between your sex, heart, and soul;
  -  experience deeper love for yourself and others;
  -  explore sex with human partners as a form of worshiping the formless universal Beloved; and
   - glimpse the one pure consciousness that we all are at the deepest level.

“I want us all to live with our genitals, heart and soul in happy harmony,” he wrote. "I offer you my life as an open book."

"Sequoia Thom is that rarest and most precious of Jewel: a true elder in the field of erotic spirituality, encompassing a breadth of experience, a depth of wisdom, tremendous integrity, and sheer delight, all powered by extraordinary generosity of spirit and profound commitment to our collective spiritual growth.

“Readers will find their journeys reflected and uplifted by reading his memoir, and by exploring the incredible treasure house of tools and teachings he shares."
-- Hunter Flournoy, Licensed Therapist, Breathworker, Embodied Wisdom Teacher, and VisionKeeper for SpiritJourneys

Follow Sequoia’s transformational life journey: your life will be better because of what you’ll discover about you!



Review:

As the generation of gay men who came of age soon after Stonewall are reaching the closing stages of our lives, we're naturally doing life review, retelling our lifestory to ourselves—and, if we're writers and teachers, to others in memoirs and autobiographies.

My own great teacher, the mytholgist Joseph Campbell, told about the German philosopher Arthur Shopenhauer's idea that when you look back over your life from near the end it appears almost like a novel with recurring themes and magical foreshadowings — as though composed by a conscious author. And you have to ask yourself who is the author of my life.

The experience of reviewing one's life is itself a kind of magic experience that hints that "you" are more than you think you are and that all your life is a message to yourself and to others about how to live well and contribute to the well-being and happiness of humankind.

Reading others' lifestory starts an almost automatic process of reliving your own story. Maybe this is especially true for that "first generation of gay men" in the rise of gay liberation because this was such an enormous conversion in how we saw the world and because we likely shared so many common experiences and discoveries.

That is certainly how I experienced reading Sequoia Thom's remarkable autobiography Divining Desire.

I use the word "remarkable" because of the self-awareness, candor, and detail of Sequoia's recounting his life. He tells that he has kept a journal most of his life and so has written records of events and feelings. But even more than his ability to tell such details is his courage and willingness to share such intimate details.

For the first part of his life — and the book — these are intimate details about his sexual explorations, first as a Catholic schoolboy with all the confusion over attraction to other boys and masturbation that such sex-suppressing indoctrination causes, then as an Air Force officer and pilot (of long polar flights sometimes through the Aurora Borealis) with the sex-suppressing rules imposed by that occupation. Though not without heartbreak on the way, by the 70s he had
discovered gay life and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Always concerned with psychological and spiritual issues, during this time of intense psychospiritual fascination in all of American culture--and especially in San Francisco, he attended grad school in "East/West Psychology" at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He'd been a flight trainer, following his expertise in the Air Force; now he changed his focus to being a professional massage therapist and then teacher of body-oriented spirituality.

The title Divining Desire makes a pun on the word divining. A divining or dowsing rod is a tool for finding water underground—it's a partly magical technique that relies on intuition and luck and maybe a partly scientific technique that picks up subtle electrical fields from underground flow. To "divine" is to seek to find. To "divine" is also to divinize, to make holy. Divining desire is first to understand what desire is and how it can lead us to make decisions and choices — some for the good, some perhaps not — and then to transform desire into the search for transcendent truth and consciousness.

Sequoia Thom
attended the original Radical Faerie Gathering in Arizona in 1979 with Harry Hay and Don Kilhefner and continues to be a faerie. He has been part of the Body Electric network with Joseph Kramer and trained as a Sacred Intimate. He's assisted and taught at dozens of Body Electric weekends. He practiced meditation (and received shaktipat) with Baba Muktananda, studied about sex meditation with Osho, deepened his Tantric practice with Rudy Ballatine (Swami Ravi Rudra Bharati), and attended lecutres by Eckhart Tolle (The-Power-of-Now guy). He's done Sufi Dancing with the followers of Sufi Sam Lewis. He's danced the gay men's Naraya with Clyde Hall. And he has offered group training in sexuality awareness and body pleasure for years in Vancouver, BC as Light Touch Retreats and later Men In Touch. He's created a network of followers and disciples whose lives he's changed for the better.

