"And he worried that sharing ideas like this publicly, where people might encounter them without context or preparation, might lead to confusion or spiritual distress"
I would argue that NOT sharing these ideas publicly has a much higher chance of perpetuating mass confusion and spiritual distress.
Excellent piece! I couldn’t agree more. Thank you for expressing my own thoughts on the matter.
Withholding what is spiritually needed now might even be compared with the harm a parent inflicts on a growing child by denying them their bodily needs. Eventually that hungry child would try consuming all kinds of stuff he might inadvertently be poisoned by.
Thanks for this excellent article, which made me think, "He who has ears, let him hear." Unfortunately also brought to mind the Roman Catholic Church, with priestly intersession, etc.
As someone who has always yearned for deeper spiritual knowledge, for Gods kingdom, but at the same time has felt fear that that kind of yearning is sinful. I really resonate with this. This may not be what you’re intending, but before I read this I was thinking to myself about the garden and eve. She had such a desire for knowledge that she disobeyed God, and her consequences was for her desire to be for Man, along with childbearing pains. It makes me wonder, is my curiosity a character flaw rather than something that has been instilled in me by God to search for a deeper meaning? Am I wrong for chasing the mysteries of the universe that God has created? Recently I haven’t been doing my usually “learning” and have just focused on the mundane aspects of living a normal life but I feel empty. I only feel on fire when I’m chasing spiritual pursuits but then I wonder if it may be the wrong path. Idk I’m just kinda talking out loud atp but I would like to know your thoughts on that.
You articulate that razor's edge very well -- I'm sure because you feel it so keenly and personally. Is the yearning, let alone the actual search, for a kind of deep and *final* spiritual knowledge a help or a hindrance, our rightful calling or something that leads us astray? It's such a subtle question because the only right answer is that it's both, depending on our inner orientation.
On the one hand, if we didn't feel that emptiness and the motivation that arises from it, we'd just sink into the oblivion of our spiritually sleeping (or dead) state. On the other hand, once we've noticed the longing and started acting on it, we can and do get caught in countless little obsessions that become ends of their own and distract from the really clear and core goal.
So the answer has to be first that there's nothing intrinsically wrong, and in fact everything intrinsically right, about the desire itself, and (or but) second, that we need to continually course-correct by reminding ourselves time and again to return to that core desire in its purity, shake off whatever partial and temporal distractions have become our spiritual dead ends -- doctrines, beliefs, practices, attitudes, environments, and/or personal relationships that used to help but now hinder us -- and start again. The fact that this "return to zero," so to speak, is actually, in the end, what it's all about anyway, the golden ring and the goal of the quest to begin with, makes the whole thing poetically appropriate.
Thank you for the reply it’s really helpful. I find that certain things that peak my curiosity are not really dead ends as much as they are things that I’ve evolved from that I keep running back to. It is super easy to get caught in the mix of it all and sometimes lose sight of reality or the “goal at hand”. With me I feel like I go manic thinking about certain things to just spiritually asleep if that makes sense. It can be pretty difficult for me to maintain a healthy balance and also to just utilize spiritual teachings in my day to day life. But yeah thanks I look forward to reading more of your work!
Agree christianity must embrace mysticism again or it will die. I had become borderline atheist due to an upbringing like yours. God showed up when i started meditating (for "stress relief," ha!), revealed mystical truth, eventually revealing the esoteric truth of Christ, who led me back to the scripture where I finally understood the meat after having rejected the milk.
And it makes all the difference to having a living experience. Sola Scriptura was the huge mistake of the Protestant movement. Knowing God requires experience, and understanding scripture requires knowing God. It's not enough to "study the book" like some sort of spiritual college course.
Spiritual malnutrition indeed is what I was raised with (along with lots of warnings that I might burn in hell if I get it wrong). Thank you for writing this. And thank you for giving me the term "Spiritual malnutrition"
I'm glad I could add that term to your vocabulary/arsenal, Clint. 😊
I'm with you on the limitations of sola scriptura, whether the actual classic Protestant principle or the wider issue of obsessive over-reliance on scriptures in any tradition. I understand why it had to emerge historically, and I understand how and why it seemed like a desperately needed breath of fresh air to those who conceived and promoted it, given the surrounding cultural and religious circumstances. But ultimately, inevitably, such an approach becomes a wasteland for the soul by making an idol out of written texts. Obviously, those who have found great nourishment in scriptural writings would disagree. But then, I think they'd be the ones who are in a real living relationship with such texts, the kind of relationship that carries the necessary first-person insight needed to bring the written word to life.
