Author: Bruce Tallman

Since 2002 I have been a full-time spiritual director in private practice in London Ontario. I have published two books on spiritual direction for spiritual directors. One of them, "Finding Seekers," is a best seller in the field. I have also published two books on spirituality for the general public. The latest one is called "God's Ecstatic Love: Transform Your Life with a Spiritual Masterpiece." It is a 21st century update of Francis de Sales' classic "Treatise on the Love of God." See Amazon.com The London Free Press has published hundreds of my articles on spirituality, theology and ethics and I have facilitated marriage preparation with over 3500 couples since 1988. For more information see www.brucetallman.com

RELIGION AND RATIONALITY

Established religion must adapt to revolution

or become irrelevant

for, authentic religion: resonates with people

consoles them in their suffering

answers their existential questions

and changes with the culture

without changing its own sacred core

this is what the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) did

 

Gaudium et Spes, a document of the Council

said that “All the faithful possess a freedom

of inquiry/thought/expression, freedom of the mind

in matters in which they have competence”

thus throwing the Vatican door wide open

to Catholic scholarly and intellectual freedom

however, scientists who

since the so-called “Enlightenment”

chose as their spirituality “scientism” –

the faith that only science has all the answers –

which is ironically not provable scientifically –

these scientists could not brook other spiritualities

and totally repressed them

zealots of any spirituality, including scientism

do not clear their heart

they try to clear the world –

to hate and get rid of anyone who is not of their tribe –

and the tribe is simply the ego writ large

on the other hand, traditionalism can give religious tradition

a bad name – many people have abandoned religion

because of traditionalists stuck in the past –

God is a God of the living and the NOW

moreover, the media only recognizes spirituality

as pre-rational and puts trans-rational religion –

religion which transcends the limits of rationality –

into the same garbage pail

as the traditionalists and pre-rationalists

religious faith is only a problem when it sees itself

as a means to an end such as heaven

since true faith is its own end

and means you are in heaven NOW.

THE ORIGIN AND GOAL OF LOVE

The End of all things – the Omega Point of Love

is the centering principle of the whole universe

integrates it all – draws all things to itself

and is present in the Beginning/Big Bang/Alpha Point of Love –

and the Union of all things with God –

the Omega Point of Love –

is the goal of all evolution

 

Love is an interdependent life force

all the way from quarks to God

Love is the origin and goal of meaning

 

every star/cell/flower/bird/animal/human

longs for wholeness/completeness

so it can rest in peace –

not die, but rest peacefully

 

just as, after the Big Bang, God rested –

God seeks repose

our souls seek repose –

repose is the Law of Pleasure

for all creatures

 

but even in repose God is at work

another religious paradox –

God’s Providence is at work

even if God lets us be miserable

and deprived of all light and love –

since the longing of holy people for God

increases in such situations

and this longing is God’s work too

 

God is being/resting/working/

becoming/evolving/loving

all the way from Alpha to Omega.

 

 

 

EASTER: CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS

For Meister Eckhart the spiritual journey

is not a climb up Jacob’s ladder

nor the ascent of Mount Carmel

but rather an upward spiral

of expanding consciousness

that has no limits

which fits with what Carl Jung thought

the purpose of life is:

to constantly grow in consciousness

 

which in some ways is similar

to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

physiological (food and shelter) needs/

safety needs/the need to belong/

the need for self-esteem/then self-actualization/

and finally self-transcendence

where you forget yourself

in service to others

 

self-transcendence does not mean

you think your self is very little

but that you think of your self

very little

 

everyone’s story, however little, is sacred

and story is our primary means

of accessing the Divine Source

and the ultimate meaning of life

 

this is why Jesus spoke in parables –

stories that overturned everyone’s applecart –

their view of how life worked –

the religious leaders want to kill God?

Are you serious?

 

but they were serious

because they were operating

from the lowest rungs

of the spiral of consciousness –

the need for their own safety –

because the Romans would destroy their Jewish applecart

if this rebel prophet Jesus

converted too many people to his level of consciousness –

Christ’s call to “repent” is “metanoia:” in Greek:

Christ said: “Go to your Higher (‘meta’) Mind (‘noia’).”

