Through the eyes to the listening heart

[Pixabay]

Less theology, ideology, and doctrine?

I ran across this book while reading the introduction to a book on Shinto. It's from Joseph Campbell's book Myths to Live By regarding a Western man asking about Shinto. It would seem to have something to say about how people in the Western cultural traditions treat religion (including the more recently imported, the exotic, and the popular varieties):

"You know," he said, "I've now been to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a number of shrines, but I don't get the ideology; I don't get the theology."

The Japanese (you may know) do not like to disappoint visitors, and this gentleman, polite, apparently respecting the foreign scholar's profound question, paused as though in deep thought, and then, biting his lips, slowly shook his head. "I don't think we have ideology," he said. "We don't have theology. We dance."

That, for me, was the lesson of the congress. What it told me was that in Japan, in the native Shinto religion of the land, where the rites are extremely stately, musical, and imposing, no attempt had been made to reduce their "affect images" to words. They have been left to speak for themselves -- as rites, as works of art -- through the eyes to the listening heart. And that, I would say, is what we, in our own religious rites, had best be doing too. Ask an artist what his picture "means", and you will not soon ask such questions again. Significant images render insights beyond speech, beyond the kinds of meaning speech defines.

Is there room for prayer in modern Buddhism?

[Pixabay]

Why such discomfort with the word "prayer" and activities that would fall under it's domain?

This question comes from a re-post on the Dangerous Harvests blog, and for context it is referring to contemporary (convert) Buddhists in post-enlightenment, post-modern societies whose cultural history doesn't have ancient connections to Buddhism. That would include the societies of nation-states such as the from the Americans, Europe, and so on. More directly it implies the more economically powerful or "developed" nations such as the United States of America.

I read the post last night and composed a comment in response. It had to be divided into two longer comments given the character limit imposed by Blogger. I think the reply was very concise but also very dense, so I decided to sleep on it. I still like the tight and compact form I originally composed, but upon reflection it seemed that there was still a little more that could be said to help clarify what I was getting at, so rather than submitting a three-comment-long response I decided my reaction would work just as well as a full length post here.

What follows is an expansion of  and elaboration on the original comment(s), and it's still pretty tightly packed even with some additional exposition and examples added in. My response is based on roughly ten years of observing convert Buddhists online and in print as well as privately studying various forms of Buddhism, and I don't claim any special titles or expertise in the matter. Nonetheless I hope it may help answer the question that was posed. It also provides another angle to my recent exposition on prayer and provides a kind of follow up to some thoughts on contemporary convert Buddhists and God.

 -------------

Well, your own post suggests a large part of the problem, both in something you identify and in the way you try to parse things. This get's a little long so I had to break it into two comments. [Or transfer it to this post instead.]

Buddhism has historically accepted that what modern post-enlightenment folks think of as the material or physical world is only one facet or angle of a larger reality. Focusing on it exclusively as the only reality was considered to be an error refuted by the Buddha.

Thus, when people from such modern societies speak of spiritual beings or places like the Buddha-fields, including Amitabha's Pure Land, there is often an automatic dichotomy set up between symbolizing something and referring to something "real" (i.e. a being or place technically defined as spiritual or supernatural, but that in a way that still treats it as a physical entity that occupies some other dimension with different laws of existence).

Taking Faith Seriously

[Pixabay]

What does it mean to take faith seriously? Is it important?

Having recently written about notions of spirituality as well as of prayer that are primitive, that is, that precede the specific notions of particular sacred tradition, that I might have something to write about faith. But that one is much harder.

It's not hard to be dismissive of the idea, either through ridicule or through firm devotion to an unexplored and undeveloped notion of faith. Taking faith seriously is a challenge.

There's a ton of material on describing or defining faith on this blog alone. But let's keep it simple. It's a form of trust and anticipation about something or someone that cannot be explained in a strictly rational, logical, or empirically verifiable way.

That isn't to say that there aren't rational, logical, or empirically grounded reasons for faith. There may be plenty. An overabundance. But faith stretches out beyond such standards of verification and prediction. Faith is a risk that one takes, which is why it is sometimes compared to a leap into the unknown.

We all take small risks like that everyday, taking common assumptions for granted. We can call those experiences little leaps of faith if we want, but they don't require nearly as much trust nor do they engender the same level of anticipation as what we're talking about. Having a big leap of faith every so often is also common in human life, but that's not what I'm getting at here either.

