Wisdom Christianity: Transforming Human Consciousness 

Gary Steele

As we learn more about other religious traditions, we discover that there is a common wisdom at the heart of each…

 

Most of us know the story by heart. There is a God who sent his only son down to earth, being born of a virgin girl. She named him Yeshua, or “Jesus” to us Westerners, which means: God saves. Jesus dies a horrible death on the cross to save us from an inherited sin or deficit that only his death can rectify. Having paid this debt, he is raised to New Life on the third day and ascends to Heaven to sit at his Father’s side and judge the living and the dead. This was all God’s plan from the very beginning of the world.

 

We can receive the benefit of Jesus’ death for us by believing this story about Jesus. If we believe these things and either ask Jesus into our hearts to be our personal savior, or belong to the church and observe certain sacraments—and live a good life—we will go to Heaven when we die. This is our salvation. Those who don’t do these things will spend eternity in Hell—otherwise known as damnation. This dualistic view of good and evil, reward and punishment, has often been wrapped in a thick cloak of shame and guilt.

 

For the past 1600 years, this has been the main Christian story in the Western world. As it turns out, however, it is not the only story about Jesus. For the first 200 years or so following the death of Jesus of Nazareth (and continuing to this day particularly in Near Eastern and Eastern Christian traditions), there was another understanding about Jesus. This was the understanding that Jesus was a wisdom teacher who had discovered the Divine “I Am-ness” within his humanity. He had become “one person.” To speak in contemporary terms, he had transcended the false self—the fortified ego that is necessary for surviving in a harsh world—and found his one true Self, which we refer to as God.

 

Like all wisdom teachers, Jesus taught in parables. These are not moral stories like Aesop’s fables, but have more in common with Zen koans. They are designed to illuminate by “blowing ones’ mind”—moving us beyond rational thought and our assumed ways of seeing things to apprehend deeper realities and perspectives. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God is an interior reality: “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” And when he said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it will not bear fruit …” he was talking not only about himself, but about us as well. The path to the level of consciousness he had experienced is the path of dying to the false self and being resurrected into new and higher consciousness.

 

The very first followers of Yeshua of Nazareth did not have much to believe about him. There were no creeds, no doctrines, and no theological statements of belief. Somehow, Christianity spread in the first few hundred years, for the most part, without all these things. What the early disciples had was an experiential belief in Jesus. They had met him and their lives had been transformed by knowing Christ. They sought to have this same mind inside themselves. They, too, could know the Divine “I Am-ness” within their humanity. They, too, could die to their false selves to know their own true Self as one in God, or All That Is.

 

This story about Jesus is being rediscovered today. As our world shrinks, we realize that the Western way of being Christian is not the only way. As we learn more about other religious traditions, we discover that there is a common wisdom at the heart of each—whether that tradition is Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or Christianity. Archeological discoveries of the last century have brought to light other ancient manuscripts that seem to have also been revered as scripture by certain Christian groups. Scientific methods have given us new tools to read anew and understand these and the previously accepted written sources of Christian teaching.

 

We can also see the lineage of the Wisdom Tradition within Western Christianity. From St. John the Divine, one of Jesus’ first followers and the Jewish Rabbi Yeshua to mystics and theologians such as St. Francis, Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich, there flows an ever growing stream of wisdom throughout this tradition. More recently, the tradition has been continued by people like Evelyn Underhill , Thomas Merton, Basil Pennington, Matthew Fox, Fr. Thomas Keating and Cynthia Bourgeault in the liturgical traditions.

 

Of course, all this is not to say that Salvation Christianity is an incorrect way to understand the “Christ event.” Indeed, all the major religious traditions have a Salvation Tradition within them. It is a conventional approach based on rules or laws that enables one to transcend superstitious, magical beliefs and structures that can torment a person with fear until they grow beyond them. That is, it moves us from a Magical worldview in which the gods and spirits must be appeased and pleased in ways to protect and benefit the individual to a Traditional worldview, where God need not be feared but can be counted on to help, heal and save the people within the group. Salvation Traditions lay the basis for moral and ethical behavior and the ability to live together in larger groups as populations grow. They move an individual beyond egocentrism to ethnocentrism. And, they provide a hopeful view of death.

