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.      

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. 

The Space Between Fundamentalism and Atheism

The remarkable success demonstrated by the methodologies of science over the past two centuries has brought us to a place in history where its epistemology has cornered the market.

In the modern West objective truth and facts have a monopoly on value. By these standards, religion does not measure up. It is useless in the modern world. The question is whether this is a fair standard by which to measure the value of religion.

Religion is viewed, by most people, as a set of supernatural propositions that must be either affirmed or denied. This position creates a deep chasm. On one side are those who validate the supernatural truth-claims of religion; on the other side are those that categorically reject the validity of those claims. These two camps are commonly referred to as believers and atheists.

For the better part of 15 years, I thought myself an atheist. The ubiquity of fundamentalist religion in the deep South (where I live), coupled with my tacit acceptance of this false dichotomy (believers vs. atheists), forced me to side with the atheists. Nothing in me believed that “God” was a suitable explanation for the origin of life or the cosmos. Furthermore, the idea that an all-knowing, all-powerful creator God fashioned a world, which so displeased him that he was forced to offer up his son as a blood-sacrifice in order to pacify his own wrath made no sense to me. It wasn’t a matter of being angry or resentful at Christianity. I was just as disinterested in reincarnation as I was in heaven and hell. As a child of modernity these supernatural propositions just didn’t resonate with me. So I found common cause with the atheist, though I was always sympathetic to the idea of spirituality.

This spiritual impulse pulled me towards the Buddhism section at my local bookstore. Buddhism seemed to be devoid of these supernatural elements. After spending some time in India I learned this was a Western facade. Buddhism, like all other religions, is full of supernatural elements: reincarnation, tulkus, gods, dakinis, dharmapalas, and yidams. Much of this is read out by those that have popularized Buddhism in the West, but in its indigenous form it is there. That said, Buddhism has a rich and rewarding tradition of contemplative practice and philosophical inquiry that is capable of functioning independent of any supernatural elements. But so does Christianity.

One day, twelve or so years ago, I was reading a book by the Dalai Lama. In it he mentioned a name: Thomas Merton. I didn’t know Thomas Merton from a hole in the wall, but the Dalai Lama—who I deeply respect—gave him a glowing recommendation. So I bought my first Merton book—No Man Is An Island—which began my love affair with Thomas Merton and my introduction to contemplative Christianity.    

As I plunged into the wide array of contemplative Christian writers—ranging from Pseudo-Dionysius to Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, and St. Teresa of Avila up to contemporary writers like Matthew Fox, Thomas Keating, Richard Rohr, and Cynthia Bourgeault—something began to awaken within me. Their words were resurrecting the winds of inspiration deep in my body. It felt like a homecoming.

In Contemplative Christianity I found a practicable spirituality that was organized around an experience of God, rather than paranormal speculation. Furthermore, it was consistent with my cultural background and required no ideological allegiances that disqualified my commitment to Buddhist practice or the principles of Buddhist spirituality that had for me proven to be true and effective. As a Westerner, their view supplemented my Buddhist practice and the practices they offered enlarged my spiritual life.

Eventually, it go to the point where I could no longer exclusively identify with either tradition. In fact, I am still in this bardo, so to speak. I am confused—actually, I am not confused! The confluence of resonant threads in my spirituality and my inability to honestly label myself as one or the other is probably a more accurate representation of the complexity of the human experience, and interestingly enough, more in line with the view selflessness in both traditions. I am comfortable without the name tag. And I am not alone in this. In the ever-developing spirituality of the modern West identification with traditions and labels are losing their significance (and not just for pretentious, quasi-intellectual reasons).  

The emerging view of spirituality in the West is one based loosely on the idea of pragmatism. What works? This is the concern driving the development of modern spirituality. And this concern necessarily absorbs into the existing framework effective ideas and practices from a variety of traditions. In fact, this view of spiritual practice is fleshed out in my book Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West.

This approach also exposes the inadequacies of the "believer vs. atheist" dichotomy. Falling through the cracks of this fatuous debate are millions of people who see religion as an effective vehicle for spiritual growth and personal, and thereby social, transformation—not as a set of truth-claims about the physical world.

If we are talking about the origins of life or the cosmos, then yes, in that limited sense, I am an atheist. Science is the most effective tool for answering those questions, not religion. However, if we are talking about moving beyond the narrow and lifeless world between our ears and reconnecting with the ground of meaning and being, then I am a religious person. When skillfully utilized, religion is, in my opinion, the most effective means of approaching and embodying our human nature.

The value of religion cannot be measured by its capacity to explain away the mysteries of the material world. That is not the job of religion. Those mysteries belong to science. And the fact that large numbers of people believe that religion’s value consists primarily in that endeavor is strange. It demonstrates our limited perspective and painfully anemic grasp of truth.

