by Doug Scott, LCSW

“The Spiritual Technology of Mutual Abiding: Kenosis as a Path Through Crisis”

This dialogue reveals a spiritual community grappling with contemporary challenges through the lens of mystical Christianity and esoteric spirituality. The central presentation by Doug Scott introduces what he terms a “spiritual technology” – the practice of kenosis or mutual abiding – as a method for transforming personal and political anger into spiritual breakthrough.

Doug Scott’s presentation introduces a sophisticated theological framework that draws from mystical Christianity, process philosophy, and contemporary spirituality to address personal and collective crisis through what he terms “spiritual technology.” His central themes—kenosis, mutual abiding, panentheism, and divine becoming—represent a synthesis of traditional mystical concepts with modern philosophical insights about divine-world relationality.

Kenosis: Self-Emptying as Transformative Practice

Doug’s understanding of kenosis builds upon the traditional Christian concept rooted in Philippians 2:7, where Christ “emptied himself” (Greek: kenóō). In mystical theology, particularly in John of the Cross’s thinking, kenosis represents the “self-emptying” of one’s own will and becoming entirely receptive to God and the divine will.

Doug transforms this theological concept into practical spirituality, describing kenosis as reaching complete personal incapacity (“I can’t”) followed by genuine invitation for divine intervention (“You must, and I invite you in”). This mirrors the tradition found in Meister Eckhart’s vernacular call to “vernihten sîn selbes” (to become nothing oneself), which echoes the broader tradition of self-abnegation going back to the Pauline imperative to imitate the self-emptying of Christ.

However, Doug’s interpretation differs from classical mystical approaches in important ways. Rather than viewing kenosis primarily as ascetic self-denial or metaphysical negation, he frames it as functional spiritual technology—a method that reliably produces transformation when applied correctly. This pragmatic approach resonates with contemporary therapeutic models while maintaining metaphysical depth.

Recent scholarship by Alex Dubilet argues that kenosis can reveal “the immanence of an impersonal and dispossessed life ‘without a why,'” challenging traditional associations of self-emptying with transcendence-seeking. Doug’s framework similarly emphasizes immanent divine presence rather than transcendent escape, positioning kenosis as opening to immediate divine abiding rather than distant divine relationship.

Mutual Abiding and Perichoretic Relationality

Doug’s concept of “mutual abiding” draws heavily from the theological tradition of perichoresis, the relationship of the three persons of the triune God to one another, involving their mutual “interpenetration” or “circumincession.” The term, meaning that “the three persons of the Trinity are all fully in one another” and “each person of the Trinity is in full possession of the divine essence,” provides the theological foundation for Doug’s claims about human-divine relationality.

This connects to John 15:4’s language of abiding: “Abide in me, and I in you,” which describes a “perichoretic relationship” extending beyond Trinity to include believers in mutual indwelling with the divine persons. Doug’s innovation lies in presenting this mystical doctrine as experientially accessible through specific practices rather than requiring advanced theological study or institutional mediation.

His description of the “infinity sign” dance between human and divine—”God is inside of you, and you are inside of God”—attempts to make the abstract concept of perichoresis psychologically tangible. This reflects contemporary applications of perichoresis to human community, where the theological concept becomes a model for “mutual acceptance and love” that values differences while maintaining unity.

Yet Doug’s framework faces the theological challenge of explaining how finite beings can genuinely participate in infinite divine life without either diminishing divine transcendence or inflating human capacity. Traditional perichoretic theology maintains careful distinctions that Doug’s more fluid language sometimes obscures.

Panentheistic Divine-World Relationship

Doug explicitly invokes panentheism—”all-in-God-ism”—to describe the metaphysical foundation of mutual abiding. Panentheism maintains “an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine” while asserting that “the universal spirit is present everywhere” and “transcends all things created.” This mediates between pantheism (everything is God) and classical theism (God is separate from world).

His solar logos example illustrates panentheistic logic: the sun provides “relevant value and a sense of ordering of possibilities” to the planetary system while depending on third-density consciousness exploration for its own development. This reflects process theology’s understanding that “God contains the universe but is not identical with it” and that “God interacts with the changing universe” such that “God is changeable over time.”

Process panentheism emphasizes that “the relationship between God and the world is an internal relationship in that God affects the world and the world affects God.” Doug’s framework aligns with this by asserting genuine divine-human interdependence rather than one-way divine action. However, his specific claims about third-density beings providing the solar logos with otherwise unavailable consciousness levels require metaphysical commitments that extend beyond established process theology.

