Three Paths to Follow
January 21, 2010
by Jeffrey Pierce
On March 21, 1987 I made a pact with the divine. I didn't want someone else's interpretation of God. I didn't want to see Spirit through the filter of a religion created by man. I wanted to experience all of it, firsthand, for myself. In exchange, I was willing to go wherever I was led, walk through any door that was opened for me, and embrace any path that I was led to explore.
Looking back on that day, I never would have guessed where the journey would take me.
From Christianity I learned of passion and emotion from the Pentecostals and of miracles, love, servitude, and balance, not just from the successes of Jesus as portrayed by a disciple of the Apostle Peter, but from his failures as well. Trained as a shaman, I explored inner landscapes and the spirit world, learning the role of ego and sacrifice, discovering how everything is filled with Spirit, power, and love. Taoism taught me of the nature of the divine and how to release my preconceived ideas and continually expand my awareness. Wicca and witchcraft taught me about magick and ceremony, of the balance between light and dark, and how everything is a cycle, continually turning and spiraling on its own beautiful way. From Tantra, I learned acceptance and love, how each thing we like or dislike is simply a mirror of ourselves. Buddhism taught me of compassion, of stilling the mind and releasing one's attachments. In Asatru, I discovered the importance of honor, honesty, and strength, of living in the moment, not for the moment, and that the story one leaves behind is of more value than the wealth one accrues. Other teachers along the way imparted their own lessons and wisdom to me, and I gratefully and humbly learned from each opportunity that I was presented.
There were so many systems of beliefs, so many spiritual paths with so much valid wisdom and insight to share.
So which path is right?
What I discovered is that there isn't a right path. There are those paths that teach us what we need, that provide us with the insight, wisdom, philosophy and techniques to take the next step in our spiritual journey, but that's all that any path is capable of doing. Tragically, it seems as if there is a predisposition for the leaders of any school of spiritual thought to find a piece of the Truth and then stop growing and evolving, holding on to that fragment of the whole tightly and claiming that the piece they hold is entire Truth, because it is Truth and it is real.
And that was an unexpected lesson that each path taught me - that each system of belief is a path, not a destination. Once it becomes a destination, once a spiritual path holds on to the Truth instead of seeking to delve deeper, to learn more, to give that Truth away freely, then it falls in love with itself. It stares too long in the mirror, complimenting itself on its good looks, on its importance, and even worse, eventually losing sight of the piece of the Truth it once held and replacing it with its demands to be worshipped.
What we, as spiritual seekers must remember is that no system of belief holds all of the answers or the complete fullness of Truth. Each spiritual school is a lesson - it is not the final answer. To make matters worse, we're so desperate for love, so desperate for Truth, that when we find the smallest piece of either, we accept it blindly. "This is Love," we're told. "This is the whole Truth." We can see for ourselves that it's real love, that it's real Truth. It's just not the entire picture. But it's real - so we hold on to it tightly, defending it against anyone who would challenge its validity, who would question whether there might be more to the bigger picture.
I do not have the whole Truth. I do not fully love. Each day, I embrace the validity of my limitations and seek to embrace a little more of the bigger picture, to understand a little more of the Truth, to unconditionally and fully Love a little bit more. Rather than embracing a particular path, I've tried to understand how we grow and the parts of our being that come into play as we learn, as we discover, as we grow.
As I have come to understand the mechanism behind our spiritual growth, there are three key Paths to follow when deepening your spiritual practice. Each of these avenues to spirituality represents a key piece of the greater puzzle and all three of these weave together to create a cohesive whole.
It's not uncommon for us to embrace a single Path for a time, only to completely abandon it when it is time for us to focus on the next portion of our spiritual practice. Approaching these Paths one at a time provides us with strong individual threads to weave into the cord of our greater spiritual path. Likewise, it is completely appropriate for us to dabble in each Path simultaneously. Doing so provides us with understanding, wisdom, and perspective from the very beginning of our spiritual journey.
The Path of Love
When we hear the word "love," one of two thoughts generally appear in our minds. The first is romantic love. "Oh, I love him!" It's a love of Valentine's Day cards and first kisses and living happily ever after. The second is that of pleasure. We love peanut butter and jelly or a good steak or fine chocolate. We make love. "Don't you just love these new shoes?"
Yet both visions of love, at best, are a poor reflection of only the tiniest fraction of Love.
