There is No Room for Admirers.

"Of all the children born to women, there has never been anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he." - Matthew 11:11

Conversion or the rebirth experience (metanoia) marks the resurrection of our True Self, which is of the Kingdom and not born of woman, so to speak. Metanoia is a renewal of one's mind and motivations. It is an experience that re-orients our entire being because it relocates the point or center from which we live our life, moving it from the head down into the heart.

In the Gospels, the Christ image is made manifest in Jesus of Nazareth. Through Jesus's life and actions the indwelling presence of God is born into the world. But the life of Christ does not end with the crucifixion of Jesus. Christ is resurrected. In fact, Christ is Resurrection. This unending Resurrection is the story of Christianity. It is the True Self or the Resurrected Christ that, in Galatians, Paul says has replaced his false-self.

Paul further elaborates on this point in Ephesians where he writes, "Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, putting on the new self, created after the likeness of God." This false-self/ True Self, former life/ New Life dichotomy is common in spiritual literature. In Alcoholics Anonymous members celebrate "sobriety birthdays." The sobriety birthday is often more significant than their biological birthday because it marks the point at which they adopted a new manner of living. The sobriety birthday is in fact a re-birth day. It is a celebration of the True Self, which obviously was not born of a woman or brought about by reproductive means, but by a spiritual death and resurrection.

In the opening quotation, Jesus also says "the least in the Kingdom" which denotes a spectrum of realization (least to greatest). This spectrum recognizes both maturity and depth of insight into the Kingdom, ranging from the admission of powerlessness found in Alcoholics Anonymous to the realization of Oneness with God proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospel of John.

But either way, he who is of the Kingdom is greater than he who is of the world because Kingdom dwellers, so to speak, strive to live in accordance with their True Nature and not the law or the prescribed guidelines of religious and social institutions. In fact, the prescribed guidelines of churches and governments are legitimized only in so far as they relate back to the inclinations of human nature and aid individuals in their quest to realize or embody that nature for themselves.

Often, institutions fail to do this because they are more concerned with perpetuating their power, which is why people like Jesus, Gandhi, and King are seen as subversive by those institutions. They embody the principle freedom of the Kingdom, not the ways of the world.

Many Americans believe America is a Christian nation. The majority of Americans may self-describe as Christian, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the spiritual principles outlined in the Gospels—the principles Jesus embodied and Christians are called to follow—are repugnant to many American "Christians," especially those that frequently say America is a Christian nation. It is obvious from the Gospel account that Jesus offered a counterculture and because of this he was seen as a troublemaker. And he was. But he also still is. He causes trouble for anyone that claims to follow him because the path he outlines is not an easy path to walk.

Richard Rohr wrote in Jesus' Plan for a New World, "We keep worshiping the messenger, keeping Jesus up on statues and images, so we can avoid what he said. It's the best smokescreen in the world! We just keep saying, 'We love Jesus.' The more we talk about Jesus, the less we'll do what he said. That's the way the ego fools itself. And in this case, it's the way culture, nations and even churches have fooled themselves."

We worship the messenger but ignore the message. In the process, Jesus obtains admirers but not followers. We have confused our ego with the Christ image depicted in the Gospels, and tragically with the image of God that lives within us. This is spiritual materialism.

The Christ image is subversive. It undermines our ego and all of its attendant fears, prejudices, resentments, and defense mechanisms. This is a challenge. It requires that we empty ourselves. Letting go of the false-self and it's strategies takes the burden off of the True Self. It shifts the burden over to the false-self. This burden is the cross upon which the ego is crucified. And the resurrection of our True Life is proportionate to the death of our false-self. "He and I cannot dwell together in the same space." Without death there can be no rebirth. "We cannot welcome the presence," writes Rohr, "the Parousia, the full coming of Christ until we've let go of the old."

Beyond the noise, the chaos, the stress, fear, and anger we can feel our heart beating, calling out to us, pleading with us to let go of our false-self and to return to the life of the body. This is the call of Christ, which lives within us as the image of God, our True Self. Jesus shows the way. And only those that follow can be called Christian in any meaningful sense of the word, regardless of what beliefs they affirm. On the path Jesus outlined there is simply no room for admirers.

Order Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West by Benjamin Riggs today. Available in Paperback and Kindle on Amazon. 

Storytelling in Spirituality: Christian Mysticism to Middle Earth

In this episode, I talk about the role myth plays in human spirituality. I cover everything from storytelling, to Buddhist tantra and Christian mysticism, and groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. Listen below on Soundcloud. Click here to listen on iTunes, or Stitcher.


Click here to listen

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.

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.