shame – Intelligent Christian Spirituality

If you are spiritual you cannot ignore the flesh

you cannot pretend we don’t need the body

to live/breathe/move/see/hear/think/contemplate God

without the body and its senses there would be no spirituality

contemplation allows us to connect scriptures to life

to see how the God who liberated the Israelites

from slavery

wants to liberate us

from slavery

to addictions/codependency/consumerism/victimhood

however, “Shame and aggression are central

in the human psyche, particularly men –

and these are the universal ‘original wounds’

not ‘original sins’ – and they are hard to shake”

– Otto Rank

but prayer heals

and translates religion/doctrines/dogma

into vital spirituality

and we pray in the first person

subject-to-subject

our soul to God’s soul

we say, “Lord, I am sad/joyful”

not “Lord, he/she/it is sad/joyful”

Carl Jung’s personal myth of meaning

which he also found expressed in the Western Mystics

was the myth that God needs us

to become more and more conscious

so that God can become conscious of the whole

which is what the Spirit is leading us to

the core of spiritual experience

is the same in all religions:

unity consciousness

which is not a phantasmagoric mystical experience

but rather a life-changing sense

of the unity of all things –

no more separation

we are all one

with God/others/ourselves

the whole Creation.

The codependent person is often a chronic worrier, a compulsive helper, suffers from a wounded inner child, and feels shamed in his or her essence. Surrendering to the grace of God in the intimacy of prayer can heal and transform these four maladies of codependents.
The very first liberal Protestant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, wrote in the 1800s that “Religion does not come from fear of death or fear of God, as philosophers previously thought. Religion is neither a metaphysic (a grand philosophy of what is beyond the material world) nor a morality. In its essence, religion is an intuition, feeling, or direct experience of God. Even dogmas are not religion. Dogmas derive from religious experiences.” Religions that do not give people direct experiences of God, in spite of being strong on metaphysics, dogmas and morality, will gradually lose followers. This is what has happened most mainline churches.
The Fourth Precept of Buddhism is about mindful speech. Accordingly, when it comes to conversation, we need to avoid four things: lying/exaggeration/’forked tongue’ (telling one person one thing and another person something different about the same event)/and ‘filthy talk’ (insulting or abusing others). Things haven’t changed much: politicians, lawyers, and athletes could learn a lot from Buddhism.

Tag: shame