LSP28: The Burden of Perfection

Ever notice that any good idea, when taken to extremes, can become a bad idea?

From my perspective, the biggest problem with all theories grown from apophatic roots is the burden placed on people to be perfect.

Nobody is perfect, and nobody should be expected by their spiritual leaders to take on the level of personal responsibility required in an apophatic belief system.

Apophatic belief systems are found in every culture and in every major world religion.  Strict monastic lifestyles, as cultivated within Theravada Buddhism and Roman Catholicism, are two examples of this way of life.  But they're not the only examples.  In fact, atheism brings to bear on its adherents the same extreme burden of perfection found within certain religious sects.  This is because all apophatic belief systems (whether theistic, non-theistic, or atheistic) share one major thing in common: an absolute hatred of the humbleness/courage/forgiveness paradigm preached by spiritual teachers such as the Hebrew philosopher Job (author of the Bible's Book of Job) and the Jewish philosopher Jesus (author of the Bible's Kingdom paradigm).

I don't use the word "hatred" lightly.  Apophatic assumptions about consciousness, life, evolution, learning, and relationships are completely different from the assumptions made by cataphatic thinkers.  Apophatics consider Kingdom teachings an affront to their intellectual authority and prowess.

Apophatic beliefs are based on the preeminence of the human mind - on a belief in the ability of the human mind to dramatically alter the universe.  Apophatic teachings, drawing on the natural authority they see in the Materialist laws of cause and effect, are highly anthropocentric.  They see human beings as a group "set apart" by their special mental powers to play a supremely important role in Creation (or on plain ol' Planet Earth, if you're an atheist).  It follows from this (say the apophatics) that human beings have a huge responsibility to themselves and to the planet to scrupulously follow every law they can think of.  Anything short of perfection is considered a failure.  It's therefore not only acceptable but completely necessary to find the flaws in everything you see around you so you can "fix" them.  Inevitably, this leads to the idea that if you always exert the right effort at the right time in the right way (etc., etc.) you - personally - can change the whole world.

Not the world inside you, or the part of the world you're connected to, or the people you know, or the garden you're digging, or the school you're building  . . . but the whoooooole wooooooorld.  And if you fall short of the ultimate goal of achieving full liberation from the cycle of rebirth dictated by the laws of Karma (with the side benefit of using your newfound universal freedom/godhead to help others on Planet Earth escape their suffering), well, then, you're just an awful, unworthy failure, aren't you?  You shoulda tried harder!

So apophatic thinkers are always trying harder, always striving for perfection, always obsessively worshiping.  Or working.  Or counting.  Always rating themselves in comparison to other people.  Always judging others "who aren't trying hard enough."  Always holding grudges, holding onto anger, holding onto denial.  Always refusing to love.  Always refusing to accept.

Meanwhile, cataphatic teachings (as represented by the Kingdom teachings of Jesus) maintain that our universe is guided by both Materialist and non-Materialist laws of science (not just Materialist laws) so it's pretty hard for the limited human mind to figure everything out by itself.  We're responsible for the personal choices we make.  Our inner self - the part each of us is responsible for - is the Kingdom Jesus refers to.  But we're not responsible for the whole universe and everything in it.  It's okay for us to have limits and it's okay for us to lean on others and on God.  It's okay for us to trust God.

It would be easy to say the apophatic thinker sees the glass as half empty and the cataphatic thinker sees it as half full.  But it's much more than that.  It's more along the lines of this: the apophatic thinker sees himself as a very big glass in a very small pond, whereas the cataphatic thinker sees himself as a very small glass in a very big pond.

The apophatic thinker sees himself as a very big glass in a very small pond - but he also thinks he's not yet a big enough glass.  He wants to be so big and so important in the world pond that his glass will be completely full - so full it will allow him to become "one substance" with the Oneness he calls Source (or Money or Success).  He thinks he's so clever and so important in the grand scheme of things that the pond will somehow dry up if he doesn't jump right in there to save it (and everybody in it) by using his "one substance."  He has a Saviour complex.

Perfect Imperfection (c) JAT 2014

Meanwhile, the cataphatic thinker, who sees himself as a very small glass in a very big pond, looks around the pool filled with all manner of life and says, "Hey, this is a beautiful place.  I see a muddy patch over there where I can hang out with my buddies and have some fun.  No one will mind.  It's a big pond, and there's room for everybody.  I'll learn what I can from everyone else.  I'll build something, create something, and share something. Then I'll pick up my garbage, go home, and be grateful for the good (but imperfect) day I've had.  Cool!"

Apophatics don't do cool.

Addendum January 5, 2018:  Interesting research has just been published about the rise of three types of perfectionism among millennials: "Students are feeling more pressure than ever to be perfectionists" by reporter Vanessa Hrvati. According to the article, Dr. Thomas Curran, one of the authors of the scientific study, "described the need to be perfect as a 'hidden epidemic' that could potentially underpin many of the mental health issues students face, ranging from anxiety to depression."


For Further Reflection:

Would it help you to know that, from God's point of view, there's no such thing as a perfect human being?

When God says it's okay for you to be born as a human being on Planet Earth, it's not because God has plans for you to become more "perfect." It's because God has plans for you to know yourself better, to know your fellow angels better, and to know Mother Father God better. But "knowing" yourself is a lot different than matching yourself to a "template of perfection" for an ideal human being. In fact, knowing more about yourself is the very opposite of trying to become an ideal human being. Knowing yourself is essential to the Humbleness paradigm of boundaries and relationships; forcing yourself to be squeezed into the teeny-tiny box of perfectionism means you're not allowed to be who you really are.

Part of the problem is that although we're very different from each other as persons-of-soul (that is, as children of God), God has given all of us very similar biological bodies as human beings. So it's hard for us to accept that it's okay for us to be similar on the outside but radically different from each other on the inside - different in terms of our temperaments, interests, abilities, learning styles, relationship styles, and so on.

If we were to wander around one of the multitudinous ecosystems of Planet Earth, we would see at a glance an abundance of species all around us. We'd notice that no two species are exactly alike. We wouldn't question the reality that each species has unique talents and attributes, talents we cherish and are continually amazed by. (How many people have looked at a hawk and not envied its ability to ride the unseen thermals of the sky?) Further, we'd quickly observe that within each species there are many individual variations of colouring, temperament, adaptability, leadership ability, and longevity. Abundance of talent is what we expect when we look at God's creatures here on Earth. It's supposed to be that way. And we have no trouble accepting that a hawk can't be a hare. Or vice versa.

Except when we look at ourselves. Many of us just can't seem to get past the idea that our outsides are 90% of our story. We reason that if 90% of a hawk's story is in its body, and if 90% of a hare's story is in its body, then 90% of a human's story must also be in its body. This, after all, is the inevitable conclusion that derives from atheistic theories such as natural selection and non-theistic evolution.

Fundamental to atheistic cosmogonies about life on Planet Earth is the belief - nay, the certainty - that there is no soul, so obviously there can be no soul to shape the inner landscape of each unique human being. From this assumption flows the implicit logic that human beings are really just a bunch of interchangeable building blocks. And from this comes the inescapable "fact" that these building blocks must be perfectible if only we can acquire the right knowledge.

Eat this food. Take this pill. Do this exercise. Obey this commandment. Be a prisoner of the DNA you were born with. Don't you dare have the temerity to believe your inner self is a whole lot bigger than your DNA says you are. Lower the bar for yourself. Lower the bar for your children and your neighbours. Be the least you can be. But throw yourself on the mercy of the wise leaders who can tell you how to perfect yourself, and maybe - just maybe - you'll be lucky enough to have a few fleeting moments of Happiness.

When Michelangelo was lying on the scaffolding of the Sistine Chapel so he could paint its famous ceiling, I doubt very much he was thinking about his perfect pasta intake or how many steps he'd walked that day.

And I doubt very much that any other human being could have told the story Michelangelo told in the precise and lasting way he told it.

He was one of a kind, a child of God with a unique inner story and a unique way of sharing it.

As all of us are when we allow ourselves to be who we really are.

