Teaching from the Light Includes the Sacred in Everything

Aloha!

The part of teaching from the Light that is hardest to express is that it cannot divorce the student's brain and soul. I am no longer comfortable with leaving the spiritual aspect of the world out of teaching about the world. The humanities, the sciences, mathematics -- these are information about the human soul. Literature should be taught for its lessons about ourselves. Then it is useful. Science should be taught for what it shows us about how we look at things.

At heart, when you divorce spirituality from the rest of education, you create a dried-up information base. Since it is dried up, it is easy to divide any object of attention into smaller pieces and analyze the pieces separately. We then conclude that we have "understood" the object.

But we have not, because we have missed the Spirit that imbues it. We know what the object is made of, but we still do not know what it is.

This separatism pervades human thought because the immanent Spirit is left out of our perceptions. Teaching from the Light puts the pieces back together. We write from our reading, read to our writing. We encounter math, science, physics, story-telling, art and music in their original wholeness on the beach, in the forest, wherever we go. If we understand what we see as expressions of the One Spirit, we understand these things in their wholeness, not separately.

The result is systemic thinking -- making choices and reacting for everyone involved, with the knowledge that all things are imbued with a living Spirit and so "everyone" also means "everything." In the terms used by alchemy, the leaden human soul sees only divisions and categories. The golden soul sees a single Body that includes all things. We are Its arteries, Its vessels, Its nerve ganglions. Our word for it is God.

We connect to It at the deepest place of our own soul, and this is where creative inspiration comes from. By daring to connect to the God inside ourselves, we hear the Sacred energy in words, in music, we see it in art. And we are so stricken and pierced by the beauty of it that we dare to disturb the sounds of silence. We find our voice, because it is the voice of the Sacred, and now we allow It to speak through us.

A Light Teacher, then, would teach music composition by first training the student to go to this God-place inside his or her own soul, and listen at that Portal for the music of the world. A Light Teacher of literacy skills would start from the same skill, and guide the student to listen for a flow of words at the Portal. The art student will watch for visionary perceptions, visual aspects of that glory.

Then and only then, can the act of creation begin. Your independence as a creator expresses through the way you bring what you have seen and heard to fruition. That is, I hear music at the portal and I render it as best I am able with my limited skills. It comes out sounding like blues polyphony, because that's what I play.

Mozart might listen at the same Portal within himself and produce a classical symphony, because his skills were different from and greater than my own. The final result is entirely personal, but it is driven by a universal Flame that others recognize and are drawn to, like hungry moths looking for that Light.

The Flame conveys emotion to the observer, and Eric Clapton said the ability to communicate emotion is the difference between a good guitarist and a great guitarist.

Dr. Matt

The Teacher's Journey

What a life it is! For forty years I woke up in the morning, got dressed, went to work. I thought that was all there was.

Then I woke up inside.

Now by focusing I can enter a space where my whole being seems to peel back in layers, and Light that is alive and speaks to me approaches and fuses with the Light inside me. I enter into a pool of bliss in which there is only One, and it is both God and me. It is the classic mystical experience, but it has become immediately available to me.

How can we understand the changes that brings on? I used to be an English teacher. I am still a teacher - a good one. But the Light experiences change one's agenda. I am a different person now, than I was before I knew such ecstatic fusion with the Sacred was even possible. You can't move in and out of bliss experiences regularly without losing your murderous edge.

I stopped fighting with people. That made it hard to be a teacher. Teachers are under constant pressure from parents, students and administration. It is a continuous battle for all of us, which we win by staying calm. But I am no longer interested in fighting. I think it is a basic failure to comprehend the situation, and that basic failure permeates education.

What is the situation? There is only the Light. There is just One Thing. We are all pieces of it. If I hit another, I have hit my mother, my father, myself. It is better, then, not to hit. That's what the Light taught me. It is simple and direct and nobody understands it. We just keep fighting.

So after a period of shock during which I departed from one teaching job and stopped seeking a career position with the other, I am rebuilding the whole "teacher" idea, to offer the classes I am able to offer now. They are different in three important ways.

One is that they will be conducted in the world, not in a classroom. I am presently blessed by being able to use Small Town Coffee in Kapa'a as an evening venue. Thank you, Anni!

Another difference is that they are all about how to do something. Literary studies are strangely unreal -- they don't do anything but produce more literary studies. In private classes at Small Town Coffee during the last school year I have been making my literary PhD useful by using it to help people do their own creative writing. My book How to Write Heroic Tales, which has evolved from those classes, should be available at Amazon some time soon. Thank you, students!

