The Industry of Spirituality

With the emerging New Age movement and the popularization of spirituality in the West, from the mainstream practice of Eastern disciplines such as yoga, meditation, Tibetan Buddhism and ayurveda; to the phenomenon of channeling, angel readings, chakra balancing, tantric workshops and the like, has come another element: the industrialization of spirituality. Around the world, people are making millions of dollars off of others, by offering their various spiritual practices, services and products at a price. And my view, is that there is nothing necessarily wrong with that!

Get Real About the New Age Movement

To start things off here, I will be up front about who will most likely NOT find this article interesting. If you have no belief in a spiritual realm, then this probably won't interest you. If you subscribe to one of the major world religions and you are happy with that explanation of God, life, the universe and everything, then what I will be discussing below probably isn't your thing. And if you're a conspiracy theorist looking for proof that the New Age movement is a vast Illuminati conspiracy, then this discussion will no doubt leave you disappointed. Rather, the audience this article is directed towards are those who are spiritually-minded, yet who are not satisfied with accepting and following one of the mainstream religious paradigms.

What Will Really Happen in 2012?

Of course, only time and unfolding events will tell. Nobody knows for sure, and anyone who thinks they do will almost certainly be proved wrong. But I think it's very clear to those of us who have been watching things for the past 20 years or so, reading the messages of the Mayan elders and various ancient civilizations, the Pleiadians, Kryon, Arcturians, and so many others, that the prophecies that were being given about a major shift during this timeframe are very much coming true. And even many who have been too busy or uninterested or not exposed to the esoteric topics and spiritual evolution, etc., are also now beginning to suspect that something strange and mystifying is going on; and multitudes around the world are beginning to contemplate at some level that life as we currently know it might be due for some major changes, beyond anything we've experienced in recent human history.

New Website: Kundalini-fire.com (Click Here)

I have a brand new spiritual website, Kundalini-fire.com. Just click the subject line above to go to my new site.

"The Goddess Quest" is now "The Mystery of Woman"

I changed the title of my book "The Goddess Quest" to "The Mystery of Woman" to better capture what the book is about. I've also added four new fascinating articles, including a 15-page interview with Maya Yonika, subject of the tantra documentary "Sex Magic: Manifesting Maya". Click the subject line above or copy the link below for lots more info about the new version of the book (available as both an e-book and as a paperback), as well as my other books:

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Gabrieltraveler

Here's a piece submitted from one woman for "The Goddess Quest"

Following is a piece written by Kylie Devi for my upcoming book, "The Goddess Quest: A Guide for Men Seeking the Divine, Ecstatic Feminine". She allowed me to share this with others for now to help give some inspiration to those who want to be involved in the project. I am still seeking writing submissions from both men and women for the book, through the month of February, 2011. You can scroll down this page further for lots more info, or else CLICK ON THE SUBJECT LINE ABOVE to join my group on Facebook where I'll be keeping people updated with any developments related to the book...


I Want Burning:
Loving a Woman on the Spiritual Path
by Kylie Devi

As I see it, there are two types of relationships people have with each other. There is the need-based, emotionally attached, I’ll-do-this-if-you-do-that type of being with each other; or there is a relationship where two people (or perhaps more) choose from a space of love, freedom and awareness, cultivating interactions from an evolved perspective.

In the second type of relationship, participants must let go of attachment, expectation and projections. However, boundaries are perfectly acceptable. It is not an “anything goes free-for-all” just because it is a relationship based on the principles of spiritual freedom. Rather, the foundation of this type of relating is integrity, trust and a profound sense of respect for the other as self. We do not intentionally play games, inflict harm or attempt to deceive in this platform. We gently nudge the other when they fall prey to illusory mental phenomena that causes suffering, and we always remember that even if we do become seduced by this type of trickery, that the other is never the cause of our suffering and we are responsible for what we perceive and how we act based on our perception. There is no exception to this, and we are impeccable with it.

I must say, loving a woman—and loving a woman well—is one of the finer accomplishments a man or woman could achieve in this lifetime. Loving her spirit and allowing her to be totally free is a gorgeous offering to this planet. Women, like the Earth herself, have been subjugated, dominated and controlled for somewhere around 6,000 years now; so loving a woman wholly while allowing her to express herself fully is almost a revolutionary contribution to human development and the evolution of consciousness. The constraining social and cultural paradigms we have lived in for the last several millennia has been for women like a flower that is allowed to grow at the stem alone, the beautiful petals being plucked before they are ready, exploited, rushed…and then sent into a torrent of wind, landing here and there but never really shining with the depth of beauty that she was born to be.

There are feminists and scholars who explain this phenomena, and there is also a trace of anger in some schools of thinking about the whole thing. I am not here to man bash or purport any type of hatred. I am simply bringing up a historical fact that can explain much about the collective psyche of the female mind. She in fact is much more primal, more body-centered, more wild and more loving then we have allowed her to be. Let’s allow her to be, then.

Have you ever loved the type of woman who simply cannot be captured? Her beauty shines through strikingly even in the most mundane moments. And yet, you cannot even fathom what her beauty is made of. She is wild one moment and peaceful the next, ecstatic for no comprehensible reason, and then sobbing into her hands at something you cannot perceive or relate to only minutes later. In her eyes you see the depth of the universe, yet she can seem so youthful, innocent. It almost seems like she needs your protection, but then...there she goes, she is free. She is untameable. She is likely to do the most profound things you have ever seen, and then on a whim make choices that perplex and stupefy, and which generally receive no explanation other than a coy smile. This, my Beloveds, is the story of any man or woman who has ever loved a woman who is in love with Love, the mystic fire.