LSP27: Seeds of the Divine: Approaches to Mysticism in Christianity and Buddhism

This post is an excerpt from a reflection paper I wrote for a 2014 inter-religious dialogue course offered through a Roman Catholic seminary (though I myself am not Roman Catholic).  I decided to include this excerpt because it explains in a more formal way some of the points I've been trying to raise about the roots of our world religions.  I welcome comments on these reflections.  Thanks for reading!

Jen
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The Christian world view, with its focus on mystery and love, redemption and forgiveness, is so open to everything in Creation that there is room within it for all God’s children, regardless of when or where they have lived.This photo of spring crocuses, taken in the morning light of the spring equinox, speaks to the joyful images of life, beauty, and creation that were central to Jesus' cataphatic mystical teachings. Photo credit JAT 2016.

It is in response to Sottocornola and De Giorgio’s closing remarks about apophasis and kenosis that I would like to offer some in-depth observations, especially as these relate to Brassard’s opening thesis about the three basic soteriological questions.   First, I should acknowledge that some of my interpretations spring from my daily personal experiences as a Christian mystic.  To refine this statement, I turn to Bernard McGinn’s three-fold definition of mysticism as “a part or element of religion; . . . as a process or way of life; and . . . as an attempt to express a direct consciousness of the presence of God” (McGinn xiii–xvi).  McGinn’s research has revealed there are different mysticisms, just as there are different Christianities and different Buddhisms.  Apophatic, anagogic, and cataphatic mysticisms do not share the same goals, experiences, or practices.  They also do not share the same answers to the three basic questions about “the human problem” or human psychology.  I myself am a cataphatic mystic in thought, word, action, faith, and experience of the Divine.

Apophatic mysticism, which in its very essence is an experience of losing one’s personal identity within a transcendent cloud of oneness and unknowing, is a phenomenon which crosses all boundaries of race, religion, and creed.  Within Christianity, the tradition of apophatic mysticism can be traced from Plato through many centuries of later Christian figures up to and including Thomas Merton.  In the words of Merton’s biographer Lawrence Cunningham, it is “an imageless mysticism” with an emphasis on “silence, lack of image, presence, and so on [that] is characteristic of the dark mysticism that goes back to Saint Gregory of Nyssa, mediated through the writings of the Pseudo Dionysius and down to John of the Cross, and mediated again through the monastic and scholastic doctors of the Middle Ages” (Cunningham 97).  There’s no doubt that apophatic mysticism is part of Christianity’s tradition, just as apophatic mysticism is the starting point for the Buddha’s own suppositions about “the human problem.”  The point I wish to make is that apophatic experiences necessarily lead to a particular way of understanding Creation that is in direct conflict with the cataphatic and life-affirming teachings of Jesus.

It is a curious thing that a transient experience of transcendent oneness in a person’s life should lead him or her further and further away from an understanding of love (specifically agape) and closer and closer to pure logic and reason as the only adequate tools for understanding the universe.  Yet this is indeed what seems to happen.  Plato, as mediated first through Paul’s own writings on sin, law, and death, has had an enormous influence on Christian thought with the “imageless mysticism” he highlights in Phaedrus.  In Plato’s well-known tale of the Charioteer, which probably dates from Plato’s middle period, he presents a “myth” about the nature of the immortal soul (Phaedrus 245c-250c).  In this myth, the soul is compared to a winged team of horses and their charioteer.  Souls compete to try to ascend to the region above the heavens, the region that is “occupied by being which really is, which is without colour or shape, intangible, observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect, and to which the class of true knowledge relates.” If a soul succeeds in its required task of gazing upon “what is true,” it will be happy and will return to its home in the heavens; but if a soul fails, it will be filled with the weight of forgetfulness and incompetence, and it will fall to earth, where it must incarnate according to specific dictates of divine law.
 
I see strong parallels between the intangible cloud above the heavens accessible only to Plato’s intellect and the cloud of codependent origination accessible only to the Buddha’s intellect. Is it possible that both Plato and the Buddha had personal, apophatic mystical experiences that led them to theorize about the underlying structure of the universe – and therefore the nature of the beings who live within it – and conclude Creation is a “closed system” of oneness governed by immutable law?  It is interesting that both men, writing from an apophatic perspective about the cloud of oneness known only to the intellect and will, both claim that incarnation is governed by rigid laws that can be understood by select human beings and escaped from through rigorous discipline and mental focus.  It is noteworthy, of course, that neither apophatic teacher speaks of the preeminence of love and forgiveness for anyone, least of all God.  Unlike Jesus, they refuse to speak of heart and mind and strength and soul in the same breath (Mark 12:28–34), but instead focus entirely on the mind’s efforts to transcend such lowly human “needs” as love and forgiveness by subjugating and even denying them through ascetical practices.  I have begun to wonder if Plato and the Buddha both make claims for a “closed system” because there is no other way to justify an impermanent apophatic experience of oneness with all that is.
 
As I – and all mystics throughout history – can attest, a mystical experience is so intense that it changes the way the mystic looks at everything.  One cannot help but seek a framework in which to understand the experience.  An apophatic mystic seeks a philosophical framework that starts with a transpersonal, impermanent oneness and works backward.  A cataphatic mystic seeks a philosophical framework that starts with a highly personal, “image-filled,” permanent Divine Love and works backward.  An anagogic mystic uses elements of both paths and tries with all his or her might to unify them (as the majority of Christian mystics seem to have done, perhaps following Paul’s lead in 2 Corinthians 12:1–9 and 1 Corinthians 15:50–57).

As a practising cataphatic mystic, who has daily experiences of the presence of God, I can attest to the feeling of “being filled up with love” that comes from being in humble relationship with God.  I would not describe it as a feeling of kenosis or self-emptying.  In fact, it feels exactly the way Jesus described it: using the fullness of one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength to sustain a relationship of love and healing with a God who is an infinitely loving and healing God.  It takes every ounce of courage plus all the gifts given to us by God to participate in this kind of relationship with God.  The corollary is that when we speak of shedding aspects of ourselves in order to be freed from suffering or sin, instead of using the alternative presented to us by Jesus – forgiveness! – we slowly but steadily chip away at the gifts God has given us so we can know what Divine Love and forgiveness really mean.  Of course, apophatic mysticism is not interested in the question of a personal Divine Love, because such a love is a question for the heart, not the mind.

I therefore argue against the use of a doctrine of kenosis in inter-religious debate.  There have been efforts to describe kenosis as self-giving (in contrast to the original meaning of the word, which is self-emptying) but if it is self-giving Christians wish to speak of, then I would suggest we speak of it as Jesus himself spoke of it.  The Gospels tell us clearly that Jesus does not endorse a withdrawal into a cloistered or consecrated ascetic community but instead insists we be full participants in community life and healing, even when others shun us for our unflinching commitment to wisdom, compassion, dialogue, healing, and service.
 
The remarks I’ve made here apply equally to any closed apophatic system, including Christianity’s own dark mysticism, and is not an indictment of the Buddhist quest for wisdom and compassion, which is filled with true sincerity, dedication, and long experience; instead, my remarks are a realistic assessment of the ways in which an apophatic world view may block and actually interfere with our quest for wisdom and compassion because of a starting assumption that denies the Divine Heart.  By contrast, the cataphatic world view is a universal theory but not a closed system.  In fact, the Christian world view, with its focus on mystery and love, redemption and forgiveness, is so open to everything in Creation that there is room within it for all God’s children, regardless of when or where they have lived.

Despite my dissatisfaction with apophatic teachings, wherever they originate, I see many positive “seeds of the Divine” in Buddhism.  Two “seeds” that seem to have sprouted more systematically in Buddhism than in Christian orthodoxy are “the deep knowledge of human psychology shared by Buddhists” (Brassard 439) and the intense focus on praxis, as expressed through the moral teachings of the Eightfold Path.  These two seeds were also primary concerns for Jesus, as shown throughout the Gospels.  It is interesting to ponder how Christianity might better fulfill its stated goal of helping people heal their relationship with God if the Church were to combine Jesus’ cataphatic teachings with a stronger focus on both praxis and human psychology.  I argue this would in no way diminish the sense of mystery and awe that are so important in the Christian relationship with our loving God.  In fact, when Jesus presented his own thesis (the Kingdom paradigm) on the three basic questions about the human problem, he may already have understood that the mysteries of Divine Love, healing, forgiveness, faith, and redemption are intertwined in our physical reality in positive ways that somehow transcend the cause and effect laws formalized within apophatic teachings.
   
