My Three Messages

Contact Us Table of Contents Search Site Home Also on this website: Toby Johnson's books: TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe SECRET MATTER: updated, revised & expanded edtion from Lethe Press with Afterword by Mark Jordan GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE PLAGUE: A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING. CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: Reclaiming Our Queer Spirituality Through Story About ordering Books on Gay Spirituality: White Crane Gay Spirituality Series   Articles and Excerpts: Read Toby's review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco" The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality Why gay people should NOT Marry Wedding Cake Liberation Gay Marriage in Texas What's ironic Shame on the American People The "highest form of love"  The cause of homosexuality What is homosexuality? What is Gay Spirituality? What Jesus said about Gay Rights The purpose of homosexuality Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality What the Bible Says about Homosexuality Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men Varieties of Gay Spirituality Waves of Gay Liberation Activity Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium Easton Mountain Retreat Center Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism "It's Always About You" The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara You're Not A Wave Emptiness & Religious Ideas Experiencing experiencing experiencing Going into the Light Meditations for a Funeral Meditation Practice The way to get to heaven Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva John Boswell was Immanuel Kant Curious Bodies What Toby Johnson Believes The Joseph Campbell Connection Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy The Nature of Religion Being Gay is a Blessing Freedom of Religion The Gay Agenda Gay Saintliness Gay Spiritual Functions The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives. The Sinfulness of Homosexuality Proposal for a study of gay nondualism Priestly Sexuality  "The Evolution of Gay Identity" "St. John of the Cross & the Dark Night of the Soul." Avalokiteshvara at the Baths.  Eckhart's Eye Let Me Tell You a Secret Religious Articulations of the Secret The Collective Unconscious Driving as Spiritual Practice Meditation Historicity as Myth Pilgrimage Next Step in Evolution Teenage Prostitution and the Nature of Evil Allah Hu: "God is present here"   Adam and Steve The Life is in the Blood Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery" Seeing with Different Eyes What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel? The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle in Riverside The Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis The Techniques Of The World Saviors Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby Part 2: The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara Part 3: Jesus and the Resurrection Part 4: A Course in Miracles The Secret of the Clear Light Understanding the Clear Light Mobius Strip Finding Your Tiger Face How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated About Alien Abduction In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance More about Gay Mental Health Psych Tech Training The Rainbow Flag Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta. Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out" About Michael Talbot, gay mystic About Guy Mannheimer About Dennis Paddie About Sterling Houston About Michael Stevens Our friend Tom Nash Second March on Washington The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the  "Statement of Spirituality"   Book Reviews Be Done on Earth by Howard E. Cook Pay Me What I'm Worth by Souldancer The Way Out by Christopher L  Nutter The Gay Disciple by John Henson Art That Dares by Kittredge Cherry Coming Out, Coming Home by Kennth A. Burr Extinguishing the Light by B. Alan Bougeois

Very succinctly, here's what I think the message of gay spirituality is: 1) Being gay/queer imbues us with a talent for seeing life and human culture, as an outsider, from over and above. AND the transformation that is occurring in the evolution of consciousness of Planet Earth includes understanding religion as myth and symbol about the nature of consciousness AND this understanding is achieved (and caused) by observing religion from over and above; hence, being gay potentially gives us a "higher consciousness" of the nature of religion and "God" on the "cutting edge of evolution." This higher perception of what religion is really about is what my "wise old man" Joseph Campbell hypothesized as "the new myth." 2) Because gay people--at least archetypally--are not attracted across the gender polarity of human biology, we are less concerned with polarization and, potentially, can experience the world nondually. I.e., in our homosexuality we can find clues and training in thinking "both/and" in contrast to "either/or" and so are less concerned with things like "right and wrong," "good and evil," "licit and illicit," "clean and dirty," (even "here and there" and "now and then"), "samsara and nirvana," "time and eternity," "heaven and earth," "us and them," "male and female." This is a kind of "enlightenment." 3) The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara--the world savior in Mahayana Buddhism--provides a wonderful clue to the spiritual nature of gay consciousness that is self-aware of being myth and so consistent with the outsider stance on religion and which reveals the real message of the "new myth." Avalokiteshvara--this cute, lovable, androgynous boy whom everybody who knows him loves and who sits out in the garden barechested in a relaxed half-lotus posture, wearing women's jewelry--has "saved the world" by taking on everybody's incarnation for them so they could go on into nirvana; so ALL of us are incarnations of the bodhisattva so there isn't even a dualism of "I" and "other." There are three wonders of the Bodhisattva: 1) ze is both male and female demonstrating the best qualities of each sex and gender; 2) to the Bodhisattva there is no distinction between time and eternity, samsara and nirvana: this, our present life, IS heaven; and--here's the kicker--the Third Wonder is that the first two wonders are the same. Seeing beyond gender roles is seeing heaven now.

Toby Johnson, PhD is author of eight books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, three gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality. In addition to the novels featured elsewhere in this web site, Johnson is author of IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD and THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET (Revised edition): AN APPRECIATION OF JOSEPH CAMPBELL.

Johnson's Lammy Award winning book GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness was published in 2000.

His Lammy-nominated book  GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe was published by Alyson in 2003.