 

What the Wisdom Way shows us, however, is that there is more. There is more than just a system of belief, for there is a way to “put on” the mind of Christ and experience the mystery of the Incarnation—that God, indeed, lives in human form—yours and mine. As early Church Father Athanasius observed: “God became human, so that humans could become Divine.” In this sense, the Wisdom Way is the path to our One True Self.

 

There are other traditions whose teachings and practices lead in the same direction: Buddhism, Hinduism, Kaballah, Sufism, etc. We are fortunate today to be able to access and learn from all these ancient paths. For those of us raised in the Christian Tradition, it is good to know that there is also a path to be followed in the language and stories of our childhoods. We need only listen to them from a deeper, more mature perspective. Through the capacities of the heart-mind, many of us have discovered and explored this perspective not only through our own religious practices, but also, perhaps, from other traditions.

 

The reality discovered is the oneness of All That Is. As Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” And then he prayed that all who followed him would know this same oneness themselves. Wisdom Christianity shows the way. 

Gary Steele is a life-long Alaskan and Episcopal priest who practices and teaches Wisdom Christianity. He can be reached at garysteele@ak.net

Logos and Mythos: The Blessings of Progress and Purpose

Bruce Bibee

 

Mythos and logos, revelation and reason, are two separate spheres of knowledge… each carries a blessing from the Creator.

 

Politics are in the domain of logos. The politician must be forward-focused, pragmatic, open to compromise, and provide order to society. By contrast, metaphorical vision, the inner battles against evil and the triumph of righteousness are in the domain of mythos. When one manufactures political policies based on mythos, disaster follows.

 

This is so because myth directs our attention back to our roots. Myth gives context, meaning and continuity for our lives. Mythos is a statement of timeless truth; whereas, logos is a plain statement of empirical fact. Myth, therefore, is not a vehicle for political change. When myth is harnessed for this alien activity—in other words, when tradition (mythos) overrules innovation (logos)—a ‘dark age’ is the result.

 

Fundamentalism, in all its religious forms, embraces the agenda of politicizing myth. The absurdity of this is analogous to building a house using poetry as the blueprint. Poetry is allegory and metaphor pointing us to deeper truths—ones which refuse the normal containment of reason and language.

 

When Christ’s return is viewed as a mythological necessity, it makes sense. When Christians, in other words, create the global conditions of peace, harmony, balance, universal justice, and loving-kindness, Christ returns in triumph, for the archetypal goal of Christianity has been achieved. This view is in radical contrast to the fundamentalist view where Christ’s return is (as was his crucifixion) a codependent rescue of humanity (especially, the elite).

 

In Genesis, to carry this idea forward, we read of God’s deliberate actions to separate dark from light, earth from water, and so on. There was a progressive refining through separation until the final one wherein God’s spirit became encased in mud-made-flesh. As poetry, this story holds profound messages. As literal history, it’s absurd. Just where, to point to one glaring logical inconsistency, did the darkness come from wherein God spoke, “Let there be Light”? Literalists have a hard time explaining the existence of the pleroma, which coexisted with God somehow. But as poetry, Kabbalists tell us this pre-existing ‘darkness’ was created by God withdrawing himself from that ‘place.’ Into his withdrawn presence, a singularity was produced within which he created dichotomy—the primal Yin and Yang from which came the ‘ten thousand things’ (as the Taoists call it).

 

One such dichotomy is mythos and logos. Mythos and logos, revelation and reason, are two separate spheres of knowledge. Each carries with it a blessing from the Creator.

 

Logos has us looking forward, testing limits, thinking new thoughts, dreaming up new projects, making new discoveries. Logos carries the blessing of progress.

 

Mythos, by contrast, calls us home to our beginnings, reminds us we are children of God, gives our endeavors a meaning greater than self. Mythos carries the blessing of purpose.

 

Rational thought is the expression of logos. Poetry is the expression of mythos. When they become confused—when myth is heralded as rational, when backwards becomes forwards, when the metaphorical is classified as science—society stagnates.

 

How could a society make such an obvious mistake? The simple answer seems to be ‘too much change, too quickly.’ It can be argued our world is changing too rapidly for most of us to track. Consequently, the old myths are quickly becoming obsolete. Or so it would seem, with God being dead and all.  For those who would hold onto the old myths, their only choice is to fight fire with fire, to fight reason with dogmatism, to fight proof with belief, to throw creationism into the wheels of evolution; in other words, to attempt to slow down the juggernaut of progress with fundamentalist terrorism and projects to hasten the End Times.

