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04/12/2002 Archived Entry: "3/22/02 – Speaking In the Flow"

It is an interesting thing about the flow of energy for me. Last night, as I was driving back home, I decided that I should write about consciousness. It is a good subject, but it is not the subject which is flowing as I sit here.

I remember my earliest efforts at public speaking – which was really quite some time ago. As an activist, I have been doing public speaking since the early 1960’s, when I began to speak against the War on Vietnam. Back then, I would write my speeches out, and mostly read them, trying to remember to look up and make eye contact with the audience. I can remember the terror of looking back down, having lost my place, or saying a few words that came to mind, and then trying to find my way back into the text. It was a very wearing process. I did not like it. After a while, I shifted to making a list of points to cover, but my talks felt awkward and jerky, as I shifted from topic to topic without a smooth transition. Sometimes, I would have a moment of eloquence, as my passion for the topic would overtake me, and then sort of leave me all breathless when it departed.

The problem was that all that speaking came from my mind rather than from my heart, but, then, I did not have a clue as to how to access my heart, or more accurately, that it might possible and desirable to do so. When I first entered spiritual practice, I left off activism for a while. A period of internal reflection and work on the vehicle which is myself. I began to teach yoga quite early on. In my yoga classes, I quickly learned to structure the classes so that the class and I would reach a space in which our hearts were open to one another, and from which I would speak. It is that space from which I speak and write these days. If I am not coming from that space, then it is not flowing, and not authentic.

I have returned to occasionally making lists, but I am relaxed when speaking these days. Silences are not threatening. Something I learned from Ram Dass. It is fine to pause and go inside, to see where to go next. And it is really a grace to be able to trust in the flow, to be plugged in as it were. It is more than that, more than being plugged in. When it is truly flowing, I am just a vehicle. It is flowing through me. It is important to remember that. It is not me. It is not about me. It is about sharing some truth, which is flowing through me. But I must make clear that I am not speaking of Divine revelation. Whatever is flowing through me is flowing through the vehicle that is this self, and is limited by the understanding and capacities of this vehicle. It is true that, thankfully, what comes out frequently transcends this self.

There is a core teaching in my spiritual path which can be roughly translated to mean that: "each person has a vision of God, according to the light granted to that person." I like that phrase and the understanding it implies. God, the Infinite, is Infinite, and beyond our knowing, except in part, in fragments of perception. There is no wrong or right perception, as each is unique according to our capacity, kharma, and situation.

Would that the various major religions be able to embrace that concept. Rather than, "I am the Lord thy God, and you shall have no other God’s before me." That would be OK too, if it were OK for others to have their own Gods (or God). But, unfortunately, that has not been the case. How much harm has been done to humanity, in a sense, through a profound misinterpretation of that phrase? It does not say, "I am the Lord thy God, and no one else shall have any other God’s before me." Therein has been the problem, people deciding, in the name of God, what others should or should not believe.

When I speak, I do not speak "for God," but according to the light granted to me.