In the context of spirituality (and religion), faith is a constant endeavor along a trajectory toward something far greater than oneself, however that may be conceived of or represented. It may also involve regular small leaps as well as bigger ones now and again, but it is part of a larger process or path. As you go along, you may even have to let go of the regularity and familiarity of the process. The path may seem to shift or even to disappear, requiring even greater faith. Dark nights of the senses and the soul.

What is the point of following such a path? Why bother with faith at all?

Why Western Christians Need "No God"

[Pixabay]

What do you think of when someone mentioned the God of the Bible?

A fickle sky deity worshiped by a collection of allied city states from Bronze age Palestine that merged to become the ancient nation of Israel? Perhaps an image of an old white haired sovereign on a celestial throne?

Perhaps you think instead of socially conservative religious leaders and their political allies and the things they say in the name of God. Or various injustices of history committed in the name of God.

If you do think of such things, you are far from alone. But like my unsolicited advice to Western convert Buddhists (1), one can ask what may be obscured by such reactions.

This kind of reaction is something many Christians seem to be at a loss over. Here is one take on that loss.

All human knowledge and experience is mediated through and embedded within symbols and analogies, especially in the shape of metaphors. Knowledge and experience is also mediated by and has embedded within it moral (how things are/how things ought to be) and emotional content. This is all woven together into narratives or stories at the level of individuals, communities, and societies.

We are more likely to trust someone whose narrative has a structure and interpretation lines up with our own in key ways, or with whom we have more intimate social and emotional connections. Its reciprocal. If I trust you, I trust your worldview. If I trust your worldview, I trust you.

Religion offers, among others things, a communal response to the spiritual impulse (seeking connection and purpose through integration into higher orders of structure and meaning) rooted in an existential narrative (a story about why we exist). This narrative takes the forms of myth, a story connecting an ahistorical origin of a people ("Long ago..." "Before the world began...") to a moral vision of the contemporary world -- how the world is, ought to be, and will be.

In many contemporary, industrial, post-Enlightenment societies the symbols and images associated with Christianity, its mythology, and its ritual institutions have become problematic.

For those with little knowledge of the religion itself or of its theology and history, the symbols, images, and references to Biblical and non-Biblical stories of faith hold little meaning except for their association with the most visible aspects of Christianity such as televangelism, homophobic and sexist political tirades, and the sex abuse scandals.

For those with limited but intense exposure, such as people who grew up in a socially conservative and fundamentalist evangelical form of Christianity and abandoned it as ignorant, deceptive, or intolerant, the moral/emotional association with the symbols, images, and stories can be downright toxic.

Then there is the fact that some symbols and images and allusions to Biblical stories are so ubiquitous that the over-exposure dilutes anyone but the loudest/most visible interpretations, feeding into and reinforcing the views already described. Add in that this does not come with the widespread and developed sense of cultural literacy needed to make sense of or engage these ubiquitous elements the social smog surrounding Christianity becomes even thicker.

So is Christianity doomed? What can the Church try that it hasn't pursued already? Jump below the break to find out.

To pray or not to pray

What is prayer and who is it for? Does it matter?

[Pixabay]

I sometimes discuss issues of religion or spirituality on social media with Clark Strand, former senior editor at Tricycle magazine and author of books on Buddhism and how to access underappreciated or misunderstood elements of religious tradition.

While working on a new book, Clark has been posting quite a bit over the past year or so about prayer with an emphasis on the rosary.

Recently he posted that "everything prays" and that "the purpose of life... is life".

I replied that I used to say (here on this blog, actually, in 2006 and again in 2008) that we need to replace "of" with "is" in "the meaning of life."

I also thought that his sentiments resonated with the idea that everything we do is a prayer, so the question becomes not "Should I pray?" but "What am I praying for?"

This raises the question of what we mean when we use the term prayer, and this actually gets back to something I recently wrote about spirituality.

So what is prayer and who it for, anyway?

Am I spiritual?

What does it mean to be spiritual?

I've been sharing a few things over the last week or two that I see when I look at the current terrain in the spiritual landscape, starting with my own  current outlook.

The question I opened with is one that comes up from time to time and is good for taking stock of where you are.

