love – Intelligent Christian Spirituality

Stages of spiritual development: a comprehensive guide

Most of us are familiar with intelligence quotient (IQ) tests. In 1995 Daniel Goleman published Emotional Intelligence a groundbreaking book based on the idea that how well you did in life depended not on IQ but on EQ, your emotional quotient, that is, how well you got along with others. Perhaps there is also a SQ, a spiritual quotient. Your SQ would be how far along you are on the spiritual journey as mapped out over the centuries by various spiritual thinkers.

In the sixteenth century, Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross outlined the stages of the spiritual life, from complete union with evil to complete union with God.

In the first stage, that of pagan life, one gives into temptation and doubt about God and lives in desolation. Eventually, through the grace of God, one may be converted to belief in God. This can occur rapidly (the “born again” experience) or gradually over time.

During the conversion stage, doubt about God disappears but temptation remains strong, so to survive spiritually one must move to the next stage, which is purgation, or “the dark night of the senses.” One must separate from evil by purifying one’s senses and learning virtue, and the best way to do this is through active contemplation, particularly prayer and scripture study.

Eventually, one gets to the stage of illumination, or spiritual betrothal, where the spiritual life is going well and there is lots of sweet consolation. It’s like being engaged to be married to God.

The next stage is shocking because it seems as if God has abandoned you. In this stage, temptation is gone, but so is consolation. The thinking here is that God has not actually deserted you; instead, God is trying to move you from a faith based on feelings to a faith based on conscious decision, a much more unshakable faith. In this spiritual desert, which people like Mother Teresa went through, doubt is strong. The only solution is to keep choosing to believe.

The final stage is divinization, not that you become God, but you are in total union with God. All temptation and doubt are gone. You are fully your beloved’s, in spiritual marriage.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) had a more generalized map. In the aesthetic stage, the sole focus is on self-centered pleasure. Eventually, you realize this is causing yourself and others great pain, and so at this point, you can choose to enter the ethical stage. In this stage, becoming “holier than thou” is easy until you realize you also fall short of your ideals and need God’s help to be truly holy. When you surrender to God’s grace, you enter the religious stage.

Empirical research on stages of faith has been conducted in the past twenty years. By conducting thousands of interviews, James Fowler of Emory University mapped out six stages.

Briefly, in magical faith, one thinks of God as a cosmic Santa Claus. In mythical faith, one takes every scriptural story as historical, scientific fact. In group faith, one believes whatever one’s group believes. In personal faith, one starts asking questions like “what do I really believe?” Here, people often feel they are losing their faith, but they are actually going deeper. In paradoxical faith, one accepts paradox, for example: Jesus is the only way to God, and yet there are other ways. In sacrificial faith, one becomes willing to lay down one’s life for principles like justice or freedom for all people, not just those of one’s own religious tradition.

SQ, like all spiritual things, cannot be exactly quantified. You cannot say your SQ is 100 or 160. However, if over the years, you have a deeper, more contemplative, loving, ethical, grace-filled and service-oriented spirituality, if you can embrace paradox and all people, and think freely for yourself, you can be assured, given the spiritual maps above, that your spiritual IQ is growing.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

The Teaching of Oneness: Addressing Global Issues Together

The central teaching of Jesus was oneness. This idea’s time has surely come. All humans are becoming increasingly tied together in a fragile web with each other and nature. In this time of climate change, worldwide trading, television, and the Internet, we are learning that what affects other humans and the natural world affects all of us.

Yet lingering ideas of separateness continue to kill us. To the extent we think we are separate from nature, we continue to decimate rainforests, overfish oceans, and pollute everything, believing it won’t impact us. To the extent we think we are separate from other people “out there,” we will continue to wage war on them, believing we can do so with impunity.

In Spanish, the devil is “el diablo” and we speak of an evil plot as “diabolical.” The “di” at the beginning of these words means “two.” Evil then divides what is one into two, dividing or separating oneness.

In the mythological Garden of Eden, the devil, disguised as a serpent, tempted Adam and Eve to eat from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so they started the endless process of dividing everything up into good and bad. Before that, they were innocent, everything existed in harmony, and they “walked with God in the garden” (Genesis 3:8). No friction existed between them and God, man and woman, or humans and nature. All was one.

