STORIES R US

Hildegard of Bingen’s famous visions

made her sick until she wrote them down

and communicated them to others.

God will not let us bury our talents/visions/stories

– they are given to us for the common good.

 

Carl Jung’s story about humans is that

we are all interdependent and interrelated

not just interpersonally but cosmically –

from this came his idea of the Collective Unconscious –

whereas Sigmund Freud atomized humans

seeing each one as an independent individual

Jung fits much better than Freud

in the quantum interconnected story of the universe.

 

A basic quantum theology principle:

ultimate meaning is embedded in stories not facts –

ideologies/mythologies/worldviews/religions

create our world more than facts.

 

The main components of the new story

of the emerging Interspiritual Age:

the evolutionary consciousness movement

the developmentalist movement

Spiral Dynamics/Integral Theory/Einsteinian physics

all these together create a new metaphysical story.

 

In the other major story –

the materialistic/scientific/rationalistic one –

Meister Eckhart’s spiritual concepts are hard to grasp –

the “God-beyond-God” and “praying to God

to rid him of the concept of ‘God’” –

since all our concepts of God are false idols.

 

Even simple Bible stories written for the common good

need interpretation: the meaning of John 3:16

changes radically depending on how you interpret

“everyone who believes in Jesus will not perish” –

does “believes” mean “intellectual assent 

that Jesus is the Third person of the Trinity”

or “everyone who trusts in Jesus” will be saved?”

Biblical interpretation is the story about the stories

that created western civilization.

 

TEILHARD VS AUGUSTINE AND MARX

In Teilhard’s view, eros, the longing for wholeness

is integral to the whole evolutionary direction towards

wholeness/complexity/consciousness/personalization/love –

the universe is personal not impersonal.

 

Ever since Augustine, western Christendom

has separated grace from nature

and so we treated nature with contempt and plundered it

and each time a piece of God died –

ironically, because of Augustine we have killed God

all over again.

 

Because of the theory of evolution, we know

everything is interconnected –

therefore salvation is communal more than individual

and we all can be involved in transforming

the whole cosmos.

 

Contrary to Marxism’s propaganda

alienation and conflict do not come from religion

but from the inevitable moral collapse

of the materialist worldview.

 

There is scientific/empirical research

that shows there are stages of religious development

from pre-rational/pre-conventional/narcissistic/childish

fantasy all the way to post-rational/post-conventional/

ego-aware/transpersonal awareness.

 

The contemplative non-dual mind

is like the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden –

it provides continual nourishment

to the soul and world.

 

THE SHADOW AND THE INNER RIVER

Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers”

however, to work for and sustain peace

you have to be at peace in your own heart

not angry and hateful of the “wrongdoers” –

if you fight evil with your own evil

you will simply replace one evil with another.

 

You cannot deal effectively with the

hurt/anger/shadow/jealousy/deceit in others

until you have dealt with these things in yourself –

then there is no judgement/condescension toward others.

 

A fruitful way of discovering your shadow

is to identify with one scripture figure:

Mary or Martha/the prodigal son or his older brother –

the one you don’t identify with is your shadow

and can teach you inner transformation.

 

According to Paul Tillich in The Courage to Be

there are three forms of inner transformation:

the courage to be vs not be

(to choose life not death)

the courage of faith vs meaninglessness

(to trust that it all somehow makes sense)

the courage to accept God’s acceptance of you

vs condemnation (to trust that God

is merciful/forgiving/your unconditional lover).

 

Teresa of Avila’s entire mystical theology

is about finding God’s Inner Flow/River of God within you

and stop wasting your time digging for water on your own –

let the Spirit do the work of transformation

and stop striving for perfection.

 

Silence and solitude are the heart of prayer –

they allow us to: go within and listen to God

let God shine light into our shadow

stop being driven by our noisome world

which incessantly clamors for our attention.

 

Without silence and solitude

the Spirit has no room to make its home in us

and is forced to vacate the premises

of our soul.

 

THE BIRTH OF TRANSCENDENTALISM

The big problem for Christianity today:

it has its roots in a first-axial-period consciousness

(500-300 BC when the great world religions formed

including Judaism, Christianity’s precursor)

and Christianity’s cosmology is outdated and irrelevant

according to many postmodernists.

 

Therefore, you sometimes have to use apologetics

(Christian philosophy) to open peoples’ minds

before you can be kerygmatic

(proclaim Christ to them).

 

Ascending religionists (working their way up to God

through more and more perfect virtue)

and descending religionists (working their way down to God

through greater and greater humility)

try to convert each other

but their salvation truly lies in their unity not division

both morals and mysticism are needed.

