It began as an method to share the lessons we have learned from our collective and individual obedience. Special men responded to our invitation and came to share a discussion of what some now call "leather spirituality."
PATH I was held in July. PATH II happened in August. Finally, on Halloween weekend, the first two-day, overnight PATH III, the impact of spiritual expansion and exploration was experienced at a fuller level. It was safe to do whatever our soul requested. We grew because we yielded our self control for a more important call.
What began as a way to share our experiences has become a family. The most important lesson I recently learned from Caroline Myss in Oakland, offering a workshop on "Divine Contracts and Archetypes", was a confirmation of my un-statistically valid suspicion that each of us must "bottom out", before we are ready to accept our destiny.
Caroline explained, "If people won't even sit still for five minutes when requested to let others off an airplane to catch connecting flights, why do you think they could accept who they are supposed to be?" I have never found an exception. I have kept hoping that I would find an exception. From her understanding of classic activities and the history of spiritual development, Caroline's explanations confirm there is no possibility of going from the good life to the spiritual one.
It remains my dream that someone who is still less than 30 years old could get clear about his life, and spend more of his life fulfilling his destiny than he does getting ready for it. I keep asking myself why the schooling should take longer than the practice of what is learned. Is there a reason why we have to absorb and consume all the efforts and experiences given throughout life for decades before we can give back to the created purpose?
I now don't think that I will ever have an answer to that question. What happens, when and why is not my concern. My concern is to be honest in every moment, and to do what I am given to do every time an impulse, intuition, question, or challenge is given to me that sounds, feels or looks true. That is very difficult for me to do and consumes my every waking moment to accomplish. The most profound actions I have taken, I almost didn't pursue because the "suggestion" was so subtle that I easily could have ignored it.
My position in life is to issue orders. It is the role of the slaves who I am developing to learn to trust those orders, and trust themselves to follow them. I am in a position that I could pretend, for a very short while, to have answers that I don't have, and require actions which I don't feel. Even more easily, I could ignore a required action which no one else would even know that I was given to do. The cost of doing so would be my integrity.
Integrity is a fleeting characteristic. If one truth is ignored, if one action taken without an honest spiritual direction for it, if one action is ignored that whispers on a quiet leaf, then there is no integrity. Integrity is 100% present, or it is not present at all.
Integrity comes from absolute obedience. Integrity, when translated into action is moral certainty. Holding the right to not be morally certain causes doubt to continuously exist and to persist. Once a single action is out of integrity, the exception will prevent feeling moral certainty again. The cost of our president "diddling" in the oval office isn't the moral consequence of his action, it is the obliteration of moral certainty needed when it comes to deciding when to wage war or to pick priorities for our national agenda.
When any of us gives up being moral for a single moment, in a single decision, we are returned to having only the egotistic certainty of past experience. All of us can perfectly make the call on which battles should have been waged after the battle is over. Moral certainly is required to know what to do before it has begun. Living without integrity is a disability that forces us to repeat the past, and do only what is already known. Without integrity there is no new movement, no creative solution, no "never been done before."
Most inventions come from those who are not academically trained in the field of their invention. The training limits the range of possibility. When we understand, we don't look for explanations outside that understanding.
Destiny is thought and action given to us individually to perform for a purpose that belongs to and is understood only by our Creator. If we can understand what is being done, or see how it is in our own best interest, it isn't the Creator's purpose at all. It is ours. If it is our purpose, and for our self interest, it isn't our destined activity. It isn't the activity we were Created for, and designed from the ground up to perform for, and in, this world.
The only way to "hear" the Creator's Universal purpose is through obedience. Having the option to perform the Creator's work, the Universal destiny, produces in us a constant doubt about whether or not what we are hearing is for our purpose or for the Universe's. The doubt requires self talk that continues until the opportunity to act is gone. While we're still deciding whether or not we are egotistically motivated, or doing this because it is an instruction from the Universe, the moment is lost, the day is gone, the circumstance over.
Human thought is too slow to implement destined activity. The only adequate replacement for self talk rationalization and determination is obedience. Many feel that enlightenment is this nirvana where we lie in a spiritual hammock drinking a spiritual Mai Tai. We visualize enlightenment to be a restful place with little to do, and much to enjoy.
Enlightenment is having orders come at us so fast that we can't possibly ask the questions that would yield understanding fast enough to keep up. The more we obey, the more we are given to obey. The more we experience, the more we are given to experience, at a ever increasing rate. Instead of everything getting quieter, it gets louder and louder until the only peace that we can know is spiritual peace. The only way we can accept what is happening is to know that it is meant to develop us, to "refine us" as Caroline Myss teaches.
As life goes faster, through our obedience we reach a rate that would emotionally overload us, overwhelm us into depression if we were to try to handle it egotistically, from the human powers that we possess. Like leaving the ground in an airplane, the physics which apply change, and the option to simply "halt" the activity is gone. Only making decisions about where the aircraft is to be directed is an option. Because we have never been before where we currently are, there is nothing in our past which prepares us to make the necessary decisions. The only way to know what to do is to "take orders", to obey, and to obey, and to obey. We must obey as fast as the need to act bombards us.
Our obedience is our only comfort and peace. The consistency of our obedience relieves our personal responsibility for the outcome. Knowing we will never fail to obey keeps us free to listen for the next order. We would miss that order if we had to stop to distinguish between what is our want and what is the Universe's, and then, further, have to stop to decide if we will obey this time, once we recognize it as an order from the Universe.