Right after eating the fruit which God forbade, they hid (separated themselves) from God, came into conflict with each other (Adam blamed Eve) and were alienated from nature (driven out of a natural paradise).

Jesus came to teach oneness and put everything back together. He prayed for his disciples and all people “that they may be one, as you God are in me, and I am in you, that they may also be one in us” (John 17: 21-23). He saw himself as one with the lowliest person on Earth: “As you do to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you do it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

Jesus was against how society was divided up according to status and privilege. So, he welcomed those of no account in his day: children, women, prostitutes, the sick and the handicapped. His directive to “love your enemies” was all about reconciliation, community, and oneness. Jesus felt so close to God that he said, “God and I are one” (John 10:30).

If we felt our oneness with nature, we would treat it as part of us. If we felt we were one with other people, we would treat everyone better, particularly our spouses. As it says in Genesis, when a man and woman marry, “the two become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). If we really believed in this oneness, we would realize that whatever we do to our spouses, we do to ourselves. We would “do unto others as we would have them do unto us” (Luke 6:31). In other words, we would obey the Golden Rule.

If we believed God saw us as united with him, we would trust that God would never punish us because it would be God’s self-punishment. We would have no fear of hell, which is basically separation from God. We would constantly sense God’s presence. We would affirm with St. Paul that “God is in, over, and through us” (Ephesians 4:6) and “I live, yet not I, but God lives within me” (Galatians 2:20). We would treat everyone, regardless of age, gender, nationality, or religion, with the utmost respect, like the temple of the divine they are.

The church and all of humanity need to focus on this core teaching of Jesus — oneness. We will only survive if we understand that we are all in this together with God, other people, and nature. This sense of oneness is the key to addressing what ails us.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

The Power of Detachment in Relationships

What most people are looking for in a relationship, whether inside or outside of marriage, is someone who is totally attached to them: completely committed and passionately in love.

While we tend to think of detachment negatively, as disinterest, aloofness, or lack of feeling, exactly what we would not want in a relationship, if we look at it in a different way, it is an important virtue in any relationship, whether with God or another human being.

Detachment in most world religions means “inner freedom.” Jesus never used the word but it was implicit in his spirituality: the ability to let go and let God. Detachment is about “not my will, but Thy will be done,” surrendering to the divine, putting your life in God’s hands.

Detachment is a key Buddhist virtue, and Meister Eckhart, the great Christian mystic, believed that in relationship to God, detachment was more foundational than love. We cannot love God fully and unconditionally as long as we are clinging to our ego. Like the rich young man who chose not to give up his wealth and follow Jesus, our ego-attachments can block our love of God.

Detachment is likewise crucial with human relationships. You cannot really love someone if you are attached to your agenda, how they should look or how the relationship or marriage should be. Your list of characteristics of the ideal mate: good-looking, healthy, wealthy, sexy, professional, romantic, etc may prevent you from appreciating someone right in front of you.

The key to any relationship is acceptance, to accept your partner as they are, with all their faults, and to celebrate their differences from you, the things not on your list. Hopefully, they will also be detached from their agenda and accept you as you are with your faults and differences.

The most important thing is to be attached only to God. The first of the biblical Ten Commandments is that we should put God first in all things, nothing should come before God. It is crucial to put God before everything, including human relationships. Then you can exist in the single life, in a relationship, or in marriage in inner freedom.

So many people are stressed-out about their relationships. If they are not in a relationship they are obsessed about when they are going to meet the right person. If they are in a relationship they are obsessed about where it is going or if it is going to end in marriage or not. If they are married they often wish their marriage was better, or wish they were not married at all.

It is very easy to let your attachment to a relationship or marriage get in the way of your relationship with God. I have known people who stopped attending their place of worship or gave up their spiritual practices or compromised their morals and self-esteem and basically sold their soul, all in an attempt to maintain a relationship. At that point the relationship has become an idol, that is, they have put it above their relationship with God.