Love is power, plain and simple. It is the wild card that trumps any challenge, any lesson, any situation. You can't defeat, beat, or overcome Love. If a situation unfolds one way, Love saves the day. If a situation unfolds the other way, Love willingly sacrifices itself. If it plays out a third way, Love makes even the good times better. You can't overcome it. You can't suppress it. You cannot defeat Love.
It's probably one of the greatest mysteries in modern spirituality, how much we talk about love but how little we practice it. The Path of Love is challenging for the mind to grasp because real, full, unconditional Love is, at first glance, a paradox. Love is power and sacrifice. It is both life and death. Love is active and passive, it is strong yet gentle, it can heal and it can destroy.
When we think of love, we think of an emotion or feeling. Some of us may even think of a vibration, although we've been taught to say that and most of us don't really understand what being a vibration entails.
Love? Love is a key.
If you think of any moment in time and begin categorizing all of the pieces that compose that moment, you'll come up with quite a list. There are the people involved, the emotional and mental state of each, where the energy is flowing, the energy that is being held in reserve (things unsaid, a desire to see what happens before you act), the environment, the history of the people involved, endless levels of symbolism and the power that those symbols hold - the list goes on and on.
If you could take all of the bits and pieces from that moment and capture it with a single word, understanding that word would give you an idea of what it is to see energetic reality. Now, using that as a framework for understanding the concept, imagine the energetic reality of fully unconditional Love.
Love is the only energy that consistently transforms what it touches. What is hidden away is brought forth. What is hurt, heals. What is strong is made stronger. The challenge for us when we find ourselves on The Path of Love is that we first have to apply those lessons to ourselves. We have to allow our hidden parts to be brought forth, our hurts to be healed, and our strengths to be made even stronger. That's a vulnerable, challenging process for many of us - but it nurtures the love, compassion, understanding, patience, acceptance, and gentleness in us that is key to fully and unconditionally loving others. It allows our own ego to die while bringing our own heart to life.
The Path of Mind
The Path of Mind is most simply understood if we think of Mind, not as an expression of deductive reasoning and analysis, but as a filter that changes what we experience. Our Mind is filled to the brim with energetic structures that I refer to as filters. These filters act much like a colored gel placed over a light. Instead of the light shining through in all of its wavelengths, it is reduced to only certain colors, limited by the gel (or filter) that we've put into place.
Embracing The Path of Mind is as much a process of removing ways of thinking as it is of embracing new thoughts and concepts. The two approaches are simply flip sides of the same coin. To embrace a new thought, requires new filters to be put into place. To change a preconceived idea, requires that the existing filters be removed.
Eventually this process leads to a point where you begin to release the need to analyze anything and simply live in the moment. At its ultimate expression, The Path of the Mind exists with simple awareness on the current moment and does not judge anything as good or evil, but simply recognizes it as part of (or a reflection of) the whole.
Taoism has always represented the ultimate expression of Mind to me, simply because of their understanding of the Tao. I like to think of the Tao as another name for God. What is the Tao? If you can name it, it's not the Tao. If you use replace Tao with God/Goddess/Spirit/Universe and begin to describe how you see the divine, you start to understand the concept of how our filters exist.
"Well, I see Goddess as an expression of feminine energy."
Then by the very concept of using Tao as a mirror of Goddess, Goddess must be more than feminine energy because feminine energy can be named. To name something is to define it. To define something is to limit it. If Goddess is truly divine, then Goddess can have no limitations.
"Okay, so I see Goddess as an expression of both feminine and masculine energy."
Once again, you've named something by using gender roles. By naming it, you've limited it.
"Alright... so Goddess is simply a reflection of everything that is."
Two problems here: One is that if something is a reflection it's not the source (and vice versa) and if it's everything that is, it's not everything that was or will one day be... or may never be.
As you can see, each step through this process illuminates more and more where our preconceived ideas (or filters) can be found. By asking ourselves, "Why do I feel this way? What about the Goddess being feminine appeals to me?" we begin to discover the underlying reasons that gave birth to these filters. By working through the underlying reasons behind our filters, by addressing the wounds, fears, or needs that empower those filters, we find that the filters themselves are no longer useful to us and they simply fall away on their own.
Eastern philosophy is rich with these sorts of thoughts, approaches, and exercises, reflecting The Path of the Mind. And while it may be cliché, how many times, watching a movie or reading a book, have you heard a master tell their student, "First you must master your own thoughts."
That, in a nutshell, is The Path of the Mind.
The Path of Spirit
In magick, whether it's worked by a shaman, turned by a witch, cast by a Wiccan, or called upon by a spirit-filled Christian, one seeks to move closer to the spirit realm. I've always thought the argument was a simple one: how can you begin to truly understand something (in this case, the realm of Spirit) if you never experience it firsthand?
Years ago, I slipped into the back of a Pentecostal Easter service where a relative of mine was performing in the service. Around me were concepts that any pagan would be familiar with. Here folks were engaging in ceremonial spiritual dance. There, members of the congregation were praising God, surrendering their ego and opening themselves up to the flow of energy.
Love is our travel guide along this path, giving us a framework for our spiritual growth. Mind allows us to consider the thoughts, philosophies, and experiences we encounter along the way, using them to gain a greater understanding of the whole and removing the filters that have limited our perspective to that point on our path. Spirit is experiential. It's what it's like to feel the divine, to touch spiritual energy, to experience a mystical moment firsthand.
It's also the easiest of all of the paths to embrace.
In my opinion, it's one of the reasons why there has been such a huge upswing in the interest in paganism and various magickal paths over the last two decades. Our culture is sadly deficient in Love. Likewise, The Path of Mind is almost completely absent as we're taught what to believe, not how to discover and consider our own beliefs.
Magick? Anyone can do magick. You don't need to be surrounded by Love or taught the concepts behind it. A candle and a few sincerely whispered words are all you need to really connect - and if resources are limited, even the candle is optional.
Experiencing something makes it real. Every path should understand this. Ask anyone, "How did you feel when you embraced this path?" and you are certain to receive a very heartfelt answer in return. Christians are actually encouraged to witness and tell you what they experienced, but any follower of any spiritual path can tell you about their personal experience with that path. Those who embrace The Path of Spirit simply want to experience it for themselves. They want to delve into the mysteries of reality, not through books or lectures or cultivating love, but by experiencing it firsthand.
What About Body?
People have asked me, "What about The Path of Body? Isn't there such a thing?" I've heard every argument from sensualists to Tantra practitioners, from athletes to aesthetics.
Body offers perspective; it doesn't offer a Path.
The easiest way to understand this is to think of Body, not as an energetic Path in itself, but as a conduit simultaneously keeping us connected to physical reality while allowing us to experience the energies of Love, Mind, and Spirit in all of their forms and combinations. If Love, Mind, and Spirit were our power sources, Body would be the wires connecting those sources and carrying the energy (or more accurately, allowing us to perceive it).
There are things we can do with Body that improves our ability to experience the other Paths. When I was studying shamanism, I was required to restrict the types of food that I ate up to three days before a rite and to fast the day of the ritual. During my time exploring Buddhism, I was a devout vegetarian. In just a general sense, I find that my ability to experience energy of any type is much more acute when I'm physically fit, drinking plenty of water, and getting enough sleep.
Sex, at its best, is a blending of Love and Spirit connected through the conduit of Body. Martial arts are typically a blending of Mind and Spirit unified through Body. The list of combinations is almost endless. Body isn't a Path in itself, but it can enhance the experience of almost any path for us.
The Right Way For Me
There is no right way to approach any of these Paths. Embrace them one at a time, embrace bits and pieces of them all at once, it's completely up to you. You can spend a lifetime exploring one Path or a lifetime bouncing back and forth between several. You can devote your life to a conduit, for instance, martial arts, and learn of both Mind and Spirit as they unify through your Body.
It's unimportant which Path you embrace or the order that you embrace them in. It's even unimportant that you consciously embrace any Path. What's useful is simply being aware of their existence.
And while that may seem like an odd approach to take, it's unbelievably useful.
You are unique, an original blessing, incomparable and unlike any other. There is no one approach that works for you. There's no one approach that works for any of us. We learn to navigate through life, using our heart as our map and our intuition as our compass and the journey that we take is as unique as we are as individuals.
It isn't important which route you take to spiritual growth and evolution. That choice is entirely up to you. However, it's important to note the pitfalls, the places where people get stuck. No one Path holds the entirety of the Truth. No one Path is the right Path. They're all simply fragmented reflections of the greater whole, resonating with Love, Mind, and Spirit in turn.
Remember this. It's these Paths, not a particular system of belief, that are important. These Paths are reflections of yourself, of the avenues within you that lead you closer to the Divine. If you begin to search for the Love, Mind, or Spirit within a system of belief, that system's pieces of Truth will be made known to you. The journey takes us from place to place, learning and growing at each stop along the way. By knowing what to look for, you'll have a better understanding of what to hold on to, what to discard, and when it's time for you to move to the next stop along your path.