01

If you haven't read yesterday's post
on the Stages of Spiritual Development,
today's post refers to that, 
so you might check it out when that is convenient.

Nowhere in my experience has there been a group
centered on spirituality
that devotes itself 
to helping people move through
the Stages of Spiritual Development.

Certain types of Yoga practice
make the Chakras the central focus
of their work,
and teach how to harmonize our body
with the energy centers in the body--
and it may be that the physical route
is the only way to spiritual reality.

That makes more sense 
than thinking that thinking
can somehow be the way of engaging
the process of spiritual development.

Spiritual reality is evoked, not thought.
It is not brought forth by reason and logic.
We do no grow spiritually by memorizing
the steps to spiritual development
and consciously adapting ourselves 
to the proper sequence of concepts.

We can think of "Oneness" all our life
without ever experiencing the wonder
of being one with all things.

We can believe all we want to
about anything we are told to believe,
but all our believing cannot conjure up
one little taste of Being Grabbed!

It is the Being Grabbed that comes out of nowhere,
when we are not even thinking about it
and hurls us into some life,
into some adventure
we would have never thought up
as something we would enjoy doing.

It is the Being Grabbed that moves us through 
the stages of spiritual development. 
Yesterday we were thinking like that
and today we are thinking like this,
and we did not think our way into 
thinking differently.

We were propelled into thinking differently.
Our entire world has changed.

We need systems or structures 
that can prepare us to leave our faith
for an experience with the Source of Life and Being.
But how do we structure the unstructured?
Maybe through Yoga,
maybe through engaging silence in a regular way.
Maybe by being told to seek the Source 
of our own Original Nature.
Maybe by talking with people who know
what they are talking about,
who speak out of their own experience of Being Grabbed.
Maybe by talking with artists and poets,
and dancers and musicians.
Or chefs and potters.

Maybe we just start making inquiries on our own,
asking people to tell us about their experience
with Being Grabbed.

I know we cannot for settle for thinking about spirituality
and think we are doing anything thereby.

The Stages of Spiritual Development

The Old Yogis/Hindus/Buddhists
held there to be seven stages of spiritual development.

Stage 1 is Living Without Being Alive.

Jesus advised leaving the dead to bury the dead.
The people at this stage are dragons (Joseph Campbell),
Dragging themselves around.
They are just hanging out,
barely making it through each day,
breathing but with no zeal for life.

Stage 2 is Coming To Life Through Sexual Desire.

The Dirty Old Men we know
have been at Stage 2 all their lives long.
Stage 2 is the stage of clueless delight,
but with a faint-just-beyond-awareness-sense
of the godliness present within The Magical Other.
At this stage,
everything revolves around sex
and the sexual orientation.

Stage 3 is the Buy/Spend/Amass-and-Consume stage.

Money, privilege, power and control
are the driving forces here.
The will to dominate,
to have dominion,
to be the richest person in the world.
Money for the sheer joy of money
dominates,
controls,
consumes people at this stage.

This is also the stage of churches,
denominations
and non-denominations.
High-steeple churches
and mega churches.
Debates about whose God is the Real God,
Bible studies
and doctrinal standards.
The flexing of spiritual muscles
and showing off for the flock.

Stage 4 is the Awakening of the Heart.

Carl Jung said, "There is within each of us,
another whom we do not know."
We tune into The Ten Million Year Old Self within
at Stage 4.
We become aware
of "The sound not heard
beyond the range of reason
and causality."
We sense there is more to us,
and to everything,
than meets the eye.

Stage 5 is Getting To The Bottom Of Things.

We take up the Quest to see what we look at,
to ask the questions that beg to be asked,
and to say the things that cry out to be said,
and seek the Source of our own nature and being.
We look past appearances to their origin,
and say, "Oh wow!" a lot.

Stage 6 is The Realization of the Inner Eye and Ear

We behold the ineffable radiance
of the divine in all things.
and are regularly being "arrested"
by the experience of oneness with
life and beauty on all levels,
take up the practice of hearing what is being said
beyond words,
and grasp the meaning of:
"The path that can be designated 'The Path,'
is not a reliable path."

Stage 7 is where we "Leave God for God" (Meister Eckhart).

Here we move beyond theology/doctrine/dogma/beliefs/creeds,
past ideas of God,
and into the realized presence of more than words can say.
We move beyond duality into oneness with
That Which Has Always Been Called God.
We live "transparent to transcendence" (Joseph Campbell),
in a "Thou Art That And Nothing More Needs To Be Said" kind of way.

