Perhaps we’re a bit late, but in honor of Pentecost we thought we’d share something a mystic friend of ours wrote on glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. This devotional practice is something a number of Friendly Fire comrades find edifying and beautiful, and it is definitely a mystical Christian practice often dismissed in the emerging Christian Left. We think that needs to change.

Nothing divides the religious world as much as the slightly spooky practice of speaking in tongues. Most Jesus followers of the Reformed tradition believe it to be totally obsolete for those on the spiritual path. If you’ve got the Bible that’s all one needs, apart that is from a trained pastor-teacher to feed you its gems! Meanwhile, Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians are only too willing to burst into tongues at the drop of an ecstatic hat, before trying to sell you their beatific experience! No wonder the non-Christian world shies away from such opposing camps, dismissively declaring ‘Thanks, but no thanks!’

Now, many books have been written for and against the modern psycho-spiritual phenomenon known as tongues speaking, or to give it its more respectable Greek name glossolalia. In this little article I’ve no intention of arguing my way through the theological minefield of trying to prove either the validity or spurious nature of this religious utterance, for like a well-loved security blanket, the proponents of either side of the argument are highly unlikely to change their minds. Instead, I wish to briefly examine the psycho-spiritual practice from a slightly different perspective.

First, let me come clean! I am still a tongues speaker even after all my painful experiences within the somewhat whacky world of Charismatic Christianity. My disillusionment with the vision and often dysfunctional, hierarchical practices of faith groups within that particular religious stream have surprisingly not shifted this most unusual of verbal curiosities. Many of my fellow ex-Charismatics dumped their tongue many moons ago, as they ran back into the security of conservative Christianity or into the freeing wilderness of non-belief.

Let’s face it – speaking in tongues doesn’t have a particularly good press. Wide-eyed fanatics dancing wildly in little wooden churches while belting out their glossolalic gushings to all and sundry, do tend to make the casual onlooker more than a little nervous. Send for the ‘Ghostbusters’ or the men in white coats is one’s instinctive reaction! Yet, the experience of being in a crowd of well-behaved tongues singers is a most uplifting spiritual high; one similar to tuning into the most sublime Gregorian chants. There is definitely something to this strange but comforting occurrence, but what?

Let me come at this question from the angle of mimetic desire and the freedom of the Queendom/Kingdom of God. In our day-to-day consciousness, ego or fragmented psyche is never far away. When pressure situations unexpectedly confront us our little ego warrior is always there ready to protect us, albeit by demonizing the other, the one blamed for our fast-approaching catastrophe. The pre-wired fight or flight tendency within the neural programming of our magnificent central nervous system, is all too willing to work hand in hand with our edgy ego advocate. Sadly, it looks like we’re stuck with such an automatic reflex response to perceived, if often illusory, dangers. Or are we?

Saul of Tarsus, aka St. Paul, who claimed to be the most prolific of tongues speakers within the early Yeshua movement, has a somewhat interesting take on things. He claims that glossolalia is a verbal expression of the human spirit; a psycho-spiritual link joining our inner Divine Spark to the transcendent Divine Fire without. In previous articles I’ve suggested that experiential salvation has less to do with escaping a fearful fiery hell and more to do with our release from our internal psychic prison, viz. our skewed desire center and its ego ally.

So may I respectfully suggest that tongues speaking is a psychic switch of sorts, a tool to unhook us, albeit temporarily, from the dominance of our conscious mind and its default desire settings. In other words, the voluntary act of speaking in an unlearned language is a form of desire detachment, a realignment with our spirit I AM, and subsequently, an experiential connection with the energising flow of Divine Presence. The tongue in question is somehow tuning our inner receiver into the Divine channel, while defusing our psychological tendency for desire conflict.

Without having to enter into an uncontrollable, frenzied state of nihilistic abandonment, the tongues speaker has consciously moved into an altered state of consciousness, one where they retain full control but have a therapeutic, detached space in which to breathe – a mini ‘holy of holies’ if you like, one free from the constant chatter of their restless, love-starved sub-personalities.

So where does that leave us? Well, for me, the gift of tongues is an authentic psycho-spiritual ability for the purpose of disengagement and connection. To disengage from the swirling desire Matrix in which we all swim – to connect to our core Self and its Mother Ship, Divine Love. Though best done in private I reckon, far from the showbiz settings of white-suited TV evangelists and their somewhat hypnotised followers.