Individuality in Relationship

"It is true that in relationship we join with others in a common life, but it is a misconception that in relationship we cease to be individuals. 

The common life has its own structure, which distinguishes it from the order of individual life, but that common life is authentic and vigorous, only when it is fashioned after the rhythms of individual life.

A relationship is a transpersonal reference point, a “We” with which a host of “I’s” can identify. For that “We” to be dynamic and useful, it must incorporate the values and customs of its constituents. There are aspects of the human condition that can be realized only in association with others, and relationships enable us to actualize those potentialities that cannot be pressed out in isolation. In short, individuals are individuated in relationship.

The constituent finds completion in association with the whole, but not in the sense that they find parts missing in themselves; rather, in association, unique opportunities to express features of individuality are uncovered. In this way, relationship is a vehicle of maturation, but it sufficiently serves this end only when its members are aware of the rhythms of their life, clearly communicate those needs, and these communiques establish the dynamics of the relationship. Thus, healthy relationships are inherently democratic." 

~ excerpt from my upcoming book "The Triumph of Principles"

Jesus Wasn't Polite Company

Well-intentioned followers of Jesus too often assume he was a warm, fuzzy guy. 

In him they see someone preoccupied with keeping the peace, not making waves. And there can be no doubt that Jesus was a peacemaker. He was non-violent to the core. But non-violent is not the same as non-confrontational.

Non-violence is an inherently confrontational practice. We need not look as far back as the Gospels to confirm this fact. Both King and Gandhi used confrontation to effectively dramatize injustice. Similarly, confrontation was a preferred tactic of Jesus. 

Jesus was undoubtedly a kind, compassionate, and loving man. But Jesus's message was subversive. His behavior, tactics, and rhetoric call to question the simple-minded ideas many of us cling to about love and compassion. The fire-brand that turned over the money-lender's table is tough to square with the overly sentimental image of Jesus many of us hold dear.

Jesus was not an "agree to disagree" kind of guy. When the Pharisees asked him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" Jesus did not say, "To each their own. Now go in peace my brother." He instead called them "hypocrites" and said,

"You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!"

Ouch. That is the sting of brutal honesty. 

“Our ideas of God tell us more about ourselves than about Him,” said Thomas Merton. I suppose the same is true about Jesus. The always affable and courteous image of Jesus that occupies the altar of our mind conforms more to our fears and expectations, than the picture painted by the Gospels. It appears to be an image cast in the shadow of our fear of confrontation. We don't want Jesus to be confrontational because we are afraid of following him into the conflict.

Conflict can be scary business. 

Jesus never declined an invitation to a good debate, even when tensions were high. "They took up stones to stone him." Stop and think about that: "They took up stones to stone him." If there is ever a time to keep your mouth shut, it is when they take up stones to to stone you. Yet, Jesus offers perhaps his wittiest response of all to this stone-toting audience: "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, you are gods?' (82nd Psalm) Now if those to whom the word of God came were called 'gods'—and the scripture cannot be in error—can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, 'I am God’s Son?' If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father." He said that to people who were about to stone him!

I am not saying that Jesus was unnecessarily combative or the First Century equivalent of an internet troll, but I am saying that when ideas and practices deviated from the truth as he saw it, Jesus turned into that friction, rather than away from it. He was not concerned with "keeping the peace," so to speak. He said, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." Obviously, he is not referring to physical violence. He is talking about the sword of wisdom which cuts through those ideas, beliefs, traditions, and institutions that prevent us from realizing what he called "The Kingdom of Heaven."

Challenging someone's "beliefs" is often thought to be impolite. Social customs that place our religious ideas above dispute are built in memetic devices that aid those ideas in their struggle to endure. On the spiritual path, such etiquette is counter-productive. It compartmentalizes our beliefs, segregating them from the reality of our daily life, which is the environment they must learn to operate within. In fact, unless they learn to operate within that environment they cannot be considered proper beliefs.

Kant describes three degrees of conviction: opinion, faith, and knowledge. In brief, opinion is both subjectively and objectively insufficient; faith or proper beliefs are subjectively sufficient but objectively lacking; and knowledge is both subjectively and objectively sufficient. Sufficient to what? Establish truth. What is the minimum threshold of truth? According to the pragmatic theory of truth as fleshed out by William James—which is the most suited for our purposes—it is utility. When an idea inspires action and the corresponding result of that action proves to be useful, then that idea ceases to be a mere opinion and becomes a proper belief, though it lacks the persuasiveness or efficacy needed to be universally accepted as knowledge. This is the ladder our ideas must climb to become beliefs, the ascent of which requires study, debate, self-examination, and spiritual practice.  

Social taboos against openly critiquing religious or spiritual ideas do nothing more than guard those ideas against the pressure truth applies to them, which is what forces them to adapt or mature into proper beliefs. As a result, our ideas about spirituality fail to ripen into a practical and effective spirituality. They remain adolescent, under-developed, ill-suited for life in an adult world, which is why Jesus ignores this custom. He embodies the sentiment expressed by Paul when he wrote, "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways."

Politics is another sphere of intellectual life that is often quarantined. We are afraid of the tension soaked conversation that ensues when politics, religion, or the ever combustible combination of the two surfaces. People tend to identify with the the ideas that collectively define their religious and political orientations and therefore feel internal friction—stress, fear, anger—when those ideas are challenged by competing points of view. Therefore, those conversations typically surface only in the "safe space" of like-minded people. And breach of this unspoken protocol is thought to be bad manners, as the old saying goes, "In polite company, it’s not proper to talk about religion or politics."

Jesus is not polite company! 

He is extremely critical of other's beliefs. In fact, the word "hypocrite" appears approximately twenty times in the Gospels. I am not suggesting we run around calling people hypocrites, but I am suggesting that open and honest debate is healthy, even necessary, for spiritual growth and a thriving democracy. We should be respectfully critical of other's beliefs, as well as our own. And by critical I do not mean rude, but "crit·i·cal: an analysis of the merits and faults of a given idea, proposal, or practice."

Beliefs are the ideas that orient us toward the world in which we live. They are those ideas upon which we act. When beliefs or traditions prevent ourselves or others from orienting their entire Being toward the reality of our daily life, they should be challenged. If there is a manner of living that is more fulfilling, then that life should be lived and any beliefs that prevent us from actualizing that life should be challenged. Avoiding this confrontation is a form of spiritual bypassing. When our ideas are challenged, it is an invitation to grow: an invitation to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

I am not suggesting that walking the spiritual path requires us to become contrarians. I am simply saying that debate and discussion are an essential part of a balanced and healthy spiritual diet. And furthermore, they are part of the path outlined by the example of Jesus.

We have to be willing to have those uncomfortable conversations. Discomfort is the texture of kenosis, which is the active ingredient in spiritual growth. We have to be willing to question not only our beliefs and traditions, but the beliefs and traditions of others—not out of spite, but as an expression of love and fidelity to the truth. This is part of Jesus's yoke, his jnana yoga, if you will.      

The Proclamation of Basic Goodness

The following is an excerpt from Finding God in the Body, Chapter 8, "Is It Not Written in Your Book?" Click here to order on Amazon.