It is important to do your part to make a relationship or marriage work, but it is far more important to put God first, keep your integrity, not make the other person into an idol, and detach from the outcome. If you let go and let God, the outcome will always be better than if you cling to a relationship out of fear of being alone or some ego-need.

The relationship is going to end at some point anyway. Even if you get married it may end through separation, divorce, or death of your spouse. Besides that, God has called some people to be single, it is not God’s will that they be with someone. God has something greater in mind, some charitable work, social justice project, or mystical marriage, that is, marriage to God.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and marriage coach. www.brucetallman.com

Exploring Divine Love Amidst Human Pain

Why does God, who is supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, allow disasters? Why does God not prevent all accidents, illness, famine, and war? Why does God allow suffering in general?

In 2005, some Christians maintained that, because New Orleans had a reputation for being “sin city,” God sent Hurricane Katrina to punish them. Pat Robertson, a US televangelist, claimed that God had punished Haiti with hurricanes and earthquakes for “making a pact with the devil.” A few centuries ago, John Wesley believed that the great Lisbon earthquake in the 1700s was God’s wrath against sin.

Such explanations must be categorically rejected. In the biblical story of the woman caught in adultery, when asked if she should be stoned to death as the Law of Moses demanded, Jesus replied, “Let the one who has never sinned cast the first stone.” All her accusers walked away because they knew they had sinned too. If God struck New Orleans, Haiti, or Lisbon for their sins, God would have to do the same to all of us.

God did not want or cause an earthquake in Haiti, one of the poorest countries on our planet. A more widespread explanation for Haiti’s poverty and woes is that foreign countries rejected Haiti when its slaves revolted and gained independence, it has had a string of brutal and corrupt governments, and Haiti is geographically located in a hurricane zone and on a fault line.

God does not want or cause suffering in general either. We know that God allows human freedom, which is the cause of most human suffering. God also allows a certain freedom in the natural world. Most of the time, nature serves us well, but natural laws will proceed even if humans are in the way. God did not cause the earthquake in Haiti, the shifting of tectonic plates did.

Getting back to our question of why God allows suffering, we also have to ask: to what extent should God eliminate suffering? Should God eliminate all pain? Pain, which is part of nature, serves us well in most cases. For example, if you put your hand on a hot stove, the pain tells you to withdraw it. If God eliminated our ability to feel pain, we would quickly destroy ourselves. Pain is also a great motivator. Most medical and social breakthroughs have come from seeking to alleviate or prevent pain.

Most of us have experienced a broken heart from being spurned by someone we loved. To eliminate all pain, God would have to make us into robots who could not do unloving things like rejecting people. However, we would also be unable to love since love requires free choice.

Pain also serves us well spiritually. The ecstasy of gaining love and the pain of losing it make us more humble, wise, and compassionate. Suffering should not be glorified; no one should purposefully seek it. However, we can use it as a great teacher.

Just as we suffer if our children suffer, God must suffer with us. In fact, that is what the cross, the central icon of Christianity, is all about. It declares that God knows what it is like to suffer as a human being. God suffers with us. The cross is the universal symbol that God is not in bliss, off somewhere else, while we suffer on earth. God is right in the middle of our pain. God is always on the side of the crucified, no matter what their nationality, race, or religion.

Sometimes, though, the suffering is so senseless that there is no adequate explanation. As Rabbi Harold Kushner said long ago, sometimes all you can do is drop your theological explanations and be with people, hold them in your arms, and cry with them in their grief. That’s what God does. God does not leave us alone in our sorrow.

The international response to Haiti was due to God moving people’s hearts and consciences to reach out and help take this crucified nation off its cross. The response has been like the beginnings of a resurrection: God overcoming horrific pain and death. Perhaps, Haiti will eventually be fully resurrected as a much safer and stronger nation than before. Let us all pray that this is what happens.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and religious educator of adults. www.brucetallman.com

What the world needs now is healthy masculinity

There is a lot of toxic masculinity floating around in the world these days. It most often shows itself socially as violence against women, and politically as dictatorship. People seem enthralled right now with the strong male who claims he will make everything right for their country. Putin and Trump exemplify this.