Rumi writes:

“I want burning, burning;
Be friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression!
Moses,
those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn are another.”

(From “Moses and the Shepherd,” by Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks)

This most certainly refers to the second type of relationship I outlined. And if you are in love with a woman who understands this type of burning, this type of yearning for union with the Divine, than you are in for a real ride. Nothing is scripted out for you to better understand. There is no instruction manual, no how-to-book that will get you any real points. No conference, convention, coaching or e-book will prepare you for this. The only rule written in stone is that you must be willing to sacrifice any part of yourself that is not real, that you have held onto for safety, comfort, social standing. You must allow all of this to be thrown into the fire. If you have studied any Eastern religions at all, than you are familiar with the Yab-Yum (a tantric pose in which the man sits cross-legged and the woman sits on top of him, face to face and embracing one another). Male and female deities engage in a complete and loving union. We Westerners have adapted this ancient wisdom into what is now known as “neo-tantra,” which is a set of practices relating to sexuality, awareness and ecstatic living. The practices range from breathing, to becoming more aware of our bodies and our desires, to making love in a spiritual or elevated consciousness.

However, the tantric masters of ancient lineages did not prescribe sexual practices to students until they had become very advanced and adept at the skill of self mastery. This is because while we are on the spiritual path, cultivating practices that accumulate power, we must have mastery over our own energy before we attempt to share it. We cannot share this energy casually. The energy must be received by those who are prepared for it.

Ancient tantric practitioners were making love to their own empty awareness. They had awakened to their deeper self, to the truth of who they really Are. And in this, they would never be able to inflict harm upon each other because this is the space from which devotional love, true love, arises. So please only make love to a woman if you know in your heart that you will never consciously harm her or yourself. Some say the Yab-Yum stands for the merger between Compassion and Wisdom. When you are in love with a woman on the spiritual path, meet her as Compassion would meet Wisdom. Do not do this sometimes; do it always, and she will give you more happiness than you even conceived was available through a relationship. You will know yourself as Divine, as Whole, as Completely Free. And she will love you. She will love you in ways you never thought possible.

The Goddess Quest, Chapter 1

Chapter 1. Make Love not War

At first glance this might seem a silly expression, as nonsensical as “Make Forks, Not Umbrellas“. What does one necessarily have to do with the other? And yet on a deeper level (beyond it being an excuse simply to have lots of sex) it actually captures perfectly the solution to many of the world’s chronic problems.

Men have been warring with one another for thousands of years. To some extent, women have joined in the fight and fought along with them, or at the least supported their efforts. But the wars are almost always of men’s making. Because the choice to go to war as a solution is part of the imbalanced, dominant male construct that has reigned for thousands of years and continue to permeate our modern societies. There are many different, seemingly practical reasons for waging war: territorial disputes, lack of food, water or other resources, lingering feuds, money, expanding power, disarming perceived threats, political rivalries and the list goes on.

But at the core of the male thirst for war, whether between nations, businesses, individuals or in a myriad of other forms, is a lack of connection with feminine love. People—men or women—don’t inflict harm needlessly on others when they’re connected to their own hearts, souls and feeling centers, because they feel the pain that this causes. And they don’t need to continually stir up conflict, aggression and dissonance in order to feel empowered, or else endlessly seek greater influence, money, fame and extravagance in order to find some sense of fulfillment, when they are fulfilled within themselves by a true connection to the divine web of life.

The answer to this enduring discord that has embedded itself in the hearts of many men and plagued humanity for eons lies in the love, wisdom and power of women. Because coinciding with this tendency towards aggression and dominance of the stronger over the weaker within our societies, has also been a denial and subjugation of the feminine principle. It is not the feminine nature to war, to battle, to fight, to seek to destroy that which is perceived as the enemy, to resolve differences through confrontation, to seek lives of excess while the poor and the planet as a whole suffer under a way of living that’s severely out of balance with the natural order.

There is more than enough of everything humans need on our abundant Earth to go around, especially given remarkable advancements in modern technology that have revealed vast alternative sources of energy. For example, water-powered vehicles were on the verge of production twenty years ago, which could have completely transformed the foundations of our societies, including geopolitical changes that might have altered the course of recent wars. But this technology and many others have been repressed by the oil companies. As such, unrelenting greed on the part of some, fueled by a lack of internal fulfillment somewhere deep in their souls, keeps Earth’s resources skewed in favor of a few insatiable elite, while billions around the world struggle to eke out a meager existence. Another example: the recent economic crisis precipitated by a relatively small number of individuals, mostly men, in the banking and mortgage industries in the United States, that ultimately threatened the entire world economy and still leaves many millions unemployed and destitute, years later.

Of course, women are subject to all the frailties and imperfections mentioned here, and a long list could be made of women throughout history who have abused power and manipulated others. The point isn’t that men are all to blame and women are exempt from any responsibility for humanity’s and the planet’s problems. But it is the overarching masculine paradigm that has held sway throughout recorded human history—ignorant and blind for the most part to the complexity, sensitivity and deep-rooted power of the divine feminine nature—that has brought our world to where it stands today, at the brink of collapse on multiple levels. And it is when men begin awakening to the feminine principle both within and without, and sincerely listening to, honoring and aligning with their women and with the wise, ecstatic, loving goddess that resides within each woman, that the world will finally change in some fundamental way and not until then.