BEYOND RELIGION
CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH

     "Think of this. The Church tells us Jesus spoke of himself as being 'the Way,' and that he told others, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.' He asked them to follow him and that he would show them the Way, and he believed that, utterly and without doubt. But we in our Order believe he did not say it as the Son of God. He said it as an Essene, because it was part of his daily life, and the other Essenes of his community spoke the same way, because they believed that man carried God within himself, and that the Way to find God is to search within yourself.

     Now if you think long and hard upon what that means, you might realize it means that you can talk to God in your own mind, and in your own prayers. And if you can do that, what need have you of priests? Think about that for a moment, and about what it means to our churchly fathers. If a man can talk to God in his own mind, and pray in the security of his own bosom, what need has he of priests, or of a Church - any church?" (Jack Whyte, Knights of the Black and White, a wonderful and extremely interesting book about the Knights Templers, those mysterious and holy warrior monks of the time of the first Crusades, p. 66-67.)


     There is no big daddy God out there, out in heaven somewhere, as many religions would have it. However, a few spiritual ways are more conscious and do see it differently. For the, Essenes, the Knights Templars, the Buddhists, the Taoists, and some others of us, there is a God consciousness within each and every one of us, a powerful spiritual light that will guide us through our lives if we but follow.

     How may we tap into this God Consciousness? How may we relate to it? We can begin by working on becoming more conscious, more clear and compassionate as the Buddhists would say. Doing this would involve uncovering layer upon layer of Jungian shadow stuff, gender issues, relationship challenges, and all sorts of personal and collective stuff that blocks direct communication with the God consciousness that is within each and every one of us.

     There is a path to spiritual growth, to this God consciousness that exists within each of us. This path has been called the Tao. In the West, for both Carl Jung, the Swiss analyst and holy man, and Stanislav Grof, renown for his work with LSD and rebirthing, this path follows along certain developmental stages of personal and spiritual growth. Each stage on this path, each step in our development into a conscious being, brings us closer and closer to this God consciousness.

     We begin this path by facing our shadows and coming to grips with who we really are. We overcome our fears by facing our self-hater and really looking at who we are in the world. We stop projecting our shit out onto others. We learn to deal with it ourselves.

     When we have this part of our lives under control, we begin to explore our totality, our wholeness of being that is separate from our bodies and our genders. We find and accept the woman or the man within ourselves and become complete, no longer acting out our one-sidedness upon the world stage.

     This allows us to understand our relationships and our place in the world. We no longer treat everyone we meet as though they were our mothers or our fathers. This is said by many to lead to a second birth, this time as a real person. This second birth, with its many illuminating insights and life changes, leads us naturally into exploring spiritual reality.

     I began my path to spiritual growth in Jungian analysis. I wasn't thinking of Spirit then. I was just very unhappy. I had grown up very depressed and with a huge self-hater. I was scared of everyone. I couldn't look anyone in the eye. I always felt as if I were an outsider and alone in this world. Much of this aloneness and depression came from my illness and the operations that followed when I was a little boy. I became very scared then. Some of it came from my parents who did not like who I was and tried always to make me over into their image of me.

     My parents were never happy with me. My mother never related to me as a person, instead using me to deal with my dad's lack of love for her. This, of course, had a major effect on my relationships with women. My dad was completely out of touch with his feelings. He was never affectionate with me. All he knew how to do was to boss me around. This led to my long-time rebellion against authority, which later caused me a great deal of trouble, especially when I was a flying officer in the United States Air Force. I was lucky to get out of there without a court-martial.

     A lot of my healing, first with several Jungian analysts and later, on my own doing a lot of acid, involved bringing to consciousness all the positive but unrealized aspects of my total personality. It also involved letting go of all those attitudes of my parents about myself that I had unconsciously bought into. The worst of it, and the most difficult to overcome, was their unquestioned belief that I had become a cripple, that my body had been ruined by my illness and my operations.


     I had always identified with my feminine because I had been way too close with my mother. For years, I had been stuck in an unconscious relationship with her, with her projecting her unconscious and unreal masculinity onto me and, at the same time, asking me to be more and more feminine. In addition, I had not been at all close with my dad, partly because I had bought into my mother's dislike of him and partly because he was always exasperated with me. I remember, years later, when I went to say goodbye to my dying mother. He told me then that he had been exasperated with me ever since I was three years old. He still was.

     When I met my second wife, Karen, back in the early seventies, she helped me to find the masculinity in myself. Soon after meeting her, I had a dream of being in a movie theatre with her, with her introducing me to a man in the row right in front of us. He was a 'real man.' Over time I was able to integrate this image of a real man into myself and actually become one, finally letting go of my mother's unconscious image about what a man should be like.

     Over time, after first letting go of both the masculine and feminine images that I had inherited from my parents, I was able to put these two sides of myself together in my own fashion, finally became a whole being on that level. In particular, I found that I may be in a man's body, but I am just as feminine as I am masculine.


     This work on shadow and gender identity led to me identifying with the Mana personality within me. I became inflated. I thought I was a big deal. This seems par for the course in the development of personality. In the Hindu tradition, it is one of the stages in the development of a holy person, the one where we erroneously identify with the magician within us.

     It was the same for me. I was experiencing magic all around me, and I made the understandable mistake of thinking that I was responsible for the magic, that I was a magician. I thought, for example, that I could be lovers with two women at the same time, that I could magically make it happen. I couldn't though, not at all, and the crash from my inflation then was severe and almost fatal. Later in my life, having not really learned my lesson about inflation, I repeated it with the Rainbow Family. I believed that I was a magician in those days too. I wasn't.


     These days though, I have finally learned my lessons. I'm aware of my shadow. I'm aware that I'm both masculine and feminine, although I am in a man's body, this time around anyway. I'm very aware that I'm not a magician, although magic does sometimes come around. These days, I live a simple life as a husband, father of three small boys, writer, healer, and sometimes spiritual adventurer.

     Now, most of my life is involved, together with my wife Aspen, with raising our boys. School days, we get up at six in the morning, getting them up and ready for school. I often shop for the family. I often cook, and I do most of the housework. I usually meet them at the bus when they come home from school. Aspen and I take Callahan to gymnastics twice a week. The boys and I go to the park often. I help them with their homework, although Aspen is better at this. I help feed them dinner. Then the two older boys and I rassle before undertaking the family rituals of flossing and brushing our teeth, reading or telling stories, and all the hugs and kisses and sweet dreams of bedtime. I usually get woke up at least once in a night to comfort one of the boys or to bring the baby, who's teething, to Aspen for boob comfort. I'm on mommy-daddy duty all the time.

     When I'm not busy being dad, I write for this magazine. I also publish and edit it. I facilitate kitchen table holy work groups, as well as seeing folks individually, helping them to be more conscious and compassionate.

     I have my doctorate in clinical psychology from UCLA. I began my training as a healer with the Jungians, the followers of Carl Jung. However, I soon realized that they were just like any other religion. They all made Jung too important and made too much of his teachings and his healing ways. Then they went on to claim that they, the various analysts, were special too, were the only ones who could tell us what our dreams, our messages from God, might mean.

     As a healer, my calling is different. When I work with folks, I share tools and understandings that allow them to understand God's messages themselves, whether from their dreams or from their life experiences. Doing this, I help them become more self-sufficient and conscious, hence closer to the God within themselves.

     Not everyone will find his or her inner God consciousness as I have done. There are many paths, all of them along the Tao.

     I have focused upon certain aspects of my life, given my upbringing and physical misfortunes. Because of the hurt to my body, I spend a great deal of time walking, bicycling, hiking, backpacking, doing yoga, and working out with weights. Influenced by Carl Jung, I was in Jungian analysis for years. I still pay attention to my dreams, learning about my true nature from them. These days, they are mostly course corrections, telling me when I have or am about to wander off the path. I also keep a journal that helps me see myself and my journey through life over a longer stretch of time.

     I have been very influenced by Eastern ideas, especially those I have gleaned from the Chinese holy book, the I Ching. I have consulted this holy book for the past forty-five years. It has always led me home to myself. I have also mediated for most of my adult life. Because of this, I am able to turn off my mind at will.

     And of course, I still smoke marijuana. I have for almost fifty years now. I smoke much less nowadays, but I still enjoy a good puff now and then. I did a lot of acid when I was younger. It helped me immensely. These days I'm very busy being dad, but I still plan on going off by myself someday soon and doing more, perhaps in the high mountains.

     Mostly I follow the promptings of my inner teacher, my God consciousness. He has faithfully guided me back to him and then onto the here and now of my life.


     My inner teacher and I are in parallel. He's all spirit. He's not at all able to deal with the outer world reality of people and things. He does better alone in the woods or desert, or in our head for that matter. I'm the one of us who has to deal with the outer world. I'm the one of us who has to relate to the kids, the chores and the errands, the money matters, schools, housework, doctors and all those sorts of things.

     My inner teacher and I come together best when we meditate, when we write, when we're involved with therapy, and when we do acid. We can always tell that we have become one whenever magic flows through us.

     I'm remembering that old saying that goes something like, "when you do God's work, God will provide." I'd say it differently today. I'd say, "if you are consciously connected with your inner God consciousness, your inner teacher, you will receive all that you need for the fulfillment of your life. It will all flow. You will manifest the Tao in your life."

     Knowing this gives me great peace of mind and confidence in my future as a husband, father, writer, healer, and spiritual adventurer. I know I'm on a spiritual path with heart.

     By Eugene Marks