“They took up stones to stone him,” John writes in Chapter 10, Verse 31. Jesus responds:

I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?

They answered, as Caiaphas would soon thereafter:

It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.

You see, moments before Jesus said, “The Father and I are one.” Steeped in Jewish mythology, as Jesus was, he turned to his stone-toting audience and asked, “Is it not written in your book, ‘You are gods’? If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’—and the scripture cannot be in error,” he skillfully continued, “can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, I am God’s Son?” Simply put, if I am in error so is the book you believe to be inerrant.

Frustrated by Jesus’s sharp-witted response, the mob tried to seize him, but he escaped. Later, in the Sanhedrin trial, Caiaphas tried to pin Jesus down once again: “I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus replied, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

First he tells Caiaphas, “You have said so. But I tell you…” In other words, what you and I mean by “messiah” are two different things. Jesus then unpacks his messianic vision. He describes “a new heaven and new earth” where “God lives amongst mortals.” In his vision, humankind is at the “right hand of God.” The phrase “right-hand man” refers to someone who does the work of another, usually someone more powerful. Jesus is saying that humankind is the instrument of God’s peace and creativity. And that all the kings, queens, and ecclesiastical hierarchies cannot stop this evolutionary force because it is coming on the clouds of heaven. This is the messianic hope of Jesus.

The messianic hope is realized not by a prefigured savior or by a chosen few, but by the whole of society. “Messianic consciousness is not something that comes in the future; it is our intrinsic nature,” writes Rabbi David Cooper. “It is our birthright, available to all of us here and now. Although obscured over the millennia by clouds of ignorance, its light continues to shine in the divine sparks at the core of our being… In our time, the goal of raising holy sparks is nothing less than the attainment of messianic consciousness for all of humankind. In this context, the individual cannot be separated from the integrated whole; the collective enlightenment of humanity is clearly as relevant as any focus on individual attainment.”

When the messianic impulse is read through the lens of fundamentalism, it leads to complacency. Instead of saying “Yes!” to our adventure, we sit on our hands waiting on our savior. When the messianic myth is read within, it leads to responsibility. We all bear messianic responsibility. “You are the light of the world,” says Jesus. “A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp-stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

It is our task to transform the world, not by trying to change the people in it, but by recovering the spark of basic goodness that shines within ourselves and elevating that light to new heights. We must allow the flame of God’s Being to consume our whole person. When our life is set ablaze by the fires of basic goodness, others feel that flame burning within themselves. This is how the world is transformed.

Just before his arrest Jesus prayed, “Father, the glory you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.” Jesus did not see himself as the Boss’s Son. He saw the flame of basic goodness in the heart of all people: “God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust alike.” His message was a universal one. He did not see man, woman, black, white, gay, straight, Jew, or Gentile. Jesus wanted to speed up the day when all of God’s children would answer the call to participate in the Power of God.

Reverberating in the mind of Jesus were the words, “God saw everything that God made, and indeed, it was very good.” This “goodness” is at the core of the gospel message. It is the “good news.” At his baptism, when the heavens parted, Jesus heard the voice of God say, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am pleased.”

At the top of the mountain, during the transfiguration, Peter, James, and John saw the heavens part and heard a voice say, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am pleased.”

When we look deep within ourselves, we see that we are good. “Christian life and growth are founded on faith in our own basic goodness, in the being that God has given us with its transcendent potential,” writes Father Thomas Keating. “This gift of being is our True Self.” The light of our True Life may be obscured by the clouds, but it still shines.

On the mantle of Jesus’s baptismal confession was the proclamation of basic goodness, the gift of eternal Being—not immortality but I am-ness. When we place him at the center of our baptismal confession, we become idolaters. When we place Jesus on our altar, we end up loving him more than we love what he embodied, which lives in our body. When we love something more than the indwelling presence of God, we break the first commandment.

Jesus walked the path for us, but not in place of us. He blazed a trail, but it is up to us to walk the path. The Power of Being must be resurrected in our body and no one can do that for us. We have to take up the yoke before us. We have to pick up the tools of self-analysis, study, prayer, and meditation.

Moving Beyond Literalism: Myth, Lent, & The Resurrection

The Bible is an anthology. It is a collection of books; not a single book as it is often thought to be. 

Furthermore, the Bible did not fall from the sky in its completed form. The books that comprise the Bible were penned over the course of approximately 900 years. Therefore, the books of the Bible were written by many different authors, each of which had their own worldview, interests, and agendas. As a result, the Bible narrative unfolds on several different levels. In it we see the curiosity of pre-scientific man musing over the origins of life and the cosmos. We see the ruling class advancing their socio-political agenda. We also see the voice of the oppressed and marginalized pushing back--pressing the issues of morality and social justice. And as the Biblical narrative advances, it becomes increasingly concerned with human spirituality.

The Bible records an evolving worldview, which is simply incompatible with the idea that it was dictated to a series of stenographers by an all-knowing anthropomorphic God. With every act of divine retribution, flood, exile, and with each emerging prophet, and every time the words "you have heard it said, but I say unto you" are uttered, the Bible ushers in a new vision, a new covenant. It is a record of mankind's wrestling with God, as well as an invitation for each successive generation to continue wrestling with the indwelling presence of the divine.

The Bible records mankind's unending exploration of the human soul. In it are snapshots of those remarkable moments from the inner-story of mankind. This record of mankind's inner history is known as mythology. Carl Jung wrote,

"The coming of consciousness was probably the most tremendous experience of primeval times, for with it a world came into being whose existence no one had suspected before. "And God said, 'Let there be light"' is the projection of that immemorial experience of the separation of consciousness from the unconscious."

From there the Bible poetically communicates mankind's longing to return from exile and reconnect with the unconscious wisdom of the body. It captures that moment when a people suddenly realized that God's will is realized, not by making the right sacrifice at the temple, but by consenting to the divine image within them. As the Biblical narrative unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that the body is the temple: "Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your center?"

Myth is mankind's on-going dialog with the divine. But the record is not closed.  It is our job to continue the dialog. We have to enter the myth. 

To understand myth you must involve yourself in the motif. You cannot stand back and read it like a newspaper. A literal reading of the Bible will lead you to the unintelligible conclusion that an all-knowing, all-powerful anthropomorphic God created a world with which he was so displeased that he had to offer up his son as a blood sacrifice to pacify his own wrath. This is nonsense.

Myth is a practice that you must immerse yourself in. When you realize that the path of the central figure (the hero) is presented to you as your way, your truth, and your life because their journey is a metaphor for your journey, the story dissolves into the immediacy of your own adventure. "The big question," says Joseph Campbell, "is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure."

Mythology invites us on a journey. "I am looking for someone to share in an adventure," Gandalf said to Bilbo Baggins. The Hobbit is not a story about an adventure. The Hobbit is an invitation to adventure. Likewise, the Bible does not tell us about God; it invites us to wrestle with God. It invites us onto a path of spiritual practice that leads to union with God.

The liturgy invites us to act out the myth. 