 

Fifty years before Pentecostalism birthed

in the 1850s, liberal Protestantism birthed

experiential American Transcendentalism with its love of

nature/poetry/spiritual solitude/mysticism

and liberal Protestantism rejected

the spiritual ennui of organized religion/church.

 

The Transcendentalists (Emerson/Thoreau/Whitman/Melville)

urged self-transcendence, a magnificent gift

but one always limited by the realities of life –

transcendence shows us the possibilities

but personal and social limitations

restrict our ability to fulfill the possibilities.

 

But exposing our limitations/mortality/hidden wounds to God

allows us to experience in our shame and brokenness

the unconditional love of the only One

the only truly Transcendent One.

 

Two tenets of Wisdom:

There is a God

You are not God.

 

GOD/FREEDOM/ADDICTION/PAIN

Without God you have no foundational significance

no unshakeable experience

and you get into needing constant self-validation/

self-proving: everyone becomes your competitor

and you are lost in fragmentary/fleeting experiences

that signify nothing.

 

Values highly prized by society: freedom/prosperity

come from God, but without God they become warped

into licence (no morals)/money-addiction –

the values were originally exceedingly good

but need to be rooted in their Divine Source.

 

The disempowerment/apathy/enslavement

caused by patriarchal institutions may be responsible

for all the addictions in our society

that give us the temporary illusion

of escaping our captivity.

 

If you are never fully in the Now where God is

you will never feel full and fulfilled

you will always grasp for more

and become a control freak/addict.

 

The enemy is us and the friend is us –

the more we can befriend ourselves

the more we can admit that we mistakenly think

that the way to get happy

is to blame someone else, even God.

 

Does God chastise us/cause our suffering?

I don’t know but Augustine thought so:

“I exceeded all the boundaries of Your law

and I did not escape your chastisement –

sin has its consequences.

But you were always with me, mercilessly punishing me

in order to lead me to the true delight

that is only found in You –

You fashion pain to be a lesson

You strike to heal.”

 

Is thinking that God punishes us out of love

a warped view of God?

I don’t know, but I think so.

SHADOW: INTEGRATION/ CELEBRATION/LIBERATION

Dualisms deny the wholism of life

and encourage us to project

our personal and social shadows

onto some external scapegoat

who we imagine as the source of all our problems

instead of facing and integrating our shadow –

if all is One, you must own your shadow.

 

Our self-image is our false self –

it contains none of our shadow –

the stuff we deny and repress about ourselves –

the self-image is a projection of our ideal/not real self.

 

It is because of men’s projection/disconnection

with their shadow/body/emotions/God

that we have rape/gun violence/war.

 

Unredeemed men love domination/patriarchy

and “dominator hierarchies” which cause oppression

whereas “growth hierarchies” end oppression

and, contrary to feminist thought

it is a disaster when all hierarchies are condemned –

nothing gets done.

 

In Christianity, a true prophet does not just critique

the present order, s/he also offers an alternative vision

of a different order of peace/justice/love.

 

In a different order, the shadow is integrated

tenderness of the awakened heart

is always accessible,

and as in Buddhism,

Christians celebrate caring/appreciation/gratitude

in poetry/dance/sculpture/music/all art.

 

In joy and sorrow

losing our small ego

results in seeing the pain and beauty of the world

and a never-ending creative outflow

of ecstasy and grief is liberated.

 

 

 

 

WHAT CONTEMPLATIVES KNOW

God is real, unlike the mythical gods

who have no existence at all.

But God is no body and no soul

God is the life of the soul

which is the life of the body –

God is the Life of lives.

 

Until the 1960s, people were taught meditation

as an exercise of the rational mind

drawing upon the three powers of the soul:

memory/understanding (reason)/will.

There was no training in contemplation –

the experience of the living God in silence.

 

The contemplative person eventually realizes

s/he no longer knows what God is

because God is not a thing but a Thou

who constantly says “I AM”

which allows me to constantly say “I am, too!”

God makes me real.

 

All the contemplative knows is: God is Love –

the core energy of evolution and its goal.

Love-energy is the most universal/tremendous/

mysterious of all cosmic forces –

“The physical structure of the universe is love” –

Teilhard de Chardin

 

But what gets in the way of love is anxiety –

“Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul, except sin” –

Saint Francis de Sales

 

To combat anxiety we need to stay focused on God

particularly the Incarnate God, the Christ

who shows us “Perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18).

Indeed, the hymn in Colossians 1: 15-20 makes Christ’s divinity

as great or greater than the prologue of John’s Gospel

(John 1: 1-18) which declares that

Jesus is not only God

as the Cosmic Christ

He created the whole cosmos

and is its goal: The Beginning and the End –

the Alpha and the Omega.

