sirguessalot

One of the most effective methods i know of for examining the classic body-soul-spirit combo involves directing our attention to our immediate experience of body, soul and spirit. The Christians of history who were most able to point them out for others were able to do so because they actually practiced going there for themselves…and quite often for most of their life. Yet the vast body of Christian art and writings on the matter are typically avoided/unknown due to our modern penchant for reinventing the wheel (like vpw), rather than standing on the shoulders of those who went before us. As if we have stopped actually practicing and embodying what we find in God, and prefer mostly to talk about God and the things of God as if they are in some other place, or some other time. Mostly a modern detached western intellectual approach to things previously examined via the whole body, soul and spirit. As if we have replaced actual practice and direct experience with mere conceptual and mental theologies, definitions and maps and models. While such maps and models are important, they are most helpful when seen as pointing to something in our immediate experience. If scripture is like the proverbial finger pointing at the moon, we do well not to limit our attention to the finger. And this common idea that “we cant possibly know or see (God, spirit, afterlife, eternity, etc…)” seems to contradict the majority of scripture, as well as the people of scripture and Christian history. As if we have somehow come to believe that only a small minority of dead people were special enough to see or know anything so important, but no one alive today is. This seems like the most effective way to remain ignorant of things that have already been known for thousands of years. But it is a common modern delusion in both religious and secular life, so it helps not to take it personal. We are all soaking wet with filters we inherited and are not yet aware of. If so…how do we leave the realm of speculative religion and direct our attention to our immediate experience of body, soul and or spirit? Practice, mostly. But not “practice that makes perfect,” but practice that makes us a little more accident prone for a grace more radical than mere belief. Maybe as you sit there, or later, ask things like “What is body right now?” “Who is soul right now?” “Where is spirit right now?” According to some, they are all right here to be found. And there is no way around some sense of humiliation of having looked elsewhere for so long. Shame is what kept them from returning to eden. Not a literal flaming sword. Shame for having simply forgot. For having fallen asleep. Thank God the shame does eventually pass.

*bump* all so very sad but true. imho, this is perhaps one of the clearest ways to find out how connected (or not) a group is to the foundational heart and mind of Christianity. many of the world's best arts and histories of psychology, medicine and hospice and such came from within the church and were founded on the words of Jesus Christ. most of the words, metaphors and sayings held to be most sacred by Christians have very much to do with such weightier matters. and so a "minister of fire" is one who walks into such flames, not runs away from them. quite easy to spot once you know what to look for. and yes, they really do exist in the world. plenty of them happening here. and more all the time. as we wake up.

i think the basic 'body-soul-spirit' is ever a valid way to describe this primary trio of differences in our experience. quite comparable the 'gross-subtle-causal' of the east. or a more modern 'biological-psychological-contemplative' nameset. or even 'waking, dreaming and deep dreamless states" in the fields of consciousness....or 'objective-subjective-nondual' if you like jazz. seems like it all becomes valid once everyone is looking at the same whole elephant. regardless...i cant help but agree with some who have said that if we are lucky, the 'path of entry' for all of us actually flows in more of a spirit-soul-body direction...and if we are luckier, we are conceived and born..even more lucky, we age and die and otherwise experience life in a general body-soul-spirit direction. as if... its not that we have to somehow get or acquire a body, soul or spirit...or even that we've lost anything...but that we most naturally and innocently do not notice them at all all at first. and simply aging is a series of humbling but inevitable disillusionments and crisis of identity. in this sense...both Jesus Christ and all of us are the prodigal son...somewhere between home and home. ...perhaps it can even be said that the whole world has been waking up in that body-soul-spirit direction...in waves...and fields...and such. and the world is currently at the stage where it is rapidly starting to realize how far from home it is. perhaps worth calling the "face down in the gutter with some important choices to make stage". seems like it. which is perfect...because it suggest that we are finally half way there.

