Toaist Toltec Panentheist

Y'all,

I've been corresponding with a beautiful soul via e-mail about some of the things I say here in this blog. One of my replies seemed especially honed so I thought I'd put it up here:

Dear Man of Sweet Powerful Mystery,

I got home last night after a lovely Indian dinner with my ex, and began cleaning up some fiction that I've been writing and just never got down to finishing up my e-mail of yesterday to you. Apologies!

All I really had to say was a continuation about synchronicities - at lunch yesterday (just after we had e-mailed, I think), I opened up my trusty "Complete Idiot's Guide to Toltec Wisdom" and continued where I left off. That point was a section describing the qualities of the "warrior". I just had to laugh: the passage was all about making your own decisions and letting others make theirs, honoring your own knowing about your selected path and sticking with it and knowing that things unfold when they're good and ready, and in the way in which it is most perfect and elegant to do so.

The book also uses a term that I thought I had created, the "big life", to describe the all-that-is panentheistic view that I find so comforting and with which I'm most at home when viewing the world. When I do Science of Mind treatment, I avoid the phrase "God is all there is", and instead use "God is everything there is". "All there is" seems limiting to me, as in, "well, that's all there is; that's all you get", and so I've been coming up with my alternate phrases to keep my inner view big and expanded instead of limited. "Big Life" was one of those: if you subscribe to the teachings of Abraham (which I am finding that I do in a big way and always have), "Big Life" is the only thing that makes sense to me. The phrase "Big Life" resonates deeply to mean to me that "God" is everything that I can see, feel, hear, touch, experience, know, explore ... "God" is really everything, the sum of it all, being absolutely intimate, immediate and accessible, not some little wizened guy in a white robe up on his throne on a cloud somewhere. So, I guess I've been a Toaist, Toltec Panentheist all along and just didn't know it :-)

And I've also found that when I really pay attention to this notion, really trust it and go with what my heart tells me it is all about, synchronicities happen all the time, almost constantly. Simple things and also big things. For instance, yesterday I was meeting my 'singing wife' at the local coffee shop and just as I was closing the car door my appointment book sort of called to me so I picked it up and took it in, something I normally don't do since I kind of consider it rude to to business when I'm meeting with someone else. But when she got up to use the restroom, I had two calls and booked three appointments right then that I would have missed had I not done so; those clients would have gone elsewhere. That was just a little instance, but with big impact. An example of a Big Thing was two years ago when I committed to attending a very expensive seminar yet without knowing how I was going to pay for it I just knew that I needed it and that it was going to be deeply important to me, which it turned out to be. I spoke with the instructor and said that I'd like to go ahead and do it, but that I didn't know where in hell the money would come from; we worked out a tentative down-payment/payment plan, then I hung up. When I got home that night, I had a check for $2,500 in my mailbox from my mom that she hadn't mentioned and that I hadn't expected which covered, to the dime, the seminar and all my outstanding expenses. I can't explain it, I just know that at the moment I made that commitment utterly and with abandon I felt something sort of "shake loose" and grow, and that everything then worked out.

All that is, is alive. And the sum of all that, that big life is what I call God. God, Logos, the spirit-of-all is therefore never farther away from me than the air I breathe. This new idea has been cooking for decades, but I'm just now trusting it. And its so much more comforting, alive, usable than any former notion that I ever had about spirituality, God, Love before. I feel like a preacher when I talk about it! I get all fired up - until I see the glazed eyes looking back at me. So for that reason, namely that this is a philosophy that can't be taught but which must instead be experienced, my church would have to be called something like "The Church of Solitary Self Revelation" :-) because I'm not into organized anything, and I also firmly believe that we all have the seeds of this knowledge inside us anyway. I think that's why I love the Shamanic journey practice so much - any knowledge I get from it, I get directly and through firsthand experience with no filters, interpretations or dogma. No one needs to teach these truths; we merely need to re-member.

Cheers! Have a good weekend.
-Raybob

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