As I come to these “hot spots” of FB Live I is like a confessional, a place where I must be honest, a place where I can’t hide behind preparation, behind the talking points, a place where I have no protection and control. The yearning that is now a compulsion is to speak totally from the heart and not the mind. I’m asking my true voice to speak. And I don’t know what it will say….I guess that is faith.

Like the puppet Pinocchio, all I want is to be a real boy. I want to cut the strings so I can dance in a flesh and blood body. This is the urge to be reborn. Life is a dance of the Unborn/Born. It is not one or the other but both simultaneously, two sides of the same coin. If I say I’m the Unborn, then I get to stand aloof and intellectually analyze the world from my safe overlook. If I say I’m the born, then I have to repress the urge as the Unborn. How can I have both: How can I be at one with the world of the born, and also recognize the. Unborn, the formless in me.

In Zen Form is only emptiness; emptiness is only form. Form is form; emptiness is emptiness. Form is the born; emptiness is the Unborn, not form yet. How can I have my form and emptiness at the same time, since these two ideas are categorical opposites. How can I die and be resurrected simultaneously. Death and life are not two. Let there be the One.

This is our yearning…to be the One that has no second. To be the One that is. not divided against itself. You are the world and the world is you. And yet, you are a separate self so you can function in the world and catch a bus. How can I be in the world and not of the world at the same time….Oh, wait…didn’t Jesus say that is what the Christ is.

Jesus is the historical person like you and me, a being in time. The Christ is. timeless, the Unborn you in and me. Call it Christ nature or Buddha nature or the Self in yoga…it is all the formless Unborn that is also born, a dynamic unity, an action, a creative action of….letting go. When we see the contraction, when we feel the tension, when we notice our mind cropping a thought with white hot knuckles, the noticing is the letting go. The Seeing is the Freeing.

The Unborn is the Christ that is formless awareness, the emptiness of form. But this Idea must be an applied Idea. The Idea is transformative when applied to my everyday mind in my everyday moments, for it is there and only there that I can feel the suffering of the cross. It is only there that I can let go of the cross and let the Unborn be born again..and again.

I posted the topic the Turning Point because I feel like I’m making a turn, that I’ve reached a turning point, and that point is that I’m looking for a heartfelt way to use Christian language to talk about a Buddhist awakening. Awakening to one’s True Nature in Christian language is framed in time. Jesus is god but you can’t be god in your nature, you are separate forever and ever. Even after death. you are in heaven as a thing in some eternal time. Things are in the saddle and ride the Christian mind. There is no place of emptiness. There is no realization of formless spirit as your very nature, as your I AM. Everything is expressed and known in an objective grid of matter, of things and stuff, whether physical or mental…all stuff.

But I want to communicate the heart that I feel, that knocks on the inside of my being. But I live in a Christian field with an Eastern lotus flower. How can I plant this oriental flower in a Christian nursery.

I went to Mt. Nebo Sunday to take pictures. Was that a Turning Point for me? You don’t know if you have turned, but you feel something is different. There is always a choice to follow the call or refuse to follow the call. Joseph Campbell talked bout this and outlined the Hero’s Journey in his book Hero with a Thousand Face. Each of us us the hero with one of those faces. The. Hero’s Journey is the journey of the soul to be reborn again and again, the dying and resurrected Son of God, or Being. The Call to Transcend is alway ringing. But this call is not to return to the fold and the safe pasture, but to go beyond where you have not been before. The Call of Religion is to be safe and secure within a belief system, protected by doctrine and the Church of your friends.

The Call of Transcendence is to go beyond religion and security….but to find a new security in one faith in transcendence. A new deeper faith is required for the path of Transcendence, the path of the Transcendent Christ. You actually have to do the cross, not believe in it from afar. Applied Christianity is different from believed in Christianity. Applied Christianity is the path of the mystic. Can you leave the security of beliefs? Can you step out on faith alone beyond the church, religion, and everything you think you are? This is not one step, not one giant leap, but a process, a practice, a Turning Point.