Integral Spirituality News

What Does a Spirituality that is Authentic and Integrative Do?

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:58:24 -0600

There is a new spiritual movement that trancends and includes not only the Interfaith movement it also trancends and includes the best of todays progressive Eco-spirituality, Women's spirituality, Integral spirituality, Participatory spirituality (P2P) and Evolutionary spirituality movements. If fact, it strives to include the best of all religions without their worst. In some ways it is a child of the Internet generation where all human knowlege is rapidly becoming accessable, yet it is far, far more than just a new synergy of spiritual data.
What is an Authentically Integrative Spirituality?

Integrative Spirituality is drawn from the totality of humanitys wisdom. It's a (r)volutionary, integral and integrative experential process that can support your personal spiritual practice by including the best of all religions without their worst. It is also an awe inspiring spiritual adventure that will help you release your fullest capacities to succeed in todays complex world by improving your relationships to yourself, others and to the Great Mystery and Wholeness that unites all things.

Integrative Spirituality is an open source, meta-spirituality that also transcends and includes the best of today's progressive spiritualities such as Eco-spirituality, Women's spirituality, Integral spirituality, Participatory spirituality (P2P) and Evolutionary spirituality. Integrative Spirituality can help you spiritually evolve within any denomination that you might currently be involved in --- without your having to leave that denomination!

If you feel that you have the right to explore to find more spiritual truth and that having open access to ALL of humanity's life-affirming spiritual wisdom might better support your personal spiritual path, you will enjoy exploring and participating in our trans-denominational, global spiritual community.

Our Basic Goal

There are actually as many personalized religions in the world as there are people. One goal of our integrative spirituality is to help you maximize your own spiritual growth and in effect --- advance or create your own personalized spiritual path or religion.

Authentic spiritual growth naturally makes one's life more complete and fulfilling on all levels. As your grow spiritually, you will increasingly find that you can act from love and with wisdom and delight. This is essentially why your life becomes better.

What Does this Mean to Your Current Spiritual Life and Practice?

An integrative and integral spirituality is one that is dynamically transformative. It's (r)evolutionary spiritual perspectives are great news for anyone who is open to a more inclusive, embodied and non-authoritarian spiritual message.

It's new open source form is well suited for anyone sincerely committed to balanced spiritual growth, acting from love and being accepted and valued as they are in a growing global spiritual community.

Who is this (R)evolutionary Spirituality designed for?

This (r)evolutionary personal spirituality is for anyone who senses the essence of Spirit in life or senses that a better world is possible. It is for those who:

1.) have no previous spiritual or religious background or,

2.) define themselves as spiritual, but not necessarily religious or,

3.) are religious, but think beyond the borders of just their own faith, or,

4.) who particularly may be part of todays Cultural Creative or Eco-Spiritulity movements.

Integrative Spirituality is ideal for those who are passionately committed to:

i.) realizing and experincing more Consciousness/Divinity through the four critical steps of direct spiritual experience, regular spiritual practice, personal psycho-spiritual shadow work, and authentic participation in spiritual community;

ii.) achienving the values of an open source integrative and integral spiritual process; where values such as sustainability, interconnectedness, authenticity, acceptance, love, forgiveness, embodied and engaged spirituality, collaboration, partnership, transparency, non-polariziation, creativity, deep listening, accountability, both/and transcending solutions vs. either/or solutions, compassionate action, service, leadership, diversity, humility, responsibility and the inclusion of multiple viewpoints are honoredon individual, societal and planetary levels.

What are the Benefits Available to You by Becomming Involved with this Unique New Spiritual Movement?

Our organization's (r)evolutionary form of open source integral spirituality is capable of producing unique benefits not currently available in other spiritual organizations. Click on the benefit type below that you are most interested for full details:

Click here for a personal 30 second audio welcome to Integrative Spirituality!

What is Next for You to Find Out More

To find out what to do next click this What's Next link. The Staff of Integrative SpiritualityJune 2008

Spiritual Projection and Authority, Healing Perspectives on Religious Authoritarianism, Part Two

Fri, 23 May 2008 10:18:36 -0600

Have you been in one or, do you know someone in an authoritarian religion with a Guru or particularly dominant leader? Do you feel that something was very wrong with this form of religion and this leader? The following is one of the two chapters that we have been given permission to republish from John Heron's great new book Participatory Spirituality: A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion. It is a great read for anyone who has been harmed by the projections of dominant leaders in authoritarian religions or who seeks what healthy forms of religion would look like

Chapter 14 Spiritual projection and authority

The interior monitor

If you claim that spiritual authority resides in some other person, being, doctrine, book, school or church, you are the legitimating author of this claim. You choose to regard it as valid. No authority resides in anything external unless you first decide to confer that authority on it. Nothing out there is accredited and definitive until you first elect it to be so. All explicit judgements that illumination resides without, rest upon a prior and much more basic tacit light within. When it is made explicit, this is the internal authority of which your own discriminating judgment is the expression. Individual human judgment, with its inner spiritual ground, is the legitimating source of all external spiritual authority. The religious history of the human race appears to involve the slow and painful realization that this is indeed the case.

We have to realize that every revelation must finally be appropriated by the individual soul. The very term revelation implies the existence of the minds by which it is received. And it is on the attitude of such minds that everything in the end depends. The last word is with the interior monitor.

The process is not completed until the divine which appears without is acknowledged by the divine which is enthroned deep within. And no amount of ingenious sophistry can do away with this ultimate fact. In other words the individual must take his stand upon the witness of the inner light, the authority within his own soul. This principle was clearly formulated by the Cambridge Platonist, Benjamin Whichcote, who ventured on the statement: If you have a revelation from God, I must have a revelation from God too before I can believe you. (Hyde, 1949: 39)

When you are aware that the final court of spiritual authority resides within, and that any authority you have vested in anyone or anything external has derived from the imprimatur of that inner court, then you are spiritually centred and will not in the future become improperly subservient to any religious school or teacher. But when you are not aware of this, then you are busy with spiritual projection, and are spiritually off-centre. The spiritual authority that resides within is not known for what it is, is in some sense suppressed and denied, and is then unawarely projected on, invested in, and inevitably misrepresented and distorted by, what is without.

