THE NATURE AND CHALLENGE OF JESUS' TEACHINGS.... July 26, 2015

"And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."
-- Jesus

 Here are some thoughts on hearing Jesus. I don't believe any genuine spiritual teaching can be approached literally as something the human ego is addressed by God 'to do.' Instead they are not intended as rational statements but are always paradoxical. I hear the sayings of Jesus intentionally creating an impossible bind for any human who aspires to live an ethical life(Which I assume to be most ordinary folks) for it points to what we well know we have not and cannot consistently or even usually practice in a literal external way. It pushes one to acknowledge their distance from any claimed moral or loving perfection. And to become aware that when any unconditional or sacrificial or effective love comes from us, it is not our ego's doing but a spirit or The Christ or The Self acknowledged within that makes such moments possible. Such moments would be ones experienced by the ego consciousness as 'grace'(where did that come from? we might ask ourselves with gratitude) and not of our own egocentric doing. That is why Jesus would would say such is not to be announced or paraded for that honors the ego which is not where such love behaviors originate, and the practitioners of this fully know that.

This would imply that behaving by the love ethic is not one to be 'worked on' as much as always 'prayed for' as in 'thy kingdom come.' Ironically this is the very prayer I was taught growing up  we do not pray, for the 'kingdom' has supposedly already come....it is the institutional church. Surely this is a tragic misunderstanding of Jesus.

I would add that I find it important to think of Jesus as not always experiencing such perfect love and sharing as a human being either. (I ask for the Christian reader's patience to not rush to the conclusion that this paragraph diminishes the value or adoration I have for Jesus. It is quite the opposite I assure you.) I imagine Jesus lived with a sense of 'grace' like I am describing above.  He  experienced being aided from beyond his ego consciousness and enabled to be what love demanded when it was most needed, often just barely enough and in the nick of time- not some continuous morally perfect life without any flaw. That is how I have come to understand what it is to be a human living in harmony with the Spirit. This would be what the actual 'incarnation and union of divine and human' would look like and how it would be experienced by the human in our day.  The idea of Jesus the man being lovingly and morally perfect(except potentially as he also implied other humans are)  makes it impossible for me to either relate to or genuinely appreciate him as a model for living.. .. I'd have to say I am somewhat repelled by that interpretation of his life for it is totally distant to what is actually me and what I observe in the best of  others. It does not help or empower me toward a more loving life. Instead it  implies Jesus was not a real and whole human being, which is the only goal I can rationally aspire to, to experience my being's center as not my ego consciousness but something much larger, something which I am not the manager of and which creates those moments of grace whenever love and full generosity  should emerge in my behaviors. This would also imply our imperfections and character flaws, rather than being despised and rejected outright,  become consciously a necessary and essential part of our true and 'whole' character or personality.

ADDENDUM: 
Jesus also says, 'All things are possible with God'... Applying that to the individual or group would mean just that. We do not ever 'know' by reasoned knowledge what The Self or indwelling spirit or The Christ can work to bring forth from humans. The important point I think is that morality and ethics in Jesus' teaching is not primarily a matter of the thinking, willing, planning ego consciousness. It is created by the 'other' undetectable by physical senses .... religious function. Depth psychology stresses, this 'other' function is as much a reality of the natural human being as are  the capacities to think and feel. Becoming more aware of this and Trusting 'It' is there and functioning creates a transformed 'state of mind' that can bring about development of the 'whole' person and  potentially  a genuinely transcending  and  realized ethic. ... where one potentially experiences 'so loving the world'. I think we can see how hope in any kind of PERFORMANCE UNDER LAW or human reason alone , runs contrary to this paradoxical emphasis of Jesus' teaching.