For example, advent, in the Christian calendar, is the liturgical period leading up to Christmas. It is a process of preparation--of readying ourselves for the arrival of an important person or significant event. In this case, we are preparing ourselves for the birth of God into the world. But God does not live in the clouds, nor is he the exclusive property of another person. God dwells within us. So advent is a process of preparing ourselves to birth God into the world through our actions and Christmas is a celebration of this event as the meaning of our life. This is our adventure.

If God lives within us as our inmost Self and the central meaning of life is to birth God into the world, then it is not a blood sacrifice or even a ritualistic sacrifice that is required of us. Before our True Self can be realized, our false-self must be crucified: To put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, we must put off our old self,which belongs to our former manner of life.

The old self or the false-self is a self-centered habit of consciousness and behavior that revolves around the pacification of our fears and the immediate gratification of our desires. Being a habit, it is superfluous to our true nature. In fact, one could call it our second nature. The path of preparation or the act of putting off our second nature is called kenosis. Lent is the liturgical cycle that invites us onto the kenotic path outlined by Jesus. Lent anticipates the Easter miracle. It encourages us to empty ourselves of the false-self system, so that God maybe resurrected in our body.


Of course, spiritual practice is not reserved for liturgical observances. Everyday is a day where we must prepare ourselves for the resurrection of God in our body. We must empty ourselves so that the light of God may shine out through every thought, word, and deed.

Every time we look within ourselves for the causes and conditions of suffering, instead of looking for fault in others, we throw off the false-self. When we pray for those we resent, rather than lashing out, we move beyond our former manner of life, enabling the presence of God to pour out through our actions. When we let go of what we think, allowing the mind to relax into the truth of silence, our True Self is resurrected from the rubble of our disembodied life. This is the practice of contemplative prayer. Every time we set aside the strategies of the false-self system and turn into our life, armed only with an honest desire to be present and helpful, we are practicing lent. We are preparing ourselves for the Easter miracle.  

When Belief Becomes an Obstacle to Believing & How the 12 Steps Can Help

In episode 9 of the Finding God in the Body Podcast, I discuss the nature of "belief." I talk about how belief often prevents believing and what religion can learn from the 12 Step approach to spirituality. Click to listen on Soundcloud, iTunes, or Stitcher. 

Click here if you prefer to read How Belief Prevents Believing.

The Death and Resurrection of God

The Conflict between Religion and Science

When the word ‘God’ is used, it typically refers to an anthropomorphic God—an extra-terrestrial super-human who, having created the world, is charged with the laborious task of overseeing its day-to-day operations. Any statement that seeks to explain the origins of the universe or the dynamics by which it is governed is a scientific statement, not a theological one, and therefore must be verified by scientific methods. Of course, neither creationism nor its sister hypothesis ‘intelligent design’ can be scientifically tested. As a result, believers often find themselves at odds with physicists and biologists. But as Joseph Campbell once observed, the conflict is not between science and religion. The conflict is between the science of the 21st century and the science of 2,000 BC.

Fundamentalists hang on every word of the Bible. As a result, they cling to an antiquated explanation of the physical universe and in doing so overlook the essential concern of religions thought. Religion is first and foremost concerned with salvation. The word “salvation”  comes from the Latin word salvus, meaning “wholeness, completion, good health.” Sure, for centuries religion was a catch-all. To some degree, everyone from St. Augustine to John of the Cross took the Bible’s creation story for granted. Like most people, they were curious about the origins of life and intelligent design was the “science” of their day, but “science” was never their chief concern. Their wheel house was always the health and maintenance of the soul—man’s inner life.

The word spirit comes from the Greek word psykhe or psyche. We tend to associate the term psyche with the brain, but the Greek word to which it owes its origins has a subtler meaning. Spirit is presence or wakefulness. It is the breath of life itself, as in the animating force breathed into Adam’s body. The psyche or the spirit, is the image of God, so to speak.

The imago dei does not explain the phenomenon of being. It is an image or symbol for Being-itself. It is, as Tillich suggested, the “ground of being.” "I am-ness is God's true name and likeness. It is the foundation, the ground, the seed of wakefulness planted in the heart of man. The image of God is also the logos—the structure of our being, which is like a blueprint embedded deep in our body that intuits maturation, wholeness, and realization. It is, in more modern language, the unconscious seeking to become conscious. This inner reconciliation is the essence of salvation and is therefore at the heart of religion, which comes from the Latin word ‘religare’ meaning, “to bind together or unite.”

Religious or spiritual practice (actions that exercise or arouse the psykhe) seeks to unite the unconscious wisdom of the body with the light of awareness, allowing God to be born into the world. Freud saw the unconscious as a sort of blind, unintelligent lusting not to be trusted. Carl Jung saw intelligence, meaning, wholeness, or Holiness in the will of the unconscious. He described libido as “the drive, passion, or will of the spirit (psyche).” Sure, like the wrathful demonstrations of divinity found in the Hebrew Bible, Jung warned of the dangers inherent in a confrontation with the unconscious, but on the whole saw that confrontation as unavoidable and working towards man’s “higher purpose”—salvation, enlightenment, individuation.

Salvation, or our inner-health and well-being, is the great anemia of modern man. We have misplaced our inner-world. Secularization has given birth to more collectivist paradigms, which enable large groups of people with differing points of view to harmoniously inhabit the same space, but unfortunately are incapable of arousing our spirit. While in many ways secularization is a necessary and vital step toward social progress, these external responsibilities do not negate our obligation to our inner world.* 

We cannot hope for a peaceful planet when we ourselves are troubled souls. Our body anticipates self-actualization, and failure to consent leads to internal division and suffering. The unconscious demands to be made conscious and “until you make the unconscious conscious,” Jung said, “it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” This drive or journey from potential to kinetic psychic energy—the unification of mind and body—is instinctual. Therefore, spirituality, religion, and myth are intrinsic to man. 

The biological and psychological imperative to make the inner journey necessitates a language that renders the instinctual forces of man accessible to his conscious mind. This language is mythology.  In short, mythology is the native tongue of the psyche. It is the map of our inner-terrain. 

We must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, as Paul said in his epistle to the Philippians. Salvation is an individual responsibility. Therefore, it is a subjective journey. It is a journey that requires a map of metaphors and symbols that resonate with us, not objective latitudes and longitudes. The ubiquity of a secular world view is creating a sense of exile or disembodiment within modern man. Secularism has its place, but just as religious symbols cannot be used to answer scientific questions, secular language cannot satisfy spiritual longings.

Secularization is needed in the external world but in the inner world it is impotent. Modern man is becoming increasingly concerned with sterile facts and less observant of his inner world. As already stated, a secular point of view is helpful, even necessary for seven billion people to peacefully share this planet in an increasingly inter-dependent climate, but objectivity is impotent when it crosses the border of our skin into kingdom of our heart. It is incapable of connecting with the forces that stir deep in our psyche. Modern man has replaced his indigenous language with the language of his rational mind. He has replaced symbols with signs and as a result he lives in his head, exiled from the life of the body.

