21 posts tagged “mysticism”

I bought four more books.

Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity

Richard Smoley

The first is Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity by Richard Smoley.  Smoley is pretty well known for his writings on the more esoteric and mystical side of Christianity.  The only thing I've read from him is the introduction to Annie Besant's book Esoteric Christianity.

From Amazon.com:

Though love is a perennial topic for writers of all kinds, much of what is written about love is simplistic and unsatisfying. In Conscious Love, Richard Smoley—an expert on the esoteric traditions of mystical Christianity—incorporates insights and wisdom about love from noted thinkers in literature, art, philosophy, sociology, cultural criticism, and even neurology. This remarkable book offers a blueprint for infusing conscious love into human relationships.

What Is Called Thinking?

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger is up next.  I've been meaning to get into him, seeing as he's one of the more popular (though dense and difficult to read) of the existentialists.  I particularly think his affinity for Being will appeal to me.  We shall see. 

This book, What is Called Thinking? is supposedly one of his later books that sort of attempts to revist a lot of the material he wrote in the beginning of his philosophical career, mainly Being and Time.  It seemed like a good place to start, because thought I really want to own a copy of Being and Time and I want to read it....it's a little intimidating to be honest.

Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (Columbia Series in Science and Reli

B. Alan Wallace

Next up, B. Alan Wallace's Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness.  Wallace is actually a rather popular writer on Buddhism, and I've noticed a few quotes from his books floating around in my Vox neighboorhood.  What he attempts to do in this book is show how Western Science and Eastern Spirituality converge into one beautiful strain of thought.

From an Amazon.com review:

The question is this: Can quantum mechanics tell us anything useful about the nature of reality in the observable day-to-day world? .... how do Einstein's theories of Relativity tie in with our day-to-day experiences and with quantum theory?

He proposes that three fundamental problems are all related: first, the problem of measurement in quantum mechanics; second the problem of time in quantum cosmology and third the so-called "hard problem" in brain science that tries to explain how consciousness can arise form apparently inanimate matter.
....
He comes to the conclusion, rightly, I believe, that consciousness does not emerge from the brain but is conditioned by it. Furthermore, that the entire Universe of mind and matter arises from a fundamental non-dual reality.

The Way of Chuang Tzu (Shambhala Library)

Thomas Merton

Last but not least, a book on Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton.  I always enjoy Merton's style and I've been meaning to learn more about Chuang Tzu. 

From Amazon.com:

"Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of personal versions from his favorites among the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of the Chinese philosophers. Chuang Tzu, who wrote in the fourth and third centuries B.C., is the chief authentic historical spokesman for Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (a legendary character known largely through Chuang Tzu's writings). Indeed it was because of Chuang Tzu and the other Taoist sages that Indian Buddhism was transformed, in China, into the unique vehicle we now call by its Japanese name — Zen. The Chinese sage abounds in wit, paradox, satire, and shattering insight into the true ground of being. Father Merton, no stranger to Asian thought, brings a vivid, modern idiom to the timeless wisdom of Tao. Illustrated with early Chinese drawings."

Went to the used bookstore in Santa Cruz with my sister.  Walked out with ...5 books.

“I told you to forget everything save the blind awareness of your naked being, I intended all along to lead you eventually to the point where you would forget even this, so as to experience only the being of God…God is your being."

-Unknown, The Cloud of Unknowing

I really need to get a copy of this book.  What kind of mystic am I without it? ;)

I saw this floating around on the internet and thought it was interesting.  What do you think of it?  What points do you strongly agree or disagree on? 

*****

Like Luther, I present 95 theses or in my case, 95 faith observations drawn from my 64 years of living and practicing religion and spirituality. I trust I am not alone in recognizing these truths. For me they represent a return to our origins, a return to the spirit and the teaching of Jesus and his prophetic ancestors, and of the Christ which was a spirit that Jesus’ presence and teaching unleashed.