OBAMA 'CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING' EFFECT......A SYNCHRONICITY .....July 17, 2015

This may be my recurring kind of thought process and observation of public/private life that 'helps thou my unbelief.' and creates hope.  I do not credit Obama personally that he, in my opinion, is being a significant 'consciousness raiser' for the American collective. I hope he is an example of a person being an instrument of nature, evolution, God, or however one describes it, for the common good. This is not something that anyone can plan or scheme into reality. It is larger than any me or us.  But is an example of 'what one is for whatever reasons' being, at just the right time, in a 'just so' perfect harmony with   barely conscious  needs of the collective consciousness. To have such an un-conspired effect is like hitting  the  bulls eye of a rapidly moving target at an incredible long distance with a bow and arrow while riding horse back.

Psychologically, and maybe theologically, this can be called a 'synchronicity'(A highly attention getting meaningful coincidence that is not rationally caused.) I interpret the recent sudden successive Supreme Court's decisions, 'making more conscious'  the  meaning of the Confederate flag, the Iran Deal and the first presidential visit to a prison as aspects of this Obama-Nation synchronicity.(This is all when a President is considered a lame duck) All these are likely very important 'consciousness raising' happenings for the country. I am also very sensitively aware that all these can be individually  painful  experiences, which is the nature of 'consciousness raising.'

This latest example included his speech inside a prison which may become quite  significant  in their  historical  ethical social effects...He said, " Many of these are young men who made a mistake, not unlike the mistakes that I made and that many of you made. The difference is they did not have the support structure, the resources (socially/legally/psychologically/educationally) to  SURVIVE their mistake like you and I did." This statement  strikes me as a mixture of personal confession and gratitude of his own life along with a solid 'as yourselves' application to the lives and hearts of others; the inmates and all the rest of us who have developed or allowed unjust public  policies.

GROWING PAINS: IS AMERICA EXPERIENCING AN EXPANSION OF ITS COLLECTIVE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS ?... July 10, 2015

The Collective Consciousness of America seems to be rapidly expanding on various fronts.  Are Americans waking up to some changing moral  values including the value  and support placed  on  the love and  marriage commitments between  gay persons?  This has breathtakingly  surged from polls taken  even ten years ago. Such rapid change or waking up to a new value is always accompanied by growing pains from whichever point of view one has carried rather habitually. We can hope that changes are not coming so fast that people do not have time to assimilate or rush to think that 'some conspiracy' is forcing it on us.  Maybe what eventually takes shape in the culture will be experienced  by most  as an activity of 'something larger' at work than just politics or activists.  This can be a new sense of the religious function at work in the culture and  give some  people a renewed  sense that the Sacred is involved.

This being said it is my hope that we are all having some of our religious or moral  traditional beliefs challenged.  I know mine have been continually for several decades. I've found   the way I had concluded that homosexuality is always immoral, and not another expression of human/Sacred love, can only be reached, as best I can tell, when the Bible is read as if it were written directly to us by a modern author. And even then by ignoring strong contradictions to such a conclusion with  far more central teachings of Jesus and other Bible themes. The Bible's truthful overall nature has to be, however sincerely, intentionally disregarded to reach that negative conclusion about this part of our citizenry.  I  fully understand this is how many sincere people  read and follow parts of the Bible. This short video briefly demonstrates at least that there is another way to read the Bible... A way of approaching the Bible that results in different applications today of the few selected verses of the Bible used to devalue and not support, as we do for straight couples, the love between same sex committed partners. This other view of the Bible has led many to value and support sexual love between same sex couples believing it can be just as needed in the world and a fulfillment of God's will as that between any straight couples. This other view of the Bible's nature helps explain why many Americans have awakened to a new value and  now support the Equality of Marriage for gay and lesbian persons as something genuinely good and loving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDKL-f9Iwds

A WISDOM IN THE DEPTHS OF NATURE.... June 12, 2015

Notice the caption on the picture. One of my first 'big dreams'(there have been only a few) was a bottomless abyss(personally and professionally) in the road. I was pleased to be traveling this road  and most needed to complete it. I was not told to jump but a 'blue collar' man with a beard appeared and pointed way down toward one end of the abyss, so far I could barely see.  There was a very narrow barely visible winding road up the other side of the abyss. It was implied I would need to enter the abyss and find that road out which  would be provided. I was, in my life, sailing on very well when I had the dream so it seemed irrelevant. I wrote it down and shared it with my Clinical Pastoral Education director.