“[Signs] do no more than denote the objects to which they are attached,” said Jung. “A word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its immediate and obvious meaning. [There is] a wider unconscious that is never precisely defined or explained. Nor can one hope to define or explain it.” This “wider unconscious that is never precisely defined or explained” is the underlying sense of divinity which anticipates the realm of transcendence. It is the Ground of Being.

Signs are definitions or explanations; whereas symbols are gateways through which we can enter into an experience of mystery. When God is used as an explanation, it is fundamentalism or faux-science. The God-sign is dead. But when God is skillfully employed as a symbol, it is a portal through which we can enter into the Power of Being that animates us all. The God-symbol is life giving. The God-symbol, in the words of Joseph Campbell, “points past itself to a ground of meaning and being that is one with the consciousness of the beholder.”

Language enables us to express meaning, which is rooted in our experience. “Man uses the spoken or written word to express the meaning of what he wants to convey,” said Jung. In addition to mythology, poetry, art, and music are all forms of language that resonate with energetic principles embedded in the human psyche and serve as mediums through which these instinctual urges are pressed out into the field of our incarnation. 

In this case, the term ‘instinct’ refers to physiological urges or objective phenomena occurring within the envelope of skin and perceived by the senses. These urges are the forces behind the unfolding or the maturation of our human nature. Each of these urges has a distinct character. This character, in the language of Jung, is called an “archetype.” These characters represent the casts of the world's great mythologies.   

There is a core pantheon of archetypes that are universal and reoccurring throughout mythology. These archetypes constitute the basic framework of the spiritual journey—the unfolding of our person into the field of our incarnation. They are the shadow, the wise old man, the child, the mother, and the anima (feminine) in man and the animus {masculine} in woman. However, like various rivers emptying into a single monotheistic ocean, all of these archetypes lead back to the original image. This transcendent symbol is the image of God, or as Jung called it, the True Self. This Self is more real than our persona or the mask we wear, which is but a translation. It is the raw, unmediated experience of Being-itself, the Logos.

Of the limitless number of archetypal images that populate the human psyche there is one character of particular importance on the spiritual journey, namely the hero. The hero is the one with which we can all identify. The hero is the one who is willing to make the journey into the unknown. The hero is a spark of inspiration in the human psyche. It is the image in the back of our mind that remembers the innocence of the child, still hears the voice of the old man, and with the compassion and wisdom of the feminine and masculine principles in his arsenal is willing to brave the shadow land in order to reconnect with the True Self and return to the plane of daily life where he gifts himself to the world in which he lives. 

The hero is, in short, the sacrificial lamb. It is that quality in the structure of our Being that anticipates the Glory of God and is willing to give up its own life so that this indwelling God may be born into the realm of time and space.

*Given the current political climate I felt it necessary to qualify my comments on globalization and secularism. I am an advocate of both. They are indispensable mechanisms in the pursuit of social progress and political order. However, man has an obligation to the maintenance of his inner life and this obligation is no less important than his social or civic responsibilities. Secular language is collectivist in nature; whereas spirituality is a deeply individualistic concern. When secular language becomes our only language system, we misplace a vital tool in the service our inner-life.   

How Belief Prevents Believing.

I have worked in substance abuse for the better part of a decade. 

I regularly lecture and give workshops on 12-Step spirituality at drug and alcohol treatment centers. Often it is those of agnostic or atheistic temperament that are thought to struggle most with the spirituality of the Twelve-Step program. But this has not been my experience.

In my experience, it is the more religiously inclined people that struggle with Twelve-Step spirituality. This is because Twelve-Step spirituality is action-based. Alcoholics Anonymous has no prescribed theology, no system of belief. It is a pragmatic spirituality. In a single AA meeting you might find a couple of Christians, a Buddhist, a Jew, maybe a Muslim, and a handful of people that identify as "spiritual but not religious." They all believe different things but enjoy the same result: sobriety. This is because they all follow the same course of action.

Pragmatic spirituality focuses on how you believe, not what you believe, which can be difficult to grasp if you are used to propositional religion. 

Evangelical Christianity is the largest single religious denomination in America, accounting for 25% of the total Christian population (40% in the South). Evangelical Christianity stresses the acceptance of certain theological propositions more than the practice of spiritual principles. It is more concerned with what you believe than it is how you believe it. When these people try to get sober they think they already have the spirituality angle worked out because they answer in the affirmative to all the right propositions. They already believe, and as far as they're concerned belief is what spirituality is all about. And that is why they struggle with Twelve-Step spirituality.

Their religiosity prevents them from seeing the obvious: "You already believe." If the problem persisted in the face of your belief, then more of that belief cannot possibly be the solution. The Twelve-Steps are referring to action or practice, when they prescribe spirituality, not the affirmation of supernatural propositions. You can believe that Jesus Christ is the one and only Son of God and still walk into a liquor store or the dope dealers house. Belief is worthless unless it effects our actions. In fact, a "belief" that fails to inspire action is no belief at all.

According to Pew Research, 58% of Americans believe the Bible is the Word of God. Over 80% of Evangelicals believe in the existence of heaven and hell. Now, think about that for a minute: There is an afterlife. You will spend eternity in either perfect bliss or unimaginable torment and God alone is the arbiter in this matter. He will weigh the balance of your life against his prescribed guidelines recorded in the Bible and assign you to eternity in either heaven or hell.

If you really believed that wouldn't you read the Bible cover-to-cover over and over again? Wouldn't you consult it before every consequential decision made? But what percentage of people who claim to believe all of that have read the Bible cover-to-cover?  Approximately, 1 in 3 Evangelicals  read the Bible once a month or less and 1 in 5 church-goers say they never read the Bible. Why does a substantial portion of the people who accept those religious propositions not read the Bible more frequently?

People often do not believe what they say they believe. 

At this point, we must distinguish between a belief and a thought. A thought is an unsubstantiated idea; whereas a belief is an idea we are inclined to trust based on some measure of evidence, even if we cannot prove it to be true or rationally explain our position. Belief is an idea or network of ideas substantiated by enough reason or experience to inspire action, though it falls short of knowledge or the state of knowing.

For example, imagine being in a strange house all alone. Late at night your mind may start to wander. Based on nothing at all, you start thinking there is someone in the house. But you don't call the police. Why? Because you know those thoughts are nothing more than the spontaneous ruminations of your paranoid mind. Now imagine you heard a strange noise in the house, something that sounded like a person rummaging around. Now you have reason to believe there is someone in the house, so you pick up the phone and call the police. You are not certain. It could be a mouse, a raccoon, or the old home settling, but there is enough evidence to take action. That is the threshold an idea must cross to become a belief.

Most people do not actually believe, they think. Their "beliefs" are in reality unsubstantiated ideas. This is a serious problem in American religion, which is ate up with fundamentalism. As I wrote in Finding God in the Body:


"The fundamentalist is an individual who subscribes to a system of ideas that do not belong to them. They rely upon a book or the experience of another person who relies, interestingly enough, on a book or the experience of someone else. This line of co-dependency stretches back to the source of the tradition, the owner of the original transcendent experience...Fundamentalists study books rather than using books to study themselves. They mistake myth as fact and read it like history. This inoculates religion. It says that the transcendent realm is off limits to everyone except the historical embodiment of transcendence that sits on the altar of their tradition."   

