Sometime back, both of us graduated seminary at the same time, but had become exceedingly disillusioned by what we kept seeing happen within the Church. We understood and continue to understand that the spiritual impulse is important — even vital — but we kept seeing it misused by damaged, even unscrupulous people as a means of coming to possess power and control over others. As you might imagine, this was very disturbing, and we wanted no part of it. Years later now, as we’ve taken ample time to think about these matters fully, we’ve come to understand that the spiritual impulse can be developed and expressed in a healthy way — so long as it’s allowed the room it needs to flourish, unfettered by demands for adherence to dogma, guilt, or power games.

Just to give you an idea of where we’re going with this, what follows is a brief summation of the core values we think are important in The Order of the Free Spirit:

The Order of the Free Spirit

• There is Truth, but it cannot be fully expressed — especially when reduced to the level of dogma. For this reason, dogmatic adherence should be demanded of no one, while free and open inquiry should be respected and encouraged.
• We hold truths, but we try to hold them lightly so that our understanding may evolve.
• We do not proselytize. The Order of the Free Spirit is a voluntary association; therefore, those who are outside our formal association are regarded as living lives as deeply sacred as any persons who remain within it.
• Morality can be summed up quite simply: “Treat others as you would want to be treated.” This is not easy; therefore harsh judgment of others or of ourselves is discouraged — and forgiveness becomes as vital as the air we breathe.
• All beings are living, fractal expressions of an eternal Being that cannot fully be named or described. To know this Being: know yourself, and therefore respect yourself and all others.

All the rest is commentary.

Proceeding on, unnoticed by nearly everyone, we are — right now — laying the groundwork for an empathic global civilization.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjpStMEQooI

“That is the essence and mission of the ‘rebel buddha’: to free us from the illusions we create by ourselves, about ourselves, and from those who masquerade as reality in our cultural and religious institutions.”

— from Rebel Buddha by Dzogchen Ponlop

Jesus said,

“Know what is before your face, and what is hidden from you will be made known.

“For nothing is hidden that will not be revealed.”

The deepest truths are hidden — not in secret places, but in plain sight.

It is well worth considering not only what we’re seeing, but how we’re seeing things — because, clearly, we’re missing something big. The 113th and final saying of The Gospel According to Thomas (Saying #114 was almost certainly tacked on to the end of the document, at a later date) has Jesus punctuating his earlier teachings with a thought for his hearers to ponder: “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out over the whole earth, but few are able to perceive it.”

In the Our Father, we pray “Thy Kingdom come” — but the Kingdom is already here. What we pray for and long for each and every day has already been made available to us — in fact it is before our very faces!

But our vision has been occluded.

— from Robert Anton Wilson, in an interview, “Searching For Cosmic Intelligence,” with Jeffrey Elliot

Here is some of PKD’s own artwork, which he uses to illustrate some fairly profound ideas concerning how an imperfect universe actually came into existence, the handiwork of the Demiurge: an imperfect, lesser God.

“Here is a modified, more precise model. The Urgrund [primal basis of reality] contains the yang-yin complementary bipolarities within it. It wishes to separate its opposites, & does this by projecting the artifact, the creator of our reality (world); this is YHWH. This is what Mani & the Gnostics correctly saw 1) about the nature of the creator; & 2) the nature of our world. They also saw the salvific stranger God ‘outwitting the archons’ & penetrating our ‘copy of a copy’ world to extricate us. According to this model the Good (Form I) which we experience is a sort of invader, unable to coerce or compel the frozen BIP [Black Iron Prison] template, but on the other hand, the Good (Form I) is real in a sense that Form II—which is a copy of a copy—is not. Thus we can call the template projected ceaselessly by the artifact dead or counterfeit, & Form I (Zebra) the authentic (Good, Form I), & thus agree with Parmenides.

