Tag: wholeness

THE DISASTER OF MODERNITY

The disaster of modernity:

since the Enlightenment, the intellectuals

in trying to grow beyond the mythic stage to the rational stage

killed the mythic God in the “death of God” movement

but in doing so they truncated their own spiritual growth

they did not go on to higher understandings of God

they repressed their own spiritual intelligence –

and the West has never recovered

 

modernism emphasized the intellectual and technological

and labeled our ancient/natural subjectivity as “superstition”

and this created a disconnect

between heartless individuals

and heartless institutions

 

and this created atheism – some atheists

have no religious awareness/strivings in them

have lauded/applauded humans so much they forgot God

have such a distorted view of God

they do not reject the God of the gospels

who they do not know

but rather they reject a caricature of God

who they have imagined

 

our western preoccupation with practicality

and means not ends

resulted in a total loss of values

and seeing life as a whole

so we became prisoners of urgency/

short-term consequences/

erratic/meaningless lives

 

non-dual thinking is the answer

non-dual thinking is both/and thinking

never either/or thinking –

it includes and honors all the previous stages

 

spirituality that ignores psychological dynamics

and psychology that ignores our spiritual nature

cannot be an adequate guide for people

who want to integrate

the quest for holiness

and the desire for wholeness.

FALSE PROPHETS, ATHEISTS, PEACE, AND WHOLENESS

 

Separation from the primal union with the mother,

the Garden of Eden, causes a lot of suffering, but is inevitable.

However, it is crucial to remember that there was

and there still is, a Garden.

 

The suffering of Jews/Blacks/Indigenous

has deepened them and elevated them

above the meaninglessness and triviality of the white man.

This is the secret spiritual heritage

of the United States of America and many other countries.

 

Between 1999 and 2009, the number of people

who identified as ‘religious only’ fell from 54% to 9%

and those who identified as ‘spiritual and religious’

grew from 6% to 48% – a ringing endorsement

of the value of spirituality.

 

Spiritual transformation normally results

in transformed relational virtues –

more honesty/compassion/forgiveness –

or it may mean you become a prophet.

Like any true reformer/prophet today

Jesus critiqued Judaism from inside Judaism

by Judaism’s own criteria and holy values.

 

Today, atheists who attack Christianity do so

based on Christian values, but they do not realize this

because western civilization has marinated in Christian values

for so long these values have become subconscious.

However, false prophets, unlike Jesus,

always attack from the outside – therefore

the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse –

Dawkins/Dennett/Harris/Hitchens –

are false prophets – they have no real understanding

of the depths of the religion they attack.

 

In critiquing Judaism’s over-emphasis on Law/morality

Jesus helped us replace our one-sided emphasis on goodness –

we are good, you are evil –

with a healthier ethic of wholeness –

looking at both our own goodness and brokenness

and seeing both the goodness and brokenness in others.

When Christians do this – take the logjam out of their own eye –

they bring peace to the world.