As Jesus taught us, and as Nostra Aetate affirmed, great things can be accomplished in this world when we open both our minds and our hearts to each other and to the mysteries of Divine Love.  There is no need to choose between the mind and the heart.  Both are reflections of God’s own image and God’s good Creation:  “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.  And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace (James 3:17–18).”

Thanks be to God.

Works Cited:
   
Brassard, Francis, Maria A. De Giorgi, and Franco Sottocornola.  “Buddhism and Christianity.”  Catholic Engagement with World Religions: A Comprehensive Study. Ed. Karl J. Becker and Ilaria Morali.  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010.  438–458.  Print.

Cunningham, Lawrence S.  Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision.  Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.  Print.

McGinn, Bernard.  The Foundations of Mysticism.  Vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism.  New York: Crossroad, 1991.  Print.

Odin, Steve.  “Kenosis as Foundation for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue.”  Eastern Buddhist 20.1 (1987): 34-61.  ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials.  Web.  23 Mar. 2014.

Plato.  Phaedrus.  Trans. Christopher Rowe.  London: Penguin–Penguin Classics, 2005.  Print.


For Further Reflection:

As you proceed along your own Spiral Path of wonder, science, and faith, it's important that you always keep your eyes and ears open to the promises being made to you by various religious leaders and gurus. Are the promises you're hearing based on equality of outcomes? Or are the promises based on equality of relationships? Although these two religious "highways" may not sound different from each other at first, they lead your brain's biology in different directions, so the physical wiring of your brain will depend on which of these two "highways" you give priority to.

The former highway (equality of outcomes) leads to moral codes based on laws, uniformity of belief, denial of historical and scientific fact, eradication of uniqueness, and the pure logic of salvation. All major world religions include some doctrines that promise equality of outcomes (i.e. if you correctly obey Laws A,B, and C, you'll get guaranteed results of X,Y, and Z), but some religions have more such doctrines than others. Platonism, Buddhism, Philosophical Taoism, and Ancient Near East Wisdom rely almost exclusively on equality-of-outcome doctrines. So do New Age and New Thought teachings derived from these earlier sources.

The latter highway (equality of relationships) leads to moral codes based on respect for interpersonal boundaries, openness to experience and change, conscientiousness, remorse, and the quixotic logic of healing. The Abrahamic religions, as well as Sikhism, Baha'i, and a number of aboriginal traditions, contain strong equality-of-relationship doctrines (though this isn't a comprehensive list of religions that incorporate equality of relationship). Wherever such doctrines exist, you'll see religious customs that are more expansive, inclusive, and emotionally uplifting.

Your guardian angels (the ones who are trying to help you heal your relationship with God during your human lifetime) are very keen on spiritual and religious theories that lead to equality of relationships. This means your angels are especially enthusiastic about praxis (i.e. spiritual practice) that promotes strong, healthy, respectful interpersonal boundaries between you and others, as well as between you and God.

Sometimes this means learning to say no -- learning to say no to those who are trying to take advantage of you by blurring the healthy boundaries that should exist between you.

From my own perspective, this has been one of the hardest things to learn and remember and implement in my daily life. I often struggle to say no, but I've learned it's a necessary part of knowing God and knowing myself.

Opening up your heart to others means you instinctively feel their pain. (This is what empathy is, after all.) But it doesn't always mean you should take on other people's pain or fix everything for them. You have to trust that your brothers and sisters are fully capable of learning how to heal their own pain without abusing and manipulating others.

Yes, it's not always easy to step back and let someone take charge of their own choices. And yes, people need many kinds of assistance and support as they learn how to cope in mature, effective, loving ways with their own pain. But if you really want to know what Divine Love feels like, you have to accept that individuals have the power within themselves -- within their own souls -- to become stronger, wiser, and more courageous as they wrestle with the fear that comes with pain.

Sometimes you have to step back so the sunlight of God's love can work its magic on the seeds of redemption that lie within everyone you know and love.

This is the one of the most overlooked aspects of Jesus' teachings -- trusting that God wants us to say no to religious beliefs that damage healthy boundaries and respectful relationships.

Religion and faith aren't the problem in our world. Doctrines that dictate equality of outcomes are the problem, both within and without religion. So try to recognize and push back against such salvific doctrines wherever you can.

It's one of the fastest ways I know of to build your relationship with God.

LSP26: Materialism, Buddhism, and Karma

Sometime in the 6th century BCE, in a region now known as Nepal, a man was born who is credited as being the Awakened One.  Siddhartha Gautama -- known to us as the Buddha -- crafted an entirely new philosophical system in response to the problems he saw in Hinduism (as it existed then).  His teachings are currently of great interest to spiritual seekers in the West who are tired of the turmoil created by our cultural norms.

From the earliest years of the movement, the Buddha's core teachings looked very different on the surface compared to Hinduism's ritual-bound, authoritarian teachings. Therein lay Buddhism's appeal. Unlike the highly supernatural Hindu teachings, the earliest Buddhist teachings were empirical, scientific, pragmatic, therapeutic, psychological, egalitarian, and directed to individuals.*  The Buddha's original religion (or way of life) was therefore long on intense self-effort, short on metaphysical speculation, devoid of authority, devoid of ritual, devoid of tradition, and devoid of the supernatural.**

Unfortunately, because the Buddha continued to uphold the laws of Karma -- not only using Karma as the main root system for his philosophy but pushing the logical implications of Karma to its ultimate purified form -- the religion he founded is also devoid of relationship with God.

Technically, Buddhism is referred to as a non-theistic religion or philosophy because there's no room in it for a personal God.  This isn't to say that God doesn't exist -- just that a personal God isn't needed. Or wanted.

This is a strong statement, so before I say anything else, I want to emphasize that my comments in this post refer only of those narcissistic individuals (some of whom I've had extremely unpleasant dealings with) who use the core teachings of Buddhism for their own selfish purposes and gain.  Most Buddhists, I'm sure, try not to misuse the teachings -- just as most Pauline Christians try to rise above the low bar set by the Church for their personal conduct.

In the Buddha's earliest teachings, which are intensely transpersonal in the way that all apophatic teachings claim to transcend the self, a personal God is discarded and replaced with the numinous cloud of Knowing/Unknowing that many people now call Source or Godhead.  It's this unknowable cloud of universal law that lies behind the theories of Karma in the East and Wisdom in the West.

As with all major world religions, Buddhism isn't a single religious entity, but is instead an umbrella term for various schools and branches that have diverged from the earliest teachings. A common belief in the doctrine of Karma is one of the uniting threads among diverse forms of Buddhism. This statue fragment of the Buddha is from the Gandharan art collection of the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

According to Karma's teachers, the cloud's Materialist laws of cause and effect (i.e. Karma) are THE laws you must obey -- no two ways around it.  Although it's a bummer to be stuck with these laws, the good news is this: he who can read the cosmic laws encoded in the cloud gains great power -- infinite power, actually.  He who can read the cosmic laws and control them no longer needs a relationship with God because he has, in a sense, become God.

In other words, once you have law, who needs love?

Bear in mind an important point here, a point which is often overlooked: it's the people who claim to have achieved nirvana who get to tell the rest of us what the laws are.  It's the normal, regular, everyday people -- not the universe or the planet or the laws of non-Materialist science -- that are dictating these Karmic laws to others from the inner reaches of their own human minds (minds which are, after all, still human, though you wouldn't know it to listen to them).  And guess what?  They don't have to explain themselves, because explaining and engaging in direct debate is for ignorant minds.  We're simply expected to trust that anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering), and anatta (absence of a permanent personality or soul) tell us everything we need to know about life on Planet Earth -- because the Buddhist philosophers have told us so.  (When they see this pattern of top-down authority in Christianity, we call it revelation.)