Males have been in power for a long time, and in that time, they have done a lot of good – they have been responsible for most of the world’s medical, legal, political, and scientific advances. However, there is no denying they have also done a lot of damage – men have caused most wars and crimes.

When healthy, every man has four basic instincts: to be a servant-leader, to defend the weak, to be wise, and to be loving. God has given these instincts to men as gifts to be used in the service of others.

Carl Jung, the great 20^th-century psychologist, found that these male instincts manifested in every age and every culture’s history, religion, mythology, and literature. This discovery led Jung to hypothesize that males must participate in a “collective unconscious,” and these instincts, which he called “archetypes,” are the contents of this vast unconscious mind.

In the contemporary literature on male spirituality, four archetypes have predominated: the Sovereign, Warrior, Seer, and Lover. These show up in a vast array of ways: the Sovereign manifests as the president, king, CEO, father, or pope; the Warrior is present as the soldier, policeman, sports hero, or prophet; the Seer shows up as the medical doctor, professor, minister, priest, or shaman; the Lover archetype can be seen in the musician, poet, contemplative, or worker for the poor.

Healthy males keep all four archetypes in balance. When out of balance, the shadow male archetypes start to show up. The anti-Sovereign is the Tyrant, for example, the domineering boss, or the Abdicator – the absent father. The anti-Warrior is the Sadist – the terrorist or bully, or the Masochist – the victim. The anti-Seer is the Manipulator, for example, the negative politician, or the Fool – the men portrayed in television sitcoms and commercials. The anti-Lover is the Addict – to pornography, alcohol, or drugs, or the Frigid – the emotionally dead male.

The male archetypes are not going to go away, they are hardwired into the male soul. We need the good archetypes to prevent the bad ones from manifesting. Boys need good role models such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and Pope Francis, or the bad archetypes will take over.

Jesus had all four archetypes in perfection. Churches refer to him as priest (Seer), prophet (spiritual Warrior), and king (Sovereign), and he is the icon of the loving male (Lover).

The world awaits the coming of males with all four archetypes in this perfect balance. Fortunately, there is an organization that is promoting this, The ManKind Project. It’s goal is to produce healthy males, men who are kind, thus the “ManKind” name: (see http://www.mkp.org). The Project’s motto is “Changing the world one man at a time.”

This is a worldwide men’s liberation movement involving about 100,000 men who train other men in the healthy male archetypes. It is not a specifically religious movement, but it is deeply spiritual. Any man, religious or not, can join. I have been involved for over 25 years, and it has changed my life in numerous positive ways.

Bruce Tallman is the author of Archetypes for Spiritual Direction: Discovering the Heroes Within (Paulist Press, 2005). http://www.brucetallman.com.

Debunking Myths Between Catholicism and Anglicanism

Etiquette in interchurch dialogue nowadays prescribes emphasizing your own church’s weaknesses and the other church’s strengths. However, Connie Woodcock, an Anglican, breached this in attacking the Catholic Church based on stereotypes in “Thanks but no thanks, Pope Benedict.” Bob Ripley, a United Church of Canada minister, was much more balanced in “Rome bends rules in a conservative way,” but even with him, a few stereotypes slipped through.

In the interests of reconciling Protestants and Catholics, it needs to be said that, while there is some truth in both sides’ stereotypes of the other, the reality is far more complex.

Before I begin attacking stereotypes on both sides, I want to note “the sudden invitation to become a Roman Catholic while remaining Anglican” was not an “ill-conceived attempt at church poaching” as Woodcock claimed. It was simply the Pope’s response to numerous requests from Anglicans. Also, the format Benedict proposed is not new. Ukrainian Catholics, who are part of the Catholic Church, have their own distinct liturgy, and their priests can marry, but bishops are celibate.

Woodcock’s first stereotype about “why Catholicism turns us off” is “the Pope’s infallibility.” Ripley likewise said, “The authority of the Pope is, of course, non-negotiable.” The reality is Catholics consider 99.99% of what the Pope says to be “authoritative,” not “infallible,” and we are taught to follow our own informed conscience, not blind obedience.

