The Transcendental Trap

Disclaimer: This note is to explain the views of one person, based on years of practical experience and study of religions and faith, while attempting miserably to find the truth. The meditation practices described here-in are not recommended by the writer, and may be considered harmful to the soul. The author of this note believes that appropriate spiritual guidance from an Orthodox Christian priest is highly advised in matters of the soul. Please do not try these things at home.

Years ago, about 15 years now and before I began my journey through Rasta and into Orthodoxy, I was very lost and searching for something to fill my life. I had a hole in my being that I had known since I was a child, that could not be filled with any amount of distraction. I'm not so sure that everyone is the same in this, being aware of some unfulfilled part of themself, but this is how it was for me. My life was filled with a pain that I could neither explain nor fully admit. On the surface I seemed happy. 

I had come out of a drug-addled slumber from my "tween" to teen years (12 to 19 yrs. old) and into a new phase of life. Seeking the one who had saved me from drug addiction and placed me on a road towards a normal life became my increasing passion. 


As time went on, and I came to feel that ever-nagging emptiness, I searched in writings and practices of different religions. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I would not be able to ever have peace unless I stopped looking at these religious practices from an outsider's perspective. I had to delve deeper and find out why I could not relate to the experiences I read about in books. There were many different experiences that seemed miraculous, The Sufi Dervish and his complete submission to Universal presence...

"There is a way between voice and presence

 where information flows.

 In disciplined silence it opens.

With wandering talk it closes." - RUMI

It is explained as an experience.I wanted to feel something like this, because I had not and knew that others must have.

The enlightenment of the Buddhist monk... 

"There are only two mistakes one can make along

 the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." - Guatama Buddha

The connectedness to everything which the Hindu attempts to practice...  

"One who always sees all living entities as                                                                                                                                spiritual sparks, in quality one with the Lord,                                                                                                                           becomes a true knower of things. What,                                                                                                                                then, can be illusion or anxiety for him?"

                                                                                                           - Sri Isopanishad

All of these things were parts of a subject I had no apparent experience with. I could not fathom such a dramatic change of my personal condition, that I too would find myself aware, virtuous and in control of the habitual stream of endless thoughts which clouded my mind and judgement. I could not understand how one can completely submit, or even if that was truly necessary, to find the Ultimate Truth. But I knew that there was a certain common theme among the world's religions, and I knew that I had to find out for myself, what it was and how to experience it, or I would have no peace.

I practiced meditations and yogas of all different sorts, starting first with Buddhist traditions, but I quickly became more drawn to the more active styles of the New Age writings I came across. This in turn lead me to reading the Vedas and the other Hindu books. I was now searching for something older, more close to what I believed at the time, was the truth. I decided that the older the religion was, the more probable it was that teaching was less corrupted by later understanding. I was fascinated by the ascetic feats of the Yogis in India, and equally fascinated by the depth of the meditation. I practiced with dilligence. At times, I would call in sick to work, I would cast aside the cares of the world, to simply just meditate and practice my yoga.

When the uneducated westerner thinks of yoga, they think of the very physical yoga seen on television as a stretching excercise. Little do they know that this is actually not just a simple stretching excercise, but that it is designed to distract the body and allow one's mind to let go of the physical realm.

Why was this so important? Letting go of the physical world, mentally allows one to "be free of thought and eventually be accepting of what may come." This is the way a Hindu Siddha yogi explained it to me. And so, I delved deeply into this style of meditation. The stretches were fine and the physical benefits were present, I can not deny that. But what truly drew me in was the breathing techniques and even further, the initiative steps which were only obtainable to those who wanted to submit completely to the teaching and to the Yogi one chose to learn from. You see, eventually in hinduism, one must make a decision to follow a specific guru, if one wants to unlock the rest of the doors to enlightenment. To the Yogi, there is no other way, but total submission. One can not experience the "detachment" of the passions without complete obedience to another. Likewise when the monastic novice in Orthodox Christianity finally becomes a monk, he submits his will to the abbot in obedience to our Lord, for the sake of his own salvation. 

Within these eastern traditions I found many strong parallels,  but the more I came to the faith of Orthodox Christianity, I realized a vastly different conclusion. 

To touch briefly on some of the similarities so that I do not leave the subject un-inspected, the concept of the soul, the nous (inner eye), the human capacity for contemplative abstract reasoning, the understanding that mankind is in a fallen-state, the development of inner awareness that leads to virtuous behavior; all of these are well known in the practices which we are speaking of. 

What differs in Orthodoxy, and in the evident outcome of it's practices are a few major points.

1. God is Trinity - this is an understanding that God is relationship and our experience of God stems from an interpersonal relationship with our creator. For the Buddhist & Hindu, God is either completely impersonal on one hand, or completely personal (everything is God) on the other hand. 

2. Christianity is not a simple "way of life" or Religion. It is a Church. As Dr. Thomas Mether writes on the subject, "Christianity is not my personal and private salvation through Jesus. As the Body of Christ, it is a deifying process of becoming a communion of persons mutually participating in the Uncreated Energies of the Life of the Trinity and increasingly after its Likeness."