Divine Becoming and “Withness”

Doug’s concept of “withness” (solidarity plus witness) appears to be his contribution to understanding divine becoming. Process theology maintains that “it is an essential attribute of God to affect and be affected by temporal processes” and that God is “in some respects temporal, mutable, and passible.” Doug’s “withness” suggests divine solidarity with human experience rather than distant observation or judgment.

This resonates with Whitehead’s description of God as “the fellow sufferer who understands” and process theology’s emphasis on divine empathy. However, Doug’s framework goes further by suggesting that divine becoming requires human participation—that God’s own development depends on human choices and experiences.

Contemporary process theology maintains that “God creates the world through us, with us” and that “we are God’s hands.” Doug’s framework takes this participatory understanding in a more explicitly co-creative direction, suggesting that human spiritual work contributes to cosmic divine evolution.

Critical Assessment

Doug’s synthesis offers several strengths: practical accessibility of mystical concepts, integration of therapeutic and spiritual approaches, and contemporary relevance of ancient wisdom traditions. His vulnerability in sharing personal struggle demonstrates the human applicability of these concepts rather than keeping them abstractly theological.

However, the framework faces several challenges:

Epistemological concerns: Doug’s claims about divine response, cosmic function of third-density beings, and the mechanics of mutual abiding require acceptance of metaphysical assertions that cannot be verified through ordinary experience or empirical investigation.

Theological tensions: His fluid movement between traditional Christian language and New Age concepts may create confusion about whether he offers Christian mysticism, generic spirituality, or something else entirely. The framework’s relationship to historical Christian orthodoxy remains unclear.

Practical limitations: While Doug reports personal transformation, the method’s effectiveness may depend on specific psychological dispositions, cultural backgrounds, or spiritual preparation that he doesn’t fully address.

Social implications: The emphasis on individual spiritual transformation as response to political crisis raises questions about whether this approach adequately addresses systemic injustice or potentially enables spiritual bypassing of necessary social action.

Conclusion

Doug Scott’s framework represents a contemporary attempt to make classical mystical theology practically accessible while addressing modern concerns about divine-world relationality. His integration of kenosis, perichoresis, panentheism, and process concepts creates a coherent system for understanding spiritual transformation as participating in divine becoming.

The framework’s value lies not necessarily in its metaphysical accuracy—which remains unverifiable—but in its potential to provide meaning, community, and transformative practice during times of personal and social crisis. Whether it represents authentic retrieval of mystical wisdom or creative theological innovation, it demonstrates the ongoing human need to find spiritual resources adequate to contemporary challenges.

The ultimate test of such frameworks lies not in their theoretical consistency but in their capacity to produce the kind of human flourishing they promise. Doug’s community’s testimony suggests genuine helpfulness, though broader evaluation would require more extensive and diverse implementation.

Spiritual Community Dialogue: The Path of Kenosis

Doug: Well, I’m going to get started, and if others come in, they’re obviously welcome.

Living in true Truth itself. Truth, goodness, and beauty. We abide in you. And you abide in us. This mutual abiding, this interbeing, is the nature of unity itself. And tonight, I ask that you bless this conversation. Be in this conversation, bless this conversation, as we ourselves offer ourselves, we offer this group, and we offer this conversation to be a blessing to all those both participating live, as well as who might listen. Amen.

Well, guys, I’m having a little internet issue. It seems like I’ve got full internet, but when people are talking, it comes in and out. So if I end up coming in and out to you, Troy, would you just raise your hand or flag me down and let me know that I’m not coming in clearly, please?

I wanted to be very vulnerable tonight. I wanted to be vulnerable to you guys tonight. I wanted to share a struggle, things that I’ve shared before, but there was a certain coming to it yesterday. I’ve been having dreams that led up to it, and then something shifted yesterday. And the dreams opened up too. There’s something metaphysical happening deeply inside of me.

I want to share this with you, because I think it’s completely related to what our group is about, and also what I think Law of One is trying to say, what mystical Christianity is trying to say at its best.

What I’ll be sharing tonight is part of my own experience. But also, I’m trying, I hope, to describe a certain kind of way to clear blockages or create harmony, especially in the lower chakras, that is not often talked about. But within the mystical Christian tradition, it is there. And it’s not the only way, and who knows if it’s the best way or not. But it is indeed a very good way, different than how Ra would explain it.

So I’m going to be talking a little bit about my own internal experience, sharing it with you. Talking about what mutual abiding looks like, kenosis, all of these words, and then ask you to see if you’ve had experiences with some of these things.

So, this is what happened for the past two weeks. No, longer than that, but it culminated yesterday, or two days ago. The weird tension that’s inside of me between conceptually knowing that I am angry at my father for being a Trump supporter, having these running conversations in my head a lot with him regarding, “Well, what about this little thing that happened today?” Never sending him anything, but just having these conversations inside of me.