 

The alternative to this nihilistic program is to reinvent the old myths and bring them to current relevance without jettisoning their timeless wisdom. Indeed, those ancient axioms are more necessary now than ever. Our world needs a soul, a conscience and a universal set of morals if we are to carry the human experiment forward. We need a myth that all people can subscribe to without abjuring their own religions.

 

Divine truth is without limit. However, mythos requires fresh interpretations to keep it relevant. New myths need to be re-drawn from the superceded ones.

 

And such a new myth exists. It exists in the mystical traditions of each great religion. The mystics of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, Buddhism, and so on teach the same truths: The Divine is omni-present, but to find it, you must take up a spiritual practice. You must train the ego to get out of the way so the spiritual ‘eye’ can open. While this eye does blink open periodically, providing us with peak experiences, it stays open as a permanent trait only with practice. After decades of practice, what the eye of spirit can see is the Divine within and the Divine all around. And this ‘seeing’ is the allegorical meaning of the Second Coming of Christ. It means we have come to Christ-consciousness.

 

Bruce Bibee, MTP, is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Kung-Fu San Soo Master. You can reach him at 562-1242, or visit his web-page: www.brucebibee.com.

Finding Spirituality in Loss

By Aliza Sherman Risdahl

 

I should be my own religion. My new religion would entail filling up my heart and soul while conditioning my body to move and flow again…

 

Recently I've been thinking about the shifts in my personal spirituality and beliefs since I started having miscarriages.

 

My first miscarriage came about so unexpectedly. I didn't turn to God or religion or spirituality at that time. But I do remember getting a reflexology treatment from a woman who also happened to be an ordained minister from a non-denominational church. She told me how she explained miscarriage to her daughter, who had experienced one as well. She said there are spirits that need only a short time on earth and, therefore, once they have had that time, they leave and are grateful for the time they spent here, albeit brief. So in a sense, women who miscarry were hosts to these transient spirits.

 

The theory she presented was far more palatable to me than the "you were my angel and now you are in heaven" way of thinking. Imagining miscarriage losses as angels was not my style. However, thinking that a spirit entered my body for just a moment of earthly knowledge only to depart after a few weeks also pushed my spirituality envelope. Still, I tried to draw comfort from the concept.

 

Even early on, when I was angry at the medical community for their insensitive treatment during my miscarriage and angry with myself for miscarrying in the first place, I was never angry at God. I did not think it was God's will that I had miscarried. I didn't believe God fit into the picture in any way.

 

After my second pregnancy and miscarriage, I held a healing ceremony that I wrote with some help from the same non-denominational minister. We held the ceremony in Vedauwoo , Wyoming , at a location completely surrounded by dramatic rock formations. On the evening of the ceremony, the sky turned steely gray and a brisk chill wind blew around us. I looked up at one of the rock formation hovering above and saw an ancient fertility goddess figure in its curves.

 

I expected to cry during the ceremony, but I was surprisingly calm. My mind and heart were clear. I'm not sure how much comfort I derived from the ritual, but I was glad I had chosen to do something to commemorate my losses. The act of holding any kind of ritual at all was opening my mind, heart, and soul to new ways of dealing with loss and grief.

 

After my third pregnancy and miscarriage, I addressed spirituality in a different way, speaking with an Ayurvedic practitioner who recommended that I build several altars to deal with my emotions, particularly a grief altar. In theory, I liked the idea of creating concrete spaces for my spirit to purge and heal. But the reality was that I didn't have a backyard for my grief altar—it was not supposed to be built indoors—so I never got around to constructing it.

 

It was during this time that a dear friend of mine offered to perform a ritual to speak to my uterus. She also said she thought that she could speak for my uterus to let me know what "she" (my uterus) needed from me. I respected this friend tremendously, and believed she had a special gift, so I agreed.

 

Another woman we knew hosted the evening ritual at her home. My friend sectioned off a space on the floor with colorful feather boas and candles, and we danced inside of the space. African tribal music played on an old cassette player and beating drums rumbled like a heartbeat. I lay down on the floor, and the women placed their fingertips lightly on me to make a connection.

 

My friend went into a trance-like state and spoke in a soft voice, telling me what she felt my uterus was saying. "She" (my uterus) wanted me to acknowledge her, wanted me not to blame myself. I think I said something to my uterus, too, relaying the message through my friend. I didn't know what to make of the experience, although I was deeply grateful for my friend's gift to me.

 

After my fourth miscarriage, I was amazed at how proficient my body had become at miscarrying. The entire event took place in a matter of minutes, at a shopping mall bathroom as I was on my way to get a latte with a girlfriend. At the time, I was working on my documentary about miscarriage, and so I immediately immersed myself in the work. In some way, working on the documentary became my religion, my ritual and healing process.

 

Despite my experiences, I still do not feel drawn to any particular religion or spiritual belief. I do realize, however, that I feel spiritually drained. I'm not sure how to replenish my spiritual coffers, but I'm certain it is not by embracing Jesus Christ as my savior or by reconnecting with my Jewish heritage or by converting to Buddhism. For me, dealing with miscarriage is not about religion.

 

I have no desire to pray about my miscarriages. I have no idea who would be listening other than myself. My theory as a child was that God was inside each of us—not a higher being or power that we could not reach but, actually, a deeper part within us all. We were God. We are all God. But what did I know? I was only a child.

 

The closest I've come to being spiritual these days is struggling to start a personal yoga practice. I think the breathing and the meditation appeals to me because it helps quiet my mind, gets me out of my head for a while. My coping mechanism for grief and loss is to fill my brain with a multitude of thoughts and project ideas to mask the emptiness inside of me. Yoga quiets my brain and allows me to come to terms with what I'm feeling.

 

I need to be worshipping at my own temple: My Body. I should be my own religion. My new religion would entail filling up my heart and soul while conditioning my body to move and flow again, to regain strength and endurance.

 

Each one of us deals with our losses in individual ways. It isn't fair for me to say "This is the right way to handle a miscarriage" or "Here is the right spiritual way to deal with miscarriage loss."

 

For me, miscarriage has nothing to do with God. It isn't about religion. It isn't even about spirituality. Yet after four miscarriages, I have transitioned from seeking answers from others to seeking peace within myself, and I think that may lead me closer to a path of healing.

 

Aliza Sherman Risdahl is an Anchorage-based writer, producer and filmmaker working in television, radio, film and online. Her work can be found at www.mediaegg.com and www.moonbowproductions.com.

Christian Spirituality

Bruce Bibee

 

This essential core of each of us can legitimately sing out, Yes! I, too, am Absolute Truth. I and the Father are One.

 

I’m a recovering Catholic. It began when I was expelled from a Franciscan seminary when I was 16 years old. I was studying to be a priest, but my big mouth got me into constant trouble. They kicked me out for “intellectual arrogance.” Imagine that.

 

Since, because of my age, I felt God Himself rejected me, I eventually looked East to find spirituality. I studied Zen, yoga and Taoism. I meditated, and had an asana routine I did every morning. I also trained in Kung-Fu. Then, I went to a workshop with Father Michael Fox (author of Original Blessing, a must-read for recovering Catholics). At one of the breaks, I spoke to him about my seminary-expulsion. He told me, “Your spiritual roots are Christian. You will have to heal that some day.” So, I did.

 

To explain how, we have to start with a distinction between exoteric religion and esoteric spirituality; otherwise, nothing makes much sense. Exoteric can be loosely translated as meaning “for general consumption.” Esoteric, loosely translated, is “for a specialized few.” Exoteric, however, is the foundation for the esoteric. It’s like learning basic math before you can get into calculus. Exoteric religion lays the groundwork (ethics, morals, ritual, awareness, etc.) so the esoteric exploration of spirituality can begin.

 

The typical problem comes from those who run the exoteric enterprises. They have a vested, financial interest in discouraging the esoteric, because the practice of advanced spirituality cuts out the middle-men (the priests, rabbis, ministers, mullahs, and so on). This is why marginalizing mystics is a universal past-time of clerics. Another reason is because mystics the world over are saying the same kinds of things.

 

For example, the Sufi poet Rumi said: Lead us. When we’re totally surrendered to that beauty, we’ll become a mighty kindness. And Meister Eckhart, a 14th Century Dominican mystic said: For we pray, ‘lead us not.’ But then we pray to be freed from evil, from a sin already committed. ‘Deliver us from evil’ also means ‘from the devil,’ because he is the one who speaks evil or because of the relentless warfare which he wages against us. ‘From evil’ can mean from the vice of asking for things which are carnal or temporal. ‘One might be ashamed to ask for what one is not ashamed to desire.’ If one is conquered by greed, then a good prayer is to be freed from the very evil of greediness.

 

It is the nature of mystics to foster a direct intuition of the Divine, to develop a direct relationship with God-as-you-know-him, to move beyond the form of religion and pierce its mysterious depths. To do so, one must move beyond the rational mind (and all things ‘carnal or temporal’). As Rabbi David Aaron says it:  This is the meaning of the verse in Psalm 111: “The beginning of true wisdom is awe of G-d.” The beginning of wisdom is awe, to see what is there, not through the filters of your words or your concepts or your biases.

 

Seeing life with the eyes of awe and wonder means to see without any expectations to understand, without trying to fit it into whatever we already know. Rather than trying to adapt what we see to our minds, we must adapt our minds to what is. Awe and wonder is an act of surrender. I give my mind over to what is, rather then expect what is to fit into my mind.

 

Centering or contemplative prayer is how this is accomplished within a Christian context. Through prayer, the mind is brought under conscious control so it can bear witness to the Divine within all things. The guidelines for contemplative prayer are such:

Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God's presence and action within.

Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle yourself and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to 

God's presence and action within.

 

When you become aware of thoughts, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word.

 

At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes. 

(See www.thecentering.org/centering_method.html for more.)

 

This looks like mantra meditation. And it is. All the great traditions figured out the monkey-mind was the obstacle to spiritual development. Meditation, by whatever name, is how it’s done.

 

Once this first step is achieved, and the mind is no longer an obstacle but a willing agent of growth, the traditions within Christianity follow slightly different mystic paths. Catholics, with their long history of desert Fathers, monasteries, and abbeys, have often pursued the course of the sacred marriage with the Divine Beloved. In fact, the Holy Grail is a symbol of this path. The Grail is the empty cup in one’s own heart waiting to be filled with Divine Grace—the Presence of the Beloved.

 

Protestant mystics, mostly because of their iconoclastic roots, seek righteousness, which is synonymous with direct contact with God’s Will. How both accomplish their mystic goals, though, is the same: contemplative prayer comes first; interacting with passages in the Bible comes next (not unlike guided imagery); intuiting the source behind Biblical stories comes next; and, finally, living from a direct experience of the Divine is achieved.

 

What is also achieved is escape from the confines of religion. Adoration and worship are abandoned as relationship with the Divine is embraced. And this is where all mystics tend to get into trouble. Al-Hallaj, another Sufi mystic, once proclaimed, I am Absolute Truth. He was killed as a heretic. Jesus announced, I and the Father are One. They killed him, too. However, as one’s relationship with the Divine matures, one discovers one’s own inner Divinity—the spark or breath of God within. This essential core of each of us can legitimately sing out, Yes! I, too, am Absolute Truth. I and the Father are One.

 

Or, as the late Trappist mystic Thomas Merton wrote in Bread in the Wilderness: What has happened? We have been transformed. The process is more than a tragic catharsis. This is more than the psychological impact of a work of art, in which our emotions, clenched in a dramatic crisis, have been sprung, have been released, and have achieved a vital fulfillment by a poetic solution of the problem in which we have allowed ourselves to become emotionally involved. There is something much deeper. It is a spiritual solution. It is a kind of death and a sea-change, operated as it were at the bottom of a spiritual ocean, because it can just as well happen to us when the Psalm, having become insipid to us by continual repetition, has ceased to have any immediate artistic appeal. And I may add that it might even happen to someone who has never quite been attuned to the full poetic quality of the Psalms.... The peculiar mystical impact with which certain verses of Psalms suddenly produce this silent depth-charge in the heart of the contemplative is only to be accounted for by the fact that we, in the Spirit, recognize the Spirit singing in ourselves.
  

Bruce Bibee, MTP, is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Kung-Fu San Soo Master. You can reach him at 562-1242, or visit his web-page: www.brucebibee.com.