Projection: perceptual and spiritual

On the view that all realities are subjective-objective, any view that reality is independently objective has a suppressed and unacknowledged subjective component which is prior, and which is inevitably misrepresented by the purely objective account. So in perceiving a world, if the subjective process of visual imaging is displaced and projected out as an objective image, then the subject is misrepresented as a dissociated Cartesian ego peering out at an independent world, instead of being known as a presence in mutual participative engagement with other presences in a shared world. In the same way, if my internal authorizing of a spiritual teacher is displaced and projected out as an external authority residing in that teacher, then my inner authority is misrepresented as nescience seeking illumination from another, instead of being affirmed as my inner knowing seeking dialogue with the inner knowing of another.

Now both sorts of projection, the perceptual and the spiritual, yield benefits up to a point, but sooner or later break down because they try to make a half-truth represent a whole-truth. The critical turning point is when the process of projection becomes conscious and the subject reclaims the personal power within. This doesnt put a stop to the projective process, but it thoroughly reduces it and brings it within the aegis of critical subjectivity. It can now be monitored and modified.

Projection and the guru

There is no doubt that the process of spiritual projection has been virtually the sole means of spiritual development both for the great mass of mankind and for many of the small minority with serious mystical intent. Indeed, eastern mysticism makes an explicit virtue of it. The guru without represents the guru within, and the guru within is only developed by full allegiance to, and identification with, the guru without. Today, however, in a world of mass communication and planetary information exchange, the competing claims of innumerable spiritual authorities of all kinds stand revealed as a composite Tower of Babel, a noisy confusion of tongues which are missing the inner point.

Spiritual authorities, who are themselves off-centre, have no authentic spiritual autonomy as a basis for real religious co-operation with each other. Their continued spiritual projection - their allegiance to the authority of traditional belief and practice - keeps them apart. There is no co-operation among those who believe, by virtue of traditional indoctrination, that they are one of the god-realized of their respective traditions.

An ecumenical movement among eastern-style perfected masters is not only unheard of, it is in the nature of the case impossible. There are, of course, exceptions among traditions that make more modest claims for their representatives. Christian creeds, all of which keep more of a distance from god, keep having a go at ecumenical togetherness, but their different traditional allegiances permit only the attempt at, not the substance of, religious co-operation.

Four stages of projection

Here is my working hypothesis about the process of spiritual projection, based on my own involvement with it in different contexts, discussions with friends and colleagues about their inner journey, and on reflections on spiritual psychology. There appear to be four stages in the process, from total projection to its substantial, but not total, withdrawal:

Intolerance

When the projection is blind and wholly unaware, the devotee is dogmatic and intolerant, outlawing and attacking all other creeds. The spiritual ground within is severely repressed and denied, and the resultant frustration is displaced into the spiritual oppression of alien beliefs.

Toleration

When there is limited awareness of the projection, we have the anomaly of (1) personal allegiance to the authority projected onto ones own school or church, combined with (2) religious toleration and freedom as between different creeds. In other words, you respect and accept the fact that what is authoritative for you is not so for other people with their diverse beliefs, but fail fully to grasp that this is so because you and they are still busy projecting inner authority outward.
The most extreme version of this anomaly is when you both respect fully the right of other people to vest authority in any creed they choose, and at the same time vest your own authority in a cult that continually denigrates the exercise of your autonomous spiritual judgment.

Collusion

When there is rather more awareness of spiritual projection, we have an unfortunate anomaly much practised by contemporary authoritarian spiritual teachers, and colluded with by their followers. The teachers repetitively define and prescribe things spiritual, while also repeatedly affirming that authority lies within each follower, who is exhorted to take nothing on teacher say-so but check it out through personal experience. The effect is hypnotic and seductive.

The follower comes to believe that what he or she is being taught is also being confirmed from within. But what is within the follower is never encouraged, in it own terms and on its own terms, to define or direct anything spiritual. All definition and direction remain firmly in the hands of the teacher. At the same time as inner discrimination is being encouraged, the person is being told what to believe and to do, and is thus lulled seductively into acquiescent projection.

This anomaly has its degenerate apotheosis in the case of the advanced conventional practitioner, the supposed enlightened one who uncritically directs all his practice and construes all his experience in the terms of tradition with which he has been indoctrinated and which he has internalized, and which has long since usurped the voice of authentic inner discrimination. What he has thus internalized may lead him to believe that he is now one of the god-realized, at an end-stage of enlightenment. Such a person will be benignly and inescapably autocratic in ruling the roost in his or her school of practice, while ostensibly encouraging disciples to make rigorous experiential tests of what is taught.

Freedom

When you are fully aware of spiritual projection so that it can be substantially withdrawn and undone, then the spiritual path itself is based on internal authority through the continuous exercise of your own discriminating judgment and its spiritual ground; and this in association with others similarly engaged. Divine becoming emerges as the living spiritual ground of human autonomy and co-operation. And the divinity thus manifest will be significantly different, I believe, in terms of beliefs and practices, from all divinities defined by external authorities. However, there are three very important caveats about all this, the second being the crucial one.

First, such withdrawal is not an all or nothing phenomenon. It may involve a variety of hybrids. These include:

Sequential projection

A person projects for a period on one spiritual school, then withdraws it and projects on to another, going through several over a number of years. This process may become quite intentional, in the sense that the person consciously goes along with the authoritarian tendency of a school in order to benefit from its teachings and practices, and pulls out when that tendency becomes too restricting.

Partial projection

A person stays constantly within one tradition in allegiance to certain strands of it, while radically reappraising other strands.

