Take My Hand
The beginning conundrum in any sincere spiritual journey toward the big room is this: you can’t pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, using the thought, talk, and action found inside a small room as the means of escaping it. It is not possible to skip step one of the recipe—where the room gets bigger and you get smaller—to jump into the spiritual cooking of step two. You must first give up your seat on the throne of an imagined isolated kingdom. Recognize your limitations, feel the need for divine help, and then ask for it; all of this is required to ignite an ecstatic flame.
Guarani shaman, Tupa Nevangayu, describes how he readies himself before healing: “When I put myself into a prayerful attitude, I speak with great humility, acknowledging that I am nothing as a person. I confess that I am simple flesh made of dirt. This attitude helps to make me a cradle for the soul.”[1] This kind of prayer is not a strategy for feeling mystically empowered, spiritually righteous, morally superior, or piously inflated. Nor is it a trick to rally the forces of the spirit world to do your bidding. Rather such an attitude is sincerely felt, bringing the peace and exhilaration of smallness, as well as the tenderness that enables your heart to be pierced and soul set on fire.
Often people who come to Sacred Ecstatics long to be spiritually cooked but soon find it difficult to get to the big room fire, realizing they don’t feel a sufficiently direct or intimate connection to the divine. It is far better to truly face and feel the absence of this connection than to rationalize it away. You have to get real in order to get reeled in by the Big Holy. All you need is to sincerely feel the need for help from a higher hand. This wisdom is expressed in the words of the classic gospel song by Thomas A. Dorsey, “Precious Lord, take my hand; lead me on, let me stand.”
Feel It, Then Feed It
Without exception, and independent of the spiritual tradition followed, those who are able to build a big room are holding onto a holy hand, praying to be led in the right direction. Asking for divine help and guidance is required to expand the room of your life, but this need must be truly felt rather than only pondered and wondered. Feel the need and then feed that feeling—put it on the rhythms and tones of soulful song. Music is the surest means of making the longings of the heart take flight.
Try again to be the captain of your soul until you bankrupt, exhaust, and extinguish every single particle of belief that you can build and pull yourself into the big room on your own. Only in this defeat are you made ready to feel that nothing else is left to do but reach toward the sky and sincerely ask that a higher hand lead you on. Don’t mess around with lesser spiritual entities, deities, ghosts, spiritual hosts, and forms that seem cool and trendy to your mind. Reach for the highest, purest, and most longstanding embodiments of holiness with whom you can feel a personal relationship.
The further away from the main source your prayer is sent, the less you receive in return. For instance, Black Elk’s prayers first addressed the highest power before he cited any of its relations. The same was true for Frank Fools Crow who advised people to “. . . remember and think about the closeness of Wakan-Tanka. If you live in this wisdom, it will give you endless strength and hope.” Pray first to the Creator, and then allow this higher source to introduce you to a distant relative, if that is the Creator’s will.
Praying to the original creator as a heavenly parent or grandparent helps your mystical umbilical cord—your rope to God—emotionally come to life. While it may pique your curiosity to imagine asking an entity from another planet for cosmic insight or to imagine the ghost of Jung tutoring you in mythological understanding, it is less likely that you will call upon them if you or your loved ones are in critical need. Reach instead for the highest hand whenever you seek the highest help, guidance, inspiration, and friendship.
Your own suffering, and that of others, is a reminder to search for a bridge that can carry you across troubled waters. Ask yourself right now, “Whose hand will I hold in the most troubling times?” The right answer to this question is felt deeply in your heart and brings an emotionally driven tear, giggle, wiggle, or song rather than only an abstract thought or unfelt visualization. The moment you stop trying be the boss of you, admit you’re lost, and wholeheartedly plead for help, the small room walls will collapse and a holy hand will grab hold and pull you into the big room. Building the sacred foundation, vast floor, and big room for spiritual cooking requires your hands be held by a First Creation carpenter’s hand, someone familiar with the nails of n/om. They are needed for the construction of a mystical house that is beyond all scientific measure and earthly pleasure.
– The Keeneys, December 2, 2018. Excerpted and adapted from Sacred Ecstatics: The Recipe for Setting Your Soul on Fire.
[1] Bradford Keeney, ed. 2000. Guarani Shamans of the Forest. Stony Creek, CT: Leete’s Island Books. p. 61.