Tantric Coconuts (12 page)

“When you get this next realization, Ted, you’re going to have a revelation. It’s a big one. Much of what seems crazy to you about religion, politics, and life will start to make better sense.”

“I’ll listen carefully.” Ted’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm; he wanted to know more. “Go ahead. Tell me this important third realization.”

Angel closed her eyes and began. “A gun sight has both a vertical and a horizontal axis. Without both axes, the sight is flawed.”

“Got it,” Ted confirmed without argument.

“Likewise, we need to define and identify a vertical and a horizontal axis for this work we are doing together to wake up. Religions or spiritual schools of thought can be seen as the vertical lines on my scope. We’ll look at Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Native American spirituality. Obviously, there are more schools or religions and an incredible number of splinter groups within each religion, but for now let’s keep it simple. Along these vertical lines are horizontal notches that one might call levels or grades, which we travel along as we mature and become more awake or aware. Some say there are six; others say nine, or more. Let’s keep it easy and just focus on six. This is the spiritual side of the equation.”

“How is that?” Ted asked.

“Do you remember this morning when we spoke of awakening as a process existing on a spectrum?”

“Yes,” Ted answered, “I remember.”

“It turns out that we can measure with a reasonable degree of certainty the awareness that each of us has obtained along that spectrum. There are patterns. It’s still a bit crude, and I suppose not everyone is in total agreement on this, but a consensus is definitely emerging. The levels define the spectrum from less awake or aware to wide awake or fully realized. At the lower levels the personality has not yet matured or opened up to its fullest potential—it is still pretty much asleep—while at the highest levels we find souls that are more actualized or awakened.”

“So why is it helpful to know the spiritual level?”

“No matter where you are on the spiritual spectrum, with a little help you can gain more awareness, or move up the levels. Essentially, we all have the potential for spiritual genius or full awakening. Any decent geographer knows that you have to realize where you are before you can chart a path to where you want to go.”

“So what does this gun-sight analogy have to do with picking a religion or knowing the difference between religion and spirituality?”

“Let me explain by asking you a question. If your parents were picking a school for you, wouldn’t they want to make sure that they both picked the right institution and placed you in the correct grade with a skilled teacher?”

“Sure,” Ted answered, shrugging.

“It’s the same for us. We must find the best institution or school, but we also have to put you in the appropriate grade. You see, Ted, there is first-grade Catholicism and sixth-grade Catholicism. Same with the rest of the religions. If I show you sixth-grade Catholicism and first-grade Islam, what will happen?”

Ted got it. “I would naturally assume that Catholicism was more sophisticated.”

“It would be like conducting a spelling bee between first graders at P.S. Mecca Elementary and sixth graders at St. Mary’s and then, from the number of correct answers alone, asking you to pick the better school.”

“I see the problem.”

“If I introduced you to Mrs. Smith’s sixth-grade classroom
before you were ready, when you were still trying to learn the alphabet, what would you think about her curriculum?”

“I might assume that Mrs. Smith was teaching gibberish.” Ted had a sudden realization. “We do that all the time, don’t we?”

“All the time and on many different levels. And Ted, do you know who makes the most fun of the first graders?”

Recognizing a rhetorical question when he heard one, Ted said, “Tell me.”

Angel’s voice rose as she swatted at a fly stubbornly resting on her nose. “The second graders! And now you should be able to recognize one of the biggest problems in the world today and the reason why we find it so hard to talk to each other about religion and politics. But just in case you don’t, I’ll tell you. We assume that our differences are at the vertical level—which religions or even denominations within religions we choose to follow—but in fact our real differences, and the root of much of the tension in the world, rest in the horizontal levels that mark our spiritual progress in awakening, or the progress we’ve made in ridding ourselves of the harmful aspects of our ego-bound Mr. Digit personalities.”

Ted thought a moment, then said, “I think I understand what you’re saying, but why does it cause a problem that your awareness is at a different level than mine?”

“The fact that we are evolving at different rates is not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“The problem is that most of the world has stopped evolving
at all. Most of the world’s population is developmentally stuck at the lower levels of awareness, and no one is out there showing them the way up the ladder.”

“And you’re saying that they can’t really do it on their own?”

“Most people, and unfortunately almost all of the world’s religious and political parties, fail to recognize that our life goal should be spiritual progress along the vertical axis and not arguing over our differences in dogmas and beliefs along the horizontal axis. As a result, the world is chock-full of first and second graders arguing with each other about their religious and political differences. The world is mired in petty conflict and destructive violence to the point of destroying itself. The human spiritual psyche of most of the world has been devolving into a one-dimensional, flat place, with our self-centered human ego as the head cheerleader screaming its worn-out chant:
us versus them
. That is why so many people are bailing on religion, frustrated with politics, and hoping for a new world order, something different.”

Ted thought a moment, then said, “It’s entirely too early to know for sure, but I think this third realization is a big one. I can see how getting this one point could really make a difference in our lives.”

“That’s good, Ted. Realizing is indeed a paradigm shift. It is more than a mere knowing or comprehension. That’s what we need you to experience.”

“Well, don’t stop. I’m intrigued. Please continue.”

“When you dig beneath all of the destruction, poverty, greed, and ignorance, you’ll see this is where the disease originates—lack of spiritual development is another way of
saying we live in a selfish world, and it’s our challenge to be less selfish. First-grade Catholicism may seem trite, but let me tell you, sixth-grade Catholicism can knock you on your psychic rump faster than a shot of whiskey with a pint of Guinness for a chaser. It’s the same with the other religions. It’s a scary journey for these first and second graders of the world to find the upper-grade classrooms. The longer they linger, the harder it is to move them upward. No one is there to take their little hands and lead them down the hall. There are no directional arrows painted on the walls to allow them to find the way on their own.”

