Foundational
Principles
I think it’s important to say a few words about what might be called the foundational principles that are the basis of my own spiritual explorations, and underpin everything that is found on this site.
This is especially true because to say that one is a “Christian” or that one finds meaning in the Christian tradition raises far more questions than it answers. Over the centuries, Christianity has grown ever more fractured, and much of what passes in popular culture or in the media as “Christian” is not anything I would subscribe to. And so it feels important to say something about what I would and do subscribe to.
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Please note this area is under construction and will be expanded.
Spirituality & Religion
Spirituality
I understand the term “spirituality” to refer to the human exploration of meaning. As human beings, each of us stands before the two great mysteries: the mystery of our existence and the mystery of consciousness. While the world’s spiritual and religious traditions have something to say about both of these mysteries, and while the scientific disciplines continue to explore them and theorize about them, the how and why of our existence as beings possessing consciousness continues to be shrouded in mystery.
All of us face these mysteries, and deal with them in some way. There are people who do this thoughtfully and with intention, and there are people who do not give them explicit thought — even though they deal with them every day. And some are so overwhelmed by these mysteries that they descend into distortion and chaos. We seek to avoid reckoning with them at our own peril.
I am convinced that spirituality is an innate part of what it is to be a human being. And, just as spirituality is the human exploration of these foundational mysteries of our being, spirituality is also an attitude of awe, wonder, and curiosity as we stand before them.
Religion
While spirituality is an intrinsic part of being human, religion is a choice. Religion is really nothing more (and nothing less) than a vehicle for human spirituality. Religion brings with it a set of practices, underpinned by some discreet understandings or “beliefs”, that can aid our spiritual exploration.
The first language of religion is ritual and metaphor. And it is through that ritual and metaphor that a connection can be formed between human selves and the great foundational mysteries. Indeed, the word religion itself, at its root, means connection.
Unfortunately, in our time, the language of ritual and metaphor often ends up taking a back seat to the understandings or “beliefs” that underpin them. So much so that religion, particularly in Christianity, has come to mean a set of beliefs more than a set of practices. In the forms of Christianity that tend to have the most influence in the United States, ritual has been reduced if not all together abandoned.
While spirituality is a necessary part of being human, religion is not — as the steady shrinking of religious communities in the “developed world” makes clear.
Yet, there can be value in religion — particularly if we can recover ritual and metaphor as its first language, and realize that religion is not defining anything. It is merely pointing to a larger, deeper reality and providing us with tools that allow us to connect to that reality.
Religion can function as it should when we remember that it is a tool, a vehicle to get us somewhere, rather than the end and goal itself.
For me, God is a label that we use to refer to that from which the mysteries of existence and consciousness arise. And just as we do not have more than an elementary understanding of existence and consciousness, we have even less of an understanding of that from which these mysteries arise.
There is a long and venerable theological tradition that says it is easier to say what God is not rather than to say what God is, and there is much wisdom in that.
I am clear that God is not some great being in the sky resembling in any way the God the Father figure on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Indeed, it is theologically impossible for God to be a being at all, since beings arise from the possibility of existence, and having arisen, eventually pass away. And so we might speak of God as Being or Existence Itself, or as Consciousness Itself. If we are asked if God exists, we must say No. But we may say that God is existence. If we are asked if God is conscious, we must say No. But we may say that God is consciousness.
Does all this seem to begin to be a bit fuzzy? Yes, indeed. Which is why religion arises — with ritual and metaphor that allow us to come into relationship with existence and consciousness itself in an intentional way. Though, as I have noted, sadly we come to confuse the metaphor with the thing itself. And, it must be said, religion is not the only way in which we can come intentionally into this relationship. It is, rather, the traditional way human beings have done so.
One of the things I appreciate about the Christian tradition is its unique take on God as Trinity: Three yet One, One yet Three. Much ink has been spilt over the centuries about what exactly this means. For me, the Trinity is a sort of koan. In the Zen Buddhist tradition, a koan is “a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.” This is the way the Trinity functions, at least for me. It is a paradoxical riddle before which all logical attempts to define the meaning of God fail. Properly understood, the Trinity is a constant reminder of what we do not know, and a reminder that to connect to that which we call God requires us to go beyond the logical confines of human thought patterns. It requires us to get out of our heads.
Christians are accustomed to referring to Jesus Christ as if this latter term — Christ — were his last name. It would be more accurate to speak of Jesus the Christ, since the term really is a title and not a name.
It is clear that Jesus of Nazareth — the one whose life and teaching inspired the Christian movement — lived and died during a particular time and in a particular place over 2,000 years ago. He was executed by Roman authority — allied with a corrupt Jewish religious leadership — by crucifixion. And having died on the cross, Jesus of Nazareth was no more.
In Jesus of Nazareth, however, dwelt the Christ. And while Jesus of Nazareth could be and was killed, the Christ whom he incarnated could not be. For the Christ is the spiritual nucleus of every human being, recognized by nearly every tradition, though under different names.
I think of the life of Jesus as the “Christ Event” — that is, in Jesus, the authentic spiritual identity at the heart of every human being was clearly revealed. And the power of that revelation was such that it constituted a defining moment in human history, a moment that ended up changing the very course of that history.
When we speak of resurrection, we are not speaking of the dead body of Jesus coming back to life, as if he were some sort of zombie. Rather, we are speaking of the spiritual nucleus of Jesus — the Christ — as surviving death and revealing its eternal nature as existence and consciousness itself.