And conceptually, I know that this is not helpful for me. I know what I offer my clients when they come up with things like this. I try to help them to understand what is going on in the subconscious mind, the tensions there, to bring them up to the conscious mind, to see the contrasting forces, and to desire a higher order resolution, which can be freeing. And that’s a concept, it’s a law of three at play.

And even though I know this, still my lower body, my experience of being me the past few days, has been almost unbearable. And it’s tension, and certainly looking for relief, and wasn’t getting it anywhere. Relief from my own thoughts, anger, desire to project.

And my own history is that sometimes when I come up with these, when I have these kinds of places of logjams where I can’t move forward, the tension is so great that I sort of break down. I have a breakdown. I’m prone to melancholy, so it starts to look like a depression. And I know what that feels like. I’ve had three major depressive episodes in my life.

And I was with a client yesterday, and we were having a good conversation, and I could just feel myself falling. It was the weirdest thing. I’m very present about how I was feeling, so almost witnessing myself falling into this depression, like the energy I was having was just almost like I had a black hole, and it was just going in.

The dreams that I’ve had in the past week, they have been very vivid, and I haven’t had vivid dreams in a while, and there were about four of them in a row. Three of them, really, I guess. And they were building upon each other in terms of themes. The themes were high degrees of blockage in higher chakras. The tension, feeling wanting to be embodied at more expansive levels, but not being able to do that. And also the great need for forgiveness.

These were coming up in my dreams in different ways. Be it how someone was dressed, the green shirts, be it the little nicknames of certain images, characters in my dreams arising. And they were very clear to me, very clear to me that it’s the upper chakra blockage because of all of the tension that I’ve been holding on.

Now, I know you guys fairly well. And for those listening later, after this live meeting, if you’re human, I can assume that the tensions we bear are often so heavy and painful. The solidarity is important. That’s why we have this kind of group here to talk.

But there’s also something, it’s kind of a spiritual technology, is what I’m wanting to describe tonight. And please don’t hear me talking to you now on the other side, you know, fully enlightened. Nowhere near. I mean, there’s no enlightenment here. I mean, if there is, it’s… I don’t even want to call it, I don’t even know what it is. I feel less tension, that’s all I can say, but it’s not fully tensionless.

But it was enough for me to want to feel it, to go through this experience, and then share maybe a little bit more clearly what the mystical kenotic path is. Kenosis. Kenotic path. And a mutual abiding that is inferred in the Law of One, but never fully explicated. It’s inferred in a lot of spiritual paths, but never fully described. And yet, there are… I mean, in Christianity, of course, at the deepest levels, it is the very heart of the message there. But I will plead ignorance to probably it being also available in other traditions, in certain kinds of teachings of those traditions.

But it goes like this.

For those of us who maybe have some experience with AA or the twelve steps, this is not going to be new. But I’d like us to look at these twelve steps as something, or at least the instinct of the first three steps, particularly as an American description. AA was kind of coming from the American experience, as an American description of what the deepest instinct of mystical Christianity has tried to say.

And the reason why I’m sharing this is not to get people to become Christian. I don’t even like that word. And I’m completely a heretic compared to what most Christians might believe. On the other hand, what I’d like to share is…

There is such a thing as having a relationship with this larger transcendent reality. It’s a relating. It’s a withness. Not just witness, it’s a with-nessing. Solidarity plus witness, you know? It’s witnessing.

And when we can reach a certain level of “I can’t do it anymore,” like, whatever feeble attempts that I have to try to understand, or unblock this, or maybe I need to do this kind of magical ritual, you know, wait till the moon is a certain kind of way, and all of that. Not saying those things aren’t effective.

But the spiritual technology that is available is much easier than that. And in my opinion, much more powerful. Way more efficacious, and much more at a much quicker pace. The relief is fairly amazing.

And when we reach a certain level of incapacity to move forward, kind of like on your knees thing, that’s when we can ask. Truly ask. Like, falling, you know, literally or figuratively on your knees, the simple gesture of something like, “I can’t. You can.”

Like, I, Doug, can no longer… You, capital You, I invite you to enter. And this is an important piece. Because I think it is the very nature of reality, and Ra does infer this, that unity itself…

We can think of unity, a lot of people do, it’s just more concentric circles that go out and out, you know, all this diversity and everything is a holon, you know? You can kind of see unity. God is like the most everything, but the most transcendent layer of God is like this most outer circle.