In its purest, earliest form, the teachings of Buddhism are no different than the teachings of other apophatic mystical traditions that seek to depose God as a person (actually, two people) and elevate the human mind to a position of authority it doesn't deserve.  It's the ultimate form of narcissism.

Ironic, yes?


* Huston Smith, The World's Religions (New York: HarperCollins, 1958 and 1991), page 98.
** Huston Smith, The World's Religions, pages 94-97.


For Further Reflection:

Sometimes, when we've been born and raised with certain beliefs about how the Universe works, we can discover it's no easy thing to set aside those beliefs even when we're sure they're wrong.

A few researchers in recent years have been looking for evidence in the human brain for "the God Spot" or "the God Code" to explain why most people seem to want and need religion in their lives. Some researchers have noticed there's a sort of "God-shaped conceptual space" in the brain that tends to fill up with non-Materialist beliefs. But it's really more complicated than this. From the moment of birth, the biological brain starts looking for evidence for two things: (1) how the 3D Universe works and (2) how the self fits into this strange new 3D Universe.

Bear in mind that, for the soul, the 3D Universe of baryonic matter (i.e. atoms and molecules that respond to the laws of classical physics) are not the norm. Souls (angelic consciousness) are born into the non-baryonic quantum world that governs 95% of all energy in Creation, a world where Divine Love and Divine Forgiveness and non-locality and quantum weirdness are normal parts of everyday life. Souls are used to weirdness. So when we choose to incarnate, we hit the ground running (so to speak) as we try to take in all the sights and sounds and gravitational laws that apply to 3D life on Planet Earth.

In our early years, we rely heavily on our own built-in observational skills as little scientists-in-human-form. We're constantly exploring the laws of classical physics, testing and retesting (yes, the peas still fall when I threw them!), and filling up our brains with all sorts of important data sets. Soon we start to ask more advanced questions about the laws of classical physics, and at this point we turn to wisdom of the adults around us. We absorb what they tell us directly about how the Universe works. We also absorb what they tell us indirectly through their own choices and their own responses to the world around them. We use the wisdom of adults as a sort of macro to filter and sort our understanding about the laws of the Universe. And this is a sensible thing for us to do because there's so much to learn and process.

When the adults around us live and breathe a highly specific cosmogony -- for example, Young Earth Creationism in Christianity, or Karma in Buddhism -- our growing brains start to accept this cosmogony not as a working theory but as an actual scientific truth. Based on our acceptance of cosmogony as truth, we then build an internal moral code that's consistent with our cosmogony. We do this because we want our inner selves -- our inner laws and choices -- to be in harmony with the laws that govern all Creation. This is the only approach to life that makes sense, because even when we're very young, we sense that we're not alone in Creation, that our lives are fully interdependent with the forces that govern all Creation. So we want to flow with the forces as we understand them, not against them.

You can imagine, therefore, how the biological brain will shape itself in childhood and early adulthood if the laws of Karma are upheld as scientific truth (even though the laws of Karma are pure conjecture). Planet Earth will, of necessity, look like a very grim place to you, and your lot in life will seem like a scientific reality that you must deserve and can't do anything about unless you commit to the path of letting go of the one thing that's truly yours: yourself.

The System 2 networks of the brain, scarily enough, see the logic in this path. But the System 1 networks, which hold within them the seeds for the path of love and forgiveness and meaning and empathy and relationship with God, will fight and fight against this ghastly "truth" until their biological networks are finally broken apart through constant suppression and denial.

Eventually, the brain's networks, so overgrown with the tenacious kudzu-like roots of Karma, can only see the world as proof of the theory itself. It's a vicious cycle, one that reinforces the theory of cyclical time and further damages the brain's ability to objectively assess religious doctrines.

One final note: You might think that a theory that's been around for a long time is surely correct simply because of its longevity. But many spiritual and religious theories have existed for centuries, even millennia, before being discarded. So longevity is in itself no proof of anything. In the past few centuries, Christianity has been undergoing a process of sorting and winnowing, and now many Christians are proud to say they don't accept ancient doctrines such as patriarchy and infallibility. We're constantly being called upon as children of God to be honest with ourselves about doctrines that create and sustain harm.

I personally believe that no religion anywhere on Planet Earth is -- or should be -- exempt from this constant process of reexamination, healing, and redemption. This is how we make the world a better place, one choice at a time. But we can't do it without Humbleness.

LSP25: What About Karma? Does It Fit With Divine Love?

Is it okay for a person on the Spiral Path to believe in Karma?  Is it okay for a person who believes in Divine Love to believe in Karma?

No, it's not okay.  It's not okay because Divine Love and Karma are mutually exclusive theories about Creation.  If you believe in Divine Love, there's no room for Karma.  Meanwhile, if you believe in Karma, there's no room for Divine Love.

October Maples (c) JAT 2014

Simply put, you have to choose.  You have to choose what kind of spiritual tree you want to grow in your garden of life.*  You can start with roots founded in Divine Love, or you can start with roots founded in Karma.  The choice is up to you, because you have free will.  But you need to know that the tree you grow from Divine Love will look very different in 20 years compared to the tree grown from Karma.  Both start from small, vulnerable seeds, which don't look much different from each other in the beginning (as both uphold the importance of moral precepts).  But tend them and feed them year after year and you'll eventually see the differences. 

Where will you see the differences?  You'll see them in the thoughts, feelings, actions, and health issues of your very own brain.  This is because the biological brain is designed to alter its wiring based on the major decisions you make.  If you make a decision to grow the Karma tree in your life, your brain will gradually rewire itself to reflect this decision.  In other words, the spiritual decisions you make will have a huge impact on how your brain works.

There are several factors that make the Karma tree seem very appealing, especially in the early stages of a spiritual journey:

1.  The Karma tree is based on the theory that the entire universe is moral, and that moral choices can't be separated from other kinds of choices.

2.  The moral laws of Karma are absolute.   Absolute rights and absolute wrongs exist, both of which have logical, predictable consequences for each soul.  Therefore, although human beings always have free will, there's really no chance or accident in the world because universal laws of cause & effect will eventually catch up with you (if not now, then in your next life).

3.  Karma is a highly logical, law-based philosophical system that makes perfect sense to logical, law-based human minds.  It demands that each person be 100% responsible for all his or her choices. 

4.  Karma teaches that Justice is absolute, totally fair, and inevitable.

5.  Karma places great power in the hands of human beings.  It's the power to fully comprehend cosmic laws and use those laws to create one's own future.  The universe must bend to human will once we humans grasp its laws.

6.  Karma teaches that the world we live in here (i.e. 3D Planet Earth) can't ever be perfected because its mix of good and evil is an intentional "training ground" for souls. This can never change because the planet's purpose is to be a "middle world" between the heavens above and the hells below.  Social progress is therefore a delusion.

7.  Karma starts with a cyclical understanding of Time.

These seven factors are the key philosophical roots that together create the theory of Karma.  Although these roots sound very logical and fair to most human minds, the big problem is this: these factors, when blended together, create the perfect excuse to avoid the hard work of opening your heart to Divine Love.

Opening your heart to Divine Love takes courage, humbleness, and forgiveness.  This is what Jesus' Kingdom teachings were all about -- opening your heart to Divine Love by finding and using your own courage, humbleness, and ability to forgive.  Courage, humbleness, and forgiveness aren't based in the logical, 3D mind; they're based in the emotional centres of the brain and soul -- the inner place we call the Heart.

The Heart has its own set of rules, but it's not the same set of rules the Mind uses (nor even, for that matter, the same set of rules the body uses).  The Heart sees many colours, tints, and tones where the Mind sees only black and white.

There's nothing in Jesus' understanding of God, Divine Love, or the soul that resembles the roots of the Karma tree.  Jesus was trying to show people how to grow something very different from the Karma tree, something that's built on the needs of the heart AND the mind AND the body AND the soul -- not just the needs of the mind. (Not that you'd know it after 2,000 years of Church teachings based on Paul's thorny, ugly, spiky version of the spiritual tree . . .)