Intellectual freedom

The intellect appears to exercise a lot of freedom, for example, with respect to transpersonal theory, but practice remains firmly wedded to a traditional school. The theoretical outcome will then include veiled special pleading for the practical allegiance.

Discreet freedom

A person remains within one tradition for purposes of the support found within its spiritual community, otherwise picks and chooses among its beliefs and practices, refracting them through the prism of the internal monitor.

Second, and crucially, I do not think there is any such thing as a final end to, a total freedom from, spiritual projection. There is certainly a critical point when it is raised into consciousness and radically withdrawn as personal power is reclaimed. But this reclamation, this radical reappraisal of ones spirituality, necessarily includes elements drawn from past and present spiritual practitioners and thinkers. So the reappraisal weeds out past projections while relying, in part, on new ones in order to do so.

The difference, of course, is in the awareness that this going on. Hence the critical subjectivity of a reframing mind, which continually deconstructs presumed internal authority to uncover the projections at work within it. The authority within is never final, always provisional and fallible. I return to this theme in Perspective 17.

Thirdly, the substantial withdrawal of spiritual projection from traditional schools certainly does not mean that one ceases to take account of them and learn anything from them. I have on occasion been criticized on the grounds that my approach to spiritual inquiry is to eliminate from consideration almost everything which has been written on the subject up to now. This is a gross misrepresentation, and quite the opposite of what I believe, which is that the beliefs and practices of the various mystical traditions constitute a huge data-bank, a massive resource which, when treated with due caveats, can be drawn upon, modified and revised in framing the maps which guide the examined life and co-operative spiritual inquiry.

I have learnt a great deal from this legacy. I totally ignore it at my peril, just as I unawarely project on to it at my peril. This is an interesting knife-edge. I need to remember that I do not really know for sure what the ancient mystics meant by what they wrote, and that when I read them (often already via a translation) it is how I make sense of them - my inner knowing in dialogue with the text - that is central. If I project this inner knowing out and claim that such and such is what the mystic meant, and claim further that this meaning is a traditional guide to spiritual wisdom, then I am sorely lost in the process of spiritual projection. I am hiding my own light behind the sages robe to the rear of which it is displaced. I have lost faith with myself. The whole of the current perennial philosophy business seems to me to be beset by this kind of mauvais foi.

The distortions of spiritual projection

When the spiritual authority that resides within is projected on and invested in some external authority, it inevitably becomes misrepresented and distorted. To disown, deny and be unaware of the inner presence is to damage its formative power and this disfiguration is reflected in the teaching of the outer authority that replaces it. From the other side of the equation, if you want to become a spiritual authority for others, then you need a perverse doctrine that invalidates and undermines their intrinsic inner spirit, and will thus lock in with their disfigured projection of it.

The Christian religion maintained its authority for centuries primarily by the corrupt doctrine of original sin, which proposed that human nature is congenitally tainted and depraved, with a proclivity to sinful conduct. The essence of original sin for Augustine (354-430), the most influential figure in Western Christianity, lay in concupiscence, meaning desire in general and sexual lust in particular. He regarded humanity as a mass of sin, waited upon by death. He identified the great sin that lay behind such misery with sex and sexual intercourse. This catastrophic assault on human eroticism deeply undermined peoples faith in their own inner life.

It is not surprising that the last twenty years of Augustines life were dominated by his controversies against the Pelagians, and as a result of his determined opposition, Pelagianism was condemned by the church as a heresy. Pelagius had rejected the idea of original sin as an inherited defect which impaired the freedom of the will.

He believed in a true freedom of the will as the highest human endowment, and held that persons are responsible for and capable of ensuring their own salvation. This optimistic account of human nature, had it spread widely, would have drastically undermined the authority of the early church.
The authority of spiritual schools and lineages in oriental religions rests on the denigrating view that human personhood, far from being a spiritual presence within divine being, reduces to a selfhood which is lost in illusory separateness.

At the ordinary, everyday level, the self is nothing but a mass of congealed fear and clinging, all knotted up. At its very highest level, the soul is still nothing but a knot, a contraction, which must die to itself, to become absolute spirit (Wilber, 1997: 47).

The spiritual teacher who has undone the knot and transcended separateness is the only one to judge whether the contracted disciple has attained any measure of enlightenment. The disciple surrenders to the guru and identifies with the guru to attain moksha, spiritual release and liberation from the illusion of selfhood and the bondage of mortal existence. Indeed, the Zen master subjects his students to physical and mental abuse in order to destroy the illusions in which they are imprisoned (Katz, 1978: 44).

So western spiritual authorities invalidate the erotic roots of personal life and eastern spiritual authorities undermine personal consciousness. Both of them are misrepresenting, denying and oppressing, the spiritual potential of personhood which, honoured in fullness, has its flower in personal autonomy and comprehensive connectedness. Between them, they inflict much damage. For spiritual practices based on negative views of human nature, by repressing positive potential, will cause a distorted return of the repressed. Thus the practice, by denying potential good and thus turning it into actual bad, appears to confirm the negative view on which it is based.

This is the ancient corruption of patriarchal priestcraft. The priests put about beliefs and practices, and organize their hierarchy in ways, which generate the sins they claim the power to redeem.
The Christian religion tends toward a modified dualism. It regards the human world as a fallen creation outside god, although he is intimately connected with it. And it regards its priests as appointed by god with authority to mediate in Christs name on behalf of fallen humanity.

Eastern religions tend toward acosmic monism: the world and the human are illusory save when known to be identical with absolute spirit. And the enlightened who know this have absolute authority with regard to the salvation of the unenlightened, who are too identified with the illusion to effect self-liberation. What we see at work, both west and east, is the classic autocracy of spiritual patriarchy. There is no hint of, no interest in, the sacral reality of womankind: embodiment as a primary source of sacrality (Raphael, 1994: 519-20).

