They Can’t Take That Away from Me: Parsing My Passages, Holding to the Constant

A few days ago I was seized with the impulse to go through my binder full of spiritual passages I have memorized for meditation over the years, and select ones that still resonate — ones that do not have negative programming woven into them, from my current cult-aware perspective. Ones I may still want to use in my (no-rules, intuition-driven, whenever-I-feel-like-it) spiritual practice.

This is a new moment for me. Since Dec. 2023, when I first heard damning allegations against the founder of the meditation center with which I was once closely affiliated, my relationship to meditation has become fraught. I mean, it was fraught previously due to Kundalini Syndrome (aka adverse effects of meditation), as well as to my confusing and destabilizing experience during a year working at the ashram in my early 30s (2005–2006).

Meditation had never been quite the same for me since that period. But learning a couple years ago that the seemingly gentle teacher whose meditation method I’d long used, and whose community I had been close to, was (I’ve been convinced) both a cult leader and a criminal — well, that made meditation along his lines feel tainted to me, no matter what inspirational passages I used. I’ve hardly been able to sit down to meditate since.

Yet, some of these passages are so dear to me. They are bound up in my own spiritual journey in beautiful and liberating ways. Though curated by the master and his minions at the ashram, they were penned by mystics and scripture-writers around the globe and across the ages. I’m not sure I’d call myself a perennialist anymore, but — to use a horrible expression (where does this come from?!) — I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I cannot allow one bad actor to poison the river of spirituality for me. I do not have to — and I choose not to — give up all of my beloved inspirational passages. It’s not the fault of Rabi’a or Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, of Meera or Chief Yellow Lark, that someone misused their sublime words for his own gain. And I won’t let them all go.

I am going through these passages with a discerning eye — perhaps not for the last time — because I know they were used to cultivate ideals that can be, and were, used in a harmful way. There are definitely some I will never put back in circulation. (Ramdas, you can keep your Unshakable Faith; for me it was too caught up in a slow and damaging process of surrender not just to God, but to that group.)

But there are others I refuse to let go of. The first passage I memorized, from the Tao te Ching, remains a touchstone for life and leadership:
​

Original Oneness

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.

​(#10 from the Tao te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation)

​St. Clare of Assisi offers a balm to the spirit:
​

The Mirror of Eternity

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity,
place your soul in the brightness of His glory,
place your heart in the image of the divine essence
and transform yourself by contemplation
utterly into the image of His divinity,
that you too may feel what His friends feel as they taste
the hidden sweetness that God himself has set aside
from the beginning for those who love Him.

Casting aside all things in this false and troubled world
that ensnare those who love them blindly,
give all your love to Him who gave Himself in all
for you to love:
​
Whose beauty the sun and moon admire, and whose gifts
are abundant and precious and grand without end.

Image: Jose M. Reyes / Unsplash

Swami Omkar’s prayer still rings pure and true:
​

Prayer for Peace

Adorable presence,
Thou who art within and without,
above and below and all around,
Thou who art interpenetrating
every cell of my being,
Thou who art the eye of my eyes,
the ear of my ears,
the heart of my heart,
the mind of my mind,
the breath of my breath,
the life of my life,
the soul of my soul,

Bless us, dear God, to be aware of thy presence
now and here.
May we all be aware of thy presence,
in the East and the West,
in the North and the South.
May peace and goodwill abide among individuals,
communities, and nations.
This is my earnest prayer.

​May peace be unto all!

St. Augustine’s words can yet transfix me:
​

Entering Into Joy

Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down,
along with all our busy thoughts about earth, sea, and air;
if the very world should stop, and the mind cease thinking
about itself, go beyond itself, and be quite still;

if all the fantasies that appear in dreams and imagination
should cease, and there be no speech, no sign:

Imagine if all things that are perishable grew still — for if we listen they are saying, We did not make ourselves; he made us who abides forever — imagine, then that they should say this and fall silent, listening to the very voice of him who made them and not to that of his creation;

so that we should hear not his word through the tongues of men, nor the voice of angels, nor the clouds’ thunder, nor any symbol, but the very Self which in these things we love, and go beyond ourselves to attain a flash of that eternal wisdom which abides above all things:

And imagine if that moment were to go on and on, leaving behind all other sights and sounds but this one vision which ravishes and absorbs and fixes the beholder in joy; so that the rest of eternal life were like that moment of illumination which leaves us breathless:

Would this not be what is bidden in scripture,
Enter thou into the joy of thy lord?