Divine Love isn't a set of transpersonal laws based on pure Mind.  Divine Love is an emotional choice.  It's a choice made by God the Mother and God the Father together.  Because it's a choice -- because it's their choice -- you have absolutely no control over it.  You can't force God to mete out justice the way you see fit.  You can't force God to agree that your neighbour got what he deserved.  You can't force God to say it's okay for you to stop working toward social progress.  You can't force God to agree with the religious choices you make in your life.  You can't force God to agree with your personal assessment of your own cleverness.

You're not nearly as smart as the theory of Karma tells you.  And God isn't nearly as stupid.


* Please see "It's the Roots, Not the Fruits, That Matter" from January 29, 2014.


For Further Reflection:

It should be obvious that if you want to build a relationship with God, you need to sift and sort through the doctrines you hold, then set aside the beliefs that are blocking your relationship skills. There's no point planting seeds for the Tree of Life if you're going to salt the ground around it with toxic beliefs that constantly kill off the tender shoots of new relationship. A small number of religious and philosophical doctrines are so poisonous to your relationship with God that if you insist on hanging onto them, you'll find yourself struck, frustrated, never making progress. One of the most pernicious of these anti-relationship doctrines is the theory of Karma.

Since the late 1800's, Christianity has gradually been exposed to, and influenced by, various Eastern teachings that view Karma as the quintessential philosophical underpinning for morality, justice, personal enlightenment, and piety. Many Christians have been understandably eager to explore the goals and practices of these Eastern traditions in the hope of enriching their own experience of God's presence. It's somewhat difficult, however, to achieve this enrichment if you naively embrace the Materialist cause-and-effect laws of Karma. Karma is, after all, a set of doctrines which, at its very core, shows nothing but contempt for God.

It's no accident that Buddhism is technically a non-theistic religion. The whole point of the Buddha's original teachings was to demonstrate that an efficient system of algorithms could take human beings steadily closer to the Laws of Creation without any need whatsoever for a personal God. It's a brilliant system of logic, to be sure. But, as with any system that relies completely on algorithms, there's no room for the mystery of the Tree of Life. This may explain why many forms of Buddhism have evolved over the centuries to reintroduce the creativity, stories, family traditions, and art that were of necessity snuffed out by the Four Noble Truths.

In the core teachings of Buddhism, algorithms rule. In the teachings of Jesus, differential calculus is the key.

Algorithms have an unfortunate tendency to spawn cultural norms that are rigid, hierarchical, patriarchal, and dependent on Materialist cause-and-effect to explain why some people should be considered superior to others. Christianity, while demonstrating these same harsh aspects many times during its history (not to its credit), has repeatedly been subject to countervailing "eruptions" of horizontal inclusiveness and respect for women and children. These periodic "eruptions" of Divine Love have been made possible because Christianity has built-in doctrines that deal with flow rates; that is, doctrines that encourage change and learning and healing and experiences of redemption over time -- time that's understood as linear, not cyclical (which makes a huge difference as far as the biological brain is concerned).

Not every Christian has accepted that humbleness is a necessary aspect of relationship with God, but some have. Many Jews have seen the calculus of faith, as well. It's the willingness to be flexible in all our relationships (including our relationship with God) that lets us bend and grow with the wonders of the Tree of Life.

As I said above, if you're sure the Tree of Karma is right for you, than by all means stick with it. But don't expect it to bear the same fruit as the Tree of Life. And don't pretend the Tree of Karma is a viable path to feeling God's presence in your life when Karma's very purpose is to justify your personal quest to become a self-contained god yourself.

You can either have a path that leads you to Mother Father God or a path that leads you to self-sanctification/self-divination. But you can't have both.

Full disclosure: you have the right to choose whatever you like; but your angels have the right to have an opinion on your choices. So if you keep insisting you're a long lost spark of the Divine who's desperately trying to reclaim your rightful godhood (Gnosticism), or keep proclaiming you're trying to escape from suffering through self-transcendence/no-self (Buddhism), you can expect to get some feedback from your guardian angels about your arrogance and narcissism and lack of respect for God's wisdom.

They'll still love you and forgive you, though.

LSP24: Fox & Sheldrake's "Angels in the New Millennium": A Response

At the end of Fox and Sheldrake's book about angels -- The Physics of Angels:Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet -- the two authors provide a neat and tidy summary of "some of the lessons we have learned." These "lessons" are based on Fox and Sheldrake's modern reinterpretation of the mystical writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, Hildegard of Bingen, and St. Thomas Aquinas.  (Please see my last LSP post: Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's . . . Pseudo-Dionysius!)

One thing that's true about angels is that human beings generally see them as beautiful beings with wings. Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

Here is the summary list from pages 193-194 of their book.  Fox and Sheldrake's points about angels are shown in blue.  My responses are shown in black. 

"Angels are very numerous; they exist in astronomical numbers. There are many other kinds of consciousness in the cosmos besides human consciousness." Well, yes, angels are very numerous, and angels do exist in all places in the universe, but the way Fox and Sheldrake discuss consciousness is a red herring. To be an independent being is to have consciousness. All beings in the universe have consciousness. All beings in the universe (except for God the Mother and God the Father themselves) are children of God the Mother and God the Father. All beings in the universe are souls. All beings in the universe are angels. In other words, "having consciousness" has the same meaning as "being a child of God" which has the same meaning as "being a soul" which has the same meaning as "being an angel." These four phrases are synonyms for the same thing. So there is only one "kind of consciousness" in the universe. Having said that, I'd like to emphasize the fact that although there's only one kind of consciousness, there are countless different ways of expressing that consciousness. Angels are all equally important to God, but angels are all quite different from each other in the way they express their unique consciousness.

"Angels have been present from the origin of the universe." No. Angels have not been present from the origin of the universe. This is a very old idea that stems from theological claims for the timelessness and immutability (i.e. permanent lack of change) of God. Certain human beings at certain times in history have claimed that God is immutable and unchangeable and outside time and space because this claim has suited certain human agendas and political motives (especially human agendas involving claims for the divine status and authority of assorted human political and religious leaders). The reality is that God the Mother and God the Father are changing all the time, as are we, their children. Part of this reality is the reality that new angels (or souls) are being born all the time. As we speak, new angels are being born somewhere within God the Mother and God the Father's immense heart. Some of these newborn angels may one day choose to incarnate on one of the planets in our universe where some angels (though not all angels) choose to incarnate for purposes of learning, growth, and change. All angels who are currently incarnated on Planet Earth as "animals" (defined here as multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa)) are fairly young angels in the grand scheme of things. Being a young angel doesn't mean you're an inferior angel. It means you're an impatient angel who learns better by "doing" than by "hearing."

"They exist in a hierarchical order of nested levels within levels." No. Angels do not exist within hierarchies of spiritual ascent as described by Pseudo-Dionysius (or by Fox and Sheldrake), with some angels being closer to God than others because of their greater wisdom and purity. All such claims are damaging and hurtful. All angels in the universe -- every single one from youngest to oldest, smallest to biggest, intellectually brilliant to intellectually challenged -- are equally close to God and equally cherished by God the Mother and God the Father. GOD DON'T MAKE NO JUNK.

"They are the governing intelligences of nature." No. God the Mother and God the Father are the governing intelligences of nature, with all God's children being helpers and students in this great task. When you think you're hearing the voice of God in the wisdom of an ancient tree or an ancient rock, guess what . . . you're actually hearing the voice of God. (How cool is that?) Fox and Sheldrake, along with many others over the centuries, have tried to insert angels and nature spirits/devas into the reality of "God-as-Nature-and-God-as-Science" to separate you from God. While you may indeed have an experience of an angel while you're sitting quietly beside an ancient tree or ancient rock, the reason the angel is there is because angels -- like you -- want to hear the stories God the Mother and God the Father are telling us through the mediums of tree and water and wind and rock. Some angels, however, don't have to incarnate in order to hear these stories. They simply "visit" for short times. Sometimes humans and/or animals can see or hear or feel the presence of these "visiting angels." (Another important possibility is that you're sensing the presence of your own guardian angel while you're enjoying Nature, but I'll get to that in a minute.)

