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.
Intelligent Christian Spirituality 