I've been reading a book called "Screaming Hawk, Flying Eagle's Training of a Mystic Warrior" by Patton Boyle. I wanted to post two different excerpts to get feedback, and maybe to see if it rings with any truth with the people here at the forum.

On Christianity and the Mystic Warrior. The words of Flying Eagle

"I have taught you about your own religion, but i have also been teaching you about mine. Our religions talk about the Spirit in different ways but they are dealing with the same truth. The words are different, but the truth is the same. I have been leading you to the truth that is found between the words. That is the true nature of religion. Many people think that religion is about the words or the forms of the rituals that are used. The words and the rituals are dependent upon the culture of the people who are seeking Spirit. That has caused your people much misunderstanding. Your religion originated with a people far away who lived in tribes in an arid land who fought for control of their territory. In this country most of your people live in a lush land who's borders are secure. The words used to point to truths about the Spirit came from a Hebrew culture that is quite foreign to your own. Even the Lord's Prayer, which people of your faith use so frequently, came through a people who understood the role of a father quite differently from the way it is understood in your culture today. The words of that prayer came through their culture. Your people seem to assume that those words convey the truth and that they do it equally as well in your culture as they did in the culture of Jesus' time. but the words don't convey the truth; they point to a truth between the words and they point with images that are now foreign to your people. your religion has lost much of its revanance for your people because you are using words from a different culture and time. You must allow the Spirit to speak to your time and to your culture through images that point between the words to truths that your people can experience. Your people are lazy; they keep borrowing the words of another culture and expecting to find the whole truth in those words. Your job is to discover the truth in your culture, not in someone else's. i can tell you of my religion. i can tell you about the words that we use and about the rituals that we have evolved and discover the truth for yourself. Don't look for the Spirit in our culture. You will never come to understand the Spirit deeply in that way. you must allow the Spirit to speak to you in the silence between the words from your culture."
-Patton Boyle

I agreed right up until he started talking about the need to seek the truth in "my own culture." Which culture would that be? Am I bound to looking for truth in Arthurian legend? Or is "Canadian" acknowledged as a culture, and if so, what does that mean, when my American friend and my Pakistani friend and I are listening to Celtic music over Thai food and Japanese bubble tea?

Being bound by one culture's version of the truth is like...well, it tends to conflate the truth and that one version of it, while denying the validity of other versions. Joseph Campbell says it's like going to a restaurant and starting to eat the menu.

I think that the spiritual is ineffable, and impossible to capture in any one medium, by any one culture. The best things I've found, I've found in the interstices, in the sparks that fly when you rub two versions of the truth together.

One day, a wise man was teaching several students, and as he finished speaking a student raised his hand to ask a question. The wise mane acknowledged the student, who asked, "What is truth and what is God?" The wise man knew that the student wouldn't understand and tried to dissuade him. The wise man said, "You don't really want the answer to that question." But the foolish student would not be deterred and persisted, "Yes I do! Please?" And the wise man said "If I take a lamp and shine it at the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume the bright spot on the wall is God! But the light is not the goal of the search, it is the result of the search! The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it. Similarly, someone who does not search - who does not bring a lamp - sees nothing. What we perceive as God is a by-product of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light... pure and unblemished... not understanding that it comes from us. Sometimes we stand in front of the light, and assume that we are the center of the universe - God looks astonishingly like we do - or we turn to look at our shadow, and assume that all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose, which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty, and all its flaws; and so better understand the world around us."

But as the wise man had predicted, the foolish student had not understood the lesson, and said, "Ah, yes... but what is truth? What is God?" And the wise man knew that the students weren't ready to understand the lesson. Sadness filled him and he answered dejectedly, "Truth is... a river!"

"And what is God?" the student asked again. "God is," And just as he was starting to speak the wise noticed a student standing off to the side who was smiling. In that moment, the wise realized that it didn't matter how he responded, because those who were ready to understand would understand, and what he answered in that moment didn't matter for the lesson had gotten through to one of them. He finally concluded, "the mouth of the river."


I think that Pagans have for many years been saying that relying only on a collection of deceased plant-matter inscribed with various characters is counter-intuitive for finding spiritual instruction. Considering that once it's been written down, revision is basically impossible, eventually one would think it would turn into the albatross. For some, that time of transition has already come and gone.

The book you're reading clearly promotes a kind of religious syncretism. Isn't that something that is heavily proscribed in modern Christianity?

i think it means that there is no one right way. i think it means that if you try to view the world outside of your own paradigm, you wont learn as much as if you try to understand it through your own paradigm or through the expansion of those paradigms. Not necessarily the stagnancy of unmovable borders.

in organized Christianity, i would assume so. Though, religion is a quest for personal truth. so, even if the majority of Christianity follows the church, there might be a Jesus freak or two out there (*wink*) that might be able to see their personal truth in the words written here... maybe even I might be enlightened by the conversation. who knows?

Hmm. Interesting book. It seems to me that your Interesting Thoughts Pt. 1 and Interesting Thoughts Pt. 2 could be seen as being in contradiction to each other.

Interesting Thoughts Pt. 1 = It is best to learn about Spirit through your own culture and contemporary experience. (stop looking to other/older cultures for truth)

Interesting Thoughts Pt. 2 = It is best to encounter and learn the truths of other people. (learn from other peoples' truth)

Clearly the book has leanings toward syncretism, which I personally support, and I do understand the underlying message the author is trying to get across -- I just wonder if maybe he might have done it in a more effective way. *shrugs*

*chuckle* probably not

Most truths, I've found, are at least partially paradoxical in nature

Indeed, Nightmare!