Shankara still speaks to me:
​

Soul of My Soul

You are the soul of my soul,
your energy my wisdom and mind;
my body is your abode,
my sensory enjoyment an oblation to you.
My powers and desires join with your will;
my life an instrument of your purpose.
My every word joins hymns to you.
I walk each step as pilgrimage to your shrine.

​Errors by my hand or foot,
by my speech, or body,
by my ears, eyes, or thought;
whether by what I’ve done or failed to do,
dear Lord, forgive all these.
O ocean of mercy, God of gods,
bestower of blissful peace,
victory unto you!

Hildegard of Bingen carried me through the turmoil of Clinical Pastoral Education (C.P.E.) in the psychiatric unit of the hospital, and the heartbreaking stories of betrayal and trauma I witnessed there. She will be there for me if I need her again (and gosh, in the U.S. of 2025, it sure feels like we need her again!):
​

In Your Midst

I, God, am in your midst.

Whoever knows me can never fall,
Not in the heights,
Not in the depths,
Nor in the breadths,
For I am love,

​Which the vast expanses of evil
Can never still.

Image: Jonathan Dick / Unsplash

​And I’m not letting Ramdas go entirely. I’m hanging onto his hymns to the Divine Mother:

Divine Mystery

​O Mother Divine!
Thou hast filled my entire being
With Thy power all-pervading
And hast made me Thy child –
A child born of Thy joy and Thy love –
A child ever aware of Thy glory,
Basking in the rare light of Thy grace.
How wondrous art Thou! from whom cometh forth
The splendor of the sun, moon, fire, stars.
Thou sporteth, O Mother, as all the worlds,
Each being and thing is Thyself in Thy myriad forms.
How can I describe Thee — O Divine Mystery!
Thou hast held me in Thy arms;
I am free, playful, and buoyant
Under Thy assuring glance and tender care.

​​When I started looking through my binder of page-protected meditation passages a few days ago, it was as a way to jog my memory. I was trying to trace my conversion from more of a jñāna yoga person — and a karma yoga person, inspired as I was by Gandhi — to bhakti yoga.

Meditation passages, taken deep into my consciousness, repeatedly and in a (self-) hypnotized state, were a big part of that conversion to bhakti for me.

When I first started meditating, and then going to retreats, I considered myself agnostic. I had definite allergies to God-language and Christ-language. The Big-Daddy-in-the-Sky version of theology from Sunday School had never made sense to me intellectually, nor connected for me emotionally.

So I first learned Taoist and Buddhist passages for use in meditation; they pushed no buttons for me. But it wasn’t long before Hindu and Sufi passages with their own sort of divine language made their way into my collection of inspirational passages. And then Jewish passages, and Christian mystics too. As the meaning of the words changed for me, became more expansive, so did my relationship to them.

My conversion to bhakti was bad in that it was, I believe, cultivated for a nefarious reason, and used to that end — to get me to surrender, ultimately, not to a higher/deeper power, but to a particular guru. My old meditation group was sneaky and masterful about conflating the two. I may write more on that another time.

But my conversion to bhakti was good insofar as it put me in touch with a depth of feeling and ardent spirit within myself that I had not previously been tuned into. It connected me more deeply with myself, and my deepest Self. So, while I’ve experienced the gamut of feelings about the getting-used part — and I still feel, well, pretty much all of that, if not quite as fiercely much of the time — I have no regrets about discovering a vein of devotion deep within me.

That earnest yearning and sense of intimacy with the Source is pure. It is good. It is true. It is the wellspring of my ministry and the bedrock of my life.
​
And like the passages I choose to hang onto, they can’t take that away from me. Gershwin’s songbird lover gets to keep her memories, and I get to keep my water-table-level connection to the Spirit of Life.

SW, Fontenelle Forest wetlands, 8-10–25

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Moving On From Your Spiritual Teacher … Seeking Safely (Tips for Meditators) … Who Joins Cults (and why why why)who-joins-cults-and-why-why-why.html

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