Spirituality: About

I am a deeply spiritual person. I have always been a deeply spiritual person, although how I understand spirituality has grown and evolved. Our English word, Spiritual, is from the Latin word, Spiritus, meaning “to breathe.” Spirituality is my breath. In ancient Euro-America, breath was the life force. It was the life force in Ancient Greece and Rome, it was so in the Bible, and it still is in the Chakra system of Kundalini Yoga (made famous by Shirley MacLaine), in Taoist Alchemy and martial arts, called Qi (Ch’i). These systems are now my spirituality—I suppose that they always were; just didn’t know. 

I was raised in the Swedenborgian Church, which was modeled after the Anglican Church when it was founded in 1787—despite the mysticism of Swedenborg’s published theology. After an interrupted venture into Swedenborgian Ministry, I gravitated into academic Religious Studies—Religion and Literature, specifically. I studied at Harvard Divinity School, earned a Master of Theological Studies in Religion and Culture; and completed a Ph.D. program in Religion and Literature at the University of Virginia. I taught World Religions, Humanities, Ethics, Philosophy, and have published articles in university presses and a scholarly book on Algora Press, A Rhapsody of Love and Spirituality.

Swedenborg’s theology states, “All religion relates to life,” (Doctrine of Life, n. 1). Although I took that to heart, the question still remained, “relates to what life?”

For me, now, religion relates to a life growing deeply mystical. I am accessing inner chambers of the soul, heart, and consciousness I had not accessed before. Wild mysticism is everywhere in Swedenborg. However, the church modeled itself after Anglicanism, so it elided the mystical aspects of Swedenborg. 

I’m not elided, anymore,as I was much of my life. Beginning with Reiki treatments, followed by ongoing Distance Healings through the Ether, my Self is emergent. Synchronicity brought me into contact with Cree (Nehiyaw) Old Ones (Elders), who were willing to introduce Indigenous Ways to me. Taiji practice from Grandmaster Chen Zhonghua—19th-Generation Grandmaster tracing back to the original Chen Village that originated the art, the International Standard-Bearer handed to him by Master Hong Jun-Sheng, taught my a Taoist Sage as a child, I am initiated into the practice of Internal Alchemy. The “Web of Light” in which I have now been placed is connecting me to remarkable friends and teachers—masters of multiple disciplines I never dreamt I would meet, nor knew that I needed to meet. Over the past year or two, or so, I am enjoying a spiritual awakening of remarkable proportions. The life “all religion relates to” is a markedly different life and world view I grew up in, more expansive, more natural to the Self I am: 

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Shakespeare, Hamlet.