And that is true, but it’s not the full truth. The full truth is that there’s also an inner dimension. An inner abiding. So maybe you could think of every circle of God, concentric circle has its center, which just keeps entering into more and more.

So, if you can picture God not just growing in bigger and bigger concentric circles as more of God’s holons have experienced, but rather, there’s this dance, this weave that goes… God is inside of you, and you are inside of God. It’s like this infinity sign that moves inside of each other, and then out, and then in, and out. It’s a breathing that happens.

And you can experience this. I’ve experienced it for most of my life, you know? But it’s just this time I feel called to just share it. Because it is a constant experience, but sometimes it gets really, again, I will fall into too much me trying to unblock this, or unblock that, or figure out all the ways in which my past lives contribute to something. Not saying that stuff is not important.

But the Path of Kenosis, the path of mutual abiding, is one in which we invite the You, whatever you could be. And it’s not even necessary to define, is it the higher self, is it the Primal Logos? Is it the Solar Logos? It doesn’t matter.

What matters is our own capacity to reach a level of “I can’t. You must. And I invite you in.”

And when that happens, there’s an inner illumination, a presence, a sweetness, it’s a freedom. There’s a freeing spaciousness that didn’t exist before, and could never have been manufactured or manifested by the self.

It’s an opening of a perspective that is at once intimately familiar, because it is your experience, while at the same time, it is beyond something that you’re participating inside of.

So the transcendent becomes immanent. And this immanent abiding, this abiding presence, is the fullness, is the pure fullness of the One Infinite Creator that can… that you can feel. And here’s the cool thing, though, is what I’m trying to say, is that that singularity of wholeness. Think of it as golden light that can be inside of you at invitation. That singularity of golden light does the work that you could not do.

Just does the work that we could not do on our own.

And so, for those of us who might be familiar with the twelve steps, you might hear echoes there. To do that which we could not find ourselves being able to do, in terms of recovery, perhaps.

But most of us, if you’re like me, we’re addicted to being angry. Or being at odds with.

…

And what happened today for me and my dad, and how it was different from the past few days, is… I didn’t feel anything different last night. But what I did all day yesterday, I woke up yesterday morning fairly incapacitated with anxiety, and as I’d mentioned before, even with my client, like, I was feeling my energy leaving, and then just being sucked into this black hole of depression, you know?

I reached out to my best friend. It’s always good to talk, get that solidarity. It was a nice way to stop the bleeding. But it wasn’t transformative.

And so I prayed. And it wasn’t a prayer, like, “I pray thee, my Lord.” It was a full-on ankh moment. Ra talks about the ankh as basically, if love is going to be manifested, there’s a price to pay. That gaining is measured in the losing. You know? Every resurrection has a crucifixion kind of thing.

This is what kenosis means, by the way. It’s this Greek word, it’s uniquely Christian. A sense of how God, or the Creator, gives of God’s self into, pours God’s self and love into as manifestation. It’s a full gift of self. And then there’s a reception of self, which is manifested reality. Manifesting reality is creation receiving God’s gift of self, and then creation pours itself back into God. You see? That’s this kenotic dance.

But when creation reaches the level of third density, we, who are God with the veil, what is required is our desire to then receive the fullness of God in us. And then what is required is our faith and will, you know? To then empty ourselves into God. That doesn’t happen automatically.

Which is why love and will, and will and faith are the two things that came out of a veiled experience. I mean, this is the great glory.

So yesterday, I prayed. Just wrote prayers, some of them, but every action I did for a long time yesterday was just “I can’t. You must. I surrender.”

Wasn’t even trying to think, is that right, is that wrong? I give all of myself into you. I accept all of you into me. Help me to love. Show me love. Show me how to forgive. I have no idea. You know, I’m not going to try to conceive of it in some kind of Law of One way, or regurgitate some way that other teachers have said. Teach me how to love. Teach me how to forgive myself.

And so, last night, I went to bed. And the dreams I had… when I have these types of dreams, they’re indicative of the very thing that I was praying for that I couldn’t have manifested on my own, because I sure as hell tried.

And they were freeing. I was always doing some kind of magic, you know, like, flying, or teaching, and I’m manifesting objects, you know, and all of this stuff, and it’s like I’m able to act as a fully embodied adept in these kinds of dreams.

And I don’t really care too much to think about what they mean or not, other than they always indicate an unblocking, which is not my point. I don’t really care if I’m blocked or unblocked. I don’t give a shit if I’m harvestable or not. Like, I don’t even think about those things.

All I want to do is be a fully embodied vessel of love. Vessel might be the best word, a chalice. I want to be a chalice of love from which people can sip pure wholeness from. You know, I want to be a vessel of love. But it’s not my contents. My yes is to hold it, and then the contents, it’s not my business. That’s what I’m inviting to be filled by God, so that others can feast. You know, drink.