 

 

STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS/UNITY/LOVE

Brother Teasdale, a monk mentored by Bede Griffiths

had a vision that nondualism would create

a Christian Renaissance.

 

Beyond that, Ken Wilber believed

the great Wisdom Traditions: Christian Mysticism/

Vedanta Hinduism/Vajrayana Buddhism/

Jewish Kabbalah/Islamic Sufism could be united

in seeing the three ordinary states of consciousness

waking/dreaming/deep sleep

as treasure troves of spiritual awakening

if we learned how to utilize these common states.

 

Beyond even that, unity could go beyond this world

to what Anthony Burgess refers to as “exoChristianity” –

assuming there are trillions of Earth-like planets

outside our solar system and assuming

there would be intelligent life on many of these “exoplanets”

which would be fulfilled in unique incarnations

of the Cosmic Christ, then the primacy/significance of Christ

would be raised to a new level.

 

Radical amazement at all this results in contemplation

which catches us up in the Love of the Creator

who lavishes love in us/on us/around us/as us.

 

By its very nature, Divine Love begets

institutions like marriage and churches which are ordained

toward the embodiment and spreading of Love

in procreation and spiritual education of children

who are the ultimate crown

of any healthy institution.

 

The Love of God is in life-giving individuals and couples

and points towards eternal life as the whole coin

of which death is just a small part – there is physical dying

but no eternal death – everything and everyone is energy

that goes through multiple states: life/death/rebirth

and can never be destroyed.

 

 

SPIRITUALITY CONQUERS HARDNESS

The ascetic Desert Mothers and Fathers

passed their lives in silence/harsh penance/

solitude/prayer/manual labor.

The ascetics were called “Athletes for Christ”

because in Greek “askesis” means “athletics.”

 

Similarly, the Crusades were meant to be super-pilgrimages

and so the pilgrim Crusaders fasted/prayed

before battles/lived lives of austerity/poverty.

 

It is not that they were against sensual living

but like John of the Cross, they considered

the natural appetites to be like little children

always whining to their mother for this or that –

the ascetics/crusaders felt we must purify ourselves

of these restless urges so we can be empty

to be filled/fulfilled/in union with God.

 

Our culture’s rejection of the spiritual life of simplicity/poverty

for the relentless pursuit of material wealth

meant that when Vivekananda, a Hindu holy man

came to the West in 1893 to teach Asian mysticism

and give an address to the first Parliament of World Religions

he found westerners dissatisfied with orthodox/traditional religion

like sheep without a spiritual shepherd.

 

Two keys to mastering spiritual practices:

find yourself a good shepherd/teacher/spiritual director

find the time to practice as much as possible.

 

Whether it is western meditation with Father Thomas Keating

or eastern meditation with some holy woman or man

meditation can help us take ourselves wherever we are:

in confusion/conflict/peace/sanity –

as we rest in the Divine

contemplation allows us to be

in complete acceptance and unconditional friendliness

with ourselves – whether we are broken and lost

or whole and rejoicing in the Lord –

either way Psalm 36:8 says “They shall drink their fill

of the river of Thy delights.”

 

 

EASTERN AND WESTERN WAYS TO GOD

Buddhists should not leave the Sangha, the community

just like Christians should not leave the Church

for it is hard to practice the faith without others.

The Sangha has arhats similar to Christian saints –

both arhats and saints can help us live fully.

 

But Sangha and Church leaders can serve or dominate you –

dominator hierarchies such as caste systems

exploit people and prevent individual/collective growth.

Growth/developmental/actualization hierarchies

lead humans from ego/ to ethnic/ to world/ to cosmos-centrism.

 

Many people, particularly men, are stuck in their lives:

afraid of introspection/pleasure/repressed emotion

disconnected from their bodies

asleep in patriarchal theocracies

but starting to wake up to their vulnerability/sensitivity.

 

Fear of being human

and information overload, a total head trip

is making Western Civilization neurotic –

the Asian belief in the richness of silence/

wordless wisdom/human wonder

is necessary and appealing

but fast disappearing.

 

However, bad discontent and good discontent exist in the West –

discontent with never having enough possessions/

always wanting more

and discontent with all the injustices in the world

that call one to take action.

 

In the East there are three main ways to God:

the way of the head – the way of intellect/knowledge/truth

the way of the heart – the way of emotion/devotion/beauty

the way of the gut – the way of will/action/goodness.

 

To Jurgen Moltmann, a European theologian

Christ’s death and resurrection, according to Colossians

reconciles and unites all three ways/all Creation/all creatures

so that the Cosmic Christ flows through all

and Creation, as Eastern Orthodox theologians say

is deified/filled with/fulfilled through

the Divine.