Fundamentalists have an unwavering attachment to a set of ideas that do not belong to them and lack the potency to effect meaningful change in their lives, partly because a strong in-group dynamic is established which utilizes the mechanism of fear and the threat of ostracization to perpetuate their psychological identification with those ideas. But those ideas are not beliefs. They lack the experiential component needed to effect action.

The experiential component comes from spiritual practice. That is why practice-based spirituality is so important. 

Practice can be seen as a process of experimentation and experimentation leads to experience. Ideas, which are otherwise unsubstantiated, can be tested using spiritual practice. The truth or validity of a certain spiritual ideas can be tested using prayer, meditation, and self-examination. In more religious language, you could say that practice makes us susceptible to revelation.  

Once again we must pause to clarify an important issue. When I say the "truth" of an idea can be verified through spiritual practice, I do not mean, for example, that the existence of a personal God can be proven using prayer. I mean "truth" in the pragmatic sense. William James wrote, in The Meaning of Truth, "The true, to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in our way of behaving." It is also worth noting that Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and the author of the Twelve Steps, was deeply influenced by James.

The idea of a personal God, if properly understood and skillfully employed, can be proven effective--and therefore true in the pragmatic sense--through spiritual practice. Prayer can be used to transcend our limited, self-centered point of view and arouse courage, compassion, and sanity in the face of fear, anger and confusion. This obviously does not prove the existence of a creator God, but it does demonstrate the truth or expediency of the belief in God.

In order for the idea of God to be transformed into a belief in God the idea must be practiced. In Luke 6:32-34, Jesus defines practice as the application of an idea outside of our comfort zone: 

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again."

In other words, practice must be demanding. There must be sacrifice. Prayer cannot be limited to periods of quiet reflection in our bedroom. It has to enter our daily life, particularly when we are angry, stressed out, and afraid. The expediency of prayer is demonstrated when we pray beyond the false-self system and reconnect with the life of the body. There we tap into the power needed to "love our enemies, do good, and expect nothing in return." This is where we discover the truth of God or as Jesus said, "Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High." But this is easier said than done.

Bill Wilson wrote, "Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation." It is easy to think, but the work and sacrifice that belief requires is demanding. So we go looking for the easier, softer way. "The gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it."

For most people, the concept of God never matures into a proper belief--an idea that orients their entire being toward the world in which they live. Instead, it remains an impotent piece of intellectual property with which they psychologically identify. This identification is a form of spiritual bypassing. It circumvents the painstaking work of transformation by plastering over fear, anger, and self-centeredness with delusion and spiritual rhetoric. But that rhetoric is empty. "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."

What we think and say does not matter.  It is our actions that matter. When we think and talk of spiritual principles but fail to express those principles in our daily life, we betray our True Self. This is the betrayal of Christ, the Kiss of Judas. 

Spirituality is nothing if it is not the act by which we transcend the claustrophobic world between our ears and reconnect with the vastness and richness of our True Life. Any ideas about spirituality we possess or identify with must be measured against their capacity to realize this goal. If those ideas fail to inspire action or bring about meaningful change, then they must be discarded. If they inspire us to give freely of our time and energy, to love our enemies, and shed the skin of our false-self, then these ideas must be practiced until they become a working part of our mind. That is the path of transformation. 

What Role Does Church Play in a Modern Spirituality?

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a church service. I don’t often attend church, but there are a few in my area that I pop into from time to time.


It was the Sunday before the inauguration and the sermon, as you might imagine, was about loving our enemies and welcoming the stranger in our midst—a timely message to be sure. It was a good sermon, but there was one note missing and its absence was conspicuous.


The missing note was “how to”—how do we love our enemies and how do we welcome the stranger in our midst?


I have spent the last five years writing a book, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West, and ironically, I failed to mention the role of the church in this modern spirituality that I describe. I am speaking of church in the generic form, not specifically of Christian churches. I am referring to the temple, synagogue, mosque, and even the meditation group.


When I realized that I overlooked the role of the church in a modern spirituality, just as the preacher forgot to mention the “how to” in his sermon, I felt compelled to explore this question: Why do people go to church, synagogue, temple, or to the mosque? When they show up at a meditation group, what are they looking for?


Roughly 166 million American adults (69 percent) attend church at least once a month. So, obviously, there is more than one answer to that question. But for many people—not all, but a lot—the honest answer is, “I don’t know. It’s just what you’re supposed to do, right? It feels like something is missing, like life is pointless or meaningless. And our culture tells us that God is the source of meaning and you find God at the temple, synagogue, mosque, or the church. So here we are. That’s where you find God, right?”



I don’t know. I don’t go to church very often. Only you can answer that question. Do you? Do you find God in church or at the temple? Do you find meaning in your place of worship?


I suspect the answer is no. In my opinion, it’s not the point of a church. We don’t find God in a building. We find God within ourselves, which is why Paul asked the people of Corinth, “Do you not know that your body is the Temple?” Back in ancient Israel the temple was the house of God. So Paul was basically asking, “Do you not know that God lives in the body, not the building?”


If we show up expecting to find God, we will be disappointed. That is, unless we are in our bodies, unless we are present while we are at church. If the people in the pews or on the yoga mat, meditation cushion, or prayer rug embody the presence of God then, yes, you will see God in your places of worship. But, obviously, God does not live in the building.


I say that like it is an obvious fact, but many people expect to find God in church. And unfortunately, many pastors, priests, rabbis, and spiritual teachers try to live up to this unrealistic expectation, which turns the whole thing into a spectacle rather than a practice. It turns the service into a form of entertainment: exhilarating music, emotional calls to prayer, lofty rhetoric.


Church, in my opinion, is meant to equip us with the tools we need to make the journey to our inner most core—where we discover the ground of meaning. It is intended to encourage and support us along the path. And finally, it invites us to gift ourselves back to the community, to share our life with those around us. The point of religion is to transform our lives—to enable us to embrace our humanity, to be whole and useful members of the human race. In this respect, religion in America is, by and large, failing us.


In order for religion to be transformative, it must invite us into the transcendent. American religion often neglects this responsibility because it is eaten up with fundamentalist thinking, particularly down here in the South where I live. Fundamentalism reads scripture like it is a newspaper or a history book. And so the transcendent is stuck in the past. This obliterates the possibility of transformation in the here-and-now.


Fundamentalism says that the transcendent realm is off limits to everyone except the embodiment of transcendence that sits on the altar of their faith.


Christian fundamentalism, for example, says, “Well yeah, Jesus and God were one, but you ain’t Jesus, my dear boy. You’re damaged goods. You had best pray that God might have mercy on you.”


The best fundamentalism can do is offer moral guidance and encourage us to love our neighbor—and that really is at its best. It cannot get us to love our enemies because it doesn’t have access to the power required to do so. And it cannot answer the deeper problem of meaninglessness because it alienates us from the ground of meaning.