Posting this to invite interested whomevers who may be in or near Portland to an art exhibition, demonstration and forum i am orchestrating on 11/11. Involves amazing food, music, some experimental wall-sized video art and slide shows, and some collective art projects...even art as problem solving techniques. So far, the reviews of the previews and test runs have been "woah"..."wow"..."oh my"..."ooh"..."aah" and such. And because i am still trying to maintain a little anonymity on GSC...send me a private message for more info (time, location) if interested. oh...and it is a donation-based event. So its free admission. all grace... +ODD

been chewing on this since you posted it, ham. oddly enough, it reflects the opinions of many christians, muslims and jews i have met and read in the fields of hospice, grief, psychology and such. this too, cman amens all around

funny...im getting ads for food coupons and non-denominational churches in Portland

thanks for that mstar...sounds like an amazing exhibition. i especially liked this... and wow...teenagers digging sri aurobindo on youtube. welcome to the 3rd millenium.

i find it interesting to compare the story of Jacob Wrestling with the Angel... ...with the shadow in psychology ... in light of homosexuality

Fundamental Human Needs

thanks abi. not much to say about homosexuality at the moment. but whether the writers know it or not, seems like they are at least asking the reader to basically turn their attention in the opposite direction of how most are conditioned. not just specifically regarding the sexuality part, but the broader advise to "be tortured by your opposition" part...as if some jews were jungian long long before jung was even jungian. seems to me a sign that not all that is called "orthodox" or "religion" is merely what one might call ancestral, magical or mythological...some is also quite rational and social and more. personally, i have come to prefer and recommend reaching for full expressions of all of the above...as an natural anatomy of sorts. and if all of them suffer when even one suffers...what happens if all of them are neglected but one?

fwiw seems to me the leadership of twi was afraid of better leadership styles from the beginning. to look into and apply them would result in firing the leaders. so the information is seen as a direct threat to the safety and security of the current leaders. plenty of the same thing outside of twi and religion...even in non-profits...plenty of self-interested and ineffectual adults in power over other more capable adults...allergic to the possibilities of better leadership skills...so their typical method involves yelling, blaming, scapegoating, intimidating and otherwise driving their employees into the ground...who are not even considered people, but objects in the leader's universe. in the fields of adult ego-development, about 10% of managers in the US lead from such impulsive and opportunist worldviews...stuck somewhere between the ages of 3 and 12. yet even though 75% of adults lead from more conventional perspectives, which is the target for western world, most of our problems are too complex for even conventional leadership styles. the other side of the curve are the post-conventional systems-thinking leaders, which are less than 12%. Christianity of history and today has it's share of such bigger-picture leaders and leadership styles. unfortunately they are among the first to be demonized by the autocratic dictatorial "power-god" style of many cults and corporations like TWI.

thanks Roy while i dont fully agree with Ram Dass, and although he is using wildly variable words like "soul" and "God"...i liked these things he said in the interview: "souls are fingers of God's awareness" and "you're living in your perception, i'm living in my perception, both of them are part of God's perception" also, in Fierce Grace, he seems humbled another notch by his stroke...and more "enlightened" than before his stroke...which happens more often than most realize. another review of Fierce Grace

seems to me we might do well to ask in both directions. because they are somehow alike in every way...and somehow different in those very same ways. such as how all plants are essentially the same and different in their processes and patterns of development... yet we have rosemary, basil and thyme. paradoxically the same and different in more ways than can be numbered. such as how... all are born, age, want to have sex, and die. all are creatures of story, celebration, ceremony and ritual. all love our children, eat good food. all are also susceptible to forgetting all this. all are capable of misunderstanding their own scripture and history.

some links and quotes to consider... review of "The Common Heart", based on the reflections of the participants of the Snowmass interreligious conference. Christian-Muslim dialogue Christian-Muslim and interfaith dialogue links The Book of the Heart

ive forgiven some folks for some pretty heinous .... in my life. not lucky enough to have made it all the way through the fire though. plenty of other events im currently working on. odd thing i discovered one day, while working on the most vile and violent chapters of my earlier experience, involved the opposite of forgiveness. i blamed my self for not being able to stop it. i blamed the person for the pain and damage they created. i blamed their family for creating them. i blamed their culture for creating family. i blamed humanity for creating the culture. i blamed earth for creating humanity. i blamed the sun for creating earth. i blamed the universe for creating the sun. i blamed God for creating the universe... some Christians say that we are not free until our heart is completely broken ...open...by God. so, no promises, but maybe try blame instead.

not imho...life happens as we know...i frequently lose access to a computer and the web these days. I especially like how Whitehead's connection to Heraclitus even connects us to the John 1 thread regarding the Logos.

maybe he simply realized (by experiencing) how everything, including himself, was a manifestation of the eternal logos. and his full realization and embodiment of the logos is what his history was waiting for...if even only for a few years. not him, personally, per se. although he could not leave himself out. nor can we. but what he finally woke up and noticed. for thousands of years, waves of ancient humans died in search of such a full direct experience of causal forms. the story of jesus is story of one who found it and came back...somehow trekked where no man had gone before. and somehow added to what buddha found...what the philosophers found...what moses found. someone called him lord of lords because he bypassed them all...because he stood on all their shoulders.