The short answer is that spirituality is recognizing the desire for  connection and integration that is part of our human nature.

Here's a longer and deeper elaboration of what that means.

The aforementioned "recognition" is connected to a larger pattern  found in nature that is characterized by sophisticated communication, it's related meta-domain of encoding (which in humans gives rise to symbolic thinking/the social landscape), and integration in larger, more complex structures.

The processes of information flow, regulation, transformation, and storage that we know as life, forms imperfectly self-replicating loops embodied as structures composed of materials such as organic molecules.

Smaller loops come together and are integrated into simple organisms. New loops are added or expanded and existing loops are integrated to form more complex organisms. This eventually includes us.

These loops of information flow, these eddies and vortexes (or vortices) of information streams, possess qualities which promote novel pathways and interconnections as well as those which reinforce existing pathways and interconnections/resist novelty.

The tension tension between these two tendencies makes life adaptable and is involved in growth, healing, and evolution. It is easier for the tendency for novelty to express itself by expanding into new spaces. On some level though it still benefits from at least some stability from its opposing tendency, which acts as a platform for such expansion.

A disruption -- such as a gap -- in the streams and loops triggers both tendencies. New threads spring from old loops to fill in or work around the disruption. This can lead to new types or levels of organization -- so that the tendency for novelty becomes a creative tendency or impulse.

As the living loops become more complex and woven into larger structures and patterns, this creative impulse becomes more limited in some ways (the more fundamental underlying patterns become fixed) but much more powerful in others, given the larger and more diverse networks of connections upon which it can draw.

At the level where this process subsumes human beings, what we call spirituality emerges. More next time. I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments.

Getting your bearings on the spiritual terrain

Landscape at Saint-Rémy (Enclosed Field with Peasant) early October 1889, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana (F641 ) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Atheism. Agnosticism. Spiritual but not religious-ism. Traditional religion. Reformed religion. Conservative religion.  Liberal religion. New religion. Agnostics who are spiritual but not religious. Religions that claim to be both traditional and liberal. Conservative religions that claim to be reformed. And in the midst of these and so many more options, chilly relations mix with loads of hot air, stirring up currents of thought and emotion that blow over the social landscape and portend more storms on the horizon. That herald further reshaping of how people understand the past and imagine the future.

What is the value of tradition and continuity? What are the risks of new revelations and interpretations? Is it necessary to find the right community with which to practice or the right guide to help you along the path? If so, how do you know which ones are right? How much do you have to study to really appreciate the real value or insights of a particular tradition or community? Is there a "genuine" core of experience and thought at the heart of such a tradition? Is it similar or even the same as the core of other traditions? Or is it better to go it alone when confronting the larger issues of living and of human existence? Is there value in such an examination of our lives, or is it just a waste of time? How can one go beyond just thinking or writing about such traditions, communities, and practices? How does one find and embrace authenticity? How does on really "get it"?

This past April marked the 8th anniversary since the beginning of this blog, my first attempt at blogging (I was hesitant to adopt the platform after seeing the much of the promise of message boards go really wrong). The above issues and questions, I think, reflect some of the stronger or more common underlying considerations for I've blogged about in my attempts to appreciate or understand what people (in post-Enlightment/Western or Western-influenced) societies mean by "spirituality" and "religion". In a way this is consistent with my larger life long interest in learning in general, and in understanding what we know/how we know it in particular.

One of things I've discovered is how many layers of misunderstanding and misuse there are for "spirituality" and "religion" along with related terms, concepts, attitudes, beliefs, rituals (and other practices), myths/narratives, and institutions. We take certain aspects of what we label as spirituality or religion, break them off, and use them to represent the whole range of what the spirituality and religion represent. (Check out this succinct summary of how I tend to see them -- I may need to write a book in order to develop and represent the larger vision of spirituality and religion that the summary and the contents of this blog suggest.)

Having familiarized myself largely with Christianity (beyond the contemporary evangelical fundamentalist perspective) and Buddhism, with smatterings of Taoism, Hinduism, and so on through many years of reading, discussion, debate, and even practice, I am of course in no real position to be telling anyone what to believe or why they ought to believe it. Nor am I any more of an expert than the many people who blog or write the books on the subject that occupy the space in the spirituality and religion section of your local bookstore. But those experiences and access to a blog give me as much of a chance to put my thoughts out there on the topic as anyone, even if there is less chance of those thoughts getting in front of people's eyeballs.