For religion to be transformative it cannot be read in the past tense. It has to be intimately and immediately concerned with the reality of our day-today lives. If it is going to transform us, it must be read as mythology, not history.


Mythology invites us to internalize. It invites us to involve ourselves in the story. In fact, when we read scripture as myth it stops being a story and becomes our journey. As I wrote in Finding God in the Body, “At the heart of every myth is a central figure—a hero that invites us to participate in our journey. Initially, our participation is subliminal and vicarious. We get caught up in their trials and tribulations, but eventually realize we are caught up in their journey because their journey is a metaphor for our journey. Their stories are presented to us as our way, our truth, and our life. When we realize that their path to freedom is our path to freedom, our vicarious identification with their journey dissolves into the immediacy of our own adventure.”

And when our adventure comes calling, we need practices that enable us to answer that call.

This is another great failing of Western religion. But this failing goes well beyond the realm of fundamentalism. Well-meaning pastors around the county are quick to share hopeful, uplifting messages of love and service, but fail to answer the all important question: How?! How do I love my enemy? When I am mad, exactly how do I return love? And what the hell does that look like? What does it look like to love a person that is a stranger to me? Maybe not even a stranger in name, but someone that is strange to me in their thinking?


For example, what does it mean for me to love someone that believes Barack Obama is a disgrace and that Donald Trump is a moral leader? It certainly doesn’t mean disengaging or even avoiding confrontation. It means entering those confrontations with the best of intentions, intellectual honesty, and respect. It means being present but never degrading. But where do we find the strength to do that, not once, but on a daily basis—because that is in fact what it means to not only walk the spiritual path but to be a citizen in a democratic society?


Religion must answer that question, but it must do so without giving us the answer. Jesus and the Buddha, both of them, walked the path for us—but not in place of us. They blazed a trail, but it is up to us to pick up the spiritual tools they gave us and walk that path for ourselves.


When we leave church, we should never leave empty handed. We should know how to pray, how to meditate. The spiritual teacher’s job is not to tell us what to believe. Their job is to show us how to believe. And this is where the majority of spiritual teachers—even the most well-meaning—fail us.


Church is not there to tell us about God. It is there to arrange the meeting. The word “religion” comes from the Latin word religare, meaning, “to bind together or to unite.” It is synonymous with the words “yoke” and “yoga”—an actionable path or way to wholeness. Jesus offered a yoke and the Buddha offered a yoga, but modern religion offers only a doctrine. And spiritual teachers have become more concerned with defending and advancing that doctrine than with passing on spiritual practices. As a result, we remain disembodied, alienated from the ground of our being—just sitting in church wondering why we are here.


In John chapter 17, Jesus prayed that we may be one with God, just as he was. But that prayer is not magically realized because it was uttered by Jesus. Without a yoke, that prayer goes unanswered. We have to look deep within the body—that is what contemplation is; contemplation is that which is done in the temple, in the body—and we have to enter the temple and abide in the presence of God. That requires practice.


Many spiritual teachers feel overwhelmed by this responsibility. Why? I suspect it’s because they don’t have practices to offer. Spirituality in the West has been divorced from practice for so long that we have raised generations of teachers that have nothing but words to teach. This was my primary motivation for writing Finding God in the Body. I wanted to put forward a mythos, an internalized worldview that not only invited people to search within themselves but gave them the practices they needed to make the journey.

Transformation requires action. To think otherwise is naïve. It takes practice.

We cannot overcome anger unless we practice love—that is unless we pray for those we resent on a daily basis. We have to pray that the people we despise most will be free of suffering, that they will find the causes and conditions of happiness—and we have to mean it. We cannot overcome stress and busyness unless we work with our busy minds—that is unless we practice meditation. We have to watch our minds and when they drift off in thought, we have to bring them back to the sensation of the breath, back to the present moment.


Yes, God lives within us, but unless we do the work required to move beyond our fear and anger, the light of God is obstructed. It cannot shine out through our actions into the world. We might feel enlivened on Sunday mornings, but we will be worn down by Wednesday.


Everybody agrees that we should love our enemies, but how? How do we love those that arouse anger? Only practice can answer that question. Self-examination, prayer, and meditation enable God to be born into the world through our actions, not just during opportune moments but in the midst of calamity.

Without practice, when our buttons are pressed, God is stillborn. God is just a theory, something we talk about.

Remember, church is for the man or woman struggling. Occasionally, the suffering person will be those who have been in the pews or on the cushion or the yoga mat for years, but most often it will be the new person because suffering is what brings us to the spiritual path. We have to be there for them, to show them another way. We have to offer them tools. We have to give them a yoke, a yoga, a path.


It’s not about what we can take away from church but about what we can bring to it. But we can’t bring something we don’t have. If we are going to be of service to others—you know, if we are going to offer practices—then we have to be practicing. And when we are practicing not just with our personal freedom and happiness in mind, but with the intention of preparing ourselves to be of service to others, it takes ego out of the equation. It takes us out of our self and brings us onto the greater path of selflessness. In fact, it turns church into a practice. And that is the role of the church in a modern spirituality.

The Role of Church in a Modern, Pratice-Based Spirituality

In this episode of the Finding God in the Body podcast, I talk about the role church--or really any place of worship--must play in a modern, practice-based spirituality.

If the Bible Isn't Literally True, it Must be a Lie, Right? Wrong!

31% of Americans believe that scripture should be interpreted literally; that’s more than one in four. Drop below the Mason-Dixon line and that number spikes.

People often resist interpretations of the Bible that are not literal. They resist symbolic interpretations of the Bible because they think symbolism is a lie. If the meaning is symbolic, then it didn’t actually happen, which, in their mind, means it isn’t actually true.

When we turn away from the symbolic dimension of scripture we turn away from the invitation to follow the Buddha or Jesus. We fail to see their life as a symbol for our life. As I wrote in my book Finding God in the Body, “At the heart of every myth is a central figure—a hero that invites us to participate in our journey. Initially, our participation is subliminal and vicarious. We get caught up in their trials and tribulations, but eventually realize we are caught up in their journey because their journey is a metaphor for our journey. Their stories are presented to us as our way, our truth, and our life.  When we realize their path to freedom is our path to freedom, our vicarious identification with their journey dissolves into the immediacy of our own adventure.”

Symbolism isn’t fiction. It is eternal truth—truth that transcends time and place. A metaphorical reading of the Bible suggests that what was true for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus is equally true for us; that their True Self is our True Self. It liberates the text from the shackles of history, disclosing its inmost meaning which is within us, not the book. I will close with another excerpt from Finding God in the Body:

“The sacred myths handed down to us from our ancestors are still loaded with meaning because the meaning is within us. Myths are vessels filled by the sacred contents of their readers. They represent a multidimensional, transgenerational dialogue between humankind and the Beyond...

“Myth is a dialogue between the conscious mind and the body. It is our responsibility to continue the dialogue. The initial remarks uttered millennia ago and recorded in scripture are just that, the initial remarks. They beg our ongoing interpretation, just as they will call for the next generation’s interpretation.”