This is the way that destiny works. Once we accept that, what do we do about it? How do we proceed once we recognize how the spiritual, real world works?
The Path of the Obedient Heart is a place to remind ourselves of the truth regarding the nature of destiny. It is a place to have experiences which force us to face our true feelings, and to develop new knowledge from experiences which we don't control. It is a safe place to let down our guard, to have a chance to not have to act like we know it all.
The physical devices of SM can be used to force an immediate exposure of what we feel, what we are thinking, what we accept and what we object to, what we need to learn, and a confirmation of what we already know. It is from hard to impossible to hide from ourselves when the pressure is so imminent, so present, and so persistent.
Our confusion has come from the use of the same devices that are used to inflict pain. The memory and expectation of what we think SM is about causes us to measure our experience in terms of that expectation. The popularity of the expectation only further confirms what we "should" be experiencing and tends to force us to ignore what we are really learning.
If we don't believe in a spiritual world, because we were created without a external organ to measure it, we can't accept a spiritual purpose for devices associated more with the Marquis de Sade than with the enlightened of the world.
Most of us have trouble overcoming the embarrassment of even being associated with the use of SM devices. It is considered the dark side of life, practiced in places painted black, mostly in basements, with a lot of mystery and secrecy surrounding it. Heterosexuals are shunned, gays mocked by their peers, families broken apart just from learning that the devices have been seen.
Now, we discover that something in our nature requires the power, drama, and immediacy of a hidden and scorned practice to achieve the highest possible purpose that can be attained in this life. What a dilemma.
The PATH is a way to mutually expose our souls for the purpose of letting our soul develop us. Our soul doesn't care what others think, not our family, not anyone. It has no concern for the petty objections that our egos can produce. It's purpose is probably to overcome precisely what those objections are. What we identify as being important is the most likely target for our soul. Make an egotistic demand, draw a line in the sand, and you have probably just put the soul on notice for its next assignment.
The PATH is a challenge for us to present. The agenda has to be what has never been contemplated before. It demands both having the faith that what to do and say will become known to us as it is needed, and the courage to do what inspiration demands that we do and say in front of others who could be potential critiques. Egotistically, none of us want to publicly fall on our face. When we have had a successful experience, we would prefer to rest on our laurels instead of expose ourselves once again to a test of our faith and the obedient practice of that faith's demands. The PATH is an intense invitation to look into the deepest recesses of our spirit to see what lurks there. What you observe can be a model for life, or our source of intense embarrassment. There is no neutral ground from which to explore.
When something works, it looks like it has been rehearsed and performed many times before. I was flattered when one of the PATH attendees requested, as a suggestion, that a syllabus be developed beforehand, and issued as a handout. Only the Universe knows what is gong to be said, to be done, and what will happen. Only the Universe could issue such a document. But it is our job in life to work as though everything we do has already been done before. That's possible only when we obey.
Knowing replaces faith when the consistency of the miracles of effective activity continue on a production bases, every time we do what we have been given to do. After we accept our destiny, and even while we are trying to decide if following our destiny is what we want to do, the Universe gives us feedback that lets us know we are on the right path. IT doesn't require that we continue, unconfirmed, along a path that has no guideposts. Once we accept that there is a spiritual world, IT lets us know that we are right. That means that after we have faith, we don't need it. That might not be the way that you and I would design the world, but that is the way the world is designed.
The PATH is an invitation to anyone who wants to explore their own obedience. There is no requirement to claim your role in life. In fact, the point might be to allow you to discover your unique, destined, role. There has to be the possibility that obedience is what is lacking in your life. If you don't plan on ever being obedient, there is no value in exploring what you have already determined you will never allow.
While you explore your path, those who have already identified and are committed to their path are given the opportunity to grow through the process of offering it as a gift to others. There is no nirvana, there is no time or place in this life in which we have achieved everything. Having reached perfection in one area simply gives us the perspective that we need to see the next challenge. No one is on either end of the development spectrum. In fact, there is no way to know how far anyone is along their path because until we know a path's destination there is no way to determine what fraction of the distance has already been traveled.
Owners and slaves must act only out of obedience. The most effective Masters are those who have developed their own spiritual obedience. All, and anyone, who acts from obedience to a higher plan, an unconscious goal, will be more profound because they are willing to live beyond their personal ability. Believing that the potential that we are capable of is a gift isn't a gracious excuse for being an achiever, it is the truth about how those in obedience live. When we can't and don't take credit for our achievements, no achievement is beyond our capacity.
Those who feel a calling to obedience, those who want to determine if they have a calling to obedience, those who want to further develop their obedience, and those who want to assist others with their obedience while expanding their own are all welcome and encouraged to join us on the Path of the Obedient Heart.
It isn't one path for all, but one path per soul, all in the same forest. This forest isn't any better than anyone else's forest, but this one has been found and identified. It is one created only for the giving to others. The quality and competence of the giving requires our own self development. The level at which we give today is adequate only today. Tomorrow the standard will be higher and the gift must be commensurably greater then.
In 1999, we will be arranging as many PATH events as we can find the time and resource for. The first is scheduled in New York on Monday after Christmas. The Calendar section will carry the full schedule as it is developed, and the Events section will carry each invitation.
Our PATH is your path. It is our order and our pleasure to offer it to you, with our love.