im still stuck on "should" i can go as far as "do well to..." or "be lucky to..." or even "be blessed to..." or "do most everyone well to..."

yeah, circular... growth in light of cyclical and seasonal tides and conditions. the way a tree grows in spite of dying back every year. the treelike nature of "all alls" is cyclical...and linear, radial, layered, wave and fieldlike. i suspect every plant metaphor in scripture may be pointing to some aspect of the gardenlike nature of everything. religions, cultures, societies...souls, psyches, minds, bodies...even love and the stories of our lives...moves and flows in the same patterned ways as the rest of life on earth. we live in not a static, but a process oriented universe.

maybe saying Christ is an incarnation of the Logos is another way of saying he is an incarnation of the Aum and Tao.

thanks abi...likewise one thing ive learned from many of the christians, muslims and jews that ive read and met and known...is that myth and story is like a vital organ of human experience...and the whole body of any one life does better when every organ is thriving in one, then magnified in cultures in cultures in cultures of such whole bodies of lives. to the depths and degrees we forget the story is a story, we lose sight of all other organs. We may even individually or collectively fight to keep an isolated myth alive while the rest of the organs of our experience are failing...even to the point of becoming enemies of our own vital organs, like reason and compassion...not knowing that our death-grip on story is a major part of what is making the others increasingly unwell and seemingly hostile. same with non-religious contexts. the last century of art, media and marketing is plenty of story for a mythic secularism, imbedding self-destructive patterns and lifestyles into a shared script...one that might even include a passionate prejudice against all religious language. even the language of reason and compassion can become reduced to a myth. like when old scientists reject new discoveries, even becoming fundamentalist and evangelical about their favorite scientific era or field. or when compassion becomes a smothering fixer with a messianic mommy complex. depending on whether we are too loose or too tight in our cultural sense of self, we can retune by including more story in our lives, or stepping back from the story we are lost in. imho, what this looks like for much of Christianity, including ex-twi, is to find a way to deepen our Christianity. which can be like leaving on an adventure, or a quest, and exploring the 2000 years of stuff vpw said he threw out. even exploring the best you can find of other religions as a way to test the fidelity of both. and if someone was born into another religion and converted to Christianity because of the failures of some in their religion, the pattern is that the lifelong search is most likely to be resolved by returning to the religion of our birth and finding the treasures under the layer of dust. for my self, i and finding that my religious story is mostly a blend of American Christianity and rock n roll. i could never become as much of a buddhist or a jew if my life depended on it...although my christianity has only deepened from my experiences with them. and the quakers have taught me most about what is best about american christianity...though i am not a quaker...and i have learned a lot more about a lot of other things from the older european christian arts and traditions.

two from one of my childhood favorites...so glad to find them on the u-toob

ive met and read and studied with and sat at the feet of a number of rabbi rebbes and such...and i found a lot of life in the way they tell the story of "how the messiah comes" and such...especially how it often involved a group of people misunderstanding that it is not really about a specific someone somewhere else with unique powers and authority...and then somehow realizing the nature of messiah when they notice it among themselves...as an profoundly ordinary quality of life that can be found or cultivated anywhere, any time...although it rarely is (or rarely seems to be)...and that this is in fact MORE important to understand, as it then actually applies practically, involves lifestyles and ethics, a vision for future generations, and does not remain in the realm of concept and belief. which not only seems like the way Jesus talked about messiah...but the way he demonstrated it. the most unforgettable and misunderstood jew of all. perhaps to say that "jesus saves" can also mean that the story of jesus carries a potential to lead us to greater wholeness...away from living in a small piece of our self. and this is a big deal. the whole anatomy of our psychology, physiology, and existential condition is wrapped up in this. and essential to being human is having a pantheon of heros and symbols in our psyche, typically with a number one role model of them all. this imagined body of characters and forces is important, and the more we are involved in cultivating it, the more likely we are to know where they are, and not mistake them for the whole ultimate reality (aka God). as our understanding of messiah develops, we become our role model...which was perhaps a primary point of messiah all along. a north star for navigation...for a deepening of everything we already always are, including our lifelong heros...and all the angels climbing up and down on our rungs. this is one thing some christians, muslims and jews agree quite completely and easily on.

from this article on Golden Age of Islam...