Authoritarian displacement and narcissism

The authoritarian spiritual teacher is also busy, of course, in suppressing some aspects of his or her own authentic inner light and inner life. The resultant subtle frustrations are displaced, acted out, not only in controlling the spiritual path for other people, but also in more or less frequent episodes of verbal, physical, sexual, power-play, and financial abuse of followers.

The behaviour of teachers, both Oriental and Western, participating in the dramatic spread of Zen and Tibetan institutions in America has often fallen severely short of the ethical ideal. (Crook, 1996: 15) The stories are legion, and likely to be found in all authoritarian spiritual schools, ancient and modern, eastern and western.

They are hushed up for as long as possible, and rationalized by devotees as consciousness-raising tests and challenges. But sooner or later they demand understanding in terms of what they are: evidence of distortions stemming from a neglected spiritual process within the directive teacher. Such distortions exhibit gross and crude forms of spiritual narcissism in the very process whereby the teacher claims he is interrupting it in others.

To get all of John Heron's great book Participatory Spirituality: A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion, Lulu Press, Morrisville, North Carolina, 2006, go to John Heron's web site at http://www.human-inquiry.com/storefront.htm

The Genius, Deep Time Integral Spirituality Word Puzzle

Wed, 21 May 2008 13:38:23 -0600

Welcome to the Deep Time Integral Spirituality Word Puzzle Contest! If you love difficult word puzzles, this one will show you just how much conceptual complexity you can break down and manage as well as how integratively smart you really are. This is a whole new kind of creative word association puzzle that for depth of challenge rivals the New York Times or for that matter, anyone elses word association puzzles. Would you like to play this genius new puzzle and enter the contest?

The Deep Time Integral Word Puzzle Description and Objectives

Part one: The first step of the word puzzle is to match, associate and/or cluster as many of the individual concepts and the descriptions of the deep time, deep patterns of evolution with a master list of classic, modern and post post-modern (integral) values and virtues.

To help you get started you will find a description and comprehensive list of the deep time, deep patterns of evolution at the top of http://www.integrativespirituality.org/postnuke/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=242 .

You will also find a master list of classic, modern and post post-modern (integral) values and virtues at http://www.integrativespirituality.org/postnuke/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=294&page=1 and at http://www.integrativespirituality.org/postnuke/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=401&page=1 .

And yes, you are allowed to do research and add additional deep time deep patterns of evolution and additional classic, modern and post post-modern (integral) values and virtues to your lists if you happen to find ones not on the starter lists above.

Part Two: once you have constructed as many lists of matches, associations and/or clusters of the concepts and the descriptions of the deep time, deep patterns of evolution with the master list of classic, modern and post post-modern (integral) values and virtues you are ready for step 2. Take these lists of matches, associations and clusters and re-order them where ever possible into the I, we it integral quadrants.

Part 3: Send your final lists of matches, associations and clusters and quadrant mapping to manage@IntegrativeSpirituality.org . If you have any realizations that you would like to share from doing this new Integral word puzzle, please put them into a short essay on what you have learned. We will announce the winner of the Genius Deep Time Integral Word Puzzle on June 30, 2008. This will allow plenty of time for all entries time to be carefully evaluated. The winner of the contest will be widely recognized as one very, very smart integrally informed individual rivaling the brightest minds anywhere!

Bonus Points: Arrange your final lists of matches, associations, clusters and quadrant mapping in such a way that would facilitate teaching their implications and meanings to students of embodied integral spirituality all over the world.

The Basics of Evolutionary Spirituality ---- The Deepest Patterns, Purposes and Intentions of 14 billion Years of Evolutionary Progress and What they Mean for Your Personal Destiny and Success!

Thu, 15 May 2008 15:31:59 -0600

In the reoccurring deepest patterns of the 14 billion years of successful evolutionary process and progress you can see the most basic patterns and laws for success that every individual, family, organization, corporation, nation, system or thing must sooner or later acknowledge and follow --- if that grouping or thing wishes to survive and/or thrive. Evolution is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses and all systems must bow Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin... Explore these deep evolutinary success patterns in this article and test how your life can improve!

Click here to continue reading this article that lists evolution's deepest truths and how they effect both your and the world's success.

Why it is Time For A Shared Great New Genesis Story for all of Humanity

Wed, 14 May 2008 12:58:52 -0600

There are many implicit or implied genesis stories within the diverse cultures and religions of our world. Genesis stories are more than just stories about origins. They instill a powerful behavior molding sense of identity, values, entitlement, natural truth and destiny. As we are now a new type of global tribe with far more information about our world than our ancestors, it is well past the time for the Great New Genesis story to be completed for the use of all humanity. This new story will greatly facilitate humanity naturally evolving, improving and shifting its identity self concepts, worldview, values and perspectives on natural truth so that we collectively and individually can better manage our potentially biocidal global challenges and shared future. Luckily the future-critical work on humanity's shared Great New Genesis story is progressing nicely...

Please click here for the rest of the story.

The Authoritarian Blight, Healing Perspectives on Religious Authoritarianism, Part One

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:56:36 -0600

Have you been on one or, do you know someone in an authoritarian religion? Do you feel that something was very wrong with this form of religion? The following is one of two chapters that we have been given permission to republish from John Heron's great new book Participatory Spirituality: A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion. It is a great read for anyone who has been harmed by authoritarian religion or who seeks to know what healthy forms of religion would look like

Chapter 13 The authoritarian blight

In this Perspective I examine the role of authoritarianism and its consequences in religious traditions and spiritual schools, ancient and modern.

Personal witness

All traditions and schools ultimately refer back, whether by first-hand, second-hand or multiple-hand reports, to the personal witness of mystics, ecstatics, religious practitioners themselves, revealed through their words, their deeds and their presence.