Great piece, Matt! Speaking of confusion and spiritual distress when encountering deep spiritual teachings, I'm reminded of a saying from the Gospel of Thomas: "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will be disturbed. When he is disturbed, he will marvel, and he will reign over all."
So what the Gospel is saying, and something I'd argue too, is that distress is to be expected. Sure, there are risks, but life itself is risky, so why would colliding with infinity be an exception? It makes no sense to judge these teachings (and their presentation) by their palatability.
And in the case of someone not seeking, and yet being blindsided by a passage like the Peter Brown you shared, well, perhaps someone has been seeking unknowingly, and having this appear before him is pure grace. As Peter Brown says in the passage you quoted, "God is doing exactly what is supposed to be done."
Aptly observed/quoted with that particular passage from Thomas, which is always potent. And great point about the possibility that the very sense of being blindsided by a saying or teaching you can’t understand may be exactly what’s supposed to happen. Just as everything is what’s supposed to happen. Thanks, Luka.
Great thoughts. I also grew up in an evangelical church (Church of Christ) and it definitely felt primarily doctrinal. I think the modern church, and western society in general, has largely lost sight of the more mystical side of things. Even people who purportedly believe in a supernatural being don't think things like that happen nowadays, and even have a doctrine for it (Jesus/the apostles needed to be able to perform miracles in order to establish the church... Like we don't need those things today).
I do believe in those things, unfortunately I haven't experienced anything yet, though. Maybe one day.
You and I probably had a similar youthful religious environment and experience, Jack. The Christian cessationist view of miracles and supernatural manifestations is an interesting entry in the annals of religious history, isn’t it? On the one hand, it aligns with the modern non-religious or even anti-religious view that things don’t happen. On the other hand, it says they once did happen—but just not today! Kind of weird.
That said, my own erstwhile desire for encountering and experiencing the miraculous, supernatural, or paranormal has died down, even when it come to exotic states of consciousness like mystical visions or enlightenment. I briefly explain why in the final paragraph of the attached piece on UFOs. https://www.livingdark.net/p/on-ufos-and-the-death-of-astonishment
Back on the subject of modern Protestant churches and their atrophied spiritual dimension, at one point in my master’s degree in religious studies, I spent a semester studying Eastern Christianity, and I ended up writing a paper on the difference between the fundamental attitudes and respective intents of American Protestantism and Eastern Christianity. The forthrightly mystical emphasis of the latter fascinated and still fascinates me. The fact that Eastern Orthodoxy makes a doctrine like theosis central to its general practice and theology is a far cry from the comparative doctrinal dustiness of the Protestant experience. My paper delved into this and offered both a diagnosis and a recommendation for Protestant churches to rediscover an emphasis on the real spiritual dimension of their tradition, as something beyond their mere social formational functions. Who knows, I may dig out that paper and share it here.
Thanks for the other article rec, I will check it out.
I'd be interested in that paper! I also looked into Eastern Christianity, it did seem to retain some of the more mystical aspects. I attend an Episcopal church now, and the tradition also seems more open to that side of things - Episcopal priests such as Cynthia Bourgeault. Loved her book on Centering Prayer.
I read this in the subscription email back when you first published it, but didn’t comment because it brought up a lot of thoughts that I struggled to articulate, and will probably struggle articulating even now… given the late hour.
I had a very similar upbringing to yours in terms of growing up in church and in terms of Christian faith. It would seem I am about 30 years behind you on my spiritual path/seeking. It has been a culmination of loss and great change (including rapid change in the world) and a sheer inability to reconcile many of the things I was told growing up with what I have always sensed (or felt a knowing about) that has set me on that spiritual path.
That said, I’ve been very grateful for your voice here because it has been like an invitation to see things outside of or beyond what I spent so much of my life not only accepting, but even dogmatically professing.