It is interesting to find Sequoia's trips to the baths, personal love-life, mid-life crises, codependency attacks, worries about attractiveness, treatments for erectile difficulties of old age, balancing new boyfriends and enduring loves—all woven together and into his spiritual journey. That is, of course, what most of us experience: our spiritual lives include romances and desires and frustrations, joys and griefs, pleasures and pains. But few tell the most intimate details or even understand how those too are parts of the soul journey through life. It is inspiring to read
Sequoia doing just that. It makes me aware of my own journey.

In the terminology of Hinduism, Sequoia has followed Tantra Yoga and Bhatki Yoga, the ways of sexual bliss and emotional devotion. I've tended to follow the way of the mind called Raja Yoga. Sequoia was in his body. I was in my head. As I read Divining Desire, I saw myself in so many of Thom's experiences, but having done it differently. What he was doing with his hands on men's bodies, I was doing with my scholarly intelligence. I was mulling over history of religion and myth and devising models of consciousness. He was teaching sexual liberation; I was practicing community mental health psychotherapy, and getting my degree from that same California Institute of Integral Studies. While he learned Tantra in the body and pleasure centers, I learned Tantra as a set of symbols and models of neurological patterns. He was touching men. I was talking to them. While Thom was organizing groups of men to experience pleasure together, I was running a gay bookstore helping gay men and lesbians create a culture and a community. While he was gathering friends and circles around, my partner Kip and I were living like hermits in a log lodge in the Rockies publishing White Crane Journal, full of ideas! (including ads for Thom's retreats, BTW).
Sequoia Thom and I moved on parallel tracks, I think. His was more embodied and pleasureful than mine, I have to say.

As I read his experiences I was able to reevaluate my own. This book is a treasurehouse of information and links to all sorts of important psychospiritual opportunities. And it's inspiration to self-awareness and life review.

The important mantra—and life-changing wisdom—that Baba Muktananda taught Sequoia Thom is Om Namah Shiva. He holds it in mind in his meditations. I too learned it back in my hippie days in San Francisco; I sing it aloud in our backyard when I think nobody's around. I've always understood it at face value: Praise the Name of Shiva.

Shiva, remember, is the Hindu god of creation and destruction: "I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds." But also the life that fills those worlds; Shiva's consort—his female self, as it were—is Shakti, the life energy that pours through women to give life to new bodies. Shiva/Shakti, Lord of the Dance, dances the dance of time and eternity. In two of his four hands he holds a drum to count the passage of time and a flame to burn it all up, his third hand points to his raised "elephant foot" about to crush all creation, and his fourth hand is raised in the wonderfully feminine, grace-bestowing gesture: "Fear not." Life and death are a part of each other. When I praise the name of Shiva out in the backyard, I'm celebrating how we are all but the burst of consciousness that is our universe, viewed from all our various perspectives, Shiva dancing us into being: The One Being.

Sequoia translates the mantra as he learned it from Muktananda: I bow to the divine Universal Consciousness deep in the heart (mine and everyone's). It's the same One Being.We are all parts of each other. The bigger I within sees through all eyes.

Because I think this is an especially (though not exclusively) queer gay trait—what Harry Hay called subject-SUBJECT—I want to say we can see through the eyes of all the gay men who've come before. Learning of other men's lives opens our own eyes to see beyond our individual selves, to experience vicariously other ways of being gay, to enjoy other's adventures as though they'd been our own, to feel a part of someting bigger, to glimpse perhaps Schopenhauer's deeper, hidden composer of the story of our lives.

Reading autobiographies and memoirs offers a kind of mystical practice.

In Sequoia's life I can see another me, another seeker, another gay man divining our queer path from birth through life to ascension into godhood, expressions of the Universal Consciousness. What a wonderful statement this book is of gay men's spirituality.

A remarkable book. Inspiring candor. I highly recommend it.




Sequoia left the Earth on September 28, 2024.
His partner Ziji has written a beautiful account of his passing. https://sequoia.wordpress.com/2024/09/29/merging-into-the-great-mystery/


 

















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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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