“To repeat: Form I, which represents not only God or Christ or St. Sophia, is found at the outskirts or trash or bottom level of this world, as far from the imperial omphalos [navel; center] of power as possible. This would adequately account for the way Jesus appeared at the First Advent. But the Second Advent (actually the remaining section of the First) will consist of a direct & successful attack on the inner fortress of imperial power itself… But, put another way, this has always already happened if we are to accept the formulation of Parmenides in denying actuality to Form II & calling it only seeming (i.e., Dokos veil or counterfeit). There is something spurious about it, however real it may seem. It is a copy of a copy, whereas Form I is, in contrast, authentic. My set ground experience bears this out. Set was alive; ground was mere sarx. In a sense, time has devoured Form II; it died somewhere along the line & leaves the line & leaves only an imprint of an empty shape. It is a hologram, but Form I is not a hologram or mere projected image. So the McKenna is only partially right; in a sense our universe is a hologram, but Zebra (Form I, nods) is not. But Zebra is not part of our universe; it is an invader into it—which was my great insight 15 months ago. Authentic reality has breached through into our world—which signifies that the end times have come (maybe long ago) but the irreal, the hologram, effaces it from our perception. The true great revelation (Gnosis) is precisely this: that Zebra (Form I, the Urgrund) has come already.

[...]

“By the very nature it is deus absconditus [hidden god], but hidden close by (‘Break a stick & there is Jesus.’). One can reread and reinterpret all scripture from the vantage point of this understanding. Many puzzling aspects can herewith be newly comprehended—why no natural theology has ever been successful— why our knowledge of God must always be a revealed knowledge. ‘The workman is invisible within the workshop.’ Immanent & gentle—one might say tenderly, ‘the shy God.’”

(A portion of Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis, originally written by PKD in 1978, and first published in In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis, by Lawrence Sutkin, Ed. in 1991.)

Greed is not only a moral failing, it is also a disease. This cognitive virus affects the mind and the soul. Greed, as an illness, is literally a “social disease” — people contract it through societal contact and from their associates and family members who themselves are infected. And yes, people do die from this. Our whole society is sick with this disease. When people say this is a “sick society,” it quite literally is.

Mark Madoff died as one of the complications of this disease. I’m sorry for all those his disease-ravaged hands touched, who were harmed. And I’m sorry also for him.

If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,

Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.

— Hafiz, 14th Century Sufi Poet

For ages you have come and gone
courting this delusion.
For ages you have run from the pain
and forfeited the ecstasy.
so come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

Although you appear in earthly form
Your essence is pure Consciousness.
You are the fearless guardian
of Divine Light.
So come, return to the root of the root
of you own soul.

When you lose all sense of self
the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish.
Lose yourself completely,
Return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

You descended from Adam, by the pure Word of God,
but you turned your sight to the empty show of this world.
Alas, how can you be satisfied with so little?
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

Why are you so enchanted by this world
when a mine of gold lies within you?
Open your eyes and come —
Return tot he root of the root
of your own soul.

You were born from the rays of God’s Majesty
when the stars were in their perfect place.
How long will you suffer from the blows
of a nonexistent hand?
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

You are a ruby encased in granite.
How long will you deceive Us with this outer show?
O Friend, We can see the truth in your eyes!
So come, return to the root of the root of your own soul.

After one moment with that glorious Friend
you became loving, radiant, and ecstatic.
Your eyes were sweet and full of fire.
Come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

Shes-e Tabriz, the King of the Tavern,
has handed you and eternal cup,
And God in all His glory is pouring the wine.
So come! Drink!
Return tot he root of the root
of your own soul.

Soul of all souls, life of all life — you are That.
Seen and unseen, moving and unmoving — you are That.
The road that leads to the City is endless;
Go without head or feet
and you’ll already be there.
What else could you be? — you are That.

— Jalaluddin Rumi, as found in Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved, translated by Jonathan Star, published by The Penguin Group, New York, 2008, pages 3-5.

It comes from one of the Nag Hammadi documents, discovered in Egypt in 1945, after being suppressed for more than 1,600 years:

“Since the deficiency came into being because the Father was not known, therefore, when the Father is known, from that moment on, the deficiency will no longer exist. As in the case of the ignorance of a person, when he comes to have knowledge, his ignorance vanishes of itself, as the darkness vanishes when the light appears, so also the deficiency vanishes in the perfection. So from that moment on, the form is not apparent, but it will vanish in the fusion of Unity.”

— The Gospel of Truth

Pretty self-explanatory.

No guilt, no suffering, no strings attached at all — just good news.