Tag: God

VISIONS

In the vision of Bonaventure and Aquinas

humans are central to the Creation –

It would make no sense for God to create

a universe to reflect God’s glory

if there was no creature conscious enough

to appreciate God’s glory/reflect God’s glory/

lead all Creation back to God.

 

When we believe humans are just

an accidental collection of atoms

it results in despair/collective irresponsibility

which results in dangerous passivity/apathy

in the face of the political/ecological crisis

which is currently in our face.

 

Besides, there is only one human problem –

to discover who we are/our purpose

in the economy/reign/rule/life of God –

if I find God I find my true self –

the face of who I was before I was born –

and I find my true purpose –

and if I find my true self and my true purpose

I find God.

 

To find your true self, start your meditation/

prayer practice where you are –

do not wait until you have it all together –

nobody ever has it all together.

If you are the most violent/depressed/

egotistical/self-hating person in the world –

those are all good places to start.

 

And as you come to see that God loves you

in your shadow/wounded parts

you can accept those shadow/wounds in yourself

and so bring your whole self to God and be healed.

 

In the vision of Teilhard, Christianity is a new “phyllum”

with the Church at the cutting edge of evolution

leading evolution forward through “amorization” –

“union in love” – guiding evolution as it moves toward

its fulfillment in the human/Cosmic God

Jesus the Christ.

 

DOWN-TO-EARTH SPIRITUALITY

The process of becoming human

involves moving from idealism to realism/reality

from sky to Earth/to life in the real world –

we don’t have to be perfect

or stoically deny our emotions.

Travelling through the many layers of consciousness

contained in the psyche can be painful/confusing/frightening

but trusting in God’s love

can keep us on the path

to discovering God’s amazing life within us.

 

Neoplatonists promoted a flight-from-the-world spirituality

whereas Aquinas and Eckhart (who inherited

the philosophy chair of Aquinas in Paris)

taught an in-this-world-here-and-now spirituality.

 

The New Testament word for the compassion

of Jesus means “his bowels turned over” –

Jesus was in touch with his guts/feelings/passion/earthy life.

 

For Thich Nhat Hanh, the well-known Buddhist

the life of Jesus is his most basic teaching –

Jesus lived exactly how he taught –

so, imitating the life of Jesus

is more important in God’s eyes

than believing in airy-fairy concepts

like eternal life after you die –

life in God/eternal life begins now

in this life in this world.

 

But Christianity is inherently dangerous

when it lives in this world because it demands

self-sacrificing love and active compassion for the poor

which automatically puts it in direct conflict

with those who value competition and success above all else –

the Masters of the Universe who worship

the Money-god/Mammon

of our western culture.

 

 

GOD’S SWEETNESS CONQUERS FEAR

Allah told the angels to bow before humans

which they did, except for Iblis (Satan) who waxed proud

and led Adam and Eve out of the Garden to where

everyone is everyone’s enemy.

 

Still, there is some friendship and joy

but apocalyptic dread predominates more than joy right now –

anxiety and some delight

are the two basic ways/feelings/

life-experiences of contemporary humans.

 

But there is nothing to be fearful/worried/anxious about –

DNA and RNA show we are all connected –

we have all evolved from common sources

and if you go back far enough

you get to the One Common Source.

 

And there is nothing to fear because

in a static world, God is independent from Creation

but in an evolving world, the world is not God

and God is not the world

but God is in the depths of all things

and leading them to growth/fulfillment.

 

Every aspect of life is an invitation

to radical amazement

which goes beyond knowledge

and is a Doorway to the Divine.

 

Enlightened people/saints/mystics

like Saint Bernard or John of the Cross

describe the experience of God

as restful/peaceful/sweet/delightful/even erotic

and Muslims like Rumi/Hafiz/Kabir

and Hindus like Rabindranath Tagore

describe life with God as

fun/fantastic/ecstatic

and Jews like Jesus

proclaim “My yolk is easy

and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30).

 

Jesus is the Light of the World (John 8:12)

who tells us we are the Light of the World (Matthew 5:14)

and there is nothing to fear (Matthew 10:31).

RELIGION TRANSCENDS REASON

Life and religion are deeper than rationality

and Christianity is not the only seemingly irrational religion:

“The first/most elementary fact about Zen

is its abhorrence of the dualistic division

between matter and spirit – body and soul are one.”

– Thomas Merton

Many of the beliefs of Christianity can be fully understood

only by contemplatives who know nondual consciousness

and its paradoxes: “Jesus is fully human and fully divine”

“Mary is both virgin and mother”

“Bread is still bread and yet it is Jesus.”

No wonder this faith seems irrational to the secular mind!

  

Bernard Lonergan, a brilliant Canadian theologian

thought it was ironic that scholastics exaggerated

the objectivity of truth since Thomas Aquinas

the Father of Scholasticism thought truth

was in the mind of God and in human minds

so Lonergan spent his life’s work emphasizing

the importance of subjective experience –

the internal mental processes by which we discern truth.

 

The truth of most spirituality tells us

we have forgotten who we are

therefore the main task of religion is to remind us

that we are original blessings: daughters and sons of God.

 

“Without God, what am I

except a guide to my own self-destruction.”

– Augustine

 

Naskapi Indians have always been guided

by their “Great One” – their soul

who appears to them in their dreams

and instructs them about when to hunt or lay low.

Lies/dishonesty they have found

drive their Great One away

and honesty/generosity draw the Great One near.

 

This shows the Cosmic Christ like life itself

transcends rationality and can be contemplated and found

in the joy of everything/everywhere/everyone

all at once.

 

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.

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.