And doing that requires one to be unblocked. But you can’t do it on yourself, at least I sure as hell can’t.

So, this is the spiritual technology, the kenosis. The mutual abiding presence. It requires our yes. Requires our inviting inside of us to where our bodies become, you know, the temple, or some would call it the tabernacle, but it’s this idea of holding the fullness inside of you, and it burns! There’s a holy burning there.

And it’s a burn that is… it’s a joy, delight burning that is orgasmic, and too muchness. It’s odd. But I think it’s the fires that Ra talks about in terms of being on the sun. You know, and the generative expressions. It’s that happening in third density, in spacetime, in your heart.

And so when I woke up this morning, there was an openness, a freshness. It was a new beginning. A new abidement, a launching pad from my heart upwards.

And the dog of the past few weeks was nipping at me throughout the day as well. The thought form of, pay attention to me and how angry you are. Nipping. That doesn’t go away, you know? Not at all. In fact, it continues to be present just now. I mean, I can see it, I can feel it, even now, creeping around, inviting me to let it into this thought form of bellicosity.

Yet, there is a capacity that is not my own to see it and love it as it is. And it’s not conceptual. It’s experiential. Because the spaciousness that I have is one that invites it in if it can bear the light. Which is not my light. And yet it is, you see? There’s this not one, not two, but both one and two quality.

And so, I’ll finish by saying this is what panentheism is talking about. Christianity has this term, where human development, human evolution came to a certain point of seeing, well, okay, pantheism, everything is God, but there wasn’t yet the psycho-spiritual evolution of humankind to recognize different layers of God, or everything is its own little gods. There’s a little god here, and a little, you know, that tree over there is a god of that tribe, or whatever.

But panentheism says something radically new. If you think about it, and it’s what I’ve been trying to say here, is that the actual psycho-evolution of God, of the Creator itself, is one in which… For example, the solar logos throws, connotes kenotic pouring of self into the solar system, the heliosphere, is its own dying. I mean, every second, the sun is dying. All of what’s being ejected is its life, man. It’s dying, it’s not getting that back.

But upon that gift of self, the entire planet Earth is dependent upon, life is, you know? Whatever little billionth we receive.

And yet, from a Law of One perspective, the solar logos gives us life and is the source in this sector. Yet the solar logos’ dependence upon third density spacetime’s exploration of consciousness is its consciousness level.

To say it again, the sun can only give us capacity, catalysts for the lower three chakras. That’s what the Solar Logos does. But when you and I are able to be the sun in this level in spacetime third density, and choose to activate in the way that I’m describing, or maybe there’s other esoteric ways, but when we’re choosing to do that, we’re actually able to give the sun something it couldn’t on its own. It is dependent on us.

Because we are the Son at this level, and we give back. So, the Son gives us glory of life, and then we return the favor and mutually abide in the Son. And give it our experience. Because it can’t do that.

Do you see this pattern here? And if you can just take that pattern and then scrunch it together to one circle, then you kind of get this almost figure-eight thing inside. It’s just mutual abiding, just constant mutual abiding.

And all we have to do is ask, and it goes inside. So I’m going to stop here and just see how this is resonating. I appreciate you letting me talk, and I hope that it’s relevant in some ways to you and your own experience, and if you’ve never done it before, I do invite you to try that invitational piece. See what happens.

…

Sirak: Hey, Doug. Yeah, this is really quick. What you just described is so… an experience I had this morning with a coworker whom I had just been frustrated with our dynamic and our work relationship, and I think sometimes in my work relationships, I can fall into the trap of I just assume people are just like me, and they love to do random deep dives on the internet, and they love to sit around and pontificate and…

And in my work relationship with this coworker, I communicated to them last week that I was frustrated with our work relationship, and I was frustrated with their performance. And it was kind of a long time coming. It was like months of subtle conversations, and I communicated all of that last week.

This week, they sent me an email. And it was a really vulnerable email, where they communicated that they just want to know that I believe in them, and they really want to know that I’m on their team, and that I’m on their side, and that I am going to walk with them through what I’m encouraging them to grow in.

And when they sent me that email, it just cut me to my heart, because when I read that, I realized that I was much angrier than I thought for months. And when they sent me that email, it was very courageous, and it was very vulnerable. But when I read it, I felt a lot of anger.

And I felt humiliated because here I am with my coworker. We’re both, you know, Christian pastors, and in the face of vulnerability and courage, I’m just even more pissed off.