Spiritual innovation and tradition

Mystics engage in an inner journey, which includes a necessary element of experiential inquiry, since subtle discrimination needs to be exercised at critical points. But the journey is also set within a given spiritual tradition and guided by a living teacher. So the inquiry component is severely limited and constrained. The exercise of inner discrimination is subordinate to the categories, claims, definitions and demands of the tradition. Indeed, in oriental traditions the capacity for such discrimination is subjected to long periods of scriptural indoctrination and conditioning, before any meditative practice commences.

The neophyte is taught what experiential distinctions to make prior to having any relevant experience.In most traditions - such as Advaita Vedanta and many Buddhist schools - a period, usually lasting several years, of rigorous study of the spiritual scriptures and right views is regarded as a prerequisite for meditative practice and experiential enactment of the teachings. The immersion in experiential practices without an appropriate understanding of the teachings is regarded not only as premature, but also pointless and potentially problematic. (Ferrer, 1998)

The result of this sort of thing is that budding practitioners, within established religious traditions both east and west, have the kinds of experiences that they have been taught to have. Some mystics, however, are primitive and solitary pioneers of a more authentic spiritual inquiry.

They apply to the mystical quest a limited version of autonomous lived inquiry together with careful phenomenological reporting. They rise out of the immediate constraints of local religious tradition, eastern or western, and originally define or redefine the territory of spiritual experience. Such revision, however, is still limited. It is necessarily restricted to an innovative rearrangement of traditional elements, with some fruitful additions. It inescapably bears the limiting hall marks of the prevailing culture and Zeitgeist.

The authoritarian blight

Furthermore, the mystic innovators usually become authoritarian when they start a teaching career to pass on their realizations; and their followers will in any case rapidly turn them into authority figures. This is because the only model of spiritual education and training the world has ever known is authoritarian. Thus a sectarian culture is formed, and what is taught within it is given a warrant of authority via an appeal to a combination of some of the following:

The teachers intuitive and experiential certitude or faith.

Divine revelation.

Instruction from the gods/angels/ancestors/entities.

Sacred scriptures. Established doctrine and practice.

A lineage of gurus, teachers or priests within the sect.

An ancient or modern innovative sage or religious founder.

Religious training everywhere, from the remote past to the immediate present, means believing-and-doing what an authority prescribes. A warrant of authority means that when an inquirer asks why they should believe-and-do what is taught, the teachers reply is, Because the tradition of which I am a representative says so. And if you follow its teaching, as I and my predecessors have, you will find that it is correct.

This appeal to the weight of established thought and practice proves that it is durable. It does not show that it is valid. Equally, of course, it does not show that it is invalid. It just doesnt answer the inquirers question. It is beside the point, for the question is an early sign of the inquirers spiritual autonomy stirring from its life-long slumber.

The question cannot be answered from without, but only from the full awakening and alertness of divine autonomy within. The universal authoritarian tendency within the diverse religious schools, ancient and modern, of our planet, is presumably to do with the remarkable call of the religious quest, which initially throws up a great deal of insecurity.

No better way to put a stop to the upsurge of such shakiness - and the underlying challenge of finding an inner source of guidance - than by capping it with allegiance to an external source of certitude. This is the process of spiritual projection, which I discuss in the next Perspective. The institutionalization of this process has had a range of unfortunate consequences within each school that maintains it. Let me overstate the case, but only somewhat, in outlining these consequences.

Hypocrisy

Little attention is paid to the disturbed behaviour of current authority figures within the sect, to the impact of unprocessed emotional distress on their motivation, their practices, their teachings and their relations with their followers. To take but one example, sexual hypocrisy and perversion is regular scandal among religious authority figures, from Roman Catholic cardinals, bishops and priests, through Muslim mullahs and imams, to oriental gurus such as Swami Muktananda and Sai Baba.

Spiritual pathology

It is only very recently that a working distinction has been made between a truly transformative spirituality and a false, psychologically unhealthy, spirituality, of which two kinds can be distinguished. There is repressive spirituality, in which spiritual beliefs and practices are used to reinforce the denial of whole parts of oneself. There is oppressive spirituality, in which inflated spiritual claims are made in order to manipulate, constrain and dominate others to support and follow the claimant (Battista, 1996). And the oppressive kind is itself rooted in the underlying repressive kind. It is a major issue as to the extent to which all past spirituality is riddled with these pathologies, which breed compulsive authoritarianism.

The dissociation test

In connection with repressive spirituality, one test proposed by Jorge Ferrer (2002) for determining valid systems of spiritual belief and practice is the dissociation test. This asks whether the system promotes embodied or disembodied spirituality, and favours the embodied approach to being spiritual. Here is Ferrer making his point:In the wake of our spiritual history, I suggest that disembodied does not denote that the body and its vital/primary energies were ignored in religious practicethey definitely were notbut rather that they were not considered legitimate or reliable sources of spiritual insight in their own right. In other words, body and instinct have not generally been regarded as capable of collaborating as equals with heart, mind, and consciousness in the attainment of spiritual realization and liberation.

What is more, many religious traditions and schools believed that the body and the primary world (and aspects of the heart, such as certain passions) were actually a hindrance to spiritual flourishinga view that often led to the repression, regulation, or transformation of these worlds at the service of the higher goals of a spiritualized consciousness. This is why disembodied spirituality often crystallized in a heart-chakra-up spiritual life that was based preeminently in the mental and/or emotional access to transcendent consciousness and that tended to overlook spiritual sources immanent in the body, nature, and matter. Embodied spirituality, in contrast, views all human dimensionsbody, vital, heart, mind, and consciousnessas equal partners in bringing self, community, and world into a fuller alignment with the Mystery out of which everything arises.

Far from being an obstacle, this approach sees the engagement of the body and its vital/primary energies as crucial for not only a thorough spiritual transformation, but also the creative exploration of expanded forms of spiritual freedom. The consecration of the whole person leads naturally to the cultivation of a full-chakra spirituality that seeks to make all human attributes permeable to the presence of both immanent and transcendent spiritual energies. This does not mean that embodied spirituality ignores the need to emancipate body and instinct from possible alienating tendencies; rather, it means that all human dimensionsnot just somatic and primary onesare recognized to be not only possibly alienated, but also equally capable of sharing freely in the unfolding life of the Mystery here on earth.