One of the most important texts about this comes from St. Paul who, despite all his flaws and failings, had brilliant insights from time to time. In 1 Corinthians 15, he writes:
“But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.
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So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.
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What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’ “
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Paul is, of course, pointing toward a mystery that is difficult to fully comprehend. But what he does make clear is that our physical bodies are something like a seed out of which the spiritual body — the spiritual nucleus of the self — is raised up. This spiritual nucleus is the Christ in each of us.
One of the mistakes we commonly make is to focus on Jesus the Christ as so utterly unique. The uniqueness of Jesus the Christ comes from the role he played in history and the spiritual wisdom that he shared. It does not come from his personhood. We are each and all incarnations of the Christ — there is a spiritual nucleus, a spiritual center in each of us that passes through this life and survives the death of the physical body, with which it is intimately connected. It is existence and consciousness itself in each of us. The Christ Event as undergone by Jesus was meant to show us who we truly are.
“So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” ~ Mark 11:24
There is a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding the practice of prayer. For many people, prayer involves asking God for some good (such mercy, forgiveness, healing, protection, and the like) or for some thing (new car, new house, more money, and the like). For most people, I suspect, prayer — whether for a good or a thing — is based on a false idea.
And that idea is that God is some great Being in the Sky who will bestow these things on those who are deserving or who meet some secret, never specified criteria. Behind the practice of prayer that is based on such an idea is the sense that we must somehow convince God to give us what we are asking for. The trick is, we never quite know what criteria we are supposed to meet.
But as I discussed above, God is not a being. That which we call God is being and consciousness itself, that out of which discrete beings — such as ourselves — arise. If God were a supernatural, all powerful Being, then yes — God could bestow boons on those chosen according to some mysterious divine counsel. But if God is being and consciousness itself, then how does that which we call God bestow anything?
Over the years, I have frequently found myself pondering the verse at the beginning of this essay, from Mark’s Gospel, in which Jesus says that we receive that which we ask for if we believe we have already received it. It is an idea that is often used abusively: “Oh, God didn’t give you what you asked for? Then you must not have believed in the right way.” But I don’t think this verse means that. At least, it doesn’t mean that to me.
Most formal Christian liturgical prayer is focused on petition. That is, on asking for forgiveness, mercy, guidance, understanding, healing, acceptance, love — a constellation of things that represent what we, as human beings, really deep down, want to experience. Each of these brings, at some level, a kind of healing into our lives. And if we are truly honest with ourselves, it is this healing deep down inside us that we long for. I note that traditional Christian liturgical prayer does not ask God for stuff. That is a particular innovation perfected in the prosperity gospel movement which, from my point of view, is a false spirituality that has no authenticity to it. It is simply a movement presided over by charlatans seeking to enrich themselves with a religious marketing scheme. The truth is that God cannot get you a new car or increase your salary or whatever. That’s not what any of this is about.
So if we use the tradition of liturgical prayer as our clue, then we can recognize that the authentic practice of prayer is about naming our deepest longings in the hope that these longings will be met with a grace that brings some measure of healing to us at the very depths of our being.
If this, then, is what prayer is about, then what do we make of this verse from Mark’s Gospel about believing that we have received it, in order to make it ours?
What I have come to in my own reflection, given the nature of what we call God as being and consciousness itself, is that the universe itself is such that all of what we need for our own healing — and the healing of the human family — is already present. Forgiveness, mercy, love, acceptance, understanding, guidance, consolation — all of these things are already available to us. They do not require us to drop a prayer coin into the cosmic vending machine hoping that the right prize will come out. The universe, the sacred, God supplies these things to us. That is what this verse in Mark is telling us: entrust yourself fully to the universe/the sacred/God, and discover that what you need is already there.
That, however, is difficult to do. There are 1001 things that get in the way of our experiencing that for which we long, that which we need to be healed. We get caught up in the flux of the world’s demands and challenges, and we lose touch with that which we need. It is part of why we need healing in the first place. And this is where the practice of prayer comes in: it helps us to remember and to re-align ourselves with the divine grace that brings these home to us.
Liturgical prayer often asks for these graces that we need to be granted to us. But that is simply a device that allows us to access and surface our longing for what we need. Remember: we already have what we are asking for. The asking for it in prayer is a therapeutic tool to help ourselves — not something that God needs to happen or to hear.
Another prominent feature of liturgical prayer is an acknowledgment or confession of sin. This, too, is a therapeutic tool designed to help us surface the fact that we often miss the mark (what the word “sin” means) in terms of living from our deepest, most authentic self — the self that knows itself as forgiven, loved, guided, consoled, accepted.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Buddhist teacher, wrote a wonderful little book called The Energy of Prayer, that I highly recommend. Essentially, he talks about how “the energies of prayer and meditation allow us to reconnect with our higher [I would prefer to say deeper] selves while satisfying our basic need to connect with the world as a whole.” In other words, prayer and meditation are energetic, they invite certain energies into our lives and create energies that we “send” out into the larger world. This is why, for example, praying for others can be powerful, because it sends an energy from us to the one for whom we pray that brings connection and healing. Such a thing is not at all far fetched when we consider what quantum physics has shown us about the close relationship between particles that are very far apart. We can energetically support others in our life — and the life of the world — through the practice of prayer and meditation.