But you also learn from such efforts at trying to understand and describe your own concerns and confusion, as well as the times when you thought you were clever. And that insight can be of use to others who are exploring or who have become stuck while diving into the same issues. That's one reason I leave the blog up even if I haven't posted in nearly a year. And it's something that draws me back in, at whatever frequency, to get and share my bearings on my own journey and to listen to others sharing their own updates. I've been away for a while, which always helps with perspective.

Over the next week or two I'll be sharing a little of what the spiritual terrain looks to me at the moment if I take the time to stop to look around. I'd love it if you shared some of your own perspective as well. There's plenty of room in the comment area! ;o)

Creative academic type still looking for work

I Need You on the Job Every Day - NARA - 534704 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wish I had the time for the things I want to share here, but I'm still looking for opportunities for gainful employment utilizing my skills and background. This has become a more and more challenging task for many people of all education levels, training, and skill sets. It's also true for those whose talents include the cultivation of the mind, exploration of ideas, teaching, and writing in an accessible way about complex topics that cross multiple disciplines.

It may be the case that those who are more educated as a group have better odds for employment than less educated people as a group, but when you break it down by type of degree, subject, where you went to school, the field in which you are seeking to work, your social networks and connections, and similar factors, the picture changes. The same is true for those in trades who do not have undergraduate or advanced degrees.

Nor does it reduce to what is beneficial to society, for surely people who have the drive and capacity to earn such degrees and who have talents of synthesis and insight beyond strict specialization have much to offer in a rapidly changing world that can seem confusing and threatening. Much of the current employment landscape has been shaped by powerful industries in an increasing unregulated set of markets chasing a goal of maximizing short term profits.

Many of the old patterns and rules of business are no longer reliable, nor is the public commitment to supporting higher education and other instruments for cultivating the values and ideas necessary for the welfare of society. This is happening at the same time as the losses of manufacturing jobs over the past few decades are being followed by budget cuts for public sector jobs related to education, public health and safety, and the growth and maintenance of infrastructure. In other words, the unemployment and underemployment epidemic isn't just affecting limited groups of types or work.

You can find out more about my own background and interests on this little page to see if there is a position or opportunity you know about that might be a good match for me. If you aren't sure if it would be a good fit, don't hesitate to ask. The same link is also available at the top of the blog. My sympathies go out to others who are under or unemployed and struggling to find their way. I wish you well. And for all who wish to help, thanks for your kindness and generosity.

Seeking more than humanist religion or spiritual atheism

English: Happy human Humanist logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This post is composed of an attempt to reply to this comment from a thoughtful reader responding to my recent critique of the UUA. After putting my own comment(s) up in response, it seemed clear it would work better as a new stand-alone essay. I have previously written about secularism and humanism (including a follow-up) and why I am not anti-religious,  but this seemed like a good opportunity to update and expand on such themes given that he generously offered a link to one of his sermons about atheist spirituality and morality.

Over a decade ago I am certain I sounded very much like him as I was transitioning from an anti-religious atheist to a slightly more open-minded non-theist. Things have changed a bit since then, but I can appreciate where he is coming from. (All subsequent links are to things written on this blog but in no particular order, and my original comments upon which this post is based have been edited slightly for clarity.)

Here is my response:

Hello Michael and thank you for your reply and the link about your thoughts on morality and spiritual atheism. It is true that if one has certain beliefs about God or religion, then shedding the outer shell of those beliefs can seem like a major release and give a sense of liberation.

Breaking out of one paradigm and worldview involves adopting another, but often at a deeper level things are still framed in the (ontological) categories of the old assumptions. Atheism is predicated on the assumptions of particular forms of religious theism, and thus sets itself in opposition to that which is seen as crucial to religion, sometimes in an aggressively dismissive or derisive way. When embracing atheism some people come to see mocking the view of others on ultimate questions as acceptable and humorous by claiming whole belief systems are unworthy of respect because of the claims or actions of some of its adherents.