1. God is both Mother and Father.
2. At this time in history, God is more Mother than Father because the feminine is most missing and it is important to bring gender balance back.
3. God is always new, always young and always “in the beginning.”
4. God the Punitive Father is not a God worth honoring but a false god and an idol that serves empire-builders. The notion of a punitive, all-male God, is contrary to the full nature of the Godhead who is as much female and motherly as it is masculine and fatherly.
5. “All the names we give to God come from an understanding of ourselves.” (Eckhart) Thus people who worship a punitive father are themselves punitive.
6. Theism (the idea that God is ‘out there’ or above and beyond the universe) is false. All things are in God and God is in all things (panentheism).
7. Everyone is born a mystic and a lover who experiences the unity of things and all are called to keep this mystic or lover of life alive.
8. All are called to be prophets which is to interfere with injustice.
9. Wisdom is Love of Life (See the Book of Wisdom: “This is wisdom: to love life” and Christ in John’s Gospel: “I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance.”)
10. God loves all of creation and science can help us more deeply penetrate and appreciate the mysteries and wisdom of God in creation. Science is no enemy of true religion.
11. Religion is not necessary but spirituality is.
12. “Jesus does not call us to a new religion but to life.” (Bonhoeffer) Spirituality is living life at a depth of newness and gratitude, courage and creativity, trust and letting go, compassion and justice.
13. Spirituality and religion are not the same thing any more than education and learning, law and justice, or commerce and stewardship are the same thing.
14. Christians must distinguish between God (masculine and history, liberation and salvation) and Godhead (feminine and mystery, being and non-action).
15. Christians must distinguish between Jesus (an historical figure) and Christ (the experience of God-in-all-things).
16. Christians must distinguish between Jesus and Paul.
17. Jesus, not unlike many spiritual teachers, taught us that we are sons and daughters of God and are to act accordingly by becoming instruments of divine compassion.
18. Ecojustice is a necessity for planetary survival and human ethics and without it we are crucifying the Christ all over again in the form of destruction of forests, waters, species, air and soil.
19. Sustainability is another word for justice, for what is just is sustainable and what is unjust is not.
20. A preferential option for the poor, as found in the base community movement, is far closer to the teaching and spirit of Jesus than is a preferential option for the rich and powerful as found in, for example, Opus Dei.
21. Economic Justice requires the work of creativity to birth a system of economics that is global, respectful of the health and wealth of the earth systems and that works for all
22. Celebration and worship are key to human community and survival and such reminders of joy deserve new forms that speak in the language of the twenty-first century.
23. Sexuality is a sacred act and a spiritual experience, a theophany (revelation of the Divine), a mystical experience. It is holy and deserves to be honored as such.
24. Creativity is both humanity’s greatest gift and its most powerful weapon for evil and so it ought to be both encouraged and steered to humanity’s most God-like activity which all religions agree is: Compassion.
25. There is a priesthood of all workers (all who are doing good work are midwives of grace and therefore priests) and this priesthood ought to be honored as sacred and workers should be instructed in spirituality in order to carry on their ministry effectively.
26. Empire-building is incompatible with Jesus’ life and teaching and with Paul’s life and teaching and with the teaching of holy religions.
27. Ideology is not theology and ideology endangers the faith because it replaces thinking with obedience, and distracts from the responsibility of theology to adapt the wisdom of the past to today’s needs. Instead of theology it demands loyalty oaths to the past.
28. Loyalty is not a sufficient criterion for ecclesiastic office—intelligence and proven conscience is.
29. No matter how much the television media fawn over the pope and papacy because it makes good theater, the pope is not the church but has a ministry within the church. Papalolotry is a contemporary form of idolatry and must be resisted by all believers.
30. Creating a church of Sycophants is not a holy thing. Sycophants (Webster’s dictionary defines them as “servile self-seeking flatterers”) are not spiritual people for their only virtue is obedience. A Society of Sycophants — sycophant clergy, sycophant seminarians, sycophant bishops, sycophant cardinals, sycophant religious orders of Opus Dei, Legioneers of Christ and Communion and Liberation, and the sycophant press--do not represent in any way the teachings or the person of the historical Jesus who chose to stand up to power rather than amassing it.
31. Vows of pontifical secrecy are a certain way to corruption and cover-up in the church as in any human organization.
32. Original sin is an ultimate expression of a punitive father God and is not a Biblical teaching. But original blessing (goodness and grace) is biblical.
33. The term “original wound” better describes the separation humans experience on leaving the womb and entering the world, a world that is often unjust and unwelcoming than does the term “original sin.”
34. Fascism and the compulsion to control is not the path of peace or compassion and those who practice fascism are not fitting models for sainthood. The seizing of the apparatus of canonization to canonize fascists is a stain on the church.
35. The Spirit of Jesus and other prophets calls people to simple life styles in order that “the people may live.”
36. Dancing, whose root meaning in many indigenous cultures is the same as breath or spirit, is a very ancient and appropriate form in which to pray.
37. To honor the ancestors and celebrate the communion of saints does not mean putting heroes on pedestals but rather honoring them by living out lives of imagination, courage and compassion in our own time, culture and historical moment as they did in theirs.
38. A diversity of interpretation of the Jesus event and the Christ experience is altogether expected and welcomed as it was in the earliest days of the church.
39. Therefore unity of church does not mean conformity. There is unity in diversity. Coerced unity is not unity.
40. The Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of working through participatory democracy in church structures and hierarchical modes of being can indeed interfere with the work of the Spirit.
41. The body is an awe-filled sacred Temple of God and this does not mean it is untouchable but rather that all its dimensions, well named by the seven charkas, are as holy as the others.
42. Thus our connection with the earth (first chakra) is holy; and our sexuality (second chakra) is holy; and our moral outrage (third chakra) is holy; and our love that stands up to fear (fourth chakra) is holy; and our prophetic voice that speaks out is holy (fifth chakra); and our intuition and intelligence (sixth chakra) are holy; and our gifts we extend to the community of light beings and ancestors (seventh chakra) are holy.
43. The prejudice of rationalism and left-brain located in the head must be balanced by attention to the lower charkas as equal places for wisdom and truth and Spirit to act.
44. The central chakra, compassion, is the test of the health of all the others which are meant to serve it for “by their fruits you will know them” (Jesus).