It was two years later that the abyss became stark reality. I was not quick to recall the dream but did and  then decided to take it as a trustworthy resource. Such experiences confirmed for me there is a 'wisdom', an unconscious natural phenomenon, like is  present in evolutionary processes, embedded in the deepness of universal creation and life. It is now second nature for me to return to that understanding and rely on it no matter how unrealistic it at times becomes in routine daily life. That is when I need it most. I think such 'wisdom' is present both collectively and individually for  all that is is  one interrelated thing. I'd say many of the religious stories that Karen Armstrong vividly relates in A History Of God are experiences of such wisdom, which can be as frightening as they are fascinating and attracting. They deserve the word numinous.
 
I think the earth itself appeals to us constantly with its seductive numinosity which is spiritual in nature. But post modern people still consider the earth as 'different' and 'disconnected' from us, an outer object to be observed and tinkered with (We are so deeply influenced by the last 400 years of science and much dualistic  monotheism theology.) Because because the earth seems as the 'other' to us it has, more harshly than probably any temporarily destructive dynamic in evolution, resulted in the human wanting to subdue, control and pillage it for temporary privilege in a completely unattached sterile way. I'm thinking that a much elevated consciousness of our interrelationship with the earth and all its parts and systems and its life giving may be our most likely approach to recognizing God again in ways relevant to humans of this new millennium.

THE 'NUMINOUS' AS THE EXPERIENCE BASE OF RELIGION... June 12, 2015

Ezekiel's  Vision Of The Celestial City

Many of Karen Armstrong's religious stories in A History of God are ones which  she says were captured by 20th century religious thinker Rudolf Otto in his work The Idea of the Holy. He explains there that worship ritual and environment are efforts to provide a 'safer' way for people to experience the Sacred without a direct encounter that could overwhelm. That is why large beautiful cathedrals with their art and statuary can render the most intellectual types silent. To be analytical and deconstructive(which one can choose  to do for sure just as one can when viewing a full circle  rainbow) would seem inappropriate and irreverent. Otto used the words NUMINOUS to describe such experience.  The callings and visions  of the  prophets, which Armstrong so vividly describes, and the conversion of Saul to Paul are classic examples of such breath taking  numinosity. This no doubt is why there is a  New Testament  passage  saying, ' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.'

I'm not sure that  progressive Christianity's emphasis, which I  think is doing  much good in giving direly needed attention to social injustices of our day,  on 'following Jesus', whose numinous experience would be his baptism voice/vision and his wilderness temptations, are acknowledged or stressed. So there is little awe and silence and many arguments for political  agreement. One with good emotional/thinking balance does not argue with the numinous or need other persuasion. It is truly a, if not the, source of natural, uncoerced, belief in what has always been called God. Any intellectual analytical description of such things fully misses their experienced meaning, even can destroy it for that person. It takes such descriptive, poetic writing as Armstrong's to point us in the right direction for the numinous  impact of such Biblical narrative. And she pulls this off in the name of history. Good for her.

 Likely our insistence on an 'only good, comforting, perfect and pleasant God' can take us away from what might be a fuller more conscious experience of the Numinous Sacred. Nature as a reflection of God is likely one of our most direct encounters with the numinous, such as  in hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis(not to mention rainbows. high mountains, life forms, waterfalls, galaxies and now wonders of the subatomic world  which deny all  'common sense' physics). My Dad's childhood home was blown away by a tornado. He talked about it all his life, not only  the destruction it did but also its powerful  fascination for him. It was a numinous experience for him no doubt. Even the life disrupting death of a loved one can be such an numinous far reaching  factor  in ones life. Part of the thrill of viewing the Grand Canyon is imagining losing footing and plunging to the bottom. These all point to the numinous which takes one beyond thinking  and reasoning  and is wrapped in irrational wonder and sometimes gut wrenching fear. Truly a religious aspect of conscious human life.                                                                                                                            http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln101/Otto.htm

PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU'S SPEECH TO CONGRESS MARCH 5, 2015

Watching Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress I see a classical projection of one's shadow onto the 'totally demonized other', Iran in this case. He creates an apocalyptic tirade that competes with any  Armageddon  imagery. Obviously, Israel's collective fears are  rational but the  Prime Minister appears to have lost himself to the full flow of  unchecked emotional  energies. 