EASTER: HUMAN VS DIVINE PERFECTION

Carl Jung believed each of us

originally had a total and powerful sense

of the Self – the total psyche

but then trauma caused the Ego to emerge

which narrowed our consciousness down

to awareness of our small self as a vulnerable individual

but our Ego still needed connection to the Self

to have psychic health

 

in this regard the Ego’s striving for security and perfection

is striving for death

because we kill our own life

by trying to control everyone else’s life

leaving no room for error or disruption

but sooner or later disruption happens

we lose our health or a loved one

and errors happen –

all this is an inevitable part of being human

 

so to counter this, God always calls all humans

to God’s version of perfection –

sharing in the Divine Life beyond all corruption –

Christ won victory over error/disruption/death

by dying and rising for all humans

so that all of us who live with Lady Wisdom

know faith is God’s Answer

to human versions of perfection

and human anxiety about an insecure future

 

by the grace of God, intimate friendship with the Risen Jesus

has always been central

to the spiritual life of authentic Christians –

this friendship allows us to love

our fellow human beings and our True Self

which fulfills God’s Commandments given to us in Judaism

and in modern Jewish thought –

“All real living is meeting other people”

– Martin Buber, Jewish theologian –

contrast this with the atheist

Jean-Paul Sartre:

“Hell is other people”

God’s version of perfection – faith in God –

saves us from every version of hell.

 

BEING AND LOVE

Our consciousness and therefore our subjectivity

cannot be explained

by science –

it just is –

it cannot be explained

by reference to anything more simple

because it is a fundamental/primary datum

 

similarly, True Love

cannot be explained –

it just is –

it requires being in the here and now

with your Beloved

practicing mindfulness

letting go of all distractions

making “quality time”

a habit

 

similarly, the Dharma of Buddhism

requires being here now

but it does not give you security

or a ground to stand on

because it is all about impermanence/groundlessness/

hopelessness – because as long as you hope

for being a better person

in a better place

you never accept who you are

and where you are

right now

you are never in the Here and Now

never in Love

 

the Enneagram is the face of Love –

it cannot be explained –

it just is –

the face of Christ

the face of God

the face of the True Human

since Jesus the Christ

is both the True Human and God

and has all the Enneagram virtues:

righteousness/compassion/excellence/creativity

wisdom/loyalty/discipline/power/peace

to the max.

 

HUMAN PURPOSE LOST AND FOUND

The new cosmology resonates with Christian faith –

God cannot be reduced to the creation event –

something must have come before Creation – 

God is not reducible to the universe –

even though people pray to the universe

or ask the universe to do things for them

“the universe” is a code name for “God”

but people are afraid to admit God into their life

because it is not cool these days to be religious –

God is not the universe nor separate from it

but God’s Presence is in and flows thru ongoing creation

modern atheism did not arise with science

but atheism got a kickstart with Copernicus’ heliocentrism –

humans kicked out of the center of the universe

to the periphery of a vast impersonal cosmos 

humans irrelevant to the cosmic story –

humans no longer the perfection of the universe

but an accidental side show

gave birth to existentialism – we have no god-ordained purpose –

we create our own purpose by what we do

Gandhi retrieved and the West lost a religious view of reality –

a view of the importance of being and truth

the West reduced the human purpose to practical efficiency –

concerned with means not ends –

no longer aware of the intrinsic God-given value 

of being human – we only focus on what humans 

can do for other humans – particularly the rich 

our only purpose: producing and consuming things

only religion kept a notion of our intrinsic value –

the Church’s mission to discover honest-to-goodness truth

through open dialogue between humans

requires reverence and respect for lawful diversity

“The Church’s purpose is to keep unity in essentials

freedom in non-essentials, and charity in all things”

– Pope John XXIII

but the Church cannot brag about any of this –

it is the work of the Holy Spirit

to call forth many religious – hermits/monks/nuns

who have consecrated their lives to prayer –

praising God and interceding for God’s People –

this has gone on since the Desert Mothers/Fathers

and is the living source of the spiritual life of the Church.

