First I had to abandon the outlines of religion to enter the realm of the spiritual and absolute. Religion has become a corruption of the spiritual realm, and spiritual aliveness demands of me that it be abandoned. For about 10,000 years, religion has attempted to put the tiger in a cage. It has offered a close-up experience of wildness that is without the depth or energy of a genuine encounter.
I think that the tiger walks with those who are willing to allow the intimacy of a close companion, including the one existing within. In the arena of religion, it was the mystics who figured this out, and religion pushed them to the side as a spiritual freak show. I think they should have been on center stage.
It was in “A River Runs Through It” that the Presbyterian pastor is quoted as telling his son that Methodists are Baptists who have learned to read. This captures well the contempt that religions have for one another. It mirrors my own moments of contempt for most forms of religion.
The history of humans, beginning with the serious commitment to a farming lifestyle, reveals an emerging social, civil order. In most cases, religion played the role of fronting for the social structure. It became a shill for those in power, attempting to legitimize what humans had become socially, wrapped in the robes of shallow spirituality. Even the images of gods reflected what the humans of a given time saw of themselves. That is no less true of today and is typical of most modern religions.
All the while, the tiger has yearned to be free. Humans have surrounded and confined themselves in social forms that have imprisoned most spiritual aspects of the erotic. The deep human power of the erotic has been straight-jacketed alike by civil and the parallel religious forms of society.
The rising of patriarchy at the time of serious farming sought to harness and control the erotic energy of the realm of the spiritual. The deep erotic impulse came gradually under the control of the male element of society, in both the civil and spiritual realms.
Religions have correspondingly aligned themselves with the male model. The erotic, which is basically feminine, tries relentlessly to break through the bars of the cage. The tiger yearns to be free and wild.
My intent is to free the tiger, which I recognize and embrace as female. I greet her every time I sit in meditation. I walk with her through the day as I move through my world. I brush against her energy, feel the depth of her presence. She informs me of what I encounter.
For me, freedom comes by abandoning the constraints I allowed to be imposed on my thinking by religion and the social norms of being a man. Allowing myself to feel the energy and power in my body has been a gateway to meditation and into the experience of the spiritual realm. The deeper I penetrate that world, the more I recognize it as being predominantly female.
I feel and love her presence in me and my whole world.