I guess I can best sum up my thoughts about this essay by going back to that LeGuin quote. I am not by any means an expert on anything, but it does seem to me that your overarching message is important and timely and needed (among many other thoughtful /insightful voices, some of which you’ve introduced your readers to). So I’m grateful you are speaking to more than just a few in some elite inner circle.
Forgive the personal context, but when my daughter died just over thirteen years ago, I was desperate to know what meaning or purpose there was in her brief time here, and desperate to know, for that matter, what mine was too—even though I’d been taught my entire life up until that point, under evangelical Christian teaching, what that purpose or meaning was. And I was desperate to know for certain about what is beyond this life (and hers). It wasn’t until a decade later that I’d begun to realize there even was such a thing as non-dual philosophy—when I followed through on a recommendation of your account. Had you not at the time recently posted your dissertation excerpt about Oswald Chambers—someone whose teaching was very in line with what I’d been taught my entire life—and had your writing not seemed so compelling, I might still to this day not know about non-dual philosophy.
But you did and it does, and so now, here I am. And these things you share and write about are things that, while I’m still “wrapping my head around” much of it, land at my center and reconcile with the felt sense I’ve already sort of known much of my life… long before discovering these ideas or “tenants” of non-dual philosophy.
So, I can say that I feel rather strongly, both personally and regarding what I believe is needed for the world/times we live in, that all that you share of this sacred nature should not be kept secret any longer, if ever it should have been before.
Inner circles are cool. I can think of a few in history—Lewis in The Inklings and Schubert’s close network of six musical friends. But imagine where we’d be if even just those two alone, not to mention so many others, hadn’t shared what they did with the world.
Your comment here reflects my own struggle following the death of a life long friend and mentor. I've spent a couple of years trying to break-through the limit of my perception - to reconnect with him. I keep a small statue of the Egyptian Cat Goddess - Bastet. She patrols the boundaries between the world of the living and the dead. She rules the subjective harmonies of Art and Music, and she reminds me of my place on this side - for now I am here.
Where I am currently, it is just after 3 A.M. I am lying awake in the dark. Outside it is freezing cold, but my own Cat has just arrived purring....comforting. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I'm sorry your comment somehow eluded my notice until just now, Georgia. Apologies for the month-long silence.
The fact that what I share here has been so moving and meaningful to you is moving and meaningful to me. So is the fact that it has intersected with your life in deeply personal ways. I am of course familiar with this experience from my own long life as a reader. The profound personal resonances we find in the shared subjectivity of strangers, transmitted through the written word, along with the new doors this can open for us, are among life's most precious things.
I'm late with my comment - catching up with these excellent pieces.
This vision takes me back into my early 20's when I began an existential crisis...driving a sports car, top down on a sunny Summer afternoon. I stopped for Gas, and decided to use the washroom before continuing on home.
I was unable to exit the washroom. I couldn't open the door - terrified to step out into the sunlight. The gas station attendant eventually came and knocked on the door..."are you OK in there ?" I called back "I'll be right out", and the sound of my voice horrified me - pretending to sound bright and cheerful and normal.
I forced myself out, into my car, and white-knuckled myself back to my Parents home where I began the process of baling-out of my normal life - my Parents frantic...calling a Doctor when I couldn't come out from under a grand piano where I took to sleeping / hiding in a darkened room.
So began an agonizing several years of pills and specialists.
Absolutely everything in the daylight world seemed to have malicious agency. I felt as though I'd become a passenger for some "thing" which had decided to occupy me for no reason, other than I had been a foolishly carefree 20 year old driving on a Summer day, heedless of the monstrous reality around me.
My crisis was also the birthing of a magical practice - a means of reordering the little riotous moments of daily demonic agency into a more well-behaved, orderly rhythm - perhaps assisted by the Grand Piano under which I'd sought refuge.
What a harrowing and fascinating account, Richard. Thank you for sharing it. The radically different ways in which our different karmic configurations manifest and play themselves out is so very striking, perhaps especially in those areas and experiences where, as in this threshold chapter of your own life, we’re upended and undermined by transformative change that arrives in a decidedly unpleasant form. I’m glad to be in contact with the you who has emerged on the other side.