45. “Joy is the human’s noblest act.” (Aquinas) Is our culture and its professions, education and religion, promoting joy?
46. The human psyche is made for the cosmos and will not be satisfied until the two are re-united and awe, the beginning of wisdom, results from this reunion.
47. The four paths named in the creation spiritual tradition more fully name the mystical/prophetic spiritual journey of Jesus and the Jewish tradition than do the three paths of purgation, illumination and union which do not derive from the Jewish and Biblical tradition.
48. Thus it can be said that God is experienced in experiences of ecstasy, joy, wonder and delight (via positiva).
49. God is experienced in darkness, chaos, nothingness, suffering, silence and in learning to let go and let be (via negativa).
50. God is experienced in acts of creativity and co-creation (via creativa).
51. All people are born creative. It is spirituality’s task to encourage holy imagination for all are born in the “image and likeness” of the Creative One and “the fierce power of imagination is a gift from God.” (Kaballah)
52. If you can talk you can sing; if you can walk you can dance; if you can talk you are an artist. (African proverb and Native American saying)
53. God is experienced in our struggle for justice, healing, compassion and celebration (via transformativa).
54. The Holy Spirit works through all cultures and all spiritual traditions and blows “where it wills” and is not the exclusive domain of any one tradition and never has been.
55. God speaks today as in the past through all religions and all cultures and all faith traditions none of which is perfect and an exclusive avenue to truth but all of which can learn from each other.
56. Therefore Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism are a necessary part of spiritual praxis and awareness in our time.
57. Since the “number one obstacle to interfaith is a bad relationship with one’s own faith,” (the Dalai Lama) it is important that Christians know their own mystical and prophetic tradition, one that is larger than a religion of empire and its punitive father images of God.
58. The cosmos is God’s holy Temple and our holy home.
59. Fourteen billion years of evolution and unfolding of the universe bespeak the intimate sacredness of all that is.
60. All that is is holy and all that is is related for all being in our universe began as one being just before the fireball erupted.
61. Interconnectivity is not only a law of physics and of nature but also forms the basis of community and of compassion. Compassion is the working out of our shared interconnectivity both as to our shared joy and our shared suffering and struggle for justice.
62. The universe does not suffer from a shortage of grace and no religious institution is to see its task as rationing grace. Grace is abundant in God’s universe.
63. Creation, Incarnation and Resurrection are continuously happening on a cosmic as well as a personal scale. So too are Life, Death and Resurrection (regeneration and reincarnation) happening on a cosmic scale as well as a personal one.
64. Biophilia or Love of Life is everyone’s daily task.
65. Necrophilia or love of death is to be opposed in self and society in all its forms.
66. Evil can happen through every people, every nation, every tribe, and every individual human and so vigilance and self-criticism and institutional criticism are always called for.
67. Not all who call themselves “Christian” deserve that name just as “not all who say ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven” (Jesus).
68. Pedophilia is a terrible wrong but its cover-up by hierarchy is even more despicable.
69. Loyalty and obedience are never a greater virtue than conscience and justice.
70. Jesus said nothing about condoms, birth control or homosexuality.
71. A church that is more preoccupied with sexual wrongs than with wrongs of injustice is itself sick.
72. Since homosexuality is found among 464 species and in 8 percent of any given human population, it is altogether natural for those who are born that way and is a gift from God and nature to the greater community.
73. Homophobia in any form is a serious sin against love of neighbor, a sin of ignorance of the richness and diversity of God’s creation as well as a sin of exclusion.
74. Racism, Sexism and militarism are also serious sins.
75. Poverty for the many and luxury for the few is not right or sustainable.
76. Consumerism is today’s version of gluttony and needs to be confronted by creating an economic system that works for all peoples and all earth’s creatures.
77. Seminaries as we know them, with their excessive emphasis on left-brain work, often kill and corrupt the mystical soul of the young instead of encouraging the mysticism and prophetic consciousness that is there. They should be replaced by wisdom schools.
78. Inner work is required of us all. Therefore spiritual practices of meditation should be available to all and this helps in calming the reptilian brain. Silence or contemplation and learning to be still can and ought to be taught to all children and adults.
79. Outer work needs to flow from our inner work just as action flows from non-action and true action from being.
80. A wise test of right action is this: What is the effect of this action on people seven generations from today?
81. Another test of right action is this: Is what I am doing, is what we are doing, beautiful or not?
82. Eros, the passion for living, is a virtue that combats acedia or the lack of energy to begin new things and is also expressed as depression, cynicism or sloth (also known as “couchpotatoitis”).
83. The Dark Night of the Soul descends on us all and the proper response is not addiction such as shopping, alcohol, drugs, TV, sex or religion but rather to be with the darkness and learn from it.
84. The Dark Night of the Soul is a learning place of great depth. Stillness is required.
85. Not only is there a Dark Night of the Soul but also a Dark Night of Society and a Dark Night of our Species.
86. Chaos is a friend and a teacher and an integral part or prelude to new birth. Therefore it is not to be feared or compulsively controlled.
87. Authentic science can and must be one of humanity’s sources of wisdom for it is a source of sacred awe, of childlike wonder, and of truth.
88. When science teaches that matter is “frozen light” (physicist David Bohm) it is freeing human thought from scapegoating flesh as something evil and instead reassuring us that all things are light. This same teaching is found in the Christian Gospels (Christ is the light in all things) and in Buddhist teaching (the Buddha nature is in all things). Therefore, flesh does not sin; it is our choices that are sometimes off center.
89. The proper objects of the human heart are truth and justice (Aquinas) and all people have a right to these through healthy education and healthy government.
90. "God” is only one name for the Divine One and there are an infinite number of names for God and Godhead and still God “has no name and will never be given a name.” (Eckhart)
91. Three highways into the heart are silence and love and grief.
92. The grief in the human heart needs to be attended to by rituals and practices that, when practiced, will lessen anger and allow creativity to flow anew.
93. Two highways out of the heart are creativity and acts of justice and compassion.
94. Since angels learn exclusively by intuition, when we develop our powers of intuition we can expect to meet angels along the way.
95. True intelligence includes feeling, sensitivity, beauty, the gift of nourishment and humor which is a gift of the Spirit, paradox, being its sister.
    

