Diary of a Novice Spiritual Searcher

Caritas

Males with integrity find it difficult when externally imposed religous law does not correspond to internal topography. This leads to conflict and even psychosis. Fashioned in the Imago Dei a young man is a mystery to himself and others and as such needs to be taught to manage his emotions and internal schema by initiated and universally constituted mature men. Only then will he be comfortable with himself to the degree that he can uncompromisingly achieve his purpose on Earth.

The formation of the heart is imperative. A Genuine, working anthropology with a composite systematic view of reality is imperative to masculine cardial development. Male initiation is something that is being rediscovered in the West. However in true occidental, easily masticated form the 1^st step of Bill Wilson’s 12 is exactly equivalent to an Aboriginal ‘Walkabout.’ Alcoholiocs are some of the most spiritual people on Earth. Acknowledgement that our lives have become unmanageable is quite imperative to the success of the 12. In the same way that a young aboriginal man was taken to the absolute limit of his endurance we are brought to a place where this is no option but to admit that ourlives have become unmanageable. The journey to Wllson’s 1^st step is a boundary experience. The soul is then liberated for two things

1) Authentic openness to the Higher Power

2) Concurrent malleability by the Five Truths of Male initiation

With recourse to popular consciousness it is useful to understand modern currents of thought and the paradigms contained within them, they are a useful pedagogical tool.

As a very young man I was utterly scandalised by the popularly philosophical Fight Club. However the immortal line “You are not a snowflake” rung true during what Rohr describes as my initiation. Like the chosen people it is imperative we are given a conservative upbringing and that as children we are taught we are special. But then we grow up and are liberated by the knowledge that we are not. Mature people and nations who are not holistically suffused with the knowledge that they are one among many remain immature forever and harm and subjugate other people, especially where the victim complex is involved.

Ideally for mature, well-adjusted adults our conservative upbringing should be a receptacle that we confidently but up against, and taking us definivley through our adult lives. Even if I had felt called to go elsewhere I would have always desired my children to cut their spiritual teeth climbing the formidable holistic edifice that is Roman Catholicism.

It is interesting that it seems to be the opposite with Catholic Charasmatic Renewal. It seems that in our post enlightenment era only after the faithful have been trained in the non-duality and chardial chaos of the Spirit that they seem to leave and enter more juridical structures.

The highly successful adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s beautifully crafted novels onto celluloid (The Bourne Trilogy) effortlessly and stylistically carved out an anecdotal mould for rudderless European youth. I have also been particularly affected by the offerings of the young Hollywood actor Jake Gyllenthaal. Early in our relationship my wife and I were both entertained by and shocked at Love and Other Drugs. Recently I cried and laughed similtaneusly during End of Watch. The son of a LA screenwriter and of beautifully creative ethnic potentialities Gyllenthaal’s heroic condensation of the brutally comic with a similarly brutal proximity to the bone means he is one of Hollywood’s hottest properties. The popularity of these popular cultural paradigms are sometimes a yardstick for what is required to survive in the zeitgeist.

What young men popularise is often what they would like to be but know not how to become. To become men they only need to be taught the emancipating and terresterially obvious five Truths of male initiation -

1) Life is hard;

2) you are not that
important;

3) your life is not about you;

4) you are not in control;

5) you are going to
die.

The purpose of secular law is ostensibly to further justice. But any of us who have dealt with occidental juridical structures know that the law exists functionally merely to keep order. In a similar way Rohr is correct about religious law: its purpose is to “get us into the boxing ring.” We only come to see morality as a result of relationship, not the other way round. A well intentioned and self-constructing masculine soul is eventually intoxicated and stretched by the Spirit until it loses all sense of itself in the higher power. The soul is left in a blissful, elemental, pre-exile from Eden state whereby all that remains is a perfect fusion of head and heart; Heaven on Earth for a man who has hitherto tried to understand all people and phenomena cerebrally.

In being freed from himself and the need to understand the man finds himself.
The self that Ludlum's character was looking for can only be found when the ego becomes subservient to the True self, which automatically chooses the higher good.

As composite parts of the soul the essential fusion of the masculine and the feminine (head and heart) can only be brought about by the one thing that western society wishes to avoid at all costs – suffering. The soul is brought into the Divine workplace where it belongs. This is only the beginning but as law becomes subjectively obsolete like the saints, prophets and boddisatvas before him the soul is assured that all that has been initiated here will continue along the High Road to the afterlife.

In any case he has been suffused with the knowledge that it doesn’t really matter what happens to him anyway. Threats of eschatological violence are anathema. With the masculine tryptych of mind, body and soul in correctly ordained eschatological order for the first the soul genuinely pilots the man's being. His purpose becomes that by which his soul aligns the tryptych. Lewis said that God was wild. The man's heart mirrors this but at the same time like Gyllenthaal’s heroic Los Angeles policeman one thing alone matters – duty. The man can turn to humour or whatever mechanism that the True self needs in order to survive the postmodern destruction of Jeungian social archetypes..... in South Central L.A. or the Latin Quarter.

With Aristotle the man knows in his bones that it is what we do that counts.

The world and our place in it is assimilated. Life’s purpose lies ahead of us like a heavenly vista and freed from self we look towards it. It is only when we know these things in our spiritual capilliaries that we can say with immortally with Augustine

“Love and do what you will.”