The contrast between sublimation and integration can help to clarify this distinction. In sublimation, the energy of one human dimension is used to amplify, expand, or transform the faculties of another dimension. This is the case, for example, when a celibate monk sublimates sexual desire as a catalyst for spiritual breakthrough or to increase the devotional love of the heart, or when a tantric practitioner uses vital/sexual energies as fuel to catapult consciousness into disembodied, transcendent, or even transhuman states of being. In contrast, the integration of two human dimensions entails a mutual transformation, or sacred marriage, of their essential energies. For example, the integration of consciousness and the vital world makes the former more embodied, vitalized, and even eroticized, and grants the latter an intelligent evolutionary direction beyond its biologically driven instincts. Roughly speaking, we could say that sublimation is a mark of disembodied spirituality, and integration is a goal of embodied spirituality (Ferrer, 2006).

Dissociation and hierarchical authority

There is clearly a close connection between dissociated, disembodied spirituality and spiritual authoritarianism. Moreover, the fact that there is so much spiritual authoritarianism in the world, in creeds and cults both old and new, creates a deep attitudinal warp in people which makes them susceptible to oppression by many other kinds of external authority. In reviewing criticisms of the traditional hierarchical model of spiritual reality, promoted by current adherents of the perennial philosophy, Donald Rothberg writes:Hierarchical ontologies are commonly ideological expressions of social and psychological relations involving domination and exploitation - of most humans (especially women, workers, and tribal people), of nature, and of certain parts of the self.

Such domination limits drastically the autonomy and potential of most of the inhabitants of the human and natural worlds, justifying material inequalities and preventing that free and open discourse which is the end of a free society. It distorts psychological life by repressing, albeit in the name of wisdom and sanctity, aspects of ourselves whose full expression is necessary to full psychological health and well-being. (Rothberg, 1986: 16)

What we need is a diagnostic pathology which allows that a person can be genuinely attuned to one aspect of god, but in a way which entails two errors: first, the experience is sustained in a fixated way that is a defense against attending to some other aspect of the divine; and therefore, second, it is claimed to be much more than it is, and is distorted and inflated to ultimate proportions. Thus the problems with the classic nondual state are its monopolar fixation, its dissociation from active charismatic participation in the social process of divine life and divine becoming, the deluded end-state claims made for it, its gender bias, and its internal association with spiritual authoritarianism.

The exploitation of spiritual projection

Relatedly, little attention is paid to the way current authority figures elicit and subtly or brazenly exploit the internal spiritual authority that is unwittingly projected on to them by their followers. Authoritarian abuse of power by leaders and teachers is an invariable consequence of such projection, and there is widespread evidence of ideological, organizational, sexual, financial and bullying abuse in current spiritual movements, whether of ancient or recent origin, whether eastern and western. The spread of Zen and Tibetan institutions in the USA provides a telling example (Lachs, 1994). I discuss the dynamic of spiritual projection in the next Perspective.

Cultural contamination

Little attention is paid to the limiting impact, on doctrine and practice, of the worldview of the culture and Zeitgeist prevailing at the time of the origination of a religious tradition by its founder. And, even more so than with current authority figures, the pathological elements in the spirituality of founding sages and heroes go unnoticed.

Shortfall on criteria

Little attention is paid to generating criteria to evaluate the overall soundness of a school: its beliefs, practices, teaching methods, initiation procedures, social and political structure, financial basis, claims of its founder, personal behaviour of current authority figures, and so on. It is only very recently that information on the relevant kind of criteria to apply to spiritual schools and cults has had any impact, especially via the internet.

Disregard of the discarnate context

No attention is paid to the unseen ambience, the spiritualistic context, of what goes on in a spiritual school or church, that is, to the influence - benign, murky or malign - of discarnate persons on its activities. As long as this kind of influence is ridiculed, denied, occluded and hence unknown, no sect can have any proper claim to understand fully what is going on within its culture. Before going to a week-end retreat with Muktananda, I once saw clairvoyantly a host of associated minions in the next world seeking psychically to prompt humans into attending the event.

Credulity about channelling

Where a cult is based on channelling from some discarnate entity, the status of the entity will become the peg for unaware projections, rather than a focus of critical scrutiny.

Suppression of spiritual autonomy

Most fundamentally, perhaps, no really serious attention is paid to the ground of discriminating spiritual authority within each student, disciple, or church follower. Any school or tradition that claims any kind of established authority for its teachings and practices will not encourage a full flowering of the autonomous spiritual judgement of each of its followers.

Critical subjectivity, individual discriminating practice, independent judgement, inner-directed unfoldment, personal freedom of spirit in defining spiritual reality and in choosing and shaping the spiritual path - all this is discreetly side-stepped or blatantly suppressed or seductively hijacked or, at the very best, affirmed only to be contained within carefully prescribed limits. The last point leads us again into the topic of the next Perspective, the process of spiritual projection, the displacement of internal authority on to an external source.

To get all of John Heron's great new book Participatory Spirituality: A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion, Lulu Press, Morrisville, North Carolina, 2006, go to John Heron's web site at http://www.human-inquiry.com/storefront.htm

Finally, a New Integral Definition of Peace and Normalcy that Reflects both Reality and Life!

Fri, 9 May 2008 10:39:55 -0600

What if the current Webster's dictionary definition of peace and the popular definition of normalcy were so wrong that if you used them to evaluate your life or the world you would probably not only come up with incorrect evaluations, but you most likely would also feel deeply frustrated about how things are going. What if simply knowing what science has discovered about the deepest success patterns of 14 billion years of evolution and what those success patterns indicate about what the real definitions of these words should be could radically enhance your whole perspective and attitude about your life and the world? Would you take 3 minutes to explore this new information...