"They have a special relationship to light, fire, flames, and photons. There are astonishing parallels between Aquinas and Einstein with regard to the nature of angels and of photons: in their locomotion and mode of movement, their agelessness, and their being massless." Okay, this particular point just makes me want to throw up. First off, I want to remind everybody that Einstein was WRONG about non-locality, so to use Einstein (or the Aristotle-adoring-Aquinas) as a reliable authority to discuss the physics of angels is a stupid way to start. To follow up this form of stupidity with the idea that angels are massless -- when physicists have almost no understanding at all about the nature of dark matter, dark energy, or gravitational fields, and physicists don't know why only about 5% of the known energy of the universe takes the form of baryonic matter (what we call 3D matter) -- is just . . . just arrogant and simplistic and scientifically implausible. Massless? You really think consciousness is massless? Consciousness is full of mass -- it's just not 3D mass, so physicists don't understand it well and have no models at present to explain it. Also, it's wrong to state that angels have "a special relationship to light, fire, flames, and photons" because this denies the equality of angels who have a special relationship to water or to heliospheric energies or to gravitational fields or to the periodic table of elements or to any of the other countless and amazing and breathtaking forms of expression that angelic consciousness takes in God's great Creation. Get over the idea that light=God. Much of God's great Creation thrives within varied forms of "darkness." As far as God is concerned, if an angel is more comfortable in a quiet, private, dark environment (as on the ocean floor), that's a good thing. Divine Love is found in everything -- not just in light, fire, flames, and photons.

"They are musical in nature and work in harmonious relationship with one another." Finally, a point I can agree with! Yes, angels are musical in nature because music is one of God's important languages. But music isn't the only language angels use. Even more surprising, not all angels sing the same songs or even enjoy the same songs. Some angels love country, while others don't resonate with country at all. This is okay with God. Why should all angels like the same music? Why should they all sing the same songs? As long as you share your songs, and sing them joyfully from the heart, God is happy.

"The majority are friendly, but not all. Christ has power over the angels."  What the F@#&!  Please see point above: GOD DON'T MAKE NO JUNK. There are no "bad" or "evil" or "fallen" angels. There are no souls in creation who choose NOT to be part of God the Mother and God the Father's wondrous, loving, harmonious, kooky, surprising, courageous family. Fox and Sheldrake are repeating an ancient idea that's often been used to explain why certain people (people who think they deserve to be treated well by God) have ended up in tragic and difficult situations. This is part of the millennia-old tradition of Wisdom literature that says if you obey all of God's "divinely revealed laws," you'll be rewarded with many blessings (e.g. health, long life, wealth, many children, or whatever your particular culture believes is most desirable). Of course, God and your guardian angels don't necessarily agree with your belief in what's most desirable, and when they don't agree with you, you can be sure they'll express their opinion to you. Directly and often. You'll just have to learn to understand what they're saying to you and why.

"They have a special relationship to human consciousness. We human beings help link the earthly world with cosmic intelligences." This is another idea that's been kicking around for millennia in most major world religions. It's sometimes known by its Judaic name, Tikkun olam. (Tikkun olam   תקון עולם in Hebrew, is a phrase that means "repairing the world" or "healing the world," which suggests humanity's shared responsibility to heal, repair and transform the world). It's also an idea that shows up in some philosophical theories about humanity's relationship to the Dao. Basically, it's a highly anthropocentric idea that says human beings have a special role to play in the great cosmic plan to heal the universe. Of course, this assumes there is a great cosmic plan to heal the universe . . .  So is it at least true that angels have a "special relationship to human consciousness"? Well, yes. But this is only because each angel who incarnates on Planet Earth is sent along with a whole team of guardian angels to guide that one individual, and this team of angels always includes some of the angels who are closest to the incarnated angel when we're Home on the Other Side in non-3D form. So of course it feels as if we have a "special relationship" with our guardian angels!  They're some of our closest friends in the universe!

"Angels may have played a special role in the birth of language." I don't even know what to say to this one. Language is intrinsic to consciousness. Language is, in fact, one of the defining characteristics of consciousness. There are many forms of language in God's Creation (as mentioned above). Human beings don't have a monopoly on language on Planet Earth. In fact, some biologists who study animal culture are finally going on record to describe what most of the rest of us have always known: animals have their own "languages" and forms of specific communication with each other -- and also with us! The most important factor in the development of advanced language skills is relationship. Those who aren't exposed to strong relationships of love and empathy and respect in their early years won't develop strong language skills during their lives on Earth. In so far as relationships of love and empathy and respect are central to the human ability to connect with God and God's angels, I guess one could say angels played -- and CONTINUE to play -- a role in the development of our language skills.

Okay, skipping ahead here on Fox and Sheldrake's list because even I'm starting to get exhausted . . .

"Their primary role is praise" AND "They are present at holy worship." Well, crap. These two short statements show such a profound lack of understanding about who God is and what Divine Love is that if you want to know my full response to these statements, you're going to have to read all 189 posts on my first four blogs. (Doesn't that sound like fun?)

My short answer to these two statements is this: an angel's job is NOT to offer praise and worship to God (although angels are always hugging Mother Father God and saying thank you to show our appreciation). While it's true that angels ARE present at human services of religious worship, it's only because guardian angels never abandon their charges and never leave their sides for a moment. This means that your guardian angel is with you 24/7 from the time you're conceived until the moment you die and are taken Home by God the Mother and God the Father. This has always been true for every incarnated being on Planet Earth, and this will always be true, because God the Mother and God the Father would never ever contemplate leaving you alone for a second. So Fox and Sheldrake's eschatological idea that "the good angels are coming, the good angels are coming" is hogwash. Our angels have never left us and never will.

Your guardian angels are always with you.This means your angels see every little choice you're making. They see you when you're not being loving; they see you when you're going to church or temple or synagogue and repeating awful things about God; they see you when you're buying into religious myths that tell you God favours human beings over all over creatures; and they see you when you're choosing Platonic and Gnostic myths over God's loving and scientific realities.

That's the bad news.  The good news is  . . . your angels forgive you!


For Further Reflection:

It's all about the big picture.

The big picture is the only thing your angels are interested in. The big picture guides the decisions made by your guardian angels. The big picture shapes the events you don't want and didn't ask for. The big picture takes precedence over your human beliefs and prayers.

For angels, the big picture is all about relationships -- knowing God the Mother and God the Father in ways we didn't think possible, and knowing ourselves in ways we didn't think possible. And relationships are the messiest, least logical experiences of our human lives, right? Relationships involve struggle. And confusion. And miscommunication. And healing. And forgiveness. And love. And pain.

Yes, it's painful to be a human being with a Heart. It's painful to know grief. It's painful to wrestle with forgiveness. It's painful to let go of denial and embrace self honesty and personal change. And it's especially painful if you spend your whole life denigrating the Heart and exalting the Mind. Pursuing the Mind's goals (purity, piety, and perfection) at the expense of the Heart's goals  (humbleness, humour, and health) is the worst feeling of all for a human being. That's the whole point as far as your guardian angels are concerned. They want you to have the chance to wrestle with your own free will. They want you to see what it feels like to make really bad choices. It's only when you're faced with the stark reality of your terrible mistakes that you have the chance to dig deep into your own courage, your own love, and your own forgiveness. In doing so, you learn important truths about yourself as a child of God. You learn an eternal lesson about the infinite power of Divine Love to fix the Mind's screw-ups.

So yes, your guardian angels will sometimes let you fall flat on your face. And other times they'll step in to stop you from messing up your whole life. It depends on the situation, though. It depends on the big picture.

If you can manage to remember that you, as a human being, are being asked by your guardian angels to take responsibility for your free will -- to fully "own" your free will and use it wisely -- then some of questions you have about your life will make more sense.

You don't have to be perfect to know God and be close to God. You just have to try each day to balance your Heart and your Mind to the best of your ability. The effort to do this is always going to be gnarly and unpredictable, so don't give yourself too hard a time.

This is where Divine Humour comes in!