Woodcock also complains about Catholicism’s treatment of women with “second-class standing.” The reality is that every priest is aware that most Catholic parishes would not survive without the immense contribution of women.

Woodcock rails against Catholic teaching on birth control, but the reality is the Catholic church promotes the Billings method of natural family planning which is quite safe and effective in preventing unwanted conception.

She also derides “top-down imposition,” but the reality is that Catholic lay people regularly give their input to priests and bishops in parish and diocesan councils. Woodcock states that in Anglicanism, there is “lots of room for varying shades of opinion,” whereas she seems to think Catholicism is one monolithic block. The reality is there are social justice people, evangelicals, liberals, conservatives, charismatics, intellectuals, prophets, and mystics of every kind all inside the Catholic Church.

On the other hand, Catholics often hold the stereotype that the Anglican faith originated with Henry VIII, but the reality is that the Church in England was one of the earliest established, and Henry merely built upon what already existed.

Catholics also have the stereotype that the United Church of Canada is exceedingly liberal, anything goes, and there is no central authority. The reality is there are many conservative United Churchers, and the church is governed by a central General Council that sets policy for it every three years.

All Christians would be much more tolerant of each other if we focused on reality rather than stereotypes.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director. www.brucetallman.com

Why Marriage is Hard: Exploring Challenges and Solutions

Songs and movies create fantasies about romantic love, and the wedding industry creates even greater fantasies about marriage. However, romantic love is fickle, and marriage is hard. St. Paul wrote in scripture that those who marry will experience trouble (I Cor. 7:28).

Humans are basically good but also basically broken, and therefore, while God meant marriage to be a holy and blessed state, if two broken people live day after day in the most intimate relationship in the world, that is, marriage, there are going to be problems.

Besides spiritual direction, I do marriage counselling. All marriage experts agree there are four distinct stages of marriage: romance, disillusionment, misery, and seasoned love.

Marriage normally begins with romance. When dating, everyone is on their best behavior and looks their best. You haven’t lived together, so it is easy to buy into the illusion that this person only has good points and will take care of all your needs forever.

After you move in together or get married, and the other person is in your face day after day, you normally start to notice things about them that bother you, and you may feel that only some of your needs are getting met. In this disillusionment or “reality check” stage, you lose the illusions of romance.

If you stay together long enough, you will normally go through misery at some point, where your partner’s good points seem to be totally eclipsed by their bad points, and you feel none of your needs are getting met. This misery stage is why, according to Statistics Canada, there is now about a 40% divorce rate for first marriages.

At this point, faith can be very helpful. In most religious weddings, the couple takes serious, sacred vows before God and other people that they are going to love their spouse “for better or worse.” When in misery, it is particularly important to remember this unconditional love commitment before God. Prayer and church-based organizations like Retrouvaille, which hosts healing weekends for couples in misery, can also help a lot.

Misery can be as difficult as overcoming an addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous has been successful because its first tenet is to admit that your life is out of control, and you need the help of a Higher Power to overcome your problem.

In a second marriage, faith can be even more crucial. People in second marriages are even more prone to fall into misery because there are usually also ex-spouses, lawyers, children from two marriages, and wounds from the first marriage to contend with. It is not surprising the divorce rate for second marriages is significantly higher than for first marriages. People in second marriages need to pray even harder and exercise even more the virtues that all churches teach: forgiveness, trust, patience, commitment, etc.

However, there can be legitimate reasons for separation and divorce. If there was prolonged emotional or physical abuse or neglect, it probably was not God’s will that the two of you be together in the first place, and you should split up. On the other hand, often couples split up without giving their best effort to preserving the marriage.

Mutual spiritual growth is the purpose of any marriage, whether first, second or third. Difficulties can be seen as an opportunity to rely more upon God, to surrender your ego more, to pray more, to love more deeply.

If you can do all these things, you will eventually come through to the fourth stage called seasoned love. If you learn to accept your partner with all their flaws, remember your wedding vows and recommit yourself to the marriage, you will normally start to see your partner’s good points again, the bad points don’t matter because you are committed to the marriage anyway, and by then you have learned to rely upon God more than your spouse for getting your needs met.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com.