From the perspective of psychology and the sociology of deviance, this can be seen at least partly as a defense mechanism against perceived rejection or hostility. Shouting matches posing as debates erupt over conceptions of perspectives such as materialism and supernaturalism. Exploring topics of spirituality and religion can become an exercise in provoking a reactive volatility to particular ideas or an outbreak of a semantic allergy toward certain words that hinder any real dialogue or insight. Little progress is made in such circumstances.

This environment hinders thoughtful and extended reflection on important questions: Is there meaning to existence? Can there be such meaning without God? Is God an inferior or superior hypothesis to be accepted or rejected as such? Does it make sense to believe in God? Why is there something rather than nothing? Is God a person or just a vague cosmic force? Should we rely on God or the self? Is some outside force going to save us? 

And now a few words from Bruce Lee

Does the path begin with "me" or "we"?

Contemplation (Photo credit: Susan Hall Frazier)

No, I'm not answering the question. It's for you.

In the Summer 2012 issue of Tricycle magazine Fleet Maull ponders:

Conventional contemplative wisdom states clearly that the path begins with ourselves, that we have to do our own work of cultivating mindfulness and awareness. We are told that we need to make friends with ourselves and develop loving-kindness and compassion before venturing very far into the sphere of bodhisattva activity or engaged spirituality. But what if this is an unnecessarily limited or even mistaken view? What if the path actually begins with us, the collective us, with interbeing, as Vietnamese peace activist and Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn teaches? What if the paths to both genuine liberation and collective awakening are inseparable and best informed by a social view of spirituality from the beginning?

He does not give an answer. I have no idea how we would actually answer any of these questions. How would you answer them?

The thoughts that initially occurred to me centered on the fact that the traditional teachings of contemplative wisdom were framed in historical and cultural context in which the hyper-individualism of many industrialized nation states, particularly the modern United States, was practically unknown.

The basic precepts of Abrahamic and Dharmic teachings (along with other major and minor religious paradigms), which are heavy on ethics, charity, and introspection, would have assumed a more intimate and collectivistic sense of identity and associated relationships. These basic precepts and the teachings in which they were grounded would have been expected then to be worked out in close relationship to others. In fact, virtually all of them must be worked out in relationship to others. You cannot cultivate (or discover) qualities such as mindfulness, loving-kindness, and compassion in a social vacuum.

In that sense, the work one is supposed to do for herself through an exploration of her inner landscape is directly connected to her perceptions of and behaviors in her outer landscape.

Smashing Idols With Pat Robertson

In this video clip televangelist Pat Robertson advocates for vandalism and destruction of property regarding a viewer's friend and her Buddha statue:



While I have no intention of labeling Mr. Robertson an idolator, this clip reminds me of something I wrote not too long ago--

You sometimes hear people warn against chasing after false idols, or being idolatrous, and the like. Yet idolatry is limiting the divine to a particular form and raising up that form as an icon of exclusion and ultimately intolerance. The idols become overly elaborate and demanding, serving to reinforce the existing views and prejudices of their creators. Those who can only see the divine in their own holy symbols, which they then guard jealously, are the actual idolaters.

I do think that the concept of idolatry has its uses, but it should be used cautiously and with a good dose of introspection and humility. Idolatry is a kind of hardening of the mental arteries as well as of the heart. It leads to a kind of choking, a lack of flow.

More on the value of the absurd in belief

Post Surreal Configuration, oil on canvas, 1939 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Originally posted on two months ago as a comment at Real Life with Ryuei (for full context visit the link).

I am wary of any “hardwired” argument for highly complex and interactive sets of behavior given the discovery of the extensiveness of neuroplasticity and the hierarchical nature of developmental regulation. Highly reproducible and even impelled complex behavior to a limited degree within the proper genetic, hormonal, anatomical, ecological and social contexts? Perhaps. Indeed, it appears that indeed some experiences which are essential for compassion, such as empathy, are either enabled, encouraged, or generated by evolved neural architecture that allow and direct us to read the body language and vocalizations of others and mimic their projected feelings. But the hard problem of consciousness remains. Does the brain generate consciousness and its attributes or focus it in an ephemeral localized expression? For all of our metaphysical and scientific investigations, a definitive answer in analytical, reductive terms remains elusive.