As we consider these stages,
it becomes apparent that meaning changes
through each stage.
What is important varies from stage to stage.
How we think changes.
We become a different person.
The symbols that work on us are different
at each stage.
How we perceive God evolves through the stages.
Life becomes deeper, richer.
The adventure of being alive sweeps us up
and carries us along paths different
from the ones we thought we would be traveling.
And each day has its own joy
just as each stage has its own place in our life.

01

The Presbyterian Women of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
participated in a Re-Imagining Conference 
in Minneapolis, November 4 - 7, 1993.
The Conference called for addressing 
injustices to women world-wide
and promoting equal leadership with men
throughout all phases of religious experience and expression.
It emphasized the fundamental need
of Re-Imagining God and Christian theology
to get past male-centered language, imagery and authority,
and referenced Sophia as the Old Testament personification of wisdom.

It was bold and beautiful,
and swiftly laid aside 
by the General Assembly of the PCUSA meeting in June, 1994,
saying the Conference 
"went beyond the boundaries" of Reformed theology.

With that judgment,
the chances for a new vision for the church
were formally laid to rest. 

Formerly laid to rest.
They are presently stirring to life.

The Status Quo is crumbling beneath our very feet.
We always grow up against our will,
or not--
and are now faced with re-imagining God
or being forever arrested in our development
and never knowing what might have been
if we had only been more courageous and imaginative.

Re-imagining God is re-imagining the Church
is re-imagining the People
is re-imagining ourselves,
is reinventing ourselves,
is making all things new.

By "turning the light around."

"Turning the light around,"
is an Old Taoist phrase
that became an Old Zen phrase
(Zen is what happened
when Taoism met Buddhism),
that continues to be the crux of the matter
in every awakening/re-imagining/reinventing experience.
We do not wake up
without turning the light around.

When we turn the light around,
we look within.
We examine ourselves.
We explore ourselves.
We seek ourselves.

The Old Taoists/Zenists would ask us,
"What is the face that was yours
before your parents (or grandparents)
were born?"

They would be asking,
"What is your Original Nature?"

It all starts with,
and flows from,
our aligning ourselves with--
living in accord with--
as servants of--
our Original Nature.

Who we were born to be.

It is the Story of Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden.
Which is also the Story of Jesus of Nazareth
in the Garden of Gethsemane.

It is our story.

It is the story of who we are,
and who we were born to be,
and how do we--
here and now--
at this point in our life--
re-imagine ourselves
to be more like we were born to be
and less like we have become.

By turning the light around.

All it takes is, at once,
the hardest possible thing,
and the simplest imaginable thing.
We are never more than one slight
perspective shift
from the Kingdom of Heaven.

The distance of the Hero's Journey
(Which is also called "The Spiritual Journey,"
which is also called "Growing Up")
is the distance from the left side of our brain
to the right side of our brain.
Or, it is the distance from our head to our heart.

We don't have to go on some long pilgrimage.
We don't have to cross the oceans,
or crawl forever on our knees across burning deserts.
We only have to change our mind
about what's important.

(Sin is only being wrong about what is important.
Salvation/realization/enlightenment/redemption
is being right about what is important.
Changing our mind is how we get there--
by re-imagining what is important.
By turning the light around.)

It is hell.
The distance between the Garden of Eden
and the Garden of Gethsemane
is hell.
What would you go to hell for?
It is like dying.
What would you die for?

Would you go to hell
before you would dare to re-imagine God?

If so, you do not have what it takes
to turn the light around.

If re-imagining God
would be worse for you
than going to hell,
you do not have what it takes
to do the work of re-imagining God--
of re-imagining yourself--
of being different than you are.

Forget the face that was yours
before you were born.
You have become who you are,
and that is all you will ever be.
Dead, Jesus called it.
"Leave the dead to bury the dead,"
he said.
He raised the dead,
but he couldn't do anything 
with those who refused to change their minds.
They were deader than dead.
Nothing can be done for people like that.

How free are we to re-imagine God,
the Church,
ourselves?
How different can we allow God to be?

Do we have what it takes for the journey
from the left side of our brain
to the right side?
Do we have what it takes to 
turn the light around?

We are all with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Will we die to our old way of life 
(Of thinking)
and take a chance on being resurrected on the third day?
Will we change our mind about what is important?
Will we live or will we die?
What kind of life will we live?
What kind of death will we die?

The time is at hand.
What will we do?

01

Jesus needed redemption as much as any of us.
The theology that contradicts this
was invented by the Church of the Holy Roman Empire
to pave its way through the ages
(With the Council of Nicaea in 325), 
and the way of all the spin-off churches
who saw what a deal the Roman Catholic Church
had going for it
and decided to get in on the action themselves
(With the Reformation in 1715).

The Church of the Holy Roman Empire
wrote/compiled the New Testament
to shore up its case
for holding the keys to the kingdom. 
That is like unto having lobbyists write the Constitution.
And here we are.
With them saying "God said!"
And me saying, "You say 'God said'!"

My side of it is to say Jesus is one of us. 
And needed redemption just like all of us.
Redemption is getting back on track,
on the beam,
on The Way,
with our life.
It has nothing to do with believing,
or having faith, in Jesus.
It strictly has to do with being who Jesus was, though,
in the sense of living out of his own feel
for what needed to be done
in each situation as it arose. 

Jesus didn't do anything like it was supposed to be done.
He did everything the way it needed to be done.
He listened to the situation as it unfolded before him,
tuning into what was being called for,
situation-by-situation,
and he responded to that,
never-minding what anybody thought or said.

That's the kind of living that redeems us
by getting us back on course with our life
in listening to our life and the circumstances of our living,
and doing what is called for moment-by-moment,
with no contriving,
positioning,
scheming,
conniving,
arranging what we think is our best possible future
serving our best possible advantage forever.

Jesus didn't care about his future.
He cared about each moment and what that moment needed.
He lived to do what needed to be done
in the time and place it needed doing.

This is redemptive.
This will put us back in our life together
with That Which Has Always Been Called God.
Nothing else will.

When Jesus said,
"I am the way,
the truth
and the life,
and no one comes to the Father 
but by me,"
The Church tells us we have to believe in Jesus,
have faith in Jesus.
 
Jesus meant we have to believe in us,
have faith in ourselves,
and live our life in response to what is being called for
in each situation that comes along.

He was saying, "You have to do it the way I am doing it!"

Jesus also said,
"Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?"
He decided for himself
what was being called for,
and he called us to decide for ourselves
what is being called for.
Time will tell if we are right about it,
and we will get better at telling what time it is,
or what it is time for,
in situations as they come along.
It only takes practice in reading the moment
to know what it is time for,
to know what is being asked for.
When we do it,
it is redemptive.

But, you see what the problem is.
Where does the Church fit into this scenario? 
Who needs the Church to tell us what to do?
Jesus was a radical kind of fellow
with his anti-church talk,
and the church of his day--
the Temple and the priesthood--
had him crucified.

But there is a place for the church 
in any age.
A different kind of church,
teaching people to think about God
in a different kind of way--
in ways that have nothing to do with theology,
but with living aligned with the life
that needs us to live it,
here and now.

This kind of church would tell us
that we live our way into knowing God, 
we don't believe our way there.
And it would teach us how to listen to our lives
and recognize the path that is opening before us
moment-to-moment.

We are living our way toward that kind of church
right now,
and The Church of What's Happening Now
is an example of what it looks like.

There were churches like this on every corner
in the world before the Council of Nicaea in 325.
It has taken all these years to get back 
to where things were then,
but the time has come around again.
And here we are!

The Sermon on the Mount,
the Parable of the Prodigal Son,
the Parable of the Good Samaritan, 
and the bit about
"Inasmuchas you have done it (or not done it)
to the least of my brothers and sisters,
you have done it (or not done it) unto me,"
are all you need to know about Jesus.

They are all you need to know
about how to live your life 
in relationship with other people.

They are all the Bible you need.

They are all the religion you need.

They are Jesus without the theology
(doctrine, dogma, creeds, beliefs).
All of which were inventions of the church
to keep the church going--
and it has kept going very well--
which began with the Council of Nicaea in 325
consolidating the Church of the Holy Roman Empire,
initiating the persecutions
and the burnings at the stake
that created Christian Theology,
the Virgin Birth, Sin, Redemption, Heaven and Hell
and all the rest.

The Church is the Church of Oppression.
It is the Church of the Oppressors.
It is the polar extreme of who Jesus was
and what Jesus was about--
"breaking down the dividing walls
and making us all one."

Oneness is what we are to be about.

Ours is the middle way
between the way on the right
and the way on the left.
Between Yin and Yang.
Between the dualities of consciousness
and lived reality.

We are to integrate the opposites,
dance with the contradictions,
embrace the dichotomies,
and bear the pain of it all
in bringing it together,
incarnating/expressing/exhibiting
"Thou Art That"
in our way with ourselves,
each other,
and all things,
and living our way into the Mystery
of the Union
at the Heart of Life and Being,
by living "This, too! This, Too!"
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.

Starting right here
right now.