And I… just like you described, Doug, this morning, I prayed. Just, I don’t… I just want to be loved, I want to communicate to this person that I am going to walk with them. And I wanted… There’s a part of me that just wanted to win the argument, wanted to win the… Whatever, I don’t even know. I don’t… it was like this… I think bellicosity is the word. It was…

But this morning, it was really powerful, like, I read their email aloud, but I felt like their words became mine, because I wanted to say to them that I want to know that they’re going to walk with me, too. We both just want to walk with each other, and it was like a full surrender to love, and we ought to encourage each other, and it just put things in perspective. It made me very confused about my own emotions and my relationship with anger and frustration, and the power of love, the power of just being open with someone, and saying it with optimism and with hope, and we were laughing together, and you know, crying a little bit, but it was enough, it was enough, you know?

So that kind of came to mind as you were sharing, Doug, just… this was probably, oh, man, probably eight hours ago, so… wanted to share that.

…

Doug: Thank you, that’s a beautiful example, a live example of what we’re trying to say here, Sirak, thank you.

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Barbara: Yeah, real quick, so, Doug, you know me really, really well, and you know my journey, and for example, you know, when it comes to my mother, it took… It was a long journey to get there, but the anger, and I guess I could even go as far as to say the hate that I had for her and carried for so many years, you know, at some point, that was just transformed into love.

You know, the forgiveness came, and then love, and so, you know, there is nothing but love for her, and love, you know, for myself in this relationship. But you’ve heard me talk multiple times. I like the way to be a vessel of love, or the chalice that others can sip from, because those are… you know, that’s what I’ve been trying to express. You know, I want to open my heart to love, I want to live love, be love, you know, I’ve described it in all different ways, so…

Very, very similar experience. I have been brought to my knees, literally on my knees. And in prayer. My prayers are always answered somewhat different in the ways… the ways yours have been, but they’re always, always answered. Something comes. And I can’t say I experienced that… I mean, I do, but maybe not the way you did the infinity dance, so to speak. I’ll have to think about that one, yeah, a little bit, in how I experienced that. The golden light, yes, but, yeah, I, yeah, it might… I think it’s a little different for me.

…

Doug: Thank you, Barbara. Beautiful, yeah. You are a light.

Yeah. Anybody who’s not really from the Christian, say, tradition, or had much experience of that, have you had a sense of mutual abiding, that the fullness and plenum of the Creator resides and abides in you, and you in the Creator’s, has that been your experience? And if so, what might have been freeing in the opening?

…

Rudy: When I 100% understand everything you just said, I will be smart as fuck that day, and I’m just going to keep listening until that day comes. But on every day till that day, just to know, I really, really appreciate the example you’re setting of in these particular times, with these particular sets of catalysts being very thick, some options of how to hold what comes up, and how to hold ourselves in what comes up. Really, really a lot to think about. Thanks.

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Troy: Doug, from what you’re saying, it sounds like you have simultaneously, a kind of emptying and helplessness to love the way you want to. And in that helplessness, God has come to you and been a fire inside you. That’s it in one hand. But even though that was transformative, and helpful, God is still allowing depression and blackness to kind of nip at you, both at the same time. Is that kind of what you’re saying?

…

Doug: Not the acuity of the depression, rather the thought forms of, bellicosity inviting me back into the same mode of thinking.

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Troy: Of yesterday. So that darkness is lifted as the fire came, but there still is anger, is that what… that’s kind of what you’re saying?

…

Doug: Well, there’s much, much less anger. I don’t feel the anger. And here’s another thing that I’d like to share, is the darkness has not lifted, it’s just been transformed. For example, darkness of liminal space is… the dark night of the soul is agonizing, say, because you feel all alone, but then also the darkness when changed, and there’s a withness inside of me.

The darkness is luminous. There’s a luminous darkness.

…

Barbara: It’s pregnant.

…

Doug: With pure love, just… it’s like intelligent infinity just is popping, you know, just zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, and I’m right there at the headwaters, and it’s dark as well, because my mind can’t wrap itself around the plenum of wholeness and light. But it’s dark too, and I would call that the darkness of mystery, that I’m just allowing it to be inside of me, and coming through me.

Rather than the darkness of complete and total alienation, alone with my anger, and feeling like I’m impotent to… because I refuse to project it, because then I know that fucking Trump wins. Just kidding. I refuse to project it. I refuse to call my dad and just yell. I refuse to project it at the cashier.

But it’s got to go somewhere, and it attacks me like an immune system disease, an autoimmune disease of the psycho-spiritual, sucking my energy and attacking my energy. But then when I can awaken, and I’ll allow the wholeness inside of me to abide inside, that darkness transmutes to what it’s always been, but now I get to enjoy it, and that’s the mystery of wholeness in me, where I don’t have to figure it out, I just have to allow it to be present, and then I participate in its own gift of self to the world.

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Troy: Well, I’ve had both of the experiences that you’re describing, perhaps, but they’ve never been together at the same time.

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Barbara: I’ve had that.

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Troy: Fire inside that’s holy love, that’s… it wraps and unfolds, and becomes too much, and it says, whoa, you know, and you kind of beg off, and it’s, yeah, I’ve had my moments of that, and that was wonderful.

And then I’ve had the helplessness, where you just tried everything you could, and nothing was working, and what I did in that case, and it provoked a miracle, was I went to confession with the charismatic priest, fellow that I knew, told them how helpless I was to get back to my place of faith, because I was stuck in a fear cycle during my dark night.

And a day later, it was… My fear was gone, even though I had worked with it for a good six months. The confession did it. So, that’s kind of my two pieces, but again, they were at different times.

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Doug: Yeah, thank you, I think maybe I’m just more neurotic, I’m not sure, but those oftentimes, I do abide in both the melancholia… in fact, I would argue that the melancholia is the fertile ground in which I break down, and then break through into, like, open receptacle asking. So that’s where my asking comes from. And then I’m filled. And then my job there is to simply give it away. Like, that’s why I wanted to talk about it tonight. In my own meager way, I’m giving it away, just my words here.

But I know that I’m not saying anything that’s not new… It’s not new. Everybody experiences in some ways.

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Barbara: Yeah, Doug, and you reminded me when you said luminous darkness, because I’ve used those exact same words to describe an experience I had. I think I even wrote it, you know, when you had me write a little bit about myself, an experience that I had where I was sitting… I call it in the dark… it’s like a dark void, but huge. I mean, we’re talking boundless infinity. And I could see my little self sitting in there, sitting Buddha-style, cross-legged, and in this expansiveness where even, I think, the boundaries of myself, but it just reminded me a little bit about when you were talking the circle, and I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve had that experience, which was very, very transformative for me. But I used the same word, luminous darkness.

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Doug: Thank you. Yeah.

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Fred: Doug, if I could share, first of all, you know, thank you for, like, just being vulnerable in your openness. I think, like, some of what everybody’s saying, like, the season that we are in right now. Everybody is getting beat up! Just beat! And that’s not in a bad way. Like, you know, in some… the whole esoteric Christian style, the buffeted about, you know, and that buffering is really shined up, like the gold…

There’s one way I was trying to… where it hit me, because we’re facing it, too. So we’re doing this album. Freaking album I’ve been trying to get out, dude. It’s called The Crucible, right? My wife and I’s joke, ongoing joke, is that she’s like, why did you call it the Crucible? Because now I’m experiencing the crucible in every fucking thing, you know, everything! Everything is the crucible! And I had this parable, it’s like…

But here’s the deal, though, like, to gold, to true gold, fire is not a threat. It’s the friend, because the true gold, the fire burns off everything that’s not the gold. So the true gold is like, yeah, I need this so I can get rid of that thing that I thought was gold. And I say that, but it’s like… but now, it’s like, we’re going through it, and I’m wondering, just at the level, it’s like, if you are more sensitive then you’re going to… everybody’s catching it. You’re going to catch it more. And what’s interesting is to see you, watching you catch it.

You know, and then sit with it. Some tremendous, you know, transformative-type work that, on the other side. You know, lately, what I’ve been trying to play with in my mind is, I have this thing I call “and scene.”

And it’s like, when I really get pissed and I lose it, and I think, okay, there’s my higher self saying, “and scene.” So it’s like, because that whole clip, it’s almost like if I was a YouTube of my life, that whole clip I was going to go back and say, do you remember this? Okay, let me take you back to it. And then I lost my shit, and it was like, “and scene!” So, what did you learn?

So it’s like, this is a part of that, and I don’t know, but if anything, you know, I think everybody’s saying I agree with it, just thank you so much for saying it out loud. Because, to some degree, and especially with how things are going politically, how we live, because politics is shared public life. Shared public life. How do we share public life? Like, and especially all that’s going on now. Oh my gosh!

So, yeah, thank you for sharing it, and our hearts are with you. I love the whole “with-nessing.” Dude, that… I’m going to carry that with me. That was very good witnessing. I wish I could have taught that to kids that I was trying to teach evangelism to twenty years ago, because true witnessing, I think, is true “with-nessing.”

So, thank you.

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Doug: Love you, brother. Thank you. Yeah, great words.

Neil, and I’m so glad you were part of our group tonight, too, because I know you’ve struggled here with your dad, and your neighbor, too. And we’ve had private conversations, you’ve spoken here about carrying all of that, and how to deal with it, and you’re always so curious about unblocking the chakras and things, and so you were kind of my muse, to be honest. You know, if there was an audience in my mind, it was you and humans like you, who I am one of.

This sense of I can’t do it on my own, and I ask something inside of me to come through. I don’t know, I am very curious, though, to how you resonated, or it’s okay if you didn’t, and understand what I was saying.

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Neal: Yeah, no, I definitely resonate, and am having a lot of memories and ways that were, you know, kind of traumatic to make it through and to surrender in a way that, you know, I do give up, kind of myself in that moment, and… My dad kind of… having that relationship that’s confusing, and not knowing if it’s the right thing to do to kind of create distance or not, and when I did surrender in that moment, I was in a place of deep confusion, of drinking a lot, and just got to the place of I think I read, you know, you have to surrender. I said, I don’t care. I surrender everything, I let it go, and I’m done suffering. And that really opened me up to almost too much love, where I was going out and giving a lot of money away, and thinking that there’s no point to, you know, material things, and really had to reel myself back in of just kind of overflowing a little bit too much.

And then life happens, I thought I was in this good place, and my neighbor does the whole lying and similar tactics of manipulation that my family used, and that got me right back into that place where I thought I had fully healed. And I’ve been working with Troy as well, where it just happened yesterday. I thought I was out of it, and heard them doing something, and it really triggered me, and I had to work through it, and there was more surrendering in that moment of just telling myself, I don’t have this, and that anger is like that poison that I’m constantly, every day, thinking, this is how they wronged me, this is how they should be punished, or have some sort of… there should be justice here, and I’m the one that should hand it out, or why can’t God just, you know, have a tree fall on their house and make something negative happen, and I think I’ve just been struggling to… have my own outcome. Wanting to see the change in someone else is really…

Yeah, sucking the energy out and not allowing me to be there and love, so… I think it’s almost a daily reminder to surrender and know that the anger is right there, crawling on my skin. I can feel it, and it’s… yeah, a constant, you know, knowing that I have to make that intention almost every day.

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Troy: One wonders if to some degree, our society is being confronted with a catalyst, like Neil’s neighbor in the form of DT, and we’re having to wrestle with it, and re-wrestle with it, and re-wrestle with it, in order to clear out this part of our shadow. I have a dear sister, who was my very first spiritual directee, who was a minister.

She said, my core has always been grace, and she reminded me of when I was doing spiritual direction with her, how I would try to get her in touch with her anger, and she man, she’s just gracious to all these people who, I would say, wronged her, and never could feel it. But man, she’s feeling it now, and she just hopes all those Trump supporters get their just due, and she imagines herself praying fire from heaven on the mall, and she’s never been like this before.

So we’re all getting our chances, and I don’t mean to make too light of that, because it’s hard, hard, hard stuff. But it’s just kind of paradoxical, so we have to laugh at our… at the paradox, I think.

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Clara: I had something pretty amazing happen to me over Labor Day weekend.

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Doug: Let’s say you’ll be the last talk, Clara, you’ll share here, and then we’ll close out in a prayer, so if everybody can hang on for a few more minutes. Go ahead, Clara.

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Clara: Okay, sorry, I didn’t realize the time. So I live in Muskegon, and my family’s on the other side of the state in Michigan. And my son invited them all here to camp, like a family reunion, and I haven’t gone to a family reunion in three years. Just a lot of hurt that I’ve been holding, especially against my brother. So it was like, okay, he’s here, I got to go face him.

And everything was fine, seeing the family and that, and my brother. But what I came to the conclusion, when I pondered over the weekend it just blew my mind, was that I was facing myself. Every single thought that I thought my brother said to me, did to me, it was myself, and to me, that is totally amazing, because it’s my thoughts that create all this, and I just hope I can do this, again, when I have somebody that’s really under my skin.

Thank you for listening.

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Doug: Well, thank you for sharing that. Let us go forth in love, and light. In unity. And enjoy. Enjoy doesn’t mean happiness. Joy means including it all. The nipping anger… Including all of the embodiment here. And still having faith and will to be vessels of love.

Where we ask the One Infinite Creator to abide in us, through us. And then out into the world. And we are very grateful for this. Amen.

Guys, God bless, thank you for participating, we’ll see you.

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Sirak: Thank you, Doug. Love you, man.

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Doug: Love you too.

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Nathan: Good evening, everybody.

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Barbara: Love y’all. Good night. Blessings.

• Cosmic Christ