When I taught Yoga and Meditation at Glendale Community College, I was friendly with the Chair of the Religions Department. We often discussed how the purpose of the Comparative World Religions class was not to convert students who already had a faith (as some paranoid individuals feared), but to facilitate tolerance between the citizens of a shrinking world through a better understanding of each others' beliefs. In that same spirit of education, I propose an open exchange of views - not to argue among ourselves as to who is right, but to share our mutual human inspirations and yearnings.

It has been many years since I felt compelled to convince others of my position; I simply put it out there, now, as a point of information. In my view of the universe, each mind has its own little piece of the Truth. For reasons we can only guess at, some of us were destined to appreciate Creation in terms of many Gods, while others were meant to see it in terms of only One - yet other brothers and sisters of ours were meant to believe in no God at all! Yet we are all children of a common Source, seeing reality as best we can from different points of view. If we combine all of our perceptions, this vast multi-dimensional hologram may begin to come into focus. 

I have gone through many stages in my life. I've had my mind opened to possibilities that I was afraid to acknowledge as a child, and which are still denied by many in my culture. Such people hope that refusing to think about something can make it go away, or that demonizing it may relieve them of the responsibility of having to understand it. But I'm pretty sure that we can only evade responsibility for a short time, and that ever-more challenging initiations lie before us.  

My Deities are Two: the Great Mother Goddess and the Great Father God. They enjoy manifesting through multiple identities, like actors and actresses playing different characters in a repertory season. This has prompted The Mists of Avalon statement that all Gods are one God and all Goddesses are one Goddess. I trust my Divine Parents and worship them - not out of fear, but out of gratitude for the ways in which they have always loved and cared for me.

I resonate with the Hindu image of Siva Nataraj, the Cosmic Dancer - equal parts Divine Female and Divine Male, beating out the eternal rhythm of cosmic Creation. The Vaishnavite version is when Lakshmi-Vishnu says in the Bhagavad Gita: "There is nothing else besides me, Arjuna. Everything you see here is strung on me, like pearls upon a thread." The universe exploded from a Great Unity in which all opposites were combined. But since we ourselves manifest as Yin and Yang, we naturally tend to see everything else that way, too.  

As Science discovers subtly vibrating particles that blur the line between Physics and Metaphysics - particles that may explain how an experiment can be affected by the expectations of the experimenter - we gain a more comprehensive understanding of what Magick really is.  

People have different ideas about what happens after death, but an intuitive thread connects the religions of humankind and the messages we receive through meditation, astral projection and psychic dreaming. There is much agreement about the nature of a locale termed the Summerland or the Pure Land or Valhalla; that said, however, there are as many heavenly stage-sets as there are imaginative souls that feel drawn to them. If our physical universe is a giant hologram, the non-physical realm must be limitless! 

To be sure, there are also reports of dark places where souls work out redemption for their karmic mistakes until their debts are paid. If you credit such dimensions, they may be directly adjacent to the fields of Light - separated from them by no stronger a psychic membrane than egoistic fear and hubris. I believe that, just as the willful mistakes we committed in our physical adolescence eventually helped us to grow into wise and responsible adults who would never commit such acts again, the same sort of development is accomplished in the realms of spirit. "As Above, So Below. As Within, So Without."  

For many, our halting progress towards perfection is pursued through the trial-and-error experience called reincarnation. (The fact that most people can't recall a prior existence is hardly proof that they didn't have one - especially considering that individuals who remember all the events of this life are exceptions!) Other, older souls may have gone around so many times that the worlds they visit now are on spiritual planes only. 

In any case, Mother Goddess and Father God know each one of us by name (Soul Name); and they hold our destinies in their wise hands. The Divine has authorized our journey in this world and the next - else we could not be here - and has watched over our every step, even when we felt completely abandoned and alone.  

At auspicious moments, I hear confirming messages from the beautiful souls who comprise my spiritual family and metaphysical lineage, whose development has progressed along with mine, lifetime after lifetime. Though death may seem to separate us, it is only by the very thinnest of veils.   

Blessed Be. I know that I have been blessed, and that I am blessed now.