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.   

God & Libido: Carl Jung's Commentary on Job

Lay thy hand upon him;
Remember the battle and do no more.
None is so fierce that dare stir him up:
Who then is he that can stand before me?
Who hath first given unto me, that I should repay him?
Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine. ~ Job 41

"God says this in order to bring his power and omnipotence impressively before jobs eyes. God is like the behemoth in the Leviathan; the fruitful Nature giving forth abundance,-- untamable wildness and boundlessness of nature,-- and the overwhelming danger of the unchained power...The Book of Job shows us God at work both as creator and destroyer.

Who is God? 

A thought which humanity in every part of the world and in all ages has brought forth from itself and always again anew in similar forms; a power in the other world to which man gives praise, a power which creates as well as destroys, an idea necessary to life .

Since, psychologically understood, the Divinity is nothing else than a projected complex of representation which is accentuated in feeling according to the degree of religiousness of the individual, so God is to be considered as the representative of a certain sum of energy (libido).

This energy, therefore, appears projected (metaphysical) because it works from the unconscious outwards, when it is dislodged from there, as psychoanalysis shows... As is easily understood, that which is valuable in the God-creating idea is not the form but the power, the libido."

~ Psychology of the Unconscious Carl Jung 

The Need to Believe.

Just as water, ice, and vapor are different arrangements of H
2O, seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling, and thinking are all different arrangements of awareness. Logically we can not go beyond this sphere of knowing, as anything and everything that is known is revealed within this spectrum of knowing.

In steps the word belief. 

There is something deep down inside of us that intuits a larger world than rational consciousness is capable of apprehending—a world beyond the limitations imposed by dualistic thinking. I want to be clear, intuition or belief first emerges as a feeling within the spectrum of knowing. It is an invitation from the heart, so to speak, calling us back to the source, back to our point of origin.

At first it seems impossible to transcend the spectrum of knowing. This is due to the fact that we only know how to relate to the world from a rational point of view. Contemplative practice offers another path, a path of "knowing" by "un-knowing," as Thomas Merton said.

Here is a gas fireplace: 

In this fireplace is a fake log with several spigots that release gas when the valve is open. The spectrum of knowing or the witness—not what you know, but that you know—is like the flame the emerges from that spigot. Each flame is an image, so to speak, of the source, but not identical to the source. Each flame is individual and unique, but also shares a common essence, gassiness, for lack of a better word. We want to reconnect with this essence, but as a flame "I" cannot go back into the spigot. The flame cannot reconnect with its gassiness, because it gets burned up in the cloud of knowing. This is where many people stop. They are afraid of forfeiting their individuality—self-consciousness or knowing that they know. From this point of view, the word belief is not an invitation, but a defense mechanism that absolves them of their responsibility to recover their gaseous nature. 

The contemplative path is a willingness to move forward in a state of unknowing. This can only be realized in the absence of a knower. This is the "Cloud of Unknowing," as the anonymous 14th century Catholic theologian put it. The flame passes through the portal of its own nothingness by renouncing its flameness or individuality. "It" does not reemerge in the deep space of Unknowing, but in a transcendent sense, finds a deeper ground of being that is not localized, omnipresent. It is seemingly another world, not where we simultaneously exist, but where existence itself is fueling the fire of life that dances around on the surface.

Our limited conscious self is constantly rubbing up against the vastness of our unconscious life. Belief is the heat generated from this friction. It is not an excuse to cling to our rigid, preconceived ideas about ourselves or the world we live in, but an invitation to abandon everything: not only our ideas or what we know, but the security and certainty of knowing itself, so that we may plummet into the divine source from which all life springs. Belief is tugging at us, inviting us into the "Cloud of Unknowing." In this darkness the sound of absolute silence can be heard saying, "Let there be light." But there is no one there to hear it. There is only the Word.

Reflections on Christian Spirituality

This article first appeared on HenryHarbor.com
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Every Christian is essentially looking for Jesus.

But which Jesus?

The historical Jesus which is situated in the past?

Or the Jesus of fundamentalism which is nothing more than facts and figures and can only be resurrected by rattling off passages from the pages to which this Jesus is confined?

How do you find the living Jesus?

To find the living Jesus is to find "the way" or the manner of living pre-ordained by your whole person, the image of God—not the small self but the true self, the Christ that lives within you.

This is the true meaning of the resurrection.

Organic Spirituality vs. Fundamentalism.

There is a manner of living pre-ordained by my whole person. 

This manner of living is intuited in the body and this intuition is rendered at the level of consciousness as a journey. 

When the map is written in symbols which relate to the immediacy of my incarnation—the unfolding of my Being into the present moment—then the journey is first and foremost an inner-journey, reflected in the world I live in. 

When the map is written in signs, which fail to point past their obvious meaning, the journey is seen as some sort of obligation to the external world. This misunderstanding may lead to any number of detours and false assumptions, none more mutually destructive than the belief that the map emerging from our body is the "one true map."

