adamchalmers on Nostr: I’m a spiritual hedonist, found between the flesh and spirit. A theistic Pagan, who ...
I’m a spiritual hedonist, found between the flesh and spirit. A theistic Pagan, who believes in God and nature. A lover of masculine awareness and feminine pleasure. I resonate with the God of the Bible, the wisdom of the Mystics, the teachings of Christ, and the wild passion of the ancient goddesses.
Learning to live with the Paradox, the balancing act of holding a polarity mindset that accepts them both is my great life challenge.
Raised as the oldest son of conservative Christian evangelicals, fundamentalism was a part of my life from my earliest memories. It probably didn’t help that as the first child of my devout parents I was born on Christmas Day. I was a wilful child. My nature is curious, experimental and rebellious. I like to try everything and ideally on my own terms. Needless to say my parents took this as a direct challenge and determined themselves to bring me into line with good old fashioned discipline and religious instruction.
It failed. I could be controlled but only for a time. Eventually all the strictness would cause me to lash out and react in a way that triggered and upset my Mum. As a law abiding, socially upright and moralistic christian the things I said and did caused my mother great anguish.
Intellectually I understood God. I believed in Him and in His son Jesus Christ, in my head and my heart. I didn’t seriously question the doctrine until my late 20s. It was just that the desires were so strong I would always cave in, then ask for repentance after the fact. I would have made a good Catholic. I’m a terrible protestant.
One great example of this was my nightly reading. I would start with an adventure or fantasy novel, move to a porn magazine, masturbate, feel guilty about it and finish with the Bible. There was a lot of guilt…
I think God was very much in the background for me, despite being immersed in Church and religious teachings, right through to my mid 20s. I really hit a hedonism peak at University around age 19 and I went at it like a Rock star. Needless to say there are some great stories and also some rather awful mistakes made during the ages of 18 - 22, but I don’t regret any of it and I also met my incredible wife Francesca smack bang in the middle of the debauchery. Needless to say she has the patience of a saint.
Sometime after University and living in Bondi Beach Sydney I felt again the spiritual call and began yearning for something deeper. I was fit and healthy, having fun, but feeling empty and a had a rather constant addiction to pornography, that has had some sort of a hold on me most of my life, I just love sex. I felt empty on a deeper level and Francesca was feeling the same.
It was at age 24, shortly before heading off on a year long travel adventure through Latin America that God came crashing into my life in a most tangible way. Without taking up the next 500 words explaining it in detail all I will say for now is, God suddenly communicated with me in a very real way in very real words and with intensely powerful energy. I had my awakening experience. I felt God and Jesus and overwhelming love and support. I felt freedom, joy and a sense of purpose. I promptly decided to commit to being a better Christian and took all my enthusiasm and pre-programmed fundamentalism and threw it at faith.
It worked quite well for about 4 years. I saw miracles, spoke in tongues, preached in church and lead Bible studies. Sure I still partied, cut loose from time to time and struggled with all the usual desires but I also felt spiritually connected and in communion with God in a way I never had before. It was real to me.
Somewhere along the line I started to see the cracks in my reasoning and the narrowness of the doctrine I was espousing. It wasn’t the God I had experienced but rather a theology I had been indoctrinated with I was falling into. I needed to let it go, eternal judgement and punishment did not work for me, and I felt the need to embrace a spirituality that was more accepting of natural human desire and the feminine. With the birth of my first child, it all cracked away and I began to question everything again.
From here life lead me to Eastern Mysticism, The Desert Fathers, Yoga, Sufism, Zen, OSHO, and Paganism. None of these teachers or teachings were something I wanted to fully adopt but I learnt something from them all and most of all from OSHO. He literally rooted the fundamentalism of my parents out of me and free’d my mind to explore outside the box. Meditation has been powerful for finding God within myself and for allowing me to be still when the mind wrestles with everything. God is there, I have no doubt, but Gods nature is still mysterious and I value the intellectual honesty of an agnostic. To say I don’t know is a powerfully humbling place to be. I’ve learnt to see Jesus with more honesty and less idolatry, without all the layers we’ve caked on top of the man who showed us God with such clarity. I’ve also learnt to tune into the energies than the theistic religions have suppressed for Millenia like the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, who later morphed into Aphrodite. She is the goddess of sexual love, fertility, abundance and war. A true weapon of a being who was much too powerful for the priesthood to accept. She has helped me to accept my hedonistic side and is the balance to Christ for me. Now I find myself seeking the fine line, the time to feel into it, and the acceptance that I cannot pick one religion or dogma. It’s just too narrow for me, I have to have an expanded mind and heart that will not capture my joy with guilt or bind my mind with judgemental superiority. I seek to live in the Paradox, learn through experience and to help others find their own unique spiritual journey. I have not found anything fresh on the well trodden path. Only old ruts worn deep by the mental grooves of all who have followed before. I consciously plunge off the trail into the unknown of my inner existence and I seek the balance between fleshly desires and the spiritual aspirations for inner peace and contentment. Have I found it? Not yet, but there are glimpses of the light, and I am most excited about the journey.
From here life lead me to Eastern Mysticism, The Desert Fathers, Yoga, Sufism, Zen, OSHO, and Paganism. None of these teachers or teachings were something I wanted to fully adopt but I learnt something from them all and most of all from OSHO. He literally rooted the fundamentalism of my parents out of me and free’d my mind to explore outside the box. Meditation has been powerful for finding God within myself and for allowing me to be still when the mind wrestles with everything. God is there, I have no doubt, but Gods nature is still mysterious and I value the intellectual honesty of an agnostic. To say I don’t know is a powerfully humbling place to be. I’ve learnt to see Jesus with more honesty and less idolatry, without all the layers we’ve caked on top of the man who showed us God with such clarity. I’ve also learnt to tune into the energies than the theistic religions have suppressed for Millenia like the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, who later morphed into Aphrodite. She is the goddess of sexual love, fertility, abundance and war. A true weapon of a being who was much too powerful for the priesthood to accept. She has helped me to accept my hedonistic side and is the balance to Christ for me. Now I find myself seeking the fine line, the time to feel into it, and the acceptance that I cannot pick one religion or dogma. It’s just too narrow for me, I have to have an expanded mind and heart that will not capture my joy with guilt or bind my mind with judgemental superiority. I seek to live in the Paradox, learn through experience and to help others find their own unique spiritual journey. I have not found anything fresh on the well trodden path. Only old ruts worn deep by the mental grooves of all who have followed before. I consciously plunge off the trail into the unknown of my inner existence and I seek the balance between fleshly desires and the spiritual aspirations for inner peace and contentment. Have I found it? Not yet, but there are glimpses of the light, and I am most excited about the journey.