“So why aren’t there more spiritual consultants traveling around. Why is the world resistant to this message? Do you have to get behind the wheel of Bertha and run into them, like you did with me?”

“There is a strong host of impediments to our graduating to the upper levels. We might call this collection of forces evil. It would be easy to describe that evil as simply our natural survival instincts and a culture mired in selfish thinking, but that answer lets people like me, and maybe someday you, off the hook. We need a new, unified spiritual path along the vertical axis that arises independently of our religious affiliations on the horizontal path. We need to create a better map that is generally accessible to the world. Some of us have gotten together and are trying to share this message, but it’s harder to communicate than we imagined.”

Ted returned to his earlier question. “Why isn’t religion doing this for us?”

Angel sighed, wishing it could be so. “Many of the world’s
religious institutions not only fail to show you the path to Mrs. Smith’s sixth-grade classroom but, I’m afraid, often discourage the journey too. Can you tell me why?”

Ted anxiously waved his hand in the air, accidentally striking the tree he was leaning against and dislodging bits of bark that rained down on them. Angel smiled, flicked the pieces of bark from her brow, and said, “Go ahead, Mr. Day. Tell me.”

Certain he had this one nailed, Ted blurted out the answer: “They are in the business of selling us the boats we need to leave behind once we have reached the shore.”

“All right. You got it. At the higher levels or grades, the values and beliefs pushed by many organized religious communities to their mainstream first and second graders become irrelevant, even impediments to growth. It is in this context that the Dalai Lama says that religion—the horizontal axis—is not so important. He means it is awakening—the vertical axis—that is important.” Angel thought a moment before continuing. “It was also in this arena that Jesus was brilliant. We’ve lost sight of the fact that Jesus was a religious revolutionary. He was trying desperately to push his community of followers from their first- and second-grade thinking about mores, God, and laws into a more radical and higher place. Like the Buddha, Jesus was the sixth-grade teacher of a millennium. This is how religion so often fails us. It stuck Jesus on a horizontal plane and turned him into a religion instead of a savior.”

“Did Jesus fail us?”

“How does the saying go?” Angel remembered the answer to her own question. “Christianity hasn’t failed us; we just haven’t tried it yet! The historical tragedy of Jesus’s life is that his legacy has become mired in first-grade, thinking, and that’s hardly his fault.”

Ted looked confused, so she continued. “Let me put it another way. To convince the first and second graders who primarily populated the world two thousand years ago, and unfortunately still populate so much of our world today, that Jesus was the real deal, his followers just made him out to be the biggest, toughest, fastest first grader out there, and many continue to bang that drum. All religions do this, though.”

“You mean virgin births, jihads, walking on water, rising from the dead, demons, and all the stuff that seems to dominate so much of religious thinking?”

“Religion needs to do more for us: help us move up the ladder of awareness—getting beyond the first-, second-, and even third-grade levels.”

“Still,” Ted said, “it seems like humanity has evolved a long way in two thousand years. So isn’t the trend away from these lower levels?”

“It is hard for many to let go of the prepackaged reality that religion offers. Focusing on true spiritual growth is a rather scary venture.”

“Letting go of knowing?”

“We’ll talk about it later, but God as magic is one of the hallmarks of the first level. At the upper levels the goal is to experience the divine in this life, in the here and now, and not
get bogged down in the terminology of the human biographers of Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, or anyone else. While this information was helpful, crucial really, in the early stages of our development, it is not the end point of the journey.”

Ted scratched Argo’s ears and continued, “I’m not sure I’m following every single thing you’re saying, but I must say it’s interesting, and it could very well explain a lot of the craziness in the world.”

“It’s getting dark. Let’s stop for now.”

As Ted and Angel walked back to the campsite on the narrow path, it was inevitable that they bumped up against each other now and then. It felt good. Ted wondered why the idea of taking a spiritual journey with a beautiful Lakota princess had never occurred to him before. His only regret was that the ghost of Wild Bill Raines wasn’t tagging along behind them in his sky blue ’82 Cadillac.

By the time the moon was high in the night sky, Angel, Ted, No Barks, and Argo were ready for sleep. They were arranged on the floor of Bertha like piano keys. To Angel it didn’t seem particularly odd to have a nonrelative and nonintimate snoring away in close proximity. She’d grown up with neighbors from down the road who crashed on her floor or collapsed on the sofa for some dubious reason (usually not enough money or too much to drink). The last time Ted had had a similar experience was naptime in kindergarten.

Argo, lying next to his wild cousin, gently put his paw on No Barks’s neck. The wolf dog gave a little shudder, sighed, and closed her eyes. When Angel rolled over, her blanket fell off. Her long, strong legs shone in the moonlight. She looked so extraordinarily beautiful that Ted wondered if she was even real. To avoid torturing himself, he rolled over and tried to fall asleep.

Before long his dream returned. The fire was now barely burning beside the same small, clear river. The campsite was empty and the sun was about to rise in the very early morning hours. Angel moved in and out of a stream with two does and a spotted fawn. She was alert and gracefully naked. She cautiously sniffed the air for danger, then carefully picked up her feet like they were delicate hooves. She nudged the fawn toward the bank. Her head tilted and her long, black hair blew sideways. In the distance there was the sound of human voices. Angel led her small herd into the thicket of brush on the other side of the creek, where they disappeared from view.