"And he worried that sharing ideas like this publicly, where people might encounter them without context or preparation, might lead to confusion or spiritual distress"
I would argue that NOT sharing these ideas publicly has a much higher chance of perpetuating mass confusion and spiritual distress.
Well said!
Excellent piece! I couldn’t agree more. Thank you for expressing my own thoughts on the matter.
Withholding what is spiritually needed now might even be compared with the harm a parent inflicts on a growing child by denying them their bodily needs. Eventually that hungry child would try consuming all kinds of stuff he might inadvertently be poisoned by.
Very good point.
Thanks for this excellent article, which made me think, "He who has ears, let him hear." Unfortunately also brought to mind the Roman Catholic Church, with priestly intersession, etc.
I'm glad it landed with you. 🙏
☦️
As someone who has always yearned for deeper spiritual knowledge, for Gods kingdom, but at the same time has felt fear that that kind of yearning is sinful. I really resonate with this. This may not be what you’re intending, but before I read this I was thinking to myself about the garden and eve. She had such a desire for knowledge that she disobeyed God, and her consequences was for her desire to be for Man, along with childbearing pains. It makes me wonder, is my curiosity a character flaw rather than something that has been instilled in me by God to search for a deeper meaning? Am I wrong for chasing the mysteries of the universe that God has created? Recently I haven’t been doing my usually “learning” and have just focused on the mundane aspects of living a normal life but I feel empty. I only feel on fire when I’m chasing spiritual pursuits but then I wonder if it may be the wrong path. Idk I’m just kinda talking out loud atp but I would like to know your thoughts on that.
You articulate that razor's edge very well -- I'm sure because you feel it so keenly and personally. Is the yearning, let alone the actual search, for a kind of deep and *final* spiritual knowledge a help or a hindrance, our rightful calling or something that leads us astray? It's such a subtle question because the only right answer is that it's both, depending on our inner orientation.
On the one hand, if we didn't feel that emptiness and the motivation that arises from it, we'd just sink into the oblivion of our spiritually sleeping (or dead) state. On the other hand, once we've noticed the longing and started acting on it, we can and do get caught in countless little obsessions that become ends of their own and distract from the really clear and core goal.
So the answer has to be first that there's nothing intrinsically wrong, and in fact everything intrinsically right, about the desire itself, and (or but) second, that we need to continually course-correct by reminding ourselves time and again to return to that core desire in its purity, shake off whatever partial and temporal distractions have become our spiritual dead ends -- doctrines, beliefs, practices, attitudes, environments, and/or personal relationships that used to help but now hinder us -- and start again. The fact that this "return to zero," so to speak, is actually, in the end, what it's all about anyway, the golden ring and the goal of the quest to begin with, makes the whole thing poetically appropriate.
Thank you for the reply it’s really helpful. I find that certain things that peak my curiosity are not really dead ends as much as they are things that I’ve evolved from that I keep running back to. It is super easy to get caught in the mix of it all and sometimes lose sight of reality or the “goal at hand”. With me I feel like I go manic thinking about certain things to just spiritually asleep if that makes sense. It can be pretty difficult for me to maintain a healthy balance and also to just utilize spiritual teachings in my day to day life. But yeah thanks I look forward to reading more of your work!
Agree christianity must embrace mysticism again or it will die. I had become borderline atheist due to an upbringing like yours. God showed up when i started meditating (for "stress relief," ha!), revealed mystical truth, eventually revealing the esoteric truth of Christ, who led me back to the scripture where I finally understood the meat after having rejected the milk.
And it makes all the difference to having a living experience. Sola Scriptura was the huge mistake of the Protestant movement. Knowing God requires experience, and understanding scripture requires knowing God. It's not enough to "study the book" like some sort of spiritual college course.
Spiritual malnutrition indeed is what I was raised with (along with lots of warnings that I might burn in hell if I get it wrong). Thank you for writing this. And thank you for giving me the term "Spiritual malnutrition"
I'm glad I could add that term to your vocabulary/arsenal, Clint. 😊
I'm with you on the limitations of sola scriptura, whether the actual classic Protestant principle or the wider issue of obsessive over-reliance on scriptures in any tradition. I understand why it had to emerge historically, and I understand how and why it seemed like a desperately needed breath of fresh air to those who conceived and promoted it, given the surrounding cultural and religious circumstances. But ultimately, inevitably, such an approach becomes a wasteland for the soul by making an idol out of written texts. Obviously, those who have found great nourishment in scriptural writings would disagree. But then, I think they'd be the ones who are in a real living relationship with such texts, the kind of relationship that carries the necessary first-person insight needed to bring the written word to life.