Yes, something is of value only if it is rooted in truth, but truth is not the same as trivia.

The word truth is a representation of reality, which is a rich, kaleidoscopic domain that the word "fact" fails to envelope. When the word “truth” is mistaken for the word “fact,” life is reduced to a myopic, single-tiered plane of cerebral existence that ignores every phenomena which escapes measurement.

Our understanding of truth must also account for those intangible dimensions of reality. It must account for consciousness and courage, meaning, longing, patience, and self-sacrifice. Love is not a quantifiable fact, but it is an indispensable quality of truth. And this aspect of truth, strangely enough, finds its most judicious descriptions in works of fiction, not philosophical treatises.

Fiction is not necessarily antithetical to truth, as any student of literature well knows. Fiction can be skillfully deployed as a means of communicating truth. When fiction is used to communicate truth (The Odyssey or The Lord of the Rings) or when fact and fiction are blended in an effort to lift truth from its historical context and place the story on a timeless plane (The Bible), it is properly called myth. At its core, religion is a collection of myths coupled with practices or rituals that enable us to participate in the story.

Myth is a system of symbols that, as the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell explained, point past themselves “to a ground of meaning and being that is one with the consciousness of the beholder.” There is always a sphere of experience that escapes the plain language of facts. This is the realm of mythology.

Historical facts detail the events of times passed; whereas myth tells the story of an ongoing journey, the human adventure. Since mythology is organized around eternal truths rather than historical details, it invites us to participate in the journey, which in truth is the unfolding of our authentic life.

Briefly stated, myth tells the story of mankind, not a particular man, and therefore invites us to participate in the telling of this story through our lived experience.

The value of religion consists, not in the factual accuracy of these stories, but in their capacity to arouse within us the courage to be in the face of despair. And furthermore, couple that inspiration with an actionable path structure that enables us to actualize that potential or express it in our actions. The value of God, for example, is found in its ability to direct our longing—to set our gaze on the transcendent realm or center our identity in the selfless awareness of the heart. The word God does not explain existence away. It is not the name of the most powerful being in the universe. God is a symbol for Being-itself, which we participate in through basic awareness.

God is not a being far removed from the reality and the immediacy of our daily life, but The intimate, intensely personal, and deeply affecting presence that substantiates our life.

The word God calls us out of the claustrophobic, false-self identity that is at the root of our suffering and into the life of the body. But religion is not a collection of magic words. Religion without practice is wishful thinking. Practice births God into the world through our actions. Prayer invokes the power of Being in the face of fear, anger, and depression. Meditation practice crucifies the false-self on the cross of silence, enabling our true Self—Christ, if you will—to be resurrected from rubble of our disembodied life. This true Self—not I but the Christ within—is the impersonal or selfless quality of basic awareness that mediates our relationship with God.    

In the words of Rabbi David Cooper, God is not a noun, but a verb. When practiced—rather than simply affirmed—God enables us to overcome personal suffering. And that is the standard of truth by which religion must be judged.

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.” I don’t agree with the idea that expedience is any more representative of truth than are facts. I believe that both have their place. Each represents a quality of truth.

Suffering brings us to the spiritual path. We might pick up a book about spirituality, meditation, or some religion for reasons of curiosity, but no one commits themselves to the painstaking work of spiritual practice unless they are looking for transformation. And suffering is what motivates us to change. So when we ask the question, “Does it work?” we must understand that to mean, “Does religion enable us to overcome suffering?” For example, we get frustrated when we lose our temper because deep-down we are aware of a greater potential. We know that our responses are limited, that our freedom is restricted by the conditioned reactions of the false-self system and we yearn to throw off the old, tired ways of this false-self. The question is, does religion enable us to accomplish that goal? It depends.

When religion is viewed as a series of truth claims that must be affirmed or denied, it does not have the ability to change our lives. It isn’t even concerned with this life. When you believe in the literal existence of heaven and hell—eternal bliss and eternal damnation—this life loses its significance. Such religion is forced to ignore the concerns of the present moment and obsess over the hereafter. However, if you reject this literalist position, which creates the false dichotomy of “believer vs. atheist,” and accept the claim that there is truth in usefulness, then you recognize the space between atheism and fundamentalism. In this space, religion is free to focus on this life.

When religion is seen not as an answer to the question of existence, but as a sophisticated system of practice that enables us to enter into the experience of Being-itself, then yes, religion has the ability to overcome personal suffering. It has the ability to conquer spiritual death.  

 

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.


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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.  

The Role of Myth in Spirituality: From Tantra to Alcoholics Anonymous

In the early 1930's J.R.R. Tolkien began work on The Hobbit. 

Had he taken up the task of penning an academic essay extolling the virtues of courage and self-sacrifice, I doubt we would remember him.