You may also like this article: Following the Myth Within: A Contemplative Reading of Sacred Texts

Finding God in the Body

FindingGodInTheBody.com is up and running. There you'll find reviews, sample chapters, the accompanying podcast, ordering info, and more.

"Finding God in the Body turns inward to examine the human condition, meeting personal suffering with heartfelt insight and transformative practice. It steers clear of the wishful thinking, unfounded beliefs, and cynicism that define much of the spirituality genre.

Ben Riggs leaves no stone unturned, addressing each stage of the journey as he explores the space between fundamentalism and atheism to uncover a spirituality that resonates with the modern, Western mind. Then he binds that view to an actionable path of self-analysis, prayer, and meditation, which introduce the reader to the God of the body.

This book is a much-needed addition to the corpus of spiritual literature, and a must-read for all modern seekers."

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Visit FindingGodInTheBody.com or pre-order on Amazon

Want to Pray but it Feels Dead & Inauthentic? Try Embodied Prayer.

Want to Reinvigorate Your Prayer Life? 4 Steps to Embodied Prayer

In the hallowed space of the body the ego cannot breathe. It dies.

A self-centered mind is an insecure mind. It is acutely aware of its impotence or powerlessness. No matter how hard it tries, the ego knows all too well, that everything it creates will come tumbling down before it’s very eyes. It is haunted by the truth of powerlessness.

So, we live in constant terror of the looming apocalypse—the big breakup, the day we get fired or laid off, fail out of school, or retire after a long and successful career, only to find out that we are uncomfortable in our own skin. We spend every waking moment trying to avoid such a catastrophe. Therefore, an insecure mind is a busy mind.

When people arrive at the practice of meditation most of them complain of this busy-ness. They have no idea that it is a symptom of insecurity. All they know is that their mind is a war zone. Their thoughts are going 90-to-nothing. They lack clarity or focus. Fatigue has gripped them, and they feel completely lifeless. In order to address this busy-ness, one must address the insecurity that finances it.

So, how does one address insecurity?

Click here to keep reading. 

A New Vision.

To be spiritual you do not have to be raptured. You do not have to be sucked into an alternative reality. You have to be ordinary—not mediocre but tremendously ordinary.

Down to earth. 

Totally human.

To be an artist you do not have to be blessed with an abundance of talent. You have to be authentic.

Sincere. 

To be creative you have to be willing to be vulnerable. You have to put yourself out there without any thought of what loss or gain.

You have to be authentic...

Courageous.

Honest.

The Intersection Between Religion and Politics

"Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is." ~ Gandhi

People often say you should never mix religion and politics. Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. disagreed, as the quote above clearly indicates. King said,

"Any religion which professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry-as-dust religion."

So where does religion and politics intersect?

In your daily life.

When religion or politics are separated from my daily life, they become merely theoretical. If we're not talking about the practical application of spiritual principles within the context of the present moment—the eternal womb out of which life is born—then what exactly are we talking about? When disconnected from the immediacy of daily life religion is reduced to nothing more than unrealized fantasy and politics becomes a collection of ideas about how things should and shouldn't be.

Daily life is the great testing ground. It is where the value and substance—real meaning—is discovered. In the present moment we clean out the closet of our mind, throwing away antiquated ideas that are not substantiated by our own experience and passion. In the present moment our passions bring us out of our comfort zone and into the wilderness of our soul where we are forced to reconcile our sincere and heartfelt motivations with what we think about ourselves and the world we live in. This is the real scratch test. This is where our true individuality is discovered.

The Practical Implications of Compassion in 150 Words

What is Compassion? 

If you are capable of relaxing into your body and touching your own humanity, then you're capable of identifying with the whole human race—not just your own petty concerns, ambitions, and fears, but the needs and the passion of all humanity.

When you breathe the whole human race breathes. When one person is suffocated you are suffocated. Injustice is no longer limited to your own personal sphere. When the rights, dignity, and freedom of another is suppressed or ignored, you can feel it being suppressed and ignored within you. It feels like a fire burning in your bones. 

Likewise, when you see someone celebrating the fullness and the glory of human life, you can feel that celebration erupting in your heart.There is a flame in your heart that is dancing you into being. This flame is compassion and compassion alone brings realization into fruition. Without compassion spirituality is merely idealism.

The Introvert & Extrovert: Ascending & Descending the Ladder of Spiritual Practice.

"The human body is an inseverable umbilical cord that connects heaven and earth. If you are too grounded, you are depressed. If you spin off of the earth and get lost in space, you are delusional."

For obvious reasons, the introverted, creative type makes a majority in contemplative circles. They are more comfortable occupying the space of their inner life. They build entire worlds in their mind's eye. They have knack for interpreting movies and literature in a mythological way that relates back to the themes and motifs that shape their inner world. Sitting in a room and zoning out for hours on end, interrupted only by intermittent periods of work, is the norm for these people. But this is one sided. 

Spirituality is about human growth and development. It is a fidelity to the expansion of our true Self, as it unfolds into the present moment. The creative personality is all spirit. Without earthiness creativity just evaporates. It is never born into this world. It is never given a body. Therefore, the spiritual path requires that the introvert cultivate discipline. How do we just sit and be where we are, right smack in the middle of the boredom without spinning off the earth. Furthermore, how do we take the creative magma that is arising from the deep, dark subterranean levels of the body and press it out into "this world"—the world of time and space, acceptance and rejection, success and failure—as an honest expression of our inner life?

We have to learn how to stay put, how to stay grounded, so to speak. The discipline of meditation teaches us this. It teaches us to come back—back to the breath, back to the body, back to the Self, over and over again, until you realize that this monotony, this "coming back" is an intrinsic part of the human life cycle. The creative has to see that life isn’t just expanding, it is also contracting.

Is Faith in God Part of Our Makeup?

There is a tendency towards basic theism that seems to be natural. It cannot be explained away.

There is something deep down inside of me, calling out to me. It is a life larger than my own. I am contained within it, but it is not contained within me. You can call it God, inspiration, or whatever--what you call it does not seem to matter. In fact, it is probably best to call it nothing. But I am beginning to understand the term, Lord. Because it is my Lord. I must respond to its call or it does become destructive. It is my true Life--the life I am being born into--and I have no choice but to live it.

The journey is calling out to you and and it is an imperative in man to answer that call. There is a passion, a sense of inspiration that strives towards the center of meaning and being in everything we do. We must become disciples of this passion, which means we must live a life disciplined by this passion. It is not enough to strive every now and again. Inspiration must be the absolute center of our lives, if we hope to maintain a sense of meaning and purpose. We lose touch with this center, and we begin to unravel.

Spirituality is a moment-to-moment, day-by-day commitment to the birth of Truth within you. And no real progress can be expected if we are not willing to maintain a disciplined practice of writing, painting, gardening, meditating, studying, playing music, or whatever resonates with us. What resonates with you is your mythology and you must live by it, or pay the unbearable consequence of being trapped in a discontented life.

Sanity and Politics: The Lost Gospel.