LSP23: Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's . . . Pseudo-Dionysius!

A number of years ago, I picked up a remaindered book called The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet by theologian Matthew Fox and biologist Rupert Sheldrake (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996). At first glance, it looked fascinating, but I didn't crack the cover until I was writing a term paper about Pseudo-Dionysius for a 2009 church history course.

I was drawn back to Fox and Sheldrake's book yesterday when I discovered it on the list of "Recommended Reading" on Eben Alexander's website (www.ebenalexander.com). My eyebrows shot to the top of my head when I saw The Physics of Angels being touted by a neuroscientist who should know better.

I didn't like The Physics of Angels in 2009, and I like it even less now. It's a perfect example of how NOT to approach the study of mysticism.

You probably think it doesn't matter that Pseudo-Dionysius was an early 6th century Neoplatonic Christian mystic and writer who single-handedly invented Western Christianity's early doctrines of "mystical theology" -- and you'd be right if it weren't for the fact that people today are still gobbling up this fake mystic's writings, putting them on a pedestal, and treating them like gospel truth.

Statue of Archangel Michael, late 13th century, Ile-de-France, on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Although much has been written over the centuries in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sources about Michael (said by many to be the first of the seven archangels and the leader of the Hosts of Heaven), the focus on angelic hierarchies in Pseudo-Dionysius's writings should set off your alarm bells. Divine Love isn't based on ladders of ascension or hierarchies of perfection. Divine Love spreads outwards, not upwards. Once you get used to the idea that there's no evil force opposing God in the universe (an evil entity variously named Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, etc.), you quickly see there's no reason for God to have an angelic army led by a sainted archangelic warrior demi-god. Photo credit JAT 2018.

In their book, Fox and Sheldrake look at the writings of three historical Christian mystics -- Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas of Aquinas, and Hildegard of Bingen -- to discuss who and what angels are in light of modern findings from physics. 

The problem here is that Fox and Sheldrake haven't done their historical homework, so they seem to think it's okay to use the "teachings" of Pseudo-Dionysius as if they're a reliable source.

Since when is a man reliable when he pretends he's a 1st century disciple of Paul, but really he's a 6th century writer who elaborately constructs a "mystical paradigm" about Heaven, and then presents it as "divine revelation" so the side he's taking in a big theological debate will win? (His side was the side that wanted to bring Plato's "truths" into the Christian fold as "Christian truths." His side won.)

Since when is the man who first coined the word "hierarchy" a reliable source for those who want to feel God's non-hierarchical love in their everyday lives?

Pseudo-Dionysius had a lot to say about angels because he had a lot to say about why human beings should obey their bishops, commanders, and rulers. He understood that if you're using religion to control the populace (a familiar tactic in so many human cultures), it's very helpful if you can "reveal" lots of impenetrable gobbledygook about celestial spheres. Then you can wave it about and tell people that if they want to get closer to God, they should submit to the same hierarchical structure of obedience to human leaders on Earth as angels joyfully abide by in Heaven. As above, so below -- but with a tyrannical twist. 

The methods of Pseudo-Dionysius were both devious and brilliant. And for centuries, his invented stories about angels have made it really difficult for regular people to trust that Heaven is a place where they'll be welcome.

In our culture, we don't take scientific concepts from the 6th century and give them special status just because they're old. Instead, we take historical scientific concepts and carefully reexamine them in light of newer findings. We acquire new data, compare it to older data, ask new questions, and ask whether the older questions were the best questions possible. We don't just take a writer's word for it because he uses lofty words and images. We should approach historical theological claims with the same rigour we apply to historical scientific claims.

Mystics of the past have changed the course of history, but this doesn't mean they were right -- or even very nice. When a person makes super-claims for himself and his side in a theological debate, we should think twice about his motives. And we should ask who was benefiting most from his "revelations": himself or God.

No one who has actually felt the loving presence of God or God's angels could treat God and God's angels the way Pseudo-Dionysius did.

That's why I think he was a fraud.


For Further Reflection:

Everybody who believes in Heaven is incredibly curious about it. We want to know what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like. We want to know what happens when we get to Heaven. We want to know who we'll see and how we'll be received when we arrive. We want to know what will happen to us in the future. We want to know what angels look like and how they behave. We want to know pretty much everything. And this is perfectly normal for all human beings.

But our abundant curiosity about Heaven makes us vulnerable to spiritual and religious charlatans.

By all means, feel free to explore the personal narratives of those who've had near death experiences, or those who've had visions of Heaven and angelic beings. Many reported experiences are legitimate and life-altering, obviously so for the individuals who've found themselves coming face-to-face with God in the most unexpected ways, and sometimes equally so for the people around these individuals.

Bear in mind, though, that every single human description of Heaven and heavenly beings is only a partial picture of the Truth. The human brain can know quite a few things about Heaven, but we can't know everything because our brains have limits. Even mystics such as myself, who voluntarily connect with God's presence each and every day, have limits.

This is normal and healthy, and there's no way around these built-in limitations, so don't try. And don't listen to spiritual gurus who tell you that God has revealed to them everything you'll ever need to know about Heaven -- and MORE!!! God sometimes does speak directly to certain individuals, but when this happens, the words and images and feelings are highly specific, highly end-user-directed. In other words, the way God communicates with you isn't exactly the same way God communicates with your neighbour. And Divine communications aren't usually about Truth with a capital "T" at all -- they're almost always about relationships. So what one person sees and feels about Heaven isn't going to be exactly the same as what his/her neighbour sees and feels, with a small number of exceptions, as follows.

This is a list of things about Heaven that every human being can relate to, even though we don't have all the nitty-gritty details during our human lives:

1. Every single soul who incarnates on Planet Earth will return to the place we call Heaven when the physical body dies. No exceptions, not even for tyrants, pedophiles, and the unshriven.

2. When you return Home to Heaven, you will (as you've heard so often) be reunited with your loved ones, and they'll be crying because they're so happy to see you.

3. You'll feel wrapped in a blanket of Peace and Divine Love that's so warm and blissful it's a bit beyond words. You'll feel safe, happy, sad, proud, and confused all at the same time. But mostly you'll feel loved.

4. You'll feel grateful for all the experiences you had as a human being (even the painful ones).

5. You'll spend some time healing and learning from your experiences, and, when you're ready, you'll help others do the same.

6. You'll understand God's wisdom in ways you never thought possible, and your Heart will feel as if it's going to burst with the wonder of God's Divine Love and Forgiveness.

7. You'll probably decide you don't want to incarnate again, but if you think another incarnation might be right for you, you'll talk it over with your angelic family for many, many years, and then you'll reincarnate several centuries in the future. Physical incarnation is a difficult process for all persons-of-soul, so there are no exceptions to the "wait-and-see" guidelines for future incarnations. God only lets you incarnate if there's something you can't learn through any other angelic learning process.

That's about it.

The rest is all gravy.

LSP22: Problems with Eternea.Org

Yesterday I visited the website (www.eternea.org) listed in the back of Eben Alexander's book Proof of Heaven and was again disappointed. It wasn't the first time. I signed up to be an Eternea member on February 2, 2013 so I could read forum posts on the message boards and also reply to them. Alas, there's no longer any point in signing up to be a "regular Joe Public" member of Eternea. Such members don't seem welcome.

 

At some point over the past few years (I'm not sure exactly when), the Eternea.org website was totally revamped. The original message board I complain about here was removed. In addition, the original Seven Statements were expanded to include Fifteen Elaborations (because apparently seven statements weren't enough). Eternea is now a non-profit group, and part of its mission statement says, "Eternea endorses a scientific approach to the study of spiritually transformative experiences and survival of consciousness after bodily death, as well as the relationship between consciousness and physical matter with special emphasis on torsion physics." Eternea appears to be trying to build yet another of humanity's failed Gnostic bridges to "Source," but it's not a bridge I recognize or recommend. As always, I suggest you learn to trust your own instincts about such teachings. Photo credit JAT 2021.