“ENLIGHTENMENT”

The new cosmology does not contradict Christian faith

but resonates with it –

God is neither reduced to the creation event

nor to the universe

nor is separate from the universe

but God’s Presence is in and flows through ongoing creation –

God is in the world but not entirely of it –

everything is made of the same stuff as God – divinity

but is not the fullness of Divinity

 

God flows thru the universe

and thru the progressive stages of human ethics:

ego-centric care (for me)/ethno-centric care (for my group)/

world-centric care (for all humans)/universe-centric (care for all beings) –

each stage has a higher compassion

so not all hierarchies are bad

 

the more mature religious mind has developed

an alternative/wider way of seeing –

Buddhism/Hinduism/the Gospel of John

call it “enlightenment” –

“you are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14) –

the light of Christ shines thru all who belong to him

and is meant to shine into every dark corner of the world –

Christians call enlightenment “conversion”

Jesus calls it “salvation” or “the kingdom of God”

which is not a place or only exists in the afterlife

but is a new way of seeing and thinking

here and now

 

“In the early church ‘believe’

meant to ‘belove’ something –

to give your heart/soul/trust to it –

but now society has become so ‘enlightened’

that to ‘believe’ something means

‘to hold an opinion about it’

so formerly ‘to believe in God’ meant

you gave your whole self/heart/soul to God

now, ‘to believe in God’ is to be of the opinion

that God may exist”

– Wilfred Cantwell Smith

 

 

 

COMPASSION – SOURCE OF SCIENCE

According to Meister Eckhart

the 13th century Rhineland mystic

Compassion is the Original Source of the universe/

the Earth/and our own individual life –

God made us because God wanted 

to share God’s Love

Love is the Source of Godhood – 

God made us because God loved us

even before we were born –

“God chose us in Christ 

before the foundation of the world”

(Ephesians 1:4)

Compassion is salvific because it unites us 

with our Origin

coming home to Compassion 

is coming home to our True Self

when we are confronted with a new paradigm

it shakes up our world

so we resist it out of fear

but the universe/science/religion 

come from the same Source –

from God’s Love –

if there was no Love there would be no universe

and if there was no universe

there would be no science 

and no religion

through rooting them in the Divine Source

we could reconcile science and religion

develop a “theology of science” 

and live lives of radical amazement

also if everyone engaged in “narrative theology”

that is, narrated their own faith story to others

and if the poor were allowed 

to tell their faith stories

it would create solidarity among all people

release new power to fight injustice –

the Vulture of Injustice would fly off –

and we could all live in amazement and peace.

DEMYTHOLOGIZING: KILLING GOD SOFTLY

“Matter is just a minor pollutant in a universe

made of light” – Ilya Prigogine

 

“For the rest of my life, I want to reflect

on what light is” – Albert Einstein

 

but artists/philosophers/scientists say

their best ideas emerged spontaneously

out of their unconscious

out of archetypes

residing deeply in the collective unconscious

in the dark –

it is the dark which paradoxically gives light

 

the drug-user/druggie/droog

swims in the same water

as the mystic –

the water of universal archetypes –

of mythology –

arch-types are the same all over the world

in their essential form

though interpreted differently

in different cultures

 

biblical scholars kowtowing to our scientific age

tried to demythologize the Holy Bible

and get to the facts

but anthropologists hrecognize

beginning and ending stories in all cultures

that is, myths

and myths are far more important to a culture

and convey far deeper truths

than mere facts –

facts are superficial –

deeper universal truth can only be found

thru myths

 

demythologizing kills God and religion

because myths are more important –

meaning is more important

to peoples’ hearts –

than science

and facts.

FLOWING WITH THE DIVINE

The cure for fear is to keep your eyes on God:

when Peter looked at Jesus

and trusted

he walked on water

when he looked at the storm/wind/waves

he feared

and sank

 

with the help of Spirit and prayer

we can face reality

and the symbolic crosses of life

squarely

 

the difference between a shaman and a schizophrenic:

the shaman on his/her visionary journey

meets symbols that match reality

their inner and outer worlds jive –

with the schizophrenic there is a break

between the inner world and outer world

they struggle

with wild/psychic/symbolic forces

that do not match reality

 

people who try to control everything

set up resistance:

one foot on the gas

one foot on the brake

like those who burn out

do not overwork, their heart is divided

going forward and resisting going forward

at the same time

 

much easier to keep your eyes on God

surrender control

and go with Divine Flow –

you can achieve much more

without tiring or sinking

 

worry about money creates resistance to Spirit –

let go of money

don’t resist the River –

let God’s Spirit Current

carry you away!