Dylan Morrison ~ The Prodigal Prophet

ER ~ Spirit Style

In my last post I looked at the results of disillusionment and anger when a previously zealous member of a religious or spiritual group finally leaves the home of their original spiritual experience. Awakening to the all too human nature of a faith group and its charismatic or institutional leadership is a massive psycho-spiritual shock that blows many of us out of the religious waters for good.

So what of Divine Love and its take on things especially the scapegoat nature of our emotional expulsion?

Well thankfully Sacred Unity is the God of the scapegoats, without being an ally in the retaliatory warfare that can so often ensue from without the religious camp. As our anger and disillusionment kick in we tend to strike out at our past mentors and their cosy faith empires. Divine Presence comes to carry us and our painful wounds to a place of safety and recovery far from the trenches of metaphysical warfare. So where does Spirit take us and what does our new psycho-spiritual landscape look like.

I believe that the Divine, utilises our anger and disillusionment to lead us well away from established religion and indeed any form of the God thing. He/She almost seems to be doing itself a disservice as we’re allowed to run far from our previous take on religious committment. Such outward manifestations of faith appear to be irrelevant to the now Hidden One, the Presence whose only concern is for our long-term healing. God is deeply into the Healing Game but one which usually lies outside the sacrosanct structures of programmed religion.The aim of Divine Love is not religious committment but the wholeness of its Creation and it will allow nothing to stand in its way.

If the expelled or departed disciple immediately jumps into another form of religious observance, whether close to that of their previous faith expression or one further along the religious spectrum, healing will not take place. Recovery from the psychic traumas of Model Obstacle religion takes time and space before we can authentically return to a form of belief and its practical overflow. In other words there remain a lot of deeply wounded folk playing the same sacred desire game within their new communities, those in denial over the depth and importance of their prior dysfunctional experiences. Like a recovering alcoholic who immediately runs back into a bar to prove that he has a handle on his drink problem, many of us run straight back into organised religion to prove that we are stronger than we really are. Such scenarios often result in a replay of the original model Obstacles conflict, this time with a new Model and a new form of mimetic desire. Church hoppers often fall into this category, in their search to find a desire Model who won’t repeat the freezing out processes of their previous mentors. It is a Utopian hope that cannot come to fruition. Once more the age-old psycho-spiritual dynamic will kick in and the follower left disillusioned.

In some cases, the ex-follower changes religious brand. I’ve recently met a lady who, on leaving a commitment requiring Charismatic Church after ten years of active membership, immediately leapt into the world of Paganism to find an authentic spirituality. Such leaps don’t generally produce the metaphysical goods as the underlying hurt and sense of betrayal haven’t yet had a safe place in which to express themselves and be brought into a reintegrated psyche.

So, it is my belief that Divine Love leads us away from the religious playing field with its mad matrix of metaphysical desire to the desert, the place of aloneness. Here, unknown to us, Spirit begins to bathe our wounds by giving us somewhat shocking insights into our fragmented psyche and the religious games that it has been playing. Once we begin to see reasons for our involvement with and departure from our previous faith Model we can begin the process of psycho-spiritual individuation. Having a psychological framework to explain our past experiences, both good and bad, is essential in regaining control of our burnt out psyche.

In such a desert place, little flowers of growth and readjustment begin to appear; events, insignificant to others, but signs of Divine Presence and intimacy, manifest at the most unexpected moments. The rebuilding of trust in Love Source has begun; like little toddlers learning to take their first steps, we begin to place the weight of our Being once more on ground of Ultimate Reality. The reprogramming of Self, with its important connection to Source is a slow and often painful experience; no doubt about that, yet one that breathes authenticity into our Love starved soul. Divine Love has brought us here for a time of intimacy, cold turkeyed from the desire flow of structured religious thought and practice. Out of the ruins of lost ‘faith’ the potent seeds of authentic trust begin to take root, seeing for perhaps the first time that we are loved regardless of our involvement in any religious or spiritual movement or sect.

In such a place, far from the clichés and rituals of the weekly religious game, a new Awareness of Divinity is birthed, yes, one  in vulnerable embryonic form but a growing one nevertheless. The seeds of a new Life are being planted in the ashes of fundamentalist belief, one that will bear fruit in the times ahead.

In my next post I’ll continue to look at how the Abba God of Yeshua moulds and fashions us in our place of brokenness, the Dark Place where we glimpse the Light of All for perhaps the first time.