The overwhelming majority of people prefer storytellers to philosophers. Storytellers occupy a special place in society because they perform a sacred function. The storyteller's elevated status in society is owed to their ability to bypass our superficial sense of self-identity and arouse those energetic principles embedded deep in the human condition that animate our lives. They are the keepers and progenitors of our mythology.

Myth is a constant force in human history. Wherever man is found, so too is myth. Whereas history and science records the story of the cosmos and our species, mythology tells the remarkable story of mankind's inner journey. When mythology is mistaken for the former, it devolves into fundamentalism. 

Mythology is a form of spiritual practice and the storyteller is a kind of shaman. In fact, one could argue that what placebic efficacy tribal shamans demonstrate is due to the powerful union of myth and drama mastered by the most accomplished amongst them. The shaman enters into and embodies the myth of the people they serve. In his essay "The Effectiveness of Symbols," the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote:

"That the mythology of the shaman does not correspond to an objective reality does not matter. The sick woman believes in the myth and belongs to a society which believes in it. The tutelary spirits and malevolent spirits, the supernatural monsters and magical animals, are all a part of a coherent system on which the native conception of the universe is founded. The sick woman accepts these mythical beings or, more accurately, she has never questioned their existence. What she does not accept are the incoherent and arbitrary pains, which are an alien element in her system, but which the shaman, calling upon the myth, will re-integrate within a whole where everything is meaningful... But the shaman does more than utter the incantation; he is its hero, for it is he who, at the head of a supernatural battalion of spirits, penetrates the endangered organs and frees the captive soul."

A more sophisticated application of mythology can be found in Buddhism and Christianity. In Vajrayana Buddhism, there are meditation practices that remove the need for a shamanic middle-man, enabling the individual to enter the mythos themselves. Practitioners of Buddhist tantra visualize themselves as the deity, (yidam) which enables them to awaken to the principles associated with that deity, as well as subtler states of awareness--all of which, in reality, constitute the structure of Being. Through repetition, the practitioner incorporates the attributes associated with the deity into their lived experience. 

Similarly, Christian mystics practice what is called "The Imitation of Christ." They use the power of imagination to identify with the Christ image, which through repeated practice births the image of God into the world, thereby fulfilling the central aim of Christianity.

Exercises like yidam practice and the Imitation of Christ are perhaps the most profound systems of mythological application ever developed by mankind. They allow the indwelling presence of God to become incarnate. Their profundity is a result of their practicality, as well as the fact that one can utilize them without buying into the mythology on a literal level, which in the modern world is no longer useful. While they maybe the most profound expressions of myth, they are certainly not the only means of mythological expression nor are they the most common.

Storytelling is a powerful vehicle of spiritual transmission. It is also the most ubiquitous practice of mythology. Practitioners of this art include everyone from Homer to Nachman to Tolstoy, Tolkien and Joseph Campbell. Judaism is perhaps the best example of storytelling as spiritual practice. For rabbis like the Baal Shem Tov and Rebbe Nachman, storytelling was one of their preferred methods for unveiling the divine. Another example of this practice can be found in groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. 12 Step groups owe much of their success to the union of storytelling (personal nature of their meetings) coupled with an actionable path structure (12 Steps themselves).

When skillfully pursued, the study and practice of myth (or scripture) is a spiritual practice because it has the capacity to elicit the experience of transcendence. It has the ability to move us beyond the limited, self-centered world between our ears and connect us with a greater reality, the unconscious wisdom of the body. I will conclude with an excerpt from my book, Finding God in the Body:

"The symbols that populate the world’s great mythologies are born out of the body. Mankind cannot part ways with myth. He can distance himself from organized religion, but not spirituality and myth. 

“Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths have flourished,” writes Campbell. “And they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind.” 

Mythology is rooted in our biology. It is a part of our makeup to the extent that it gives voice to our makeup. Mythology satisfies the desires of our heart without sacrificing the integrity of our intellect. In this sense, mythology occupies the space between fundamentalism and atheism.

Since spirituality is ultimately concerned with embracing and embodying the human condition, and myth is rooted in our very nature, myth is an integral part of the spiritual path. 

There is always a dimension of inner-space beyond words, definition, and explanation. This is the domain of myth. Mythological symbols mediate the relationship between the unconscious wisdom of the body and the intellect. Myth connects the formless realm of truth and inspiration with our rational mind. Our sacred myths are rooted in the transcendent realm of human experience—those aspects of our humanity that escape plain speech."

The study of myth is a spiritual practice and like all practices there is an element of how to. Myth is a map for our inner-journey. But before we can utilize the map, we have to learn how to read it. If you would like to learn more about the relationship between spirituality and mythology, meditation, personal inventory, and contemplative prayer, check out Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West. It is available in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon.

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.