INTEGRAL SALVATION

Our True Self was traditionally called the ‘Soul’

the place where the immortal God

and the mortal human met.

Your Soul/True Self/God-in-you

is spacious awareness-itself, not judgment-itself.

It refuses to get involved in all

the comparisons and judgments

that constitute most of life.

The human soul rebels against death

because she contains within her

the eternal seed of intuition

and longing for, a higher life

which cannot be satisfied

by reducing humans to mere matter

as scientific materialism does.

The absolutization of science created

dissociation of the three main spheres:

science/culture/religion.

But science failed miserably to fulfill

the spiritual longing for ultimate answers.

Science conquered the world

but cannot fulfill it

the way an adult faith can.

Buddha preached an adult faith to Buddhists:

“Look deeply into the nature of suffering

and you will find the causes and a way out.”

Buddha did everyone the ironic favor

of pointing out that whether you are

a saint/sinner/winner/loser

suffering is everyone’s ordinary experience –

life is hard for everyone.

To live more easily and peacefully

sin must be eliminated

but shadow must be reconciled.

“The unconscious is not just the source of evil

it is also the source of the highest good

not just bestial and demonic

but spiritual and divine.” – Carl Jung

There is a dark shadow and a gold shadow

within each one of us.

To live with integrity is to integrate the shadow

not to be perfect in every way

but to have an integral self-image –

you know both your strengths and weaknesses

and where you need to grow.

Despite integral individuals within it

Christianity went down the wrong path

when it became all about the truth or falsity

of doctrines, rather than following a Person –

when it became about faith in ideas

rather than trust that God was in Christ

and cares for us.

In the late nineteenth century and still today

Christians react negatively to attempts

by people like Ramakrishna and Vivekananda

to reduce Jesus to just one of many incarnations of God.

To Christians, Christ is unique –

“For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily.”

– Colossians 2:9

The basic principle of the Spiritual Exercises

of Saint Ignatius of Loyola

is that humans are created to

praise/reverence/serve

God in Christ

individually and communally

and thus save not only their True Self

but also their Collective Soul.