Tag: Martin Luther

CADUCEUS

God created humans in God’s image: male and female

God is both masculine and feminine energy

but once the male and female separated into separate forms

the fall began from perfection into duality

which was further exasperated by the discovery of good and evil

and the subsequent banishment from Paradise

where God walked with humans in the Garden

 

the disconnection of humans from the Cosmos

continued with Martin Luther the Protestant reformer

whose doctrine of “sola scriptura” – “only scripture”

as the revelation of God – banished Nature as the first Bible

and resulted in extreme anthropocentrism –

humans as the center of everything

thus divorcing salvation from anything to do with Nature

 

modern society has further exasperated things

by teaching individualism: your body belongs only to you

not also to God and others

so you can do whatever you want with your body –

“George W. Bush get off my bush” –

but according to Buddhist emptiness/no-self/interbeing theory

your body belongs to your parents/ancestors/every living being –

your body is not only your own – you belong to the human race

and belonging to a group is essential to our inner growth and maturity –

it breaks us out of individualism/self-centeredness

 

but this requires true humility: journeying into the darkness

of oneself/others/divinity

and always a strain remains between the “Via Positiva” –

the Cosmos as glorious – and the “Via Negativa” – life as hard/suffering

always conflict remains between love and sacrifice

 

the Caduceus – the Staff of Hermes

in Greek/Roman/Egyptian mythology –

the staff born by heralds/messengers/gods

with two serpents twined around it and topped by wings

symbolizes healing by the medical/pharmaceutical professions –

the rod represents the spinal cord

where the serpents cross represents the seven chakras

the serpents represent the solar and lunar/

masculine and feminine energies

that come together in each chakra

and heal all our divisions.

 

TWO AGES

Michel Foucault believed the sciences of man

furthered scientism

the belief science has all the answers

which led to the “Age of Man”

in which humans are studied as

objects of scientific investigation –

B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism

treats humans as “Its”

with no subjectivity.

Science can give us concrete information

about the flow of evolution and our place in it

but not a framework for ultimate meaning –

the purview of theology and religion.

There is a different way of looking at salvation – 

God saves us from ourselves

by giving us meaning.

With meaning, little else is needed

without meaning we are caught up in endless

addictive consumerism, rivalry, competition

endlessly rolling the stone up the mountain

only to watch it roll down again

as others out-compete us.

But there is positive meaning and negative meaning.

Martin Luther’s meaning in the 16th century 

created the perfect storm for anxiety:

focus on sin, the wrath of God, heaven and hell

coupled with new printing press technology

to spread the Message, rats to spread the Bubonic Plague

and the dissolution of ecclesial order

an “Age of Anxiety” blossomed 

whose rotting fruit persists to this day.

Believing, as Luther did, 

that we are a solid, separate self

traps us in self-centeredness

but as we work through the chakras in order

we are liberated from successive prisons:

chakras 1,2,3: egocentric food, sex, power

chakras 4,5: ethnocentric love and communication 

chakras 6,7: world-centric mindfulness and spirituality.

The ‘porous’ non-separated self gives and receives:

as living beings, we are part of the close-knit family 

of living organisms that evolved one from another

over billions of years, products of immensely creative

energy-exchanges of matter and spirit that makes us one with

stars, galaxies, and everything.

Pharisaism symbolizes the self-centered self –

identification with your own self-righteousness

no shadow; no need of conversion

which ironically blocks your path to God

and your compassion for others –

being in touch with shadow means

you know you need, and others need

God’s grace.

To break addiction to yourself 

(the only way to liminal space/transformation)

you must change your usual patterns:

fasting not eating, silence not talking,

anonymity not fame, displacement not status,

poverty not money.

Realizing that all desires are good

and the problem is only selfish misuse of desire

many mystics gave up asceticism:

punishing their bodies, suppressing their desires.

Meister Eckhart for one

replaced asceticism with non-attachment.

Desires are good, but on the other hand

pain burns through illusions

of false pleasures

and shows us what is truly beautiful.

But what you see, the beauty of pain or pleasure

depends on how you choose to see:

positive or negative, blessing or curse.

Why is the Holy Spirit within everyone 

but not everyone realizes it?

Because God does not force anything on anyone

that they didn’t desire and choose – 

human freedom is respected –

and the freedom of the Holy Spirit 

to overcome anxiety

and the limits of science.