"I was filled full of everlasting assurance, powerfully secured without any pain or fear. This experience was so happy spiritually that I felt completely at peace and relaxed; there was nothing on earth that could have disturbed me. But this lasted only for a short time, and then I was changed and I began to act with a sense of loneliness and depression and the futility of life itself, so that I hardly had the patience to continue living. No comfort or relaxation now, just 'faith, hope and love', and truly I felt very little of this. And yet soon after this our blessed Lord gave me once again that comfort, so pleasant and sure, so delightful and powerful, that there was no fear, no sorrow, no pain, physical and spiritual that could bother me. And then again I felt the pain; then the joy and pleasure; now the one and now the other, again and again, I suppose about 20 times. In the time of joy I could have said with S. Paul: Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ; and in my pain I could have said with S. Peter: Save me Lord, I am perishing. This vision was shown to teach me to understand that some souls profit by experiencing this, to be comforted at one time, and at another to be left to themselves. God wishes us to know however that he keeps us safe at all times, in sorrow and in joy."

- Julian of Norwich

"...the need to have continuity from generation to generation...as far as I know, no one has invented a means of handing it on by means of books alone. It's the personal transmission that is most powerful from someone who embodies the message or the experience.  So the Christian tradition is not really in books or doctrine or even dogmas, although these are helpful as pointers.  The Christian tradition is the *experience* that Christ Jesus had of the Father...as the loving presence. ...there needs to be a training or a place you can go or people you can go to who have the experience and can communicate it..."

and

"The problem is that people get stuck in their journey and don't move beyond the external symbols to the mystery they are meant to communicate. So some people resolve that by walking around it, the real secret is to go through them, using them according to the...but moving beyond them and thus being lifted up on the experience of many people so that one can move into this contemplation of life, the contemplative dimension of life.  It is not a rejection of one's tradition, but a moving beyond it, in other words, one's *fulfilling* one's tradition in the most sublime manner as one moves to this common bonding with all spirituality that has reached a certain level of transformation and can transmit that experience without words, since silence is the greatest teacher."

- Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk

(from the video Laura posted on her blog)

The Ascent to Truth

Thomas Merton

I just started reading Thomas Merton's The Ascent to Truth, which is about contemplation and mysticism.  It seems like it will be a really good book for me, as I've been meaning to get into some of the classic writers in the older Christian tradition, and this book seems to introduce them quite well.  He's modeling his discussion mainly after the writings of St. John of the Cross.

In the introduction, he goes into the fact that the biggest danger to Christianity does not come from without, but from within.  It is the preoccupation with the external to the point of exclusion of the interior life.  He points out that concepts cannot contain God, and anyone who is satisfied with knowing God only through concepts does not really know God at all.  Contemplation starts and ends with love.

So far, nothing that I haven't read before, but it is really cool to see him explain and quote people like St. John of the Cross, Blaise Pascal, Gregory of Nyssa, etc etc. 

I'll keep posting about it as I read through it.  I'm looking forward to delving deeper into classic mysticism, and will probably be buying some of their writings the next time I'm at my favorite bookstore.

First and Last Freedom, The

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Read this while reading Krishnamurti's The First and Last Freedom.  It may be of particular interest to Rich.

“Most of us want to see a radical transformation in the social structure.  That is the whole battle that is going on in the world—to bring about a social revolution through communistic or any other means.  Now if there is a social revolution, that is an action with regard to the outer structure of man, however radical that social revolution may be its very nature is static if there is no inward revolution of the individual, no psychological transformation.  Therefore to bring about a society that is constantly alive, it is imperative that there should be a revolution in the psychological structure of the individual, for without inward, psychological revolution, mere transformation of the outer has very little significance.”

Then:

“So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves and to understand the world we must understand ourselves.  The world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world’s problems.  This cannot be repeated too often, because we are sluggish in our mentality that we think the world’s problems are not our business, that they have to be resolved by the United Nations or by substituting new leaders for the old."

“It is not withdrawal from the world, because you cannot live in isolation.  To be is to be related, and there is no such thing as living in isolation.  It is the lack of right relationship that brings about conflicts, misery and strife; however small our world may be, if we can transform our relationship in that narrow world, it will be like a wave extending outward all the time.”

More on knowing yourself:

“To understand oneself there must be the intention to understand—and that is where our difficulty comes in.  Although most of us are discontented, we desire to bring about a sudden change, our discontent is canalized merely to achieve a certain result; being discontented, we either seek a different job or merely succumb to environment.  Discontent, instead of setting us aflame, causing us to question life, the whole process of existence, is canalized and thereby we become mediocre, losing that drive, that intensity to find out the whole significance of existence.”

“One must know oneself as one is, not as one wishes to be which is merely and idea and therefore fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be.”

“If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value.  But to know that one is greedy or violent, to know and understand it, requires an extraordinary perception, does it not?  It demands honesty, clarity of thought, whereas to pursue an ideal away from what is is an escape; it prevents you from discovering and acting directly upon what you are.”

“There is a difference between being virtuous and becoming virtuous.  Being virtuous comes through the understanding of what is, whereas becoming virtuous is postponement, the covering up of what is with what you would like to be.”

“But if we begin to condemn what is, if we begin to blame or resist it, then we shall not understand its movement.  If I want to understand somebody, I cannot condemn him; I must observe, study him.  I must love the very thing I am studying.”

“The difficulty with the majority of us is that we do not know ourselves directly, but seek a system, a method, a means of operation by which to solve the many human problems.”

“Therefore there is no method for self-knowledge.  Seeking a method invariably implies the desire to attain some result—and that is what we all want.  We follow authority—if not that of a person, then that of a system, of an ideology—because we want a result which will be satisfactory, which will give us security.  We really do not want to understand ourselves., our impulses and reactions, the whole process of our thinking, the conscious as well as the unconscious; we would rather pursue a system which assures us of a result.”

So, in summary:

“In order to transform the world about us, with its misery, wars, unemployment, starvation, class divisions and utter confusion, there must be a transformation in ourselves.  The revolution must begin with oneself—but not according to any belief or ideology, because revolution based on an idea, or in conformity to a particular pattern, is obviously no revolution at all.  To bring about a fundamental revolution in oneself, one must understand the whole process of one’s thought and feeling in relationship.  That is the only solution to all our problems—not to have more disciplines, more beliefs, more ideologies and more teachers.  If we can understand ourselves as we are from moment to moment without the process of accumulation, then we shall see how there comes a tranquility that is not a product of the mind, a tranquility that is neither imagined nor cultivated; and only in that state of tranquility can there be creativeness.”