Yet whatever the answer to hard problem, there is also the question of why it should be that nature would produce creatures with conscious awareness or why consciousness should exist at all. In neither case do I refer to structural or adaptive arguments about origin or persistence of a trait (“consciousness is the result of the confluence of the following neurological processes which became interconnected when…” or “consciousness has the following functions that enhance inclusive fitness…”). There are even arguments that consciousness is just a sloppy shorthand for an apparent coherence to brain function that doesn’t really exist and is instead a mirage. But I am thinking here of why consciousness, whatever it is or isn’t, should exist at all in the realm of possibility.
The problem with popular depictions of mysticism is that it is often associated with a “left-brained” literalism applied to the poetic/metaphoric nature of supernatural and religious imagery, which are intended to point to that which is beyond the capacity of the rational mind grasp except in a distorted and partial glimpse. The mystical becomes tied up with buffoonish characterizations of magical thinking and the kind of dreadful superstition born of flat imagination and a desire to control the unknown and the unknowable.

It strikes me that a more genuine and useful mysticism would, in fact, be rooted in forms of consciousness which do not limit themselves to such a piecemeal approach but facilitate what is sometimes referred to as a more unitive state. This need not be assumed to be either a superior or inferior form of awareness, but perhaps simply a different way to process information and engender perception. That is, whether deep meditation merely takes us to the root of the neural processes generating conscious awareness and our most rudimentary perceptions/distinctions/valuations or whether it is pointing to a non-localized consciousness that precedes material existence, it is still taking us to the ground of being or the root of “form” (where “form” is phenomenological prior to an ontological theory of its nature or origin).

The value of the profound in the absurd

Poetry (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Originally written February 26th, 2010

Have you ever wondered why so many supposedly deep insights have an element of wackiness to them?

Any good religious or spiritual insight (and to some degree any truly profound paradigm shift in science as well) has to contain the absurd.

Ponder that.

It has to defy the logical, analytical style of comprehension, to point to that which beyond such forms of understanding. It creates the necessary space for a new way of seeing the world beyond the safe boundaries that other parts of the mind wish to create and reinforce.

Anything outside of a closed system will appear odd or absurd or even impossible from within that system. It is not captured or explained by the current set of rules and expectations in place, and so when encountering or considering such novel phenomena using available "left-brain" conceptualizations and terminology to try to grasp or contain them can create a confusing and contradictory riddle instead of a stunning new insight.

Pioneers in expanding our view of the nature of existence, of its substance and value, initially seem to be speaking and thinking incoherently because there is no common experience of their vision and no vehicle to readily make this new vision available to others.

This is where the artist comes in to play.

Will Christianity rediscover its relevance in the West?

A cross close to the church in Grense Jakobselv, Norway. Suomi: Risti kirkon lähellä Vuoremijoella, Norjassa. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Will Christianity rediscover its relevance in the West? While Christianity is growing in many parts of the non-Western world, it continues to age and shrink in the West while becoming seen as less credible and relevant. Yet in the United States, people are not simply rejecting anything and everything to do with either religion or spirituality. Some are turning to other traditions, such as Buddhism,while many are identifying as "spiritual but not religious". While some do refer to themselves as atheist or agnostic, not everyone who adopts such labels are hostile to religious and spiritual things.

This suggests that many folks who are abandoning or rejecting Christianity (the latter never having embraced it to begin with) are not simply "turning away from God", especially in the broad sense of God as some greater meaning to existence, a transcendent or higher power, or some deep inner light that cannot be explained or contained. They are specifically turning away from the contemporary Christian presentation of God. They are turning away from the social and political agenda associated in the popular consciousness with Christianity, especially when it involves shunning or shaming the poor, ethnic and religious minorities, homosexuals, and others who are marginalized and disenfranchised by society.

The confluence of cultural, social, economic, political, and historical factors that are involved in this transition are too complex to be mapped out and dealt with in detail here. I am going to focus on something that stands out to me, but I don't claim it is the only issue or the most important one when it comes to the decline of Christianity in the West. Yet I do think if it is taken seriously it could not only resonate in this age but actually help Christianity to remember itself. To move toward a reawakening. 

Left Brain, Right Brain -- Doubt and Opening the Heart

Image via Wikipedia

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have no sense of "depth" to reality beyond the general appearance of phenomena? This depth is sometimes referred to spirituality, or a sense of the numinous, or by some similar terminology, including cosmic awareness or mysticism or transcendent consciousness.