The scientists who study the universe and its history on both macro and micro levels tell us that one of the deepest reoccurring patterns in the ongoing greatest system success of all time --- (our 14 billion years of universe evolution,) is near continuous dynamic tension and balanced turbulence between sub-systems or groupings within the universe trying to establish higher levels of complexity, integration and dynamic equilibrium. Put more simply, as it is currently and commonly defined, there is no peace in the most successful living and non living system ever existing!

For 14 billion years, peace in the real universe and in real life has required continuous dynamic tension and balanced turbulence between sub-systems or groupings trying to establish higher or larger levels of complexity, integration and dynamic equilibriums. Science has proven dynamic tension and balanced turbulence be the best peace and normalcy that the universe has every wisely evolved.

Why should that not be the real and rational gold standard for judging the current peace, normalcy and even success in your own life and it the world around you?

But it gets even better, the same scientists studying the deepest reoccurring patterns of the 14 billion years of successful evolution of life tell us that in addition to the dynamic tension and balanced turbulence --- reoccurring bad news, catastrophe, destruction and death are also absolutely continually necessary for new life, releasing new creativity and finding new adaptive solutions. 14 billion years of evolutionary universe success resoundingly demonstrates that these combined stresses are absolutely essential to help life and the universe grow. It is not an exaggeration in any way to say that without these vital stressors continually existing life, the universe and yes even you would simply not be here today!

So take a new look at your life and get more real about what these words really dynamically mean. Consider changing your life perspective about peace and normalcy will always look like in both your life and the world. See what this does to how you see and feel about your life and the world and all of the success and successful process that surrounds us at ever moment that we often do not even see.

If these new, more reality and truth reflecting definitions of peace and normalcy were used on everything from how we feel about the state of politics to the success and quality of our interpersonal relations would be dramatically changed and improved. Maybe the ancient mystics who prayed for adversity to help them reach the Divine knew this all intuitively.

Evolution has other 14 billion year success deep patterns. It also moves with its own inevitable force toward more cooperation and integration, more complexity, more novelty, and more consciousness. This increasing consciousness and its potentials of personal choice for you create a powerful new partner for the unstoppable success forces of evolution --- you!

By our conscious choices and actions you can help diminish most unhealthy and distorted excesses of the evolving dynamic tension and turbulence, bad news and catastrophes that continuously and naturally occur in most any area of life. Here is just one of the many powerful ways.

Even though we may live in a world like the above, we can still own our own feelings and actions. Circumstances do not and should not absolutely determine our state of mind or how we feel. When we maintain a calm inner self, even in the midst of chaos, we change our lives and also the lives of those around us for the better. We proactively diminish the excesses of dynamic tension and turbulence, bad news and catastrophes of life and move them toward their more optimal balances.

The above ideas about dynamic tension, turbulence, bad news and the naturally evolving catastrophes of life prompts us to ask, do we want to be in a state of confusion and stress about what is natural or to have a tranquil inner self optimized to do its best co-creative part? The solution for a life of anxiety about your past or present personal conditions or the worlds particular state of political or ecological evolution is a combination of always accepting what is natural to life and evolution and then choosing inner spiritual stillness and simplicity. This then allows you to consciously choose the most effective personal actions to improve any area.

Are you depressed? Irritated? Frustrated? Madly in love? Whatever your current state, if you believe a changing of events around you is responsible for your inner calm or happiness and you then use these external factors to explain your inner state of being, you've lost touch with the true power of your inner being of spirit. Why?

This is because you're allowing yourself to be blown to and fro by the shifting changes of dynamic tension, turbulence, bad news and catastrophes that naturally take place outside of you. They will always be there, but you can accept, quiet you mind and become spiritually centered in the midst of any kind of unrest.

You can make a decision to accept natural evolutionary truth and optimal growth conditions and find calm. After fully accepting what naturally is take a few deep breaths and empty your mind of judgments. Then it becomes impossible to not find calm.

You have the innate ability to find calmness when others are driven to madness by accepting what is a natural and healthy evolutionary growth supporting process. This doesn't mean you don't care about what is happening outside yourself or the state of our world, but that when you come from a place of acceptance of natural truth and centeredness you are far more likely to be able to deal with the outer world in a more loving way...

We strongly recommend that you do a few fast experiments and exercises for a few minutes:

1.) Revision your own personal life history by viewing it from the perspective that all of the dynamic tension and balanced turbulence of your life as well as its bad news and catastrophes were essential to your personal evolution and your optimal personal growth and even those around you. What happens when your see and accept your past this way and in the light of truth of one of evolutions deepest success patterns?

2.) Revision how you see where your workplace or even how you see the current world political or ecological situations by viewing them from the perspective that all of the dynamic tension and balanced turbulence of these areas as well as their bad news and catastrophes are essential to their natural evolution and their optimal growth. What happens when your see and accept these areas this way and in the light of truth of one of evolutions deepest success patterns?

Empowered Integral Spiritual Lifestyle Basics, Part 1: Spiritualize Your Life by Spiritualizing Your Desires!

Mon, 7 Apr 2008 14:17:07 -0600

Almost everyone has had an experience where they skipped or underestimated a simple earlier step and then noticed that everything later becomes considerably harder or less effective until they go back and fix or do the skipped or under done earlier step. This principle is just as true with building an empowered and authentic spiritual lifestyle. Consider the following 5 minute exercise and see if there a simple and easy way to expand your spiritual lifestyles' richness and effectiveness

(Editors Note: This is the first in a series of 5 minute motivational, inspirational basics for building an empowered and authentic spiritual lifestyle. We suggest you sign up for our RSS feed for these articles at the bottom of the page to get all of them as they are released.)

Thomas Merton is the omni-denominational theologian who is credited as being the first to call attention to the essential truth that to spiritualize your life; you first need to spiritualize your desires. While most individuals sense this feels right they nevertheless do not actually take the time to list out their spiritual desires or ask themselves what spiritual desires are not on the list.