Effective Prayer: Seven Key Habits for Spiritual Growth

Most people who believe in God, whether Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Bahais, or Jews, pray at least occasionally. For many, prayer is central to their spiritual journey. However, like anything else we do, prayer can be effective or ineffective.

The key to prayer is desire for God. St. Augustine’s classic Christian definition of prayer is “lifting up our hearts and minds to God.” In this sense, whatever we do, whether working, playing, or even just walking the dog, can be prayer if we use it to connect to God.

Another key to effective prayer is silence, both internal and external. It helps to pray in a quiet environment and to take a moment to still the constant cacophony of thought before beginning. However, God can be found in the midst of noise and chaos as well.

Having a special designated place and time can be helpful, but where, when, how often and how long you pray depends entirely on your schedule and whatever proves fruitful for you.

In preparing to pray it helps to get into a comfortable posture, whether sitting or kneeling, and then follow the A.C.T.S. formula: Adoration (instead of starting with requests bring to mind God’s glory: e.g. “Almighty God, source of all being, truth and life…”), Confession (examine your conscience, repent of and surrender to God all negatives such as unforgiveness and deceit), Thanksgiving ( remember all God’s blessings), Supplication (pray for the needs of others).

It is also okay to pray for your own needs, as long as this does not become the major focus of your prayer. As well, the Jewish scriptures say that if you pray for someone else’s need and you have a similar need, God will supply your need as well. You don’t even have to ask for it.

There are seven habits of people who are highly effective at prayer:

First, their prayer is based on their own experience of God, so they are praying from their heart as well as their head, not just mumbling prayers composed by someone else.

Secondly, their prayer is simple and direct. Good prayer is possible for anyone, not just the religious professionals. You don’t have to have a doctorate in theology to pray well.

Next, their prayer is bold, strong, and durable. They boldly approach God because they know God as a God of compassion. They do not timidly address God as if God’s grace did not outweigh their failings. Also, their prayer gets stronger, not weaker, during the hard times.

Fourth, their prayer is deep and loving. It involves a radical commitment to God and others, particularly their enemies. For them, prayer is broad and hospitable. It welcomes all human beings, all creatures, and the whole planet into their hearts. It is never just about their own little group.

Fifth, they listen to God as much as they talk, and they take this listening attitude into their daily life. Throughout their day they are sensitive to the subtle promptings of the Spirit. In this sense, they “pray always” as St. Paul exhorted Christians to do.

Sixth, their prayer is socially conscious. They are particularly aware of the marginalized, the people the rest of us often forget about because they drop through society’s cracks. Their prayer takes in the social issues of the day. It is never just about “God and me.”

Lastly, their prayer is integrating. It integrates their faith with their life, their contemplation with their action. After they pray, they do something that addresses what they prayed about. As someone said, the person who is effective at prayer “prays as if it all depended on God and then acts as if it all depended on them.” They know that what the world needs now is effective prayer harnessed to effective social action.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com

Understanding Spirituality: The Essence of Consciousness

God is Mother as much as Father. God as Mother is welcoming, warm, and inclusive. Returning to God as Mother would be a return to compassion and wisdom as a way of life.

The most foundational thing in existence is not matter, atoms, or quarks, but consciousness or spirit. Ultimately, we live in a spiritual universe.

The bottom line is not money; it is God’s love. So, reality is foundationally safe and benevolent. Ultimately, it is not a scary universe.

God does not love us because we are good. God loves us because God is good.

Salvation is not perfect morality. It is letting the dance/wind/fire of God flow through you.

True religion is humble, not judgmental. It says, “Maybe I am the problem here, not you.”

Love is to recognize the oneness of all things. God is in all of us, I am in you and you are in me, and we are all in this together.

God is not a concept to be believed in. God is a reality to be experienced.

God, who is infinitely perfect and blessed, in an act of sheer goodness, created humans to share in God’s blessed life. That is our ultimate purpose.

All the world’s major religions have identified the main problem as the ego.

We all need to stop focusing on which worldview or religion is superior and start focusing on inner transformation by letting go of our egos.

The only way to let go of ego is awareness of it. Ego is unconsciousness, so awareness kills it.

The foundation of all justice is that our equality is intrinsic and founded on God’s love, not earned. Through no doing of our own, we are all equally loved by God.

A teacher imparts knowledge or techniques. A master teaches by his or her way of life.

All the great spiritual masters say: wake up: God has a plan for the creation. The plan is that God be all in all. This is the ultimate purpose of the cosmos. Do not shut God out of your life!

The rich person may be poor, blind, and naked in God’s sight. Or not. The poor person may be rich in God’s sight. Or not. Outward state is no indicator of God’s favor or disfavor.

“Ten thousand difficulties do not make a doubt.” – John Henry Newman

To have everything, desire nothing.

The garden of Eden, paradise, heaven, and God are within us, and it is the knowledge of good and evil, and the judgmentalism that comes with it, that keeps us out of the unity of all things.

Life has always been a struggle and always will be. The fact life is hard does not mean it is not good. If the universe was perfect, there wouldn’t be anything to do. God made life good not easy.

If we accept whatever God gives us: honor or dishonor, long life or short, health or sickness, riches or poverty, then we are free indeed.

God is the only true object of desire because God alone has all love, knowledge, truth, justice, peace, freedom, and wisdom.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

From Winning to Losing: Navigating life’s Challenges

The universe is all about loss – things are constantly becoming, that is, changing. Nothing stands still, so we are constantly losing the way things were. Loss is built into the very fabric of reality and is essential to all life. Every creature is born, grows, and then dies.

The first half of life is about winning, getting, and accumulating. Most people gain an education, their first big job, a spouse, a house, and children in the first half of life. The second half of life is about losing: the children grow up and move out, friends start dying, your spouse may leave you or die, you may be downsized, you retire, you may move out of your house, and your health starts to deteriorate.

Eastern societies had a way of coping with these losses. There were four recognized stages of life: student, householder, withdrawal from active life to contemplate your losses and death, and finally, leaving everything to become a holy man or woman. In Western societies, there is no conscious process like this – you are supposed to keep accumulating throughout your life.

Therefore, it’s a shock when we start to lose, but contrary to what we all believe, we are more losers than winners in Western societies. Loss always begets sadness, and the rapid change in our culture means rapid loss. However, we have no structured life stages that can help us cope with this. This may explain why we have suffered an epidemic of depression, as witnessed by the high proportion of the population that is on anti-depressants.

We believe we are a society of winners because the media emphasizes the lifestyles of the rich and famous. What it doesn’t highlight is the thousands of people who tried but failed at becoming an American or Canadian Idol, or the five hundred individuals who applied for one job and didn’t get it, or the team that lost. The media makes everyone who is not a superstar feel inadequate, and so, alongside the epidemic of depression, we also struggle with a plague of diminished self-esteem.

All these losses have four main purposes. First, to gain wisdom. In the first half of life, you grow in knowledge and material things; in the second half, you are meant to grow in wisdom about spiritual things, a spirituality of subtraction. The second purpose is to gain compassion. You can only open your heart to the suffering of others to the extent that you have suffered yourself. Thirdly, all these small losses are meant to prepare you for the biggest loss of all, your own death, in which you literally lose everything. Finally, these losses are meant to motivate you to search for and find the only permanent thing, that is, God.

In the face of financial meltdowns and all the other losses in our lives, the only real losers are the ones who have not gained compassion for the setbacks and struggles of others and the wisdom to know that all of us die and all things pass away except God.

Christians believe in a man who was arguably the biggest loser of all time. He started his earthly life in an adoring family and was adored by wise men and angels. He ended his life on earth publicly humiliated and put to a grisly death by the secular authorities as a criminal and by the religious authorities as a heretic. He failed his divine mission, failed everyone, even God.

However, Jesus clung to the bitter end to his faith that the one thing no one can lose is God’s love, and so God rewarded him for this faithfulness. Two thousand years later, he still has more followers than anyone in history, people who come together to adore the wisest and most compassionate person who ever lived and, therefore, the biggest winner of all.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion.. http://www.brucetallman.com.