“I stressed the need for a social gospel to supplement the gospel of individual salvation. I suggested only a ‘dry as dust’ religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an earthly hell.”  ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

We, in the west, have for far too long been subjected to the unbearable consequences of a theology that denies the revelation of direct experience. Inspired by a fundamental sense of broken-ness or incompleteness religion has, for many westerners, reduced to nothing more than an escape route. Not only has religion become an enterprise of redemption, but redemption remains just around the corner in the afterlife. The affirmative side of popular spirituality is the promise of greener pastures and sunnier days, but the implied consequences of such wishful thinking—the negation of our day-to-day life—has led to a belief in our own insufficiency, articulated by the doctrine of original of sin.

Our “earthly hell” is revealed to be the absence of content or meaning, the sense of lifelessness that characterizes the way we are living. There is no vitality. We are just trudging along. Life feels mechanical or numb, as if we are living once removed. We feel disconnected from the life we are living, as if we were a spectator watching as someone else’s life unfolds. This fundamental form of dis-ease constitutes the basis of self-hatred.

“Self-hatred is the basis for hating others or the world at large. For self-hatred, being really unbearable, is easily justified by making the others and the world bad, so they can become the object of hatred instead of the own self. Thus, pessimism maybe called the philosophy of hatred, or, as Nietzsche termed it more subtly, of ressentiment.” ~ Otto Rank

Ressentiment is the French word for resentment. In popular language, resentment has been reduced to nothing more than un-resolved or aging anger. In the above passage, psychologist Otto Rank suggests a deeper meaning. Rank defines resentment as the projection of self-hatred onto objects in the environment as a way of relieving ourselves of the turmoil wrapped up in our festering self-hatred.

Embedded in the life we are living is a feeling of disgust. Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, writes, “We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people…” What could be more important than an accessible down-to-earth resolution to these most basic of human problems? What could be more important than our basic sanity and well-being?

Unfortunately, the attitudes and states of mind that breed these basic human bedevilments are ignored, as we frantically project our sense of disgust onto objects in the environment. We become obsessed with decrying the moral shortcomings of those politicians and their supporters who stand opposite of our convictions. Liberals and conservatives alike, log onto facebook to spew their self-hatred onto the news feed in the form of short opinion pieces that point out the stupidity and treasonous opinions of those on the opposite side of the aisle. We are so lost in this depreciating process that seldom do any of us stop to consider the role this behavior plays in the inflammation of self-hatred.

Resentment is not responsible for self-hatred, but it is obvious that projection is one of the more common ways we deal with the pains of self-hatred. We experience ourselves as removed from the scene—a spectator watching life unfold from a distance—because the life we are living is a scam. We are more like an actor playing the part, and the part is assigned by our environment  The views we are vehemently defending do not belong to us. They are the intellectual inheritance of our family, social class, and education, which we feel compelled to defend, but lack the felt conviction to author for our Self. We lack authority, confidence, and creativity in our convictions. This leads to insecurity, fear, and aggression.It has nothing to do with whether the points of view we are sharing are reasonable or "right" or "wrong," instead the problems seems to be how we are arrived at these conclusions. We were given the answer by our minister, parents, friends, boss, neighbors, or the news media, rather than given the space needed to arrive at our own conclusions. We were taught what to think, instead of how to think. 

Sanity is a point of view substantiated by reality. Reality is revealed in the body. Insanity begins with misplacing the body. We have forgotten how to listen to our hearts. We have replaced the biological or spiritual imperative to live fully and honestly with the tendency to think about life, and the voice in our head is inspired by everyone except our heart—the preacher, the pundit, the teacher, mom, dad, those socially and economically successful role models we strive to imitate—all have taken up space in our head, drowning out the voice of our true Life, and as a result we feel lost and lifeless. We are only pretending to be passionate. In fact, we are angry and disembodied. We are plagued by a spiritual rigamortis.

“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” ~ St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 6:19

You can almost hear St. Paul’s surprise…. “Wait! You don’t know?! The temple ain’t some building or institution out there. It is not a document, political or religious bureaucracy, or ecclesiastical hierarchy. It is your beating heart. It is the life of the body.” Our relationship with God or Truth is not limited to periods of worship on Sunday mornings, nor is it dependent upon quiet moments of prayer and meditation in our bedrooms. God lives in the body and the variety of affairs that make-up our daily life— political, economic, social, and intimate—constitutes the womb out of which God is born into the world.

The misplacing of the body in western theology is the source of our misplaced spirituality. The body of experience is the ground of being or basic sanity. To talk about life apart from the body is to speculate or hallucinate. We migrate out of the vitality of the body and into the lifeless world of ideas. Unfortunately, hallucinating and faith have become synonymous. But St. Paul is inviting us back into the original meaning of faith, back into direct experience.

The body is the house of God or the temple. Truth is revealed in and through the body, which means that Truth or God’s will is first and foremost an unformed or un-interpreted feeling, spontaneity. Listening to this still voice is commonly referred to as prayer. We come back to the body and we reclaim the quality of wakefulness and vitality that we crave. Until we reconnect with a God that actively reveals itself to us through the silent revelation of our body, we will continue to be plagued by the fundamental sense of disgust and self-hatred that arises out of the unfortunate fact that we are only thinking about life or pretending to live.

So, how do we reconnect with the body? Simple. We let go of the tendency to think about life, and fall into the immediacy of direct experience. Rather than projecting our experience onto objects in the environment, we silently accept the movement of our body. We own our experience with the willingness to embrace whatever arises in the body with simple awareness. We move into the feeling, without words, and feel through the feeling. It does not matter if we are talking about a pleasant or unpleasant experience, we remain present to the feeling. To deny the body is to deny life, which is the source of dis-contentment or the absence of fullness that we have been projecting onto others. This is the work we are called to before we offer our gifts to the world.

“Leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” Matthew 5:24

Our offerings to the world are not to be tainted. They are to be the pure, unadulterated expressivity of God as revealed in the body, as the above passage from 1^st Corinthians indicates. Glory, in the Hebrew bible has a sense of majesty, splendor, or brightness. So, to glorify is to allow the splendor of God’s creativity to shine through our pores. Before making any offering, even a political opinion on facebook, we are directed in Matthew 5:24 to first go and be reconciled with our brother. We must be free of insecurity, fear, and aggression, less our body become an instrument of self-will and destruction. We are warned that to be crossed with our neighbor may lead to more worldly consequences, but to become resentful is to be damned to an “earthly hell.”

The content of our politics is of little importance. The tone is far more important. The tone tells you the source of this opinion. Any argument that tries to dissuade those with differing points of view from responding, through the use of technical, wordy jargon or aggressive, incendiary rhetoric is no offering at all. It is a projection of our own self-hatred, and a demonstration of our own refusal to participate in the unfolding of our life. Rather than embracing the unfolding of our life as the movement of the body, we turn our feelings of discomfort into behaviors that seek to transfer the sense of disgust to another person. This leaves us feeling empty and broken. A passionate, non-aggressive offering shines through our pores and inspires healthy dialog that promotes understanding and growth. Creativity can transform simple conversation, political, religious, or otherwise, into a transformative experience, because it invites the energy of God into the exchange.