A SIMILAR PREVIOUS  SPEECH AT UNITED NATIONS

This kind of outpouring of 'all or nothing-ism' by a world  leader can be contagious. Heaven knows he was speaking to some in congress who are very primed to step into his horrific proportions 'all or nothing' worldwide ' we vs them'. He builds a conspiracy theory which forbids acknowledging any benefit to rational discussion of differences and he wants no kind of agreement with Iran, even one that would limit their capacity to have nuclear weapons. Of course he would never be interested in reducing his U.S. sponsored nuclear arsenal.

This is an excellent example of C.G. Jung's ideas of how the eternal archetypes, emotional causing patterns in our Collective Unconscious, stimulate the individual and collective psyche, initially at an unconscious level. This causes dangerous situations in outer reality when persons do not question but instead give such emotions  free course in their attitude and speech. It is disturbing to hear such 'all or nothing, good vs evil' doomsday talk coming from Israel's Prime Minister. The speech sounds parallel to the Bush/Cheney mind set  that led to the rushed bombing of Iraq in the Spring of 2003,

Only higher levels of consciousness and owning ones own shadow by all parties can prevent tragedies this kind of rhetoric, with the prompting of unconscious forces, is ginning up to bring into physical reality. We should be quite concerned that Prime Minister Netanyahu would  choose to stimulate our polarized political situation even more by injecting his toxic one-sided  ideas of good vs evil.

WHERE DOES GOD COME FROM TO HUMAN AWARENESS? Jung Red Book Quote... January 26, 2015

Below  is a quote from the Red Book, the record of C.G. Jung's inner world experience from roughly 1913-1930. As with all that comes directly from the Unconscious this is symbolic language as are all dreams and visions. The Unconscious has always brought up the symbolism of God and 'the gods'. This is an example of that and says something about some characteristics of God..... 'God has smashed his own weapon' and the theme of the 'futility of the human effort at earthly power.' Such statements directly from the Unconscious are why Jung would say of God, ' I don't believe, I know.' His' belief'  is not talking of giving ascent to what he has been told 'to believe' or even only  to what 'has been written' as Sacred text,  but that the reality of God is  the human psyche's own collective and personal  confession. Obviously he is not speaking of believing as simply saying yes to 'a creed' but yes to the psychic reality of God as it has forever shown its multifaceted Self through the Collective Unconscious in all human groups and religions as well as the humble nightly dream. Jung would likely also add  those  moments when  nature displays itself  to a person in seemingly extraordinary timing of 'just the right event happening in an un-caused way with others... of even a sequence of such events back to back.' This Jung calls synchronicity and such a momentous happening  can make the most stubborn reasoning rationalist  to ponder,' this simply means far more to me than mere coincidence.'  He would say in fact it is from this same source, the Collective Unconscious,  that all the human images of God have come to us. It seems to me, a little reflection would inform us, images of God  are not the products of the outside material world but of the human inner world.

Augustus-First Roman Emperor

" You gain everything from the God whom you bear, but not his weapon, since he crushed it. He who conquers needs weapons. But what else do you want to conquer? You cannot conquer more than the earth. And what is the earth? It is round all over and hangs like a drop in the cosmos.
You will not reach the sun, and your power will not even extend to the barren moon; you will conquer neither the sea, nor the snow on the poles, nor the sands of the desert, but only a few spots on the green earth. You will not conquer anything for any length of time. Your power will turn into dust tomorrow, for above all-at the very least you must conquer death.
So do not be a fool, throw down your weapon. God himself smashed his weapon. Armor is enough to protect you from fools who still suffer from the need to conquer. God's armor will make you invulnerable and invisible to the worst fools." ~Carl Jung; Red Book