From the beginning, the Eternea forums were difficult to use because they were so heavily moderated. You'd post a comment, then wait for several days to see whether or not the moderator would approve it. Meanwhile, your comment wouldn't be visible to anyone but yourself. This made it difficult to carry on a dialogue or conversation with other members.

For months now, it's been rare to see a new comment appear on any of the Eternea forum threads. I tried starting a new thread on the Religion, Spirituality and Beliefs forum on April 13, 2014. As far as I can tell, it was never approved. (At least, I think it was never approved -- the way the message board is designed makes it awkward and confusing to figure out which of your own posts have been approved.)

So what's going on here? Why are there so few new comments? I doubt it's from a lack of interest among regular people. I think regular people want to talk about their unusual spiritual experiences. I think regular people want to share their stories with other people (without fearing their personal stories will be co-opted for Eben Alexander's next book projects). I think people want a safe place where they can talk about God and the soul and the afterlife without being laughed at, rejected, or treated as mentally defective.

Unfortunately, the Eternea site is not that safe place.

Dr. Alexander has a new book coming out in October 2014. It's called The Map of Heaven, and although I can't tell you anything about it (because it hasn't been released yet), it seems that in this book Dr. Alexander "shares some of the stories that . . . people have told him."

Well, I'm curious about that.  I'm curious about the fact that when you go to Dr. Alexander's own website (www.ebenalexander.com) and click on "Stories of the Eternal: Share Your Story," you don't get to read stories left by other readers.  You get to read this disclaimer:

"You understand that by submitting this letter/story it may be used on the website and in other media projects including books related to Dr. Alexander's work without restriction.  However, your email address will not appear.  Select 'No' if this is a private message."

For the record, I submitted a personal letter to Dr. Alexander via his lifebeyonddeath.net website on October 24, 2012. I sent him one personal snail-mail letter (addressed to Eternea's Deerfield Beach, Florida address) on November 14, 2012. I also submitted a "spiritually transformative experience report" to Eternea on November 6, 2012. In all these communications, I indicated that I'm a practising mystic who has a continuing and voluntary experience of connection with God in what Dr. Alexander calls "the Core." I expressed my willingness to share more about my ongoing experiences as part of the wider project of investigating consciousness and the soul. I've never heard back from anyone affiliated with Dr. Alexander or Eternea.

Fortunately, I keep records of all my communications, so I know exactly what I said to Dr. Alexander and Eternea.  I told him I have scientific insights into the voluntary mystical state that allows one to connect with God and Divine Love on an ongoing basis. Yet, because I've had no reply, I've sadly come to the conclusion that the information I can offer isn't of interest to him or his team of researchers.

My personal story doesn't line up perfectly with Dr. Alexander's conclusions. In fact, I disagree with him on a number of major points he's raised. However, this kind of disagreement doesn't usually stop researchers from engaging in debate and ethical criticism. In fact, it's this kind of disagreement that usually leads to greater insights and stronger research.

Eben, you'll have to decide for yourself about the path you're following. Please take the time to recall that Divine Love doesn't insist you always be right. Instead, Divine Love calls upon you to be honest about your human limitations and to find the courage to admit it when you discover you've made a mistake. There's no shame in making mistakes. But there's lots of suffering in the attempt to cover them up.

Blessings,
Jen

The Eternea oganization seems to have fallen into the tragic cycle of planting a crop of hope and then failing to nurture it appropriately. Come on, people. Smarten up! There's no way in hell you're ever going to have all the answers, so stop pretending you're the only gateway to God's truth. We've all been through the perils of over-zealous gatekeeping many times over. It doesn't work! Swallow your pride, forgive yourselves, and move on. 

 

For Further Reflection:

I think it's very helpful for those on a spiritual journey to read widely about the transformative experiences of others. Sometimes we're encouraged by spiritual leaders to stop reading from "mundane" sources; that is, books and articles not specifically focused on spirituality and the Divine. We're led to believe we've risen above these mundane sources. But if every person on the planet is a child of God (whether he or she knows it), there's always the potential for people to contribute in meaningful ways to the growth of healing and Peace, with or without their direct knowledge of God.

Every tale of courage and loving commitment is important, because inspiring stories resonate with our souls and remind us who we can really be. We all learn a lot from each other's struggles. Just knowing that one other person has navigated the same difficult situation you're facing and has come out okay is a source of encouragement. Sharing and learning from our painful experiences brings us face to face with our own Hearts. In doing so, we begin to be able to see the face of God.

It's all in the pain, you see. You've been told by every major religion that pain is a sign of unworthiness, inferiority, karmic recycling, Divine punishment, and the like. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, for instance, begin with the statement that life is dukkha (suffering). Pain is considered the opposite of salvation and enlightenment and pure Divine Love. Pain is the thing religion is supposed to rescue you from.

Absolutely nobody tells you that God the Mother and God the Father know more about pain than any of the rest of us will ever know.

One of the hardest things for angels to understand is the pain caused by Oneness. As angels, we belong to a vast Divine Family where we share a common morality (a morality of boundaries) and a common sense of devotion to each other (Divine Love), but in other respects we're very different from each other. The roots of our Mother and Father's loving relationship have grown a garden in Creation where untold diversity is possible. If you think the breathtaking variation of evolutionary life on Planet Earth blows your mind, you should see the indescribable breadth of colours and shapes and sizes and talents of the angels in God's universe!

Because God's universe is radically egalitarian -- because each unique soul is equally loved -- angels are all on different learning paths. We're not required to learn the same things in the same way at the same time. At some points in our growth, we'll need to receive more help than we give, and at other points, we'll give more help than we receive. It's organic. It's a blend of order and chaos. It's changeable. And sometimes it even hurts. But there's no obstacle and no pain that can't be transformed into something infinitely mysterious and beautiful by the courage of Divine Love. The Heart is the place deep within the self where this transformation takes place.

Angels live and breathe this kind of heart-based learning. So when Mother Father God try to explain to us that long, long ago and far, far away the universe was structured according to the mind-based principles of Oneness, we can't understand a word they're saying.

So some of us come here to Planet Earth to check it out.

It's important to note that Oneness and belonging aren't the same thing. As psychologist Abraham Maslow noted, one of the core human needs is a sense of love and belonging. We all need it. And when we don't get it -- when we don't have the sense of being warmly and sincerely accepted within our group despite our quirks and lack of perfection -- we feel disheartened, discouraged, and depressed. If we're using our Hearts (rather than just our Minds), we feel similarly depressed when painful things happen to our friends and family. Because we love, we share in the pain of those we cherish. Because we love, the journey toward healing, repair, and Peace is communal.

As the early seventeenth century English poet John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Oneness isn't a state of belonging. It's a state of control -- control over pain. It's an attempt to use pure logic, law, and knowledge to transcend all sources of pain and replace them with happiness.

It sounds absolutely wonderful at first, doesn't it? And because it sounds like the perfect pathway to Peace, millions and millions of people have tried to make Oneness work.

Here's why it doesn't work. It doesn't work because Oneness focuses on equality of outcomes instead of equality of relationships. The final goal -- "everyone is now happy" -- is considered far more important than any of the methods used to get to the goal. So relationships are discarded as those who are faster, smarter, and stronger take over the process to speed it up for everyone else. Those who are faster, smarter, and stronger consider themselves saviours, not tyrants. But before long, they start to believe that those who are slower, less smart, and weaker are inferior and farther down the ladder of perfection. Hierarchies develop. Then, before you can say Kim Jong-un, you have a despotic leader at the very top of the hierarchy who believes he's been divinely chosen to bring happiness to all his citizens by forcing every single one of them to believe what he believes, to learn things in the way he learns things, and to be happy in the way he defines happiness.

One of the great gifts of democracy (when it's done halfway right) is that individual citizens have the right to choose how they will handle pain and how they will approach happiness. This is a blessing that few of us recognize or appreciate. But without it, we become nothing more than the numbered drones in any of the dystopian science fiction novels and films that capture the terror of Oneness so well.

God thinks your story and your journey is uniquely important, and you should, too.

So be part of your community. But always remember to be your own self, too.

Don't let anyone else steal your right to heal your pain in the way that works best for you. Just don't steal anyone else's right while you're at it.