Great piece, Matt! Speaking of confusion and spiritual distress when encountering deep spiritual teachings, I'm reminded of a saying from the Gospel of Thomas: "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will be disturbed. When he is disturbed, he will marvel, and he will reign over all."
So what the Gospel is saying, and something I'd argue too, is that distress is to be expected. Sure, there are risks, but life itself is risky, so why would colliding with infinity be an exception? It makes no sense to judge these teachings (and their presentation) by their palatability.
And in the case of someone not seeking, and yet being blindsided by a passage like the Peter Brown you shared, well, perhaps someone has been seeking unknowingly, and having this appear before him is pure grace. As Peter Brown says in the passage you quoted, "God is doing exactly what is supposed to be done."
Aptly observed/quoted with that particular passage from Thomas, which is always potent. And great point about the possibility that the very sense of being blindsided by a saying or teaching you can’t understand may be exactly what’s supposed to happen. Just as everything is what’s supposed to happen. Thanks, Luka.
Great thoughts. I also grew up in an evangelical church (Church of Christ) and it definitely felt primarily doctrinal. I think the modern church, and western society in general, has largely lost sight of the more mystical side of things. Even people who purportedly believe in a supernatural being don't think things like that happen nowadays, and even have a doctrine for it (Jesus/the apostles needed to be able to perform miracles in order to establish the church... Like we don't need those things today).
I do believe in those things, unfortunately I haven't experienced anything yet, though. Maybe one day.
You and I probably had a similar youthful religious environment and experience, Jack. The Christian cessationist view of miracles and supernatural manifestations is an interesting entry in the annals of religious history, isn’t it? On the one hand, it aligns with the modern non-religious or even anti-religious view that things don’t happen. On the other hand, it says they once did happen—but just not today! Kind of weird.
That said, my own erstwhile desire for encountering and experiencing the miraculous, supernatural, or paranormal has died down, even when it come to exotic states of consciousness like mystical visions or enlightenment. I briefly explain why in the final paragraph of the attached piece on UFOs. https://www.livingdark.net/p/on-ufos-and-the-death-of-astonishment
Back on the subject of modern Protestant churches and their atrophied spiritual dimension, at one point in my master’s degree in religious studies, I spent a semester studying Eastern Christianity, and I ended up writing a paper on the difference between the fundamental attitudes and respective intents of American Protestantism and Eastern Christianity. The forthrightly mystical emphasis of the latter fascinated and still fascinates me. The fact that Eastern Orthodoxy makes a doctrine like theosis central to its general practice and theology is a far cry from the comparative doctrinal dustiness of the Protestant experience. My paper delved into this and offered both a diagnosis and a recommendation for Protestant churches to rediscover an emphasis on the real spiritual dimension of their tradition, as something beyond their mere social formational functions. Who knows, I may dig out that paper and share it here.
Thanks for the other article rec, I will check it out.
I'd be interested in that paper! I also looked into Eastern Christianity, it did seem to retain some of the more mystical aspects. I attend an Episcopal church now, and the tradition also seems more open to that side of things - Episcopal priests such as Cynthia Bourgeault. Loved her book on Centering Prayer.
I read this in the subscription email back when you first published it, but didn’t comment because it brought up a lot of thoughts that I struggled to articulate, and will probably struggle articulating even now… given the late hour.
I had a very similar upbringing to yours in terms of growing up in church and in terms of Christian faith. It would seem I am about 30 years behind you on my spiritual path/seeking. It has been a culmination of loss and great change (including rapid change in the world) and a sheer inability to reconcile many of the things I was told growing up with what I have always sensed (or felt a knowing about) that has set me on that spiritual path.
That said, I’ve been very grateful for your voice here because it has been like an invitation to see things outside of or beyond what I spent so much of my life not only accepting, but even dogmatically professing.