This is the epitome of fundamentalism, the essence of which is hypocrisy. 

Hypocrisy is so violent because it ignores our non negotiable obligation to the inner life and transfers the balance of responsibility onto objects in our environment: either belief systems that suggest all has already been accomplished by some savior figure and/or everybody around me needs to get busy. 

The only truly universal path is the path that recognizes the integrity of each persons path, as it is revealed through their own unmediated, direct experience. On this path one's heart is the guide and there are no backseat drivers, not even what I think about the path that lays before me is taking into account.

This is the path of silence.

If, in the present moment, we consent to the fulfillment of our person by aligning our conscious will with the revelation of the body, then the journey is intentional and is often called the spiritual path. If, however, we deny our responsibility, then we separate ourselves from the ground of meaning and freedom, and life becomes dry and mechanistic. We feel as though we're being drug through the motions of life kicking and screaming, until it all comes to an end with one final 'meaningless' gasp.

What Language Does the Body Speak?

The body's first language is silence.

It speaks on a physiological or instinctual level. The transmutation of this energy into conscious understanding is facilitated by symbolism.

The most fundamental form of symbolism is what Jung referred to as the archetype. An archetype is the creative medium through which the unconscious or unformed mind shares itself with the conscious world of time and space.

The archetype does not refer to itself. The emphasis is not placed on the image or the pattern, but the principal form of energy, or instinct, that the motif is organized around.

A submission to these self-existing patterns of energy or mandalas constitutes the spiritual journey. The journey itself is a motif symbolizing the embodiment of the human life cycle.

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.

The Global Threat Stemming from Self-Avoidance.

"I put it to the enlightened rationalist: has his rational reduction led to the beneficial control of matter and spirit? He will point proudly to the advances in physics and medicine, to the freeing of the mind from medieval stupidity and—as a well meaning Christian—to our deliverance from the fear of demons. But we continue to ask: what have all of our other cultural achievements led to? The fearful answer is there before our eyes: man has been delivered from no fear, a hideous nightmare lies upon the world. So far reason has failed lamentably, and the very thing everybody wanted to avoid rolls on in ghastly progression. Man has achieved a wealth of useful gadgets, but, to offset that, he has torn open the abyss, and what will become of him now—where can he make a halt? After the last World War we hoped for reason: we go on hoping. But already we are fascinated by the possibilities of atomic fission and promise ourselves a Golden Age—the surest guarantee that the abomination of desolation will grow to limitless dimensions. And who or what is it that causes all of this? It is none other than that harmless, ingenious, inventive, and sweetly reasonable human spirit who unfortunately is abysmally unconscious of the daemonism that still clings to him. Worse, this spirit does everything to avoid looking himself in the face, and we all help him like mad.” ~ Carl Jung

Every significant problem in this world can be explained by this violent avoidance of our Self: The benevolent scientist cannot see his face in the collateral damage of a drone strike; the Democrat cannot look deep enough into the Republican to find himself, and the Republican cannot hear his own voice in the complaints and dissatisfaction of his liberal counterpart. The minister rages on and on against the sins of others, but fails to see the sin of his own rage. Even we religious reformers and revolutionaries fail to see the sin of our intellectual idealism, which amounts to nothing more than a sophisticated indifference set in motion by resentment. Most of us are so wrapped up in the American dream that we cannot see or feel the lurking presence of a totalitarian state—governed by self-ignorance and our desperate dependence upon consumption, all of which will be symbolized by an external tyrant. But we must understand that the coming tyrant is formed in the collective psyche of our society, not in the wishful thinking of our adversaries.

Our society is looking for a hero. There is a desperate search for someone to save us. We are totally unsure as to what we need to be saved from, which leads to the greatest displays of certainty. It is those who are the most uncertain that scream the loudest. We are waiting for someone to hear our cry, and when they do, we will come together as one voice behind this persona. I fear that it will be too late when we realize that the figure we have rallied behind is nothing more than an image representing the sum total of rejected darkness within ourselves. It is not "they" we must be saved from. Man-kind must be delivered from the terrible fear that grips his heart and enables the evil that creeps out of him through his actions, words, and deeds to remain un-conscious. This fear is the great evil. 

It is the bad odor oozing from our own un-kept spirit that we smell, not the person next to us. It is only through an authentic form of mindful introspection that problems like world hunger can hope to be solved, because it is only by looking deeply within our own darkness that we will find the causes and conditions that lead to "12% of the world’s population (U.S. & Western Europe) accounting for 60% of private consumption spending; while one-third of the world’s population (South Asia & sub-Saharan Africa) account for only 3.2%." 

This is not the problem, it is a problem. The disproportionate consumption of the world’s resources is but a symptom of a much greater issue that faces man-kind: self-centeredness. And you cannot know the self-centeredness of another. You can only find it within yourself. Self-centeredness, which is what plagues our society, is created and perpetuated by fear. The bad odor we all smell is the fear that has grown putrid and stagnant within ourselves. Remember, it is a plank in our eye and a speck in our brother’s eye. Our political culture encourages our fixation on the plank in their eye, which is, practically speaking, a form of self-avoidance or a distraction. It is a welcomed distraction, though. It does not play off of our fears, our fear plays off of it.

