Spiritual Experience By Michael Henry Dunn
Chapter Twenty-Three – The Lake Shrine
The saints I’ve known warned us not to share experiences. I mean those sacred ones that are intimate moments between you and God, moments of bliss, of vision, or of favors. You will very often find that those moments lose something of their sanctity and special intimate quality if you speak of them too freely to others. Jesus spoke of this, of those who pray in public in order to be seen as pious, that they already have their small reward. But He urged us to ‚pray to your Father in secret, and in secret He will reward you.‛
As for me, I would one day be asked to often 'pray in public‛ (and to lead others in devotional chant) and would experience the temptation of that small reward of being thought holy by others. I observed how I grew to expect those small ego rewards – someone waiting after the meditation to tell me how inspired they were, or pronaming to me in the same reverential way that I would to the Reverend Mother - and then caught myself looking for such rewards with eagerness. Much as I would struggle to pray and chant only from the heart, and to be grateful for the privilege, the human desire for recognition would reassert itself, and then I would feel ashamed.
But I gradually saw that the shame itself was the ultimate ego trap. 'O, what a sad case I am!‛ I would tell myself. ‚How unworthy of grace!‛
And then I came across this quote:
'Once I heard it said that there was more of self-love than desire for penance in such sorrow.‛
— St. Teresa of Avila
St. Teresa saw through this one too, long ago. How much easier simply to accept that I would fall in this way, being merely human, and to trust that God would lift me up again and again, and would finally lift me beyond this fault through sheer grace, merited or not. I was finally able simply to be glad if others were inspired, thank them, and let it go. I gradually learned that the Lover didn’t mind that my love was so imperfect. She sees our efforts, and knows our hearts.
So then, about sharing intimate spiritual experiences with others: how would you feel if your lover boasted to others of moments you considered sacred and intimate? Divine Mother feels the same way – She might delay to visit you again, if you do not treat Her love with reverence.
For myself, it was a dilemma in this book. I feel it right to share some stories, but not others. There is nothing more private, more sacred than the experiences that the Divine grants you in this romance. The more you press them to your heart with gratitude and reverence, the deeper will your intimacy become.
Occasionally you may be speaking with a fellow lover of God, and be moved to share a personal story for their encouragement, as I feel moved now.
I had moved from Chicago to Los Angeles – ostensibly to pursue my still thriving acting career – but soon found it was another pull that moved the journey. I had found a modest apartment near the church where Brother Bhaktananda served as minister, and found work with a courier service. I heard Brother speak in his quiet and powerful way about the bliss that comes to those who practice the presence of the Divine, and I was on fire to follow his example.
Like Brother Lawrence, Brother Bhaktananda found that he did not need to neglect the Beloved during times of work, that he could keep his attention on God even while engrossed in demanding duties.
I often thought to myself, however, that neither the saintly monk of 17th century Paris, nor Brother Bhaktananda, had tried to practice the presence of God while driving forty hours a week in L.A. traffic with a stack of boxes and a massive map book perched on the passenger seat! (This in the days before the GPS, before Google, and just before the prevalence of cell phones.)
In those forty hours, I would more often take the name of God in vain than in prayer. Yes, I more often invoked His ire upon the heads of those who dared to cut me off than I did to gently ask His blessings on my 'fellow passengers to the grave,‛ as Dickens put it. (For your comfort, and in my defense, I will reveal that even certain very highly evolved souls I have known have confessed to succumbing to the serenity-wrecking challenges of the Santa Monica Freeway on occasion!)
But of course, the Lover loves to test our love, and so I tried very hard. I would return home after a day of stress sufficient to age me a decade, take a candlelit bath to restore the body, then stagger to the meditation garden to try to recover my lost equanimity.
One April day my frustration reached a zenith. In the Hollywood Hills, the reclusive and exclusive hideaways on Mulholland Drive do not advertise their driveways or their addresses in the ordinary, middle-class fashion. A half-hidden plank obscured by a shrub may hold five or six illegible addresses on it. Lovely if you seek privacy - insanity-provoking if you seek to deliver a package - particularly if your profit margin dwindles with every mile lost to fruitless meanderings. All the while, of course, attempting to keep a silent river of devotion flowing peacefully through your mind.
To be brief, I lost it.
A passerby would have witnessed a 1988 blue Dodge Daytona pulled over in the dust, with a lone man in the front seat (nearly obscured by a stack of undelivered boxes) screaming highly colorful language while gesticulating wildly toward the heavens.
The screams comprised a kind of prayer. I was addressing God in very emphatic language. It went something like this: "*%#&! If You don’t give me a &#$! job where I can practice your
*&%$ presence, I’m going to...I’m going to...well, I don’t know what the &^%$ I’ll do, but You’d better help me here, G--d----t!"
It was, you see, a sincere prayer. Deep, passionate, and very sincere.
And so, of course, She answered.
This dream held no light, or bliss. Joy, yes, but of a gentle sort. That night I dreamed I was visiting the monastery where Brother Bhaktananda had once lived. I walked into the main building, and there was the Reverend Mother of the order sitting in a large chair, doing some knitting. She looked up and saw me, and smiled warmly. She gestured me to come a little closer, and then said in a kind of conspiratorial whisper, "I’ve said a prayer for you!"
I smiled with surprised joy and pronamed to her. Then I turned to find Brother Bhaktananda standing to one side. He too leaned in confidentially and whispered, "Consider yourself employed!"
I did not often dream of saints and so I woke with the dream still vivid in my mind. The meaning was a bit obscure, but the joy of it lingered.
It might have been that day, or the day after. On my daily post-courier stagger towards the meditation chapel, I saw a notice posted on the community bulletin board: "Wanted: Male Vegetarian Cook or young man willing to learn." Little paper strips with a phone number clung to the notice, with no other indication of the employer. Young I still was, willing I certainly was, a cook I was not (though I had flipped burgers in a theater bar in NY). I took a strip with the phone number, and decided to give it a try.
The job was in the monastery. Within a week the Reverend Mother herself was signing my paycheck. And the kitchen where I was to work was located in a lakeside meditation garden world-famed for its peace and beauty, a place of such powerful sanctity that few can visit it unchanged, which would become my spiritual home for the next twenty years.
If I couldn’t practice the presence of Divine Mother there (She may have reasoned), I was probably on the wrong planet.
So sometimes it’s good to have a screaming fit with God. It’s not the generally recommended practice, I know, but as long as you are conversing with the Divine from the heart, you can’t really go wrong.
(excerpt from "Romancing The Divine," by Michael Henry Dunn, https://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Divine-Science-Falling-Love-ebook/dp/B079WWB5DQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=romancing+the+divine+michael+henry+dunn&link_code=qs&qid=1619796032&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-1)
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