Tag: conversion

Understanding Spirituality Through Great Thinkers

Martin Buber was the great spiritual interpreter of relationships

Gustavo Gutierrez of liberation

Karl Rahner of ordinary experience

Paul Tillich of cultural trends

Ken Wilber of everything

Wilber and Tillich:

everyone has a spirituality: an ultimate concern:

– archaic spirituality (food/sex/survival)

– magic spirituality (rituals/voodoo/Santeria)

– mythic spirituality (fundamentalism/literalism/exclusivism)

– rational spirituality (reason/materialism/science)

– pluralist spirituality (postmodernism/relativism/skepticism)

– systems spirituality (deep ecology/Gaiaism/interconnectedness)

– integral spirituality (inclusivism/developmentalism/

inner and communal transformation)

Buber: “Spirituality and life is about community 

not the lone individual”

in a Christian society, people produce goods and services

for the good of all/the common good

not for the profits of the owners

all work is done for a transcendent purpose:

building the kingdom/queendom/kindom of God 

where all people and creatures are taken care of

However, Christianity is not the only place of God’s rule:

Chakravartin, the universal Hindu king in India

Ashoka, the first Buddhist monarch in Buddhism

Shih Tuang Hi, the first Taoist emperor of a united kingdom in China

all governed by Heaven’s Mandate

under Heaven’s Law

so Mother Teresa taught her sisters

never to try to convert a Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist

by talking about Jesus

or promoting Christianity

but rather by being Jesus to them.

HEARTS ON FIRE

If you want to be a real help to your temple/church/

Buddhist sangha first light the fire

of love/tolerance/understanding in yourself

so you can inspire others to do the same.

Otherwise, no matter how beautiful the edifice

it will be a false temple/church/sangha.

 

If you are not on fire for God

it is because your image of God is old school –

God is transcendent/detached from human life.

The theory of evolution forces us

into a new image of God as immanent –

God arises from within everything.

 

Teilhard/Merton/Panikkar/Griffiths

all call for inner renewal as the key to living Christ

in the 21st century. These four deceased

but alive mystics can be our guides

for living in an evolutionary world.

 

Religion is falsely thought of as contentment –

an idealistic escape from the stresses of harsh reality.

However, religious discontent is synonymous

with spiritual renewal – discontent that the world

is not like God’s dream

of peace and justice for all.

Prophetic religion is not about certainty and security.

 

Earthly attachments to comfort/porn/money

control the soul/end the spirit’s freedom/

cut us off from God.

As we value and pursue foolish things,

foolish fears, like losing our comfort, result.

 

“Conversion” according to Bernard Lonergan

is the experience by which one becomes

an “authentic human being.”

And Lonergan affirmed conversion as holistic:

it involves the whole person in all our dimensions:

intellectual – loving God with our mind

ethical – loving God with our body

and religious – loving God with our heart on fire.

3 Big Ideas for April 18, 2019

  1. Every spiritual path begins with a founder who experiences a deep spiritual conversion. Then his followers turn this I-THOU relationship between the founder and God into an I-IT relationship by developing beliefs, creeds, rituals, and institutions. And the gap grows between the founder’s experience and his disciples’ lives as the founder fades away in historical time. We need to constantly try to recapture the founder’s original experience.
  2. D. H. Lawrence, mostly known for his erotic novels, was also a spiritual man who wrote that our deepest religious urge is to come into direct contact with the deep elemental life of the cosmos and to derive energy and life from it. He believed that erotic energy underlies everything in the universe, and that God is not only “agape” (suffering love) but also “eros” (the power of attraction) which expresses itself most fully in human sexuality. When the masculine energy of the universe meets the feminine energy, fire happens.
  3. In his “Discourse on Mindful Breathing,” the Buddha taught “Breathing in, I recognize my feeling. Breathing out, I calm my feeling.” Christian monks teach similar spiritual practices. Medical science has now proven them both right: when you inhale and then slowly let your breath out, the breathing out activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which has a calming effect on your whole body. Science is gradually catching up with and proving wisdom taught by ancient religion.