To help you do this simple 5 minute spiritual desires exercise it is good to be aware of the benefits of a spiritual lifestyle. We have included this partial list of benefits to help you do this exercise.

The Amazing Personal Benefits of an Empowered and Authentic Spiritual Lifestyle:

A new, revitalized or expanded sense of:

inner peacefulness,
hope and calm,
self esteem,
purposefulness,
meaning and knowing your personal destiny,
releasing untapped personal potentials,
personal effectiveness,
being able to implement wise and balanced applications of the virtues to resolve lifes relationship, career, financial and other challenges to achieve your most important and enlightened goals,
emotional and mental balance,
physical well being, (this includes everything from improving your nutrition and fitness to paradoxically feeling younger in heart, form and energy as you age,)
present moment consciousness and awareness,
delight and joy in the beauty of life,
improved interpersonal relationships and experiences in the NOW, and personal autonomy, freedom and self control.

The Amazing Spiritual Benefits of an Empowered and Authentic Spiritual Lifestyle: :

A new, revitalized or expanded sense of:

your most authentic spiritual self --- your highest identity and dignity, interconnectedness to all of life,
a tangible healing or lessening of the sense of fragmentation and personal isolation (an epidemic in todays post modern world,) present moment consciousness and awareness,
delight in the art and beauty of life,
improved inter-personal relationships and experiences in the Now,
compassion and personal peace,
personal or transcendent connection, relationship and union with the Ever Present Origin such as:

1.     a visceral experience of God and/or the Buddha, 2.     a personal connection with God and/or the Buddha,
3.     a personal relationship God and/or the Buddha, 4.     union with God and/or the Buddha, 5.     a transcendent experience of God and/or the Buddha,
6.     personal ecstatic experiences of God and/or the Buddha,
7.     knowing more about God and/or the Buddha through direct experience,
8.     finding a presence of God and/or the Buddha within oneself (or, even as them,)
9.     ultimate connection with God and/or the Buddha, 10.     having new cycles of personal renewal and empowerment in the form of feeling energized, motivated, inspired and rekindled hope,
11.     an expanded living of the virtues in a balanced way. So that in your personal and social behavior and attitudes you are being like what God and/or the Buddha is like.

We believe that spirituality is the center pole that supports, nourishes and uplifts the whole spiral of life. It not only better interconnects us to the Great Mystery it also better connects us to ourselves and others as well. When one authentically progresses in their spirituality one improves their ability to successfully create every single thing that is:

worthwhile to be or become, worthwhile to do or be done and,
worth having --- both in the here and now and, throughout eternity!

The Amazing Social Benefits of an Empowered and Authentic Spiritual Lifestyle:

co-creation of an equitable, just and sustainable world,
better interpersonal relationships and connection with kindred spirits --- through supporting their spiritual evolution while expanding your own,
a tangible healing or lessening of the sense of fragmentation and personal isolation plaguing todays post modern world,
co-action with other spiritual pioneers and cultural creatives in life affirming social service through spiritualized collective social activism,
sharing your personal life, spiritual and social wisdom with others to help expand the global spiritual commons.

The Final Spiritualizing Your Desire Step:

A.) Now that you have reviewed some of the benefits above, print them out. When you print them out be sure to leave some room to add any additional benefits that you are seeking in your spiritual life that are not listed.

B.) Next, go over the list and mark the ones most important and that you desire most. You can use a 1-10 scale of desire if you like. You now have your list of personal spiritual desires! You even have which desires are most important to you if you did the 1-10 scale part of this exercise.

Keep this list where you will see and review it regularly! Watch what happens in the quality and results of your spiritual life now that you have renewed, clarified and/or expanded your real spiritual desires.

The Practical Virtue Proofs of an Authentic and Effective Integral Spirituality Lifestyle

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:59:01 -0600

When lived in a balance, the list of virtues and values found in this article are the resultant authentic fruits of the Spirit. These fruits of classic, modern and post modern virtues are a reliable and observable broad spiritual community validity "proofs" for the results of authentic and effective spiritual practice, spiritual growth and a congruent spiritual lifestyle for an individual within the world. Compare your current spiritual lifestyle against these virtues criteria now...

Within the majority of world religions they also are considered to be the time-proven community validity and reality tests for the legitimacy of the results that are to be achieved if one is xperiencing authentic spiritual practice and spiritual growth. In the list below you will find some virtues and values from the modern, postmodern and integral worldviews not specifically mentioned in earlier classical or traditional worldview lists of virtues and values.

The virtues below do not absolutely imply belief in a God/Buddha or being self-aware that one is on a "spiritual" path. People can embody or practice these values and virtues as asecular humanist. The values and virtues can be also thought of as one of the best results and proofs of authentic "enlightenment."

For ages, these virtues and values have been called the "fruits of the spirit" in humanitys religious materials. While one could live and demonstrate these virtues without being spiritual, claiming to be spirituality growing or having an authentic and congruent spiritual lifestyle and practice without increasingly manifesting living more of these virtues lived in balance is a spiritual incongruity.

Click here to use our online tool to rate your relationship and life application of the virtues listed below. This will make it easier to see just how balanced your application of them actually is.

Accepting - tolerating without protest, on a deeper level recognizing the inherent and neutral truth/existence/"isness" of every occurrence

Adaptable - capable of adapting to varying conditions

Altruistic - unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others

Amiable - being friendly, sociable, and congenial

Appreciative - having or showing gratitude

Attentive - heedful of the comfort or condition of others

Authentic - true to one's own personality, spirit, or character

Autonomous - existing or capable of existing independently

Aware - having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge

Balanced mental, spiritual and emotional dynamic steadiness

Benevolent - disposed to doing good

Capable - having general efficiency and ability

Centered - emotionally stable and secure

Charitable - merciful or kind in judging others

Committed - able act with deliberation

Communicative - able to transmit information, thought, or feeling so that it is satisfactorