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BodyPrayerPath:
The Tantric Practice of
"Spirituality beyond Belief!"

Barnaby B. Barratt

The essay is under copyright – please contact Barnaby if you wish to reproduce or distribute it in any way.

Humans spend their lives longing for spiritual life. Whether we realize it or not, we live in our desire, and ultimately all desire is for the divine.

Whatever the diversity of names by which we call the divine, it is our human condition that we long to return to the Holiness of the Beloved. We share this universal longing even while our egotism is busy with its incessant effort to keep us from falling into “Her” arms.

Alienation and Suffering
We live alienated from the Sacred Unity of Love, which is our Beloved’s rhythm of compassion, appreciation and grace. Yet we long for relief from all our suffering. The Beloved is actually in each of our hearts, as the miraculous rhythm of the lifeforce that flows within us, through us, and all around us. But it is as if we have long since forgotten this Holy Spirit – it is as if we have long since forgotten how to listen to her song, and how to sing it. We live desiring the joy, ecstasy and bliss, of which we have all caught a glimpse, but to which most of us have closed our eyes.

No one says that they do not desire happiness. But most of us remain unaware of the strategies by which we repeatedly turn away from it. Such strategies are the fabric of our egotism. We live in dreams and delusions, from which we are longingly waiting to awaken. Unhappiness is all around us and -- for most of us -- it is also inscribed deep within us.

All around us, we see how human beings persecute, torture, and kill each other in fighting for “causes” – these “causes” are ultimately their own egotistic advancement. As a species, we desecrate the planet, willfully destroying its life and rendering our own garden almost uninhabitable. In a thousand-and-one ways, large and small, we hurt each other – and ourselves -- everyday.

We usually do these things for the sake of some “cause” that we hold dear to us. Such “causes” are “something we believe in.” Whether we kill another human being, abuse a child, destroy a magnificent tree, trample a flower, eat to excess while others starve, exploit and mistreat those around us, or merely hold ourselves superior to others, we usually do such things because of our core beliefs about ourselves, about others, and about the world in which we live.

Our “causes” are almost always wrapped in some dream of domination, of conquest and possession, of power, wealth, or of achieving something “everlasting.” Our “causes” are almost always bound to some fundamental belief that we are cosmically important and that others should cede to us in some way or other. There are many ideological systems that seem to justify such beliefs.
In the patriarchal tradition that characterizes the law and order of our communities – and especially in the technocratic culture that characterizes the dominant nations -- we violate others “in the name of the father” and “in the name of our sons.” We maim ourselves, cripple our children, and strive to gain advantage over others, disregarding the sanctity of life, and poisoning the planet -- apparently often doing so for the sake of what we think of as our “higher ideals.”

All such “causes” are our egotism’s misconstruction and misdirection of our own spiritual longing. We pursue egotistical dreams of domination – of political power, of accumulating material wealth, of “making a name” for ourselves in some celebrated endeavor, of creating a dynasty, or of securing endless comfort – but, even when achieved to greater or lesser degree, such accomplishments never satisfy. Happiness is never secured through domination, not even through the achievements of moral mastery and bodily self-control.

The Dreams and Delusions of our Egotism
So perhaps we need to reconsider the human condition. And perhaps the fundamental problem of human life is not that we embrace the wrong “causes,” but that we attach ourselves to such “causes” at all. In other words, perhaps the fundamental human problem concerns our propensity for belief – that is, our propensity to think that happiness means having goals in which we believe, and which we might finally accomplish.

After all, we humans always seem to attach ourselves through a bewilderingly varied array of beliefs -- to goals of power, of wealth, of celebrity, of physical beauty and athleticism, of moral superiority, of “high ideals,” or of the attachments we call “love.” In relation to these goals, we dream of our “just rewards,” if not here and-now, then at least there-and-then, in some unknown afterlife. But it cannot be overemphasized that, even in their appearance of attainment, such goals always betray us.

Kings as well as paupers breathe in their own unhappiness. Robber barons, Nobel laureates, media stars, and simple folk from “good families” all know the suffering of unhappiness. Whatever our beliefs and whatever our accomplishments, nothing insulates us from the eventual deterioration and decay of all we have achieved. Nothing protects us from disease and death. One way or another, we all experience hardship, pain and loss.

The most important point here is that, even while thirsting for spiritual relief, we actually perpetuate our own suffering and the suffering of all others by questing for our “true beliefs.”

This is because, in the pursuit of our goals, we separate ourselves from the divine flow of the universe. We separate ourselves from the Sacred Unity of all that is and is not, both by propounding our absurd beliefs – our smug assurance that we know what is “right,” and that we know others to be “wrong” – and by then imposing our beliefs on ourselves and on those around us. In this sense, however “altruistic” our beliefs may appear to be, all beliefs are egotistic and no ideological “cause” can ever be benign.

Religion as Opiate
Religious belief is the prime culprit. Because when we recognize that our material accomplishments will not grant us happiness, it is our religious beliefs – as distinct from our spiritual practice – that step into the breach.

“If we are not happy with our material circumstances,” our religions tell us, “at least we can take comfort in knowing that we are in the right, and we can secure ourselves in the knowledge that our righteousness will be rewarded in some other time and place.” In this way, our egotism mistakenly attempts to address our spiritual thirst by means of the “spiritual” chicanery of its “faith” in the belief systems it concocts. In this sense, spiritual life can never be attained through religious affiliation, and the religious promotion of “righteousness” and “true belief” becomes the major perversion of spiritual practice.

Yet only spiritual life can be the wellspring of our happiness. Neither material success, nor subscription to the “right beliefs,” but only spiritual life can bring us happiness. And it is this double addiction – to material gratifications and to the comforts of “correct belief” – that keeps us human beings out of our spiritual potential. Let us consider this rather provocative notion further.

We all become variously addicted to “religious beliefs,” to superstition and to our egocentric sense of moral superiority. We become addicted to them just as we become addicted to substances … from hamburgers to heroin. We become addicted to them just as we become addicted … to political power and social approval … to economic gain and material wealth … to the hocus pocus of magical thinking that often masquerades as “spirituality” … to a specious sense of immortality purchased in the coinage of our “future historical significance” … to our hope for miracles … to our nostalgia for “better times” … or to cheap thrills and to all the opiates of our commercial media. It seems more or less universal that we strive to find meaning in all these pursuits and we mistakenly believe their achievement will make us happy. We are devotedly attached to our absurdities. We are all addicts.

Stepping onto the tantric spiritual path, we come to understand that all these beliefs and pursuits are not what bring us human beings into the presence of Love. Rather, they are what keep us out of Love’s presence. Yet, we continue to stake our lives on them. We continue to be sure that greater achievements, better beliefs, or more righteousness, will save us from our unhappiness. In this way, we live in dreams and delusions.

Here we will come to understand that the fundamental human problem is our egotism’s attachment to itself, and to its propensity to hold fast to its own beliefs – often mischaracterizing these beliefs as contributive to our spiritual life. Actually, our egotism cannot tolerate the intensity of our spiritual longing, nor can it tolerate the authentic gratification of our spiritual desire. This is because our authentic spiritual enlightening would entail the dissolution of our egotism. So instead we concoct “spiritual” substitutes and alongside our lust for social power and economic grandeur religious affiliation is available as the major substitute. This is why religious belief comes to be the reigning perversion of spiritual life, and releasing ourselves from religion – as well as from all other addictions – is perhaps the “first step” in returning to our spiritual sourcing.

Let us be carefully clear about this. It is not to be denied that religions are generated in the endeavor to address our spiritual desire. Nor is it to deny that perhaps every religion houses spiritual practice at its mystical core – often a core that has been long since forgotten. Rather, it is to recognize that it is our attachment to belief systems as such – as well as to the anesthetics of a commercialized culture -- that actually obstructs our access to all that is divine. Whether our beliefs are about “God,” the self corrective functioning of the capitalist marketplace, “what women really want,” which cable channel “really tells it like it is,” or the importance of eating a nutritious lunch, our egotism’s attachment to this judgmentalism is actually the force that alienates us from experiencing here-and-now the divine Sacred Unity of life itself.

A belief in some version of “the big G in the sky” is the most conspicuous example of this alienation. In one-way or another, it seems this “supreme ego” always keeps issuing commands that would curb or censor our potential for happiness here and now. For example, “He” always seems to be issuing directives that are anti sexual and, as we will see, anti-spiritual.

From the earliest mythologies, “He” has been, even at his best, a half hearted advocate for humanity’s erotic freedom. More typically, he has been a vehement killjoy toward that most sacred of human pleasures -- lovemaking. Even when he is not fanatic on chastity, he always insists that our erotic pleasures be constrained and restrained within a system of tight regulations and prohibitions. Mollified only by the sort of praise and petitioning that is commonly called “prayer,” he seems to relish our immersion in shame and guilt, inconsiderately presiding over an anxiety-ridden populace.

Characteristically, “He” punishes infractions and rewards pious affiliation (but rarely is the reward to be enjoyed here-and-now, more commonly we are placed on a system of earned credit in which our “just rewards” are only to be savored at some other time and place). Perhaps most egregiously, he seems to invite us to trash the planet -- to view ourselves as “made in his image” and therefore justified in lording ourselves over nature. He invites us to condemn all those who do not believe in our egotism’s own image of “his magnificence.”

Crusades, inquisitions, pernicious prejudice, pogroms and genocidal destructiveness are all endemic to a belief in our moral superiority. And even without direct incitement to violence, the same moral superiority is preached from every pulpit. This is the smug “spiritual knowledge” that “our faith is better than theirs,” that we are the chosen, the saved or the elect, that we are therefore righteous in promoting ourselves over unbelievers, and that we are justified in imposing our beliefs upon the conduct of others. Hostility and violence to whatever is “other” inheres to every religious faith – even when tolerance and “love for humanity” may be what is preached. In short, the hostility of judgmentalism is always operative whenever moralizing codes and ideologies are propounded.

This simplistic and reductive version of the “supreme deity” is, of course, not the only theological rendition. But note that the issue here is not the naiveté of some of our cherished beliefs. Rather, the crucial issue is our fundamental addiction, namely our attachment to belief itself. Supposedly sophisticated versions of theology generate similar abuses to that of the “big G in the sky.” If we formulate our faith in terms of some “Absolute Idea,” a “Higher Power,” or set of “Great Ideals and Values,” we sooner or later generate the selfsame consequences. Again, the crucial problem is not what we believe; it is that we are attached to belief itself. The judgmentalism of our chattering mind is the major obstruction to our spiritual life.

The Addictions of our Chattering Mind
We are all attached to the identifications, positions and stories that our egotism pronounces. This attachment to beliefs – the attachment to our own judgmentalism – is the indispensable condition, the sine qua non, of our egotism. Beliefs and ideologies are the warp and woof of our egotism’s clinging to itself -- its craven mandate to construct an edifice for itself by which it might prevent its own dissolution into the magnificence of the divine. By its attachment to its own judgmentalism, our egotism keeps us alienated from the godliness of Holy Spirit, which actually flows here and now within and through all that is and is not.

This is why we say that spiritual life has little or nothing to do with what we conventionally call “religion” and, sadly, that religious belief is the prototypical perversion of spirituality. Our addictions keep us out of spiritual life – our clinging and craving is the cause of all our unhappiness. Our main addiction, our attachment to belief – this insistence on living in the domain of dreams and delusions as if they were real -- supports our egotism, whereas our spiritual awakening is the harbinger of our egotism’s extinction.

Let us consider briefly how human egotism operates. Basically, our attachment to multifarious belief systems and ideologies – which is our egotism’s attachment to its own judgmentalism – gives our egotism a spurious sense that it is itself “really real.” The judgmentalism of our chattering mind appears to assure our egotism that it is secure and substantial. So our chattering mind constructs a world for itself by separating everything into binary categories -- such as either/or, present/absent, good/bad, pleasure/pain, life/death, me/not-me -- and then deciding that one pole is “better” and the other “worse.” This is how thinking, “in our head,” functions.

We organize the world into dichotomous hierarchies, such that, whenever we become attached to this judgmentalism, something “other” always has to be condemned. The incessant formulation, enunciation and exchange, of these judgments supports our egotism’s delusional sense that it is living in a “real” world, albeit of its own construction, and therefore that it must itself be secure and substantial. Our egotism persistently operates to sustain, endorse and elaborate its delusional sense that it can itself be stable, rational, masterful, and even immortal. So long as our chattering mind continues its chatter, our egotism assures itself that it is present or “real” – despite the fact that the edifice it constructs always consists of representations of matters that are invariably past and future.

Promulgating judgments about “God” or about other ultimate matters, and propounding moralizing ideologies – rules and regulations about how we all should live – is an especially intoxicating “head trip” for our egotism, since it permits us to assure ourselves that we are not only “real,” but also righteous in comparison to others.

So our egotism constructs this edifice of judgmentalism. It requires us to reside in the domain of incessantly and compulsively repeated identifications, positions, and stories. It is addictively attached to all these beliefs and ideologies, precisely because it is terrified of its own evaporation. As such, our attachment to beliefs is always inherently fundamentalist and fascistic. It is fundamentalist in that our root purpose in propounding any belief – even those that appear mundane, relativistic, or tolerant of dissent – is always to assure our egotism of its own “reality,” against the possibilities of its expansive opening and dissolution. It is fascistic in that all judgmentalism – even when applied in a manner that appears altruistic, liberal or emancipative – always asserts a spurious unity against some “other” that is outside this unity.

Our egotism solidifies its position by creating its world of separation and condemning something “other” for its putative inferiority. This is how the judgmentalism of our chattering mind is responsible for producing and reproducing the tyranny of human malice. Our judgmentalism is always fundamentalist and fascist in its inherent structure and function, even if not always in its apparent content. This fundamentalism and fascism is precisely the dimension of our human condition that refuses to dance with the divine flow of life itself as we experience it spiritually.

Sadly, fundamentalism and fascism are the apotheosis of our egotism – they do not dance, and they alienate us from dancing the liveliness of life itself.

Returning to the Liveliness of Life
Instead of attaching ourselves to our judgmentalism, we might listen to what whispers in the wind. We might look carefully at the waves upon the shore. We might feel delicately the breathing momentum of our own bodymind, the pulsations of life within and all around us. We might surrender our being-in-the-world to our spiritual life.

The lifeforce flows gloriously within us, through us, and all around us, promising to sweep us away in its abundance and exuberance. This lifeforce pervades all that is and is not. It is the difference-in-unity and unity in difference of what our chattering mind dichotomizes as presence and absence. The breathing of the lifeforce within us intimates how each presence includes its own absencing. It intimates to us how an ecstatic emptiness infuses all the apparent manifestations of presence and absence.

The lifeforce is the timespace in which presence and absence are united in their difference -- or différance as deconstructive philosophy phrases it. It is the dynamic process of presencing and absencing, to which Buddhist practice alludes as the Emptiness pervading all that is and is not. This is the Emptiness that is Compassion in all presencing absencing of the lifeforce itself, the Compassion of this Sacred Unity.

This is a timespace profoundly different from – or otherwise than -- the time and space of all the pasts and futures that our chattering mind keeps representing to us. It is Holy Spirit, our Beloved – the supreme flow of the universe, which is that of the truthfulness of Love.

The lifeforce presents us with the deathfulness inherent to every moment of life itself. In this sense, life and death are as inseparable as presence and absence. They are co-creative in every moment of this here-and-now. This inherent deathfulness constitutes the liveliness of life itself, presenting itself in the breathing flow of our erotic desire -- into which our egotism would dissolve, as if drowning in the suffusion of our erotic energies. Against the awareness of this flow of the lifeforce, our egotism – because it is terrified of its own extinction -- desperately attaches itself to the delusion of its own permanence and significance. And so our chattering mind judges matters incessantly, for our egotism cannot allow us to live otherwise, which would be to live in our hearts and in the wisdom of the erotic energies of our bodymind. Thus our egotism takes its stand against the inherent deathfulness of the lifeforce, as if by the persistence of chatter it could secure and substantiate its own grandeur and immortality. It condemns us to live “in our heads.”

Our addictive judgmentalism is precisely this vain effort to stem the deathfulness of the erotic energies that flow abundantly and exuberantly through our embodiment. All our identifications, positions and stories function to obstruct the flow of the lifeforce within us – they are coagulations of energy designed to fortify our egotism, and convince it that it is indeed real and righteous.

They are fundamentalist and fascistic -- they hold us back from the dance. Each belief to which we are attached is an attempt to block the liveliness of our erotic desire, because the attachment is an effort to secure our egotism in its illusory and delusional self imprisonment. Our egotism’s other addictions – whether to the ingestion of substances or to the headiness of social, economic and political power over others – also comprise an attempt to obstruct the liveliness of our erotic desire. The edifice of our egotism is constructed precisely as an anti-sexual and anti spiritual impediment to our enlightening.

So this is the key to understanding our spiritual life, not as special medley of beliefs in which we may profess the attachments of faith, but rather as a living experience available to all of us in any moment of this here-and-now. We experience openings – glimpses of this – as soon as we allow ourselves to hear the whispering of the wind, to gaze at the waves on the shore, and to follow the erotic pulsations of life within the rhythms of our bodymind. As soon as our egotism steps aside, the Holy Spirit of all that flows within us, through us, and around us, is revealed. This is the Beloved of our heart’s desire, and the blessing of our erotic embodiment. As our egotism’s attachment to itself -- its addiction to the chattering of its judgmentalism, along with all its projections onto an egotistic “God” – disintegrates, we come into an immediate experience of the divine. Holy Spirit is revealed within us, coursing through us, and moving all around us. This is our heart’s desire and the momentum of our erotic being in-the-world that becomes evident as soon as we release ourselves from our imprisonment in our own egotism.

The Threefold Way of the BodyPrayerPath
In sum, spiritual life is not about beliefs. It is a living experience. Spiritual life means accessing -- and aligning ourselves with -- the divine. To return ourselves to the Beloved entails realigning ourselves with our erotic energies -- our readiness to surrender ourselves, with awareness, to the magnificent flow of the lifeforce, and to cultivate our awareness of Holy Spirit. Spiritual life means living in meditation.*

Meditation is the prayerful way of living, by which we align ourselves with Holy Spirit, the Beloved that is the supreme flow of the universe, the truthfulness of Love. This is the tantric way – the way of the “bodyprayerpath.” The initiating “step” on this path involves spiritual practices that invite our egotism’s unsettlement and dissolution. We practice meditation as an expansively opening and releasing process that frees us from our egotism’s addictive attachments to itself. Thus, spiritual life reveals the Beloved and reunites us with Holy Spirit. There are three methodical dimensions to spiritual practice. These are three modes of practice that are actually one and the same:

• In meditation, we work and play to invite the dissolution of our egotism’s attachment to itself. This means that we cultivate our Compassionate Witness, becoming aware whenever habitual patterns of belief are promulgated by our chattering mind, and gently bidding goodbye to our tendency to hold onto them, merely by watching these repetitive patterns arise and disperse like clouds in the sky, and thus loosening our attachment to all that obstructs the flow of the lifeforce, or prana, within us.
• In meditation, we work and play to cultivate heart fully the erotic potential of our bodymind. This means that we invite the sacred energies that are our lifeforce to unsettle us, and to set us alight. With awareness, we cultivate the juiciness of our embodiment, surrendering ourselves to the supreme vibration and flow of the universe, which is that of the truthfulness of Love.
• In meditation, we align ourselves with Holy Spirit, the Beloved that flows everywhere within us, through us, and all around us. This means that we awaken and become aware. We open ourselves, release ourselves, and expand ourselves, onto the spiritual path that is ethical, existential and experiential. We celebrate life on this “pathless path,” freeing ourselves from the malicious tyranny of judgmentalism, and bringing ourselves home to compassion, appreciation, and grace.

In this way, spiritual life is a releasing, and expansive opening, and an attuning or aligning. No belief in “God” is required and, indeed, such beliefs are more than liable to obstruct our appreciation of the “godliness” that resides in all that is and is not. This enlightening of ourselves – our opening, releasing, and expanding into the divine -- comes with the dissolution of our egotism, as we surrender ourselves into the ecstatic emptiness of Love’s vibration.

In this way, spiritual practice means living in meditation. We are invited to let go this chattering mind, so as to experience the ubiquitous presence of Love itself -- as the liveliness of the lifeforce itself – the Sacred Unity or Holy Spirit of all that is and all that is not. Living ethically – in contrast to living under the governance of moralizing judgmentalism – allows us to fall into the arms of the Beloved, to experience Love as the universal presence of Holy Spirit. Through living spiritually -- living in meditation -- we fall into the holiness of compassion, appreciation and grace. We surrender our judgmental egotism so as to fall into the ethicality of our alignment with the supreme vibrational flow of the universe, which is that of the truthfulness of Love. On the tantric path, we return to living life by surrendering ourselves to the Sacred Unity of Love.