I guess I can best sum up my thoughts about this essay by going back to that LeGuin quote. I am not by any means an expert on anything, but it does seem to me that your overarching message is important and timely and needed (among many other thoughtful /insightful voices, some of which you’ve introduced your readers to). So I’m grateful you are speaking to more than just a few in some elite inner circle.
Forgive the personal context, but when my daughter died just over thirteen years ago, I was desperate to know what meaning or purpose there was in her brief time here, and desperate to know, for that matter, what mine was too—even though I’d been taught my entire life up until that point, under evangelical Christian teaching, what that purpose or meaning was. And I was desperate to know for certain about what is beyond this life (and hers). It wasn’t until a decade later that I’d begun to realize there even was such a thing as non-dual philosophy—when I followed through on a recommendation of your account. Had you not at the time recently posted your dissertation excerpt about Oswald Chambers—someone whose teaching was very in line with what I’d been taught my entire life—and had your writing not seemed so compelling, I might still to this day not know about non-dual philosophy.
But you did and it does, and so now, here I am. And these things you share and write about are things that, while I’m still “wrapping my head around” much of it, land at my center and reconcile with the felt sense I’ve already sort of known much of my life… long before discovering these ideas or “tenants” of non-dual philosophy.
So, I can say that I feel rather strongly, both personally and regarding what I believe is needed for the world/times we live in, that all that you share of this sacred nature should not be kept secret any longer, if ever it should have been before.
Inner circles are cool. I can think of a few in history—Lewis in The Inklings and Schubert’s close network of six musical friends. But imagine where we’d be if even just those two alone, not to mention so many others, hadn’t shared what they did with the world.
Your comment here reflects my own struggle following the death of a life long friend and mentor. I've spent a couple of years trying to break-through the limit of my perception - to reconnect with him. I keep a small statue of the Egyptian Cat Goddess - Bastet. She patrols the boundaries between the world of the living and the dead. She rules the subjective harmonies of Art and Music, and she reminds me of my place on this side - for now I am here.
Where I am currently, it is just after 3 A.M. I am lying awake in the dark. Outside it is freezing cold, but my own Cat has just arrived purring....comforting. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I'm sorry your comment somehow eluded my notice until just now, Georgia. Apologies for the month-long silence.
The fact that what I share here has been so moving and meaningful to you is moving and meaningful to me. So is the fact that it has intersected with your life in deeply personal ways. I am of course familiar with this experience from my own long life as a reader. The profound personal resonances we find in the shared subjectivity of strangers, transmitted through the written word, along with the new doors this can open for us, are among life's most precious things.
I'm glad this has brought us in contact.
I'm late with my comment - catching up with these excellent pieces.
This vision takes me back into my early 20's when I began an existential crisis...driving a sports car, top down on a sunny Summer afternoon. I stopped for Gas, and decided to use the washroom before continuing on home.
I was unable to exit the washroom. I couldn't open the door - terrified to step out into the sunlight. The gas station attendant eventually came and knocked on the door..."are you OK in there ?" I called back "I'll be right out", and the sound of my voice horrified me - pretending to sound bright and cheerful and normal.
I forced myself out, into my car, and white-knuckled myself back to my Parents home where I began the process of baling-out of my normal life - my Parents frantic...calling a Doctor when I couldn't come out from under a grand piano where I took to sleeping / hiding in a darkened room.
So began an agonizing several years of pills and specialists.
Absolutely everything in the daylight world seemed to have malicious agency. I felt as though I'd become a passenger for some "thing" which had decided to occupy me for no reason, other than I had been a foolishly carefree 20 year old driving on a Summer day, heedless of the monstrous reality around me.
My crisis was also the birthing of a magical practice - a means of reordering the little riotous moments of daily demonic agency into a more well-behaved, orderly rhythm - perhaps assisted by the Grand Piano under which I'd sought refuge.
What a harrowing and fascinating account, Richard. Thank you for sharing it. The radically different ways in which our different karmic configurations manifest and play themselves out is so very striking, perhaps especially in those areas and experiences where, as in this threshold chapter of your own life, we’re upended and undermined by transformative change that arrives in a decidedly unpleasant form. I’m glad to be in contact with the you who has emerged on the other side.