Those who work in the religion of psychology, a field I confess to not being well acquainted with, have as I understand it tried to come up with scales and measures based on self-reporting and self-scoring of experiences which are associated culturally with transcendent phenomena, including what are known as peak experiences, and the effects of those who have such experiences. Ralph Hood at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga and his M-scale come to mind.

There are also students of the brain such as Andrew Newberg who have tried to identify the neurological structures and processes related to such experiences, not to mention the accounts of trained neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor and her shift in consciousness after having a stroke. Dr. Taylor's stroke impaired activity on the left side of her brain, in particular the areas that discriminate and label experience as a part of our capacity for language.

While none of the work or insights by these and other researchers has come to any firm conclusions about the nature of the spiritual experience, and while the left-brain vs. right-brain dichotomy may be over-generalized, over-exploited, and potentially misleading, there does seem to be evidence for distinct ways of shaping conscious experience corresponding to neural process and structure.

And this does match some accounts by contemplatives and mystics about the nature of transcendent consciousness. Not only does this have the potential to validate the experiences of such spiritually oriented people as healthy brain function rather than delusion, it may also help shed light on why some people seem to have difficulty in recognizing, generating, or maintaining such states.

Spiritual suspension of disbelief

Image by janoimagine via FlickrSo, what do you do if you are trying to find, reconcile your problems with, increase the depth of your spiritual path? There are many possible answers, and no one can list or describe them all.

However, a major stumbling block is the suspension of disbelief.

When you read a novel, attend a play, or watch a television program or a movie, even when playing some video games, part of you agrees to react as if it were really happening. If you are unable to suspend your disbelief even a little, then the program can become tedious--perhaps straying into boredom, annoyance or frustration.

This can also be an obstacle when you are trying to search out the meaning and insights of a sacred tradition, and in fact, it can snuff out any chance of really appreciating that tradition or its wisdom before you've even really started exploring it. In that situation your future efforts have already been sabotaged and the pattern of your expectations has already been set.

For example.

Which spiritual path is best?

Image via Wikipedia

There is no right or wrong path in life. 

Yeah, it probably wasn't what you were expecting to read. And you may disagree. And you may be right.

But let's consider the notion for a moment that there is no right or wrong path just to see what comes of it.

It doesn't mean choices are essentially irrelevant, or that there is no right or wrong in choice. It tells us exactly the opposite. Choice is everything. If we have handled one moment badly, we have, and we must face what comes of that. But more urgently we are called to focus on what to do next. Now. To open our hearts and find the courage to change direction if necessary to move toward that which is kind, generous, accepting and merciful. To shed our scripts about who we are supposed to be, our shells, and be naked before our own being, before Being itself.

It is in this way that we are born again. It is this way we walk with the spirit of God. It is in this way we recognize that samsara is nirvana. It is in this way we see the Kingdom of God in ourselves and the face of God in neighbors. This is the path of no path. This is the the beginning and the end of the spiritual journey. It is where the prophets, Jesus and the saints walk. It is the way of Lao Tsu and the Buddha.  It is always before you no matter which way you turn.   

Remove your shoes. Every step in on holy ground.

Burn me, a wretch, O God, with undying fire

Image by SearchNetMedia via FlickrHaha, catchy title isn't it?  Let me explain.

Something occurred to me randomly long after writing and scheduling a previous post, a kind of extension, but it was too long to add to that post.  It had to do with things like prayers which we find ineffective or offensive or both.

The premise is simple: Why is it that people can outgrow a particular view of religion and still find prayers or other practices that seem to reinforce that older view worthwhile and useable? What about the contradiction?

So I thought it, "Let's pick a facetious prayer, completely fabricated, such as: God, I am a worthless piece of excrement. Let your judgment burn me like hot coals."

Is the medium ever the message in spirituality?

Image by jimforest via FlickrHave you ever visited a shrine or a temple or cathedral, maybe a synagogue or a mosque, and felt a vital energy and a connection to something ancient and mysterious?

Maybe you've had the experience around monasteries or monastic individuals, or when contemplating a statue or icon. Perhaps around something similar, such as an undisturbed and majestic natural space?

One way to look at it is that something in your own experience of being has resonated with something in these forms giving a sense of connection. But what then? Where does that feeling or experience take us and what do we make of it?