3. For the Orthodox Christian, prayer is practiced for the purpose of our relationship to God. Gnosis is knowledge of God, or more importantly knowledge of our relationship to God, but none of this is important without the understanding that our God is Love. This is why we Christians look at prayer, not as separate from life, as if it is some practice that will help us get  to something better, but as intrinsically connected to life. Prayer is life. This is why St. Paul tells us to pray ceaselessly (1 Thes. 5:17). To pray without ceasing is to be in the grace of God and to do God's will. By turning our will over to the one who gave us free-will, we learn how to use it properly, and by doing this we find salvation not only effects us but those whom we relate to as well. Salvation for us, is something we are to work out, "with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12).

Hindsight being what it is, I can now see that I fell for a time into the transcendental trap. I had lost my Self into the Impersonal. This is what the Holy Fathers of the early Christian Church warned about. They knew that without a direct relationship with our creator through sacramental communion, and a spiritual father to assist in the efforts & struggles, inner prayer and contemplation can be destructive and lead one into utter self-ambiguity. With this dangerous practice, one can let go of concepts which are intrinsically connected to our being. Knowledge of what is right and wrong, awareness of personal boundaries, inhibitions are a part of our psyche that protect us and are built into us to guide us to God. When we strip these from our personality we become animals, living on passion and instinct. We become less than human, when we are meant to be more than human. What is more is that we become susceptible to spiritual beings which are not of God, the demons and their influences. 

Thinking that we are spiritual, because we are practicing something spiritual and seeing some initial results, we become puffed up. We see ourselves making strides in our awareness and control of our thoughts and actions, and therefore we believe that we are achieving Godliness. This, combined with a misunderstanding of our relation to God as personal, we can begin to deceive ourselves into thinking that we in fact are Gods. As the saying goes, "Pride comes before the Fall."


What we tend to miss in our search for truth, and I missed it terribly, is that we are dependent on God. Jesus is my salvation, not only because I believe in Him, but because He is God and brought me to Himself. His actions in life, in his ministry, on the cross, in the tomb, and after He ascended to Heaven... all of this is the answer to redemption and salvation. My spiritual experience is dependent on what God reveals to me and what I do with it. I can do nothing without Him. We may control our lives but God constantly prods us and nudges us and chastises us to assist us on our journey. Hopefully we begin to listen.


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When I was in my deepest meditative state, long after the thoughts, the physical awareness, the awareness of spiritual beings besides myself, even the breath itself had passed, I was still aware of myself, not as a body or a psyche but as Being. And as Being I was an empty well, completely devoid of emotion, feeling, thought, action. And yet I could behold. I was aware. And what I was aware of was an infinite otherness, much larger and very separate from myself. At the core of my being was still a sense of other-ness. What I beheld was my emptiness and my separation from God. I was overwhelmed with the sense that if I stayed in this state, I would be alone and devoid of love. This is a terribly fearful awareness. What good am I if I can not experience giving and receiving Love? I was Abyss. I was in my own personal Hell. Completely alone.  I was aware that if I had died at that moment, never knowing the truth of God, I would have forever had the experience of being alone.

With all this in mind, it is not my wish to bash any certain religious person, but to distinguish what is truth from what can lead to perdition. I have discovered that there are paths in our world that lead to confusion, others that lead to denial, others that lead to rejection, still others that lead to Hate. All of these paths and more are the snares set before us. By choosing not to know God, to not stay open to learning about truth, we inevitably lose ourselves to distractions and it becomes too late. We die. And when we die we are made aware of our path and how we chose it for ourselves. This can lead one to total despair and alone-ness. What is more is that we are always in the presence of God and His energies are fully experienced, and since the veil is now lifted we find ourselves ashamed, filled with despair and wanting to reject God so that we do not have to feel what we have done. We deny our responsibility. We deny God. We fall into complete debasement, never to forgive ourselves or anyone else.

It is good then to understand that the God of the Christians varies greatly from the utter loss of self found in the Eastern meditative religions. Meditation and Contemplation are practiced with humility and a sense of otherness in Christianity. Prayer is a crying out to God, the creator of all, for assistance because we are aware of our debased existence. The Christian prays not to find salvation within himself but to ask the God of Salvation to come in to him and live through him. He prays (ON BEHALF OF ALL AND FOR ALL) as a way of communing with the one who is beyond all knowing. He communes then with the infinite because of his mortality. In fact we pray with extreme humility and reverence to our creator that He would allow us in our mortality, to partake of something immortal. What is more is that He wants to give it to us freely. "The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in mercy." (Psalms 103:8)



My entrance into the Orthodox Church has afforded me something which I never received in my experiences with other practices. It has given me a freedom to make decisions with the knowledge that God is allowing me to. This is comforting. The Christian relies heavily on his faith and his faith becomes the obedience necessary for God to do the work. We are not alone in our struggle and the universe is not impersonal, but super-personal. Our experience with life and God are a balance of the finite and the infinite. In Christ we have our hope, our example and our strength. This is unique to the Christian faith and I would never trade it for anything. 


In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God. Amen. +++