There is nothing more terrifying than the immediacy of the evil within. So, there is nothing more convenient than a backdrop to project that darkness upon. Unfortunately, when we rage against our religious and/or political enemies, we are raging against ourselves, only unconsciously, which is to no healthy end. It only serves to increase the level of irritation. Growth by integration is the only possible resolution. We have to accept these repressed elements of the Self as the path God offers us. Rather than projecting them onto another, and making the destruction of the other our path. So, while political activism is important, let it begin within yourself, less the "hideous nightmare" of self-avoidance be realized completely.

I will conclude as I began, with wisdom of Carl Jung:
"When will the time come when we shall not simply take man for granted in this barbarous manner, but shall in all seriousness seek for ways and means to exorcise him, to rescue him from possession and unconsciousness, and make this the most vital task of civilization? Can we not understand that all the outward tinkerings and improvements do not touch man's inner nature, and ultimately everything depends upon whether the man who wields the science and the technics is capable of responsibility or not?"

The Relationship Between Being and Truth in 112 Words.

Consenting to the will to God simply means Being honest. 

Not just telling the truth, but Being Truth. It is about allowing Truth to gift itself to world through your life—in your relationships, at work, in traffic, at the grocery store, and in the bedroom. 

Truth is Being. It is the breath of Life that animates all of our activities. We cannot hide from Truth. It does not recognize our attempts to compartmentalize life. It does not see your business life, spiritual life, or sex life. It just sees Life. In this sense, God is either present as the center of meaning, or whatever activity you are involved in is dead.

What is Fate?

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate." ~ Carl Jung

Embracing Personal Sadness as the Path to Awakening.

Buddhism is not about wishful thinking or academic speculation. The Buddhist path is about learning to participate in the expansion of your true life. In short, it is about learning to love your Self.

Buddhist spirituality is not a theoretical endeavor. It is a first-person exploration of what it means to truly be your Self. Buddhism is about awakening to the immediacy of our life. Ideas do not awaken people, experiences do. So, the Buddhist path is an experiment that emerges in response to the question, “Who am I?”, and ends with a direct experience of Being that precedes any speculation. The aim of Buddhist spirituality is to move beyond the realm of internal dialogue so that our personal confusion maybe unraveled in a flash of insight.

In order for this experiment to be relevant, we have to be willing to be honest with ourselves. This means that any attempt to engage in wishful thinking is a waste of time. We have to get our hands dirty. Currently we are standing at the threshold of the spiritual path, and no one comes to spirituality for shits-&-giggles. We come to spirituality because of personal dissatisfaction, and the Buddhist path begins with the first noble truth, the truth of suffering. The first noble truth is an invitation to relate to our personal disappointment.

God & Meditation: The Rise, Fall, & Redemption of Western Spirituality in 371 Words.

At one time, we were all connected, so to speak. There was an intuition of being. We were aware that we were awareness. “God” wasn’t over there; it was at the core of who we were. There was a rawness about us—we were open and willing to be embarrassed. Furthermore, this way of being was so natural, so instinctual, that we didn’t even think about it. But somehow we caught the sickness that was being passed around.

Society was intimidated by our freedom and confidence. Societies are dependent upon conformity, and neither freedom nor confidence conforms to external expectations. Caught in the psychological momentum that installed the very insecurity that now compelled them to act, they transmitted their pervasive sense of dis-ease—they taught us that we were separate or other than the immediacy of direct experience. First, they assured us that the power of being, from which our life emerged, had a name and that name was “God.” Then, they drove home the idea that God was out there. In subsequent lessons we were taught shame—that grace was afforded only to those individuals who achieved a standard of perfection that was situated just beyond our grasp. This is “The Fall.” This is what happened. This is how we came to be ashamed of our own existence. This is how we became they. Sad L.

Re-Discovering Joy and Creativity In Your Daily Life.

“Do not try to become anything. Do not try to make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let be. When you walk, let be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.”

In short, be vulnerable.

Creativity is the inherent capacity, which is owned by no one, but present in all, to never be the same person twice. This article is about rediscovering and expressing that capacity through vulnerability, the process of individuation, and the practice of meditation.

Click here to read the entire article.

My 84 lb dancing dog, an uncle epidemic in Ivory Coast, and the enslavement of our true self.

Hey everyone I posted a new article on Elephant Journal this morning.
It is about the enslavement of our true selves, and the possibility of freedom. It talks about the first and final step in finding peace in the midst of chaos; with a story or two about dancing dogs and spam email... Click here to read it, and if you like it please share it with your friends!

Meditation & Spirituality~ We know nothing of ourselves by Carl Jung

"The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves."
— Carl Gustav Jung