Since I am also an active composer who has produced about twenty hours of classical-blues polyphony in the last 3 years, I am going to teach people how to write polyphonic pop music, expanding the principles of twelve-bar-blues into larger patterns. And since I have 20 years of training and experience as a woodworker, specializing in wood ornament, I am going to teach people to make carved / veneered boxes. Every course has to result in a useful product of some kind.

The third difference is something I have established through years of experiment and observation: creative inspiration comes from the Light. My creative life has spiked sharply upwards as I learned to contact and communicate with the Light. And I will teach my students how to contact the Light themselves and use it either for prayer or creative inspiration. Kauai is a very strong place for the Light experience, which is why I am here. That will be a part of every course.

I doubt if I could teach that in any school but my own. Perhaps deep post-graduate work always brings one to such distant outposts. But so it is, at any rate, for me.

Dr. Matt Miller

Morning Prayer

Morning Prayer

I wake, and fragments of yesterday

plunge through the tunnels of my soul –  

But I let the light wash them away

and I let its sweetness make me whole.

I float in a pool of ecstatic light

Sweetened to stay soft in the fight –

Warriors whose wars will never cease

Will lie amazed in my place of peace.

Ladler in soup kitchens, tired but true,

I’ll pass out bowls of light to you.

The Archetypal Fiction Class Ends

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Well, my Archetypal Fiction class at Small Town Coffee has come to an end, after 21 fun Thursdays! At the end of its term, it gave birth to a small Writer’s Workshop, in which I and some of the Archetypal Fiction students will just get together over a weekly potluck to read our work and comment helpfully on what we hear. We are all teachers and all students: price of admission is something good to eat.

We had a great time the first evening of the Workshop, reading each other long free-verse poems we have written and looking at how they link to music. I played a recording of myself reading a narrative poem called The Pirate Band Laments Its Fallen King, in sync with the music of the pirate band itself – or rather themselves, since there are really two pirate bands, one with electric guitars and the other with a piano and other classical instruments like flutes and trumpets. They get into a musical competition to see who can lament their fallen king the best, and we hear their sad conversation about the Great Man when he still walked the decks and ruled their lives.

I had just seen Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time when I created the words and music, and  this was a weird spin-off from that unique movie experience. It all seemed so real to me at the time, I developed a short story from the lyrics. Who knows where these things come from?

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Partnership

I am Dr. Matt Miller, PhD in Medieval English Literature, poet, composer, wood-carver and practicing mystic. 

In the mid-1990’s I began a prayer dialogue with the Holy Spirit that still continues. In our exchanges She has patiently taught me seven universal truths about human life, by showing me how they are at work in each life situation that arises. Using these seven steps to direct experience of the Sacred has turned my life around from bitterness and anger to peace, acceptance and an unquenchable desire to help others who suffer. 

She has told me that She came "from the volcano on Kauai," over 60 million years ago when it was still active. Her first people called her Hina. But many thousands of years ago She moved across the world and came to be known in many places by many names.This extraordinary mythology is combined, in the seven verses of this poem, with the seven great Teachings that guide the human soul to inner peace and deep pure experiences of bliss. 

The second verse concerns Her second  Teaching: Partnership with the Holy Spirit in all things.

2. Partnership

And now the darling of the Unknown One, the Holy Spirit

That moves upon the waters has sent forth Her heart,

Burning, from Kauai’s flowery gala

Across the world where She has many names. 

Yet She is known through them, and they reach to Her airy

Effortless perfection, to Fruit that cannot fall or fail,

The Holy Spirit, Word spoken on the waters in the dawn

That brings the blooming, buzzing world to being. 

She is the Partner of our secrecy

The mother of all known Divinity.

To shape a people, let Hina come forth

From ancient memories that the wise have heard,

They who sat at Her feet in time’s beginning

They who shaped their lives around Her words.

Now understand: the core lies in one Thing,

One Thing pervading all, so all the fighting

Working sharing loving quarreling people

And the people of the sea, the air, the earth,

All join into a single shining ring

Of fellowship, for though many paths run

All lead to the same peak where all are One.

Choose the partner of your ancestors,

And by your partner we shall know your truth.

Centering Prayer: Step 1) on the Path to Direct Experience of the Sacred

This begins our review of seven states of consciousness which lead like a Path to healing, anesthetic bliss, with an account of the first state of consciousness, Centering Prayer.

The first state of consciousness is generated by a process now called Centering Prayer (Keating Open Mind Open Heart), although in centuries past its name was contemplatio. This is a Christian form of meditation, which entered Christianity from the 6^th c. Syrian writings of Pseudo-Dionysius. 

The process of Centering Prayer is quite simple. Find a place of stillness and peace; a forest glade, a garden, a silent room after midnight when the world sleeps. You can have gentle music playing if you like. There sit comfortably so your body does not call out to you to move.

Then listen to your own inner talk. It is composed of thoughts and thoughts about the thoughts. Here is how you short-circuit it to reach inner silence. You will have a thought. Do not think about that thought. Don’t follow it up or explore its implications. Don't reject it or start thinking about how you don't want to think about that. Just accept it and let it float away.

There will be a moment of stillness. Then another thought will occur to you. Handle it the same way. Don’t follow it up. Don't fight it either, because resisting requires other thoughts. Just accept it and let it float away.

Reduce your mental activity to that one repeated act: just accept it and let it float away. The repetition has a lulling, hypnotic effect on the brain.

If a thought is particularly persistent, repeat a prearranged word mentally to drown it out. The word can be anything that has a peaceful, safe affect for you – Abba (Father) or Love are good words to use, but in fact the repetition of any word will short circuit the thinking process so your brain lets the thought go. The peaceful affect just helps the brain relax and stop babbling.

As you keep doing this, gradually your brain will catch on that you aren’t interesting in thinking right now; that it can rest. The flow of thoughts it generates will slow down, and then stop altogether. You enter a place of silence, in which you are still perceiving the world around you, but not reacting to your perceptions. Reality just flows through you like an empty channel.

You have entered a state of Empty Mind, the second of the seven states of consciousness leading towards bliss. Hold on it for a while. Keep your eyes open, so you still perceive the world. But do not react to it. Just be there. Feel the tensions flow out of you when you do not maintain them by constant mental commentary. It is a peaceful garden within yourself that you can enter any time, even for a few minutes at work. It heals stress, renegotiates anger, makes you stronger for grief. 

Without tension, stress, anger and grief,  you are much less aware of the separations between objects, people and places. In the Empty Mind state of consciousness generated by Centering Prayer, a shadowy new way of seeing the world seems to drift in and out of focus -- as if it were all One Thing, not many things. You have a strange sense of belonging to a great Community which includes all things, through which whether living or dead there penetrates a living, sentient Spirit. The closer your Empty Mind takes you to this all-penetrating, angelic Presence the sweeter and more blissful your Emptiness becomes. But thinking brings up separations, and the sweetness fades away.

This is the gift of Centering Prayer -- not only the inner peace it brings, but also this joyous, oceanic sense of the cosmic Oneness of all things. Men such as Richarde Bucke, Gopi Krishna and Ravindra Kumar believe that the human species is evolving into a type of being that can connect with that healing Oneness at will. By practicing Centering Prayer you are evolving yourself into a higher being with that angelic power, right here and now, rather than waiting thirty thousand years for Nature to do it for your distant descendants.

Check out the next blogs, which will review Empty Mind, the second state of consciousness on the path to bliss. For more detail, my book What Happened to Happiness?, refers the seven states of consciousness to their descriptions in thirteen ancient traditions.

The Monks on the Stair

I was raised to believe “community” meant myself, my friends and family, and our domestic animals. All other living things were outsiders. And of course, you can’t be in community with inanimate objects.

But very rarely something would happen that suggested to me that there was a much larger community which I could be entering into if I only knew how. This community included things so different that it was many years before I saw they all belonged to the same community – a community, it seems, of all things. My first revelation about this community, in 1960 when I was seven years old, was that it also included things that I had been taught were “dead” and so could not communicate.

My family spent that year in Europe. We visited an abbey whose name I have forgotten. After going down into the crypt to see the tombstones, we climbed up a long shallow flight of stone steps, with stone walls on each side, to a distant door that opened into the cathedral of that abbey.

I had been feeling very strange in the crypt – not physically strange, exactly, and yet it was physical, too.  Something compelled me to linger behind. I wanted to feel that strangeness alone. I lagged back, and my parents and sister went up without noticing I was no longer right behind them. They passed into the upper church, a bright rectangle of sunshine – and the door closed. I was alone in the semi-gloom of the cold stone staircase. The strange feeling closed around me. But I was not afraid.

I reached out a small hand to steady myself against the damp stone wall. When my fingers touched the stone, I suddenly saw a line of hooded men walking slowly up the stairs in single file. They were singing, all together on one note, a lugubrious tune in an unknown tongue. They were so close I could have touched them.

Startled, I removed my hand from the stone. Immediately I was alone in the echoing stone stairwell. I did not run. I understood it was not necessary. But I did not linger either, and I was very careful not to touch the stones of that wall again. I moved quickly up the steps and into the lighted church. There I stood with my family, but very much alone, remembering. I said nothing of what I had seen.

I knew they would think it was a ghost. I would not be able to explain how I knew those hooded men were not ghosts. But I understood clearly that the stone of the wall I touched had shown me something it remembered from long ago. And it stayed in my mind that the stone was alive, and could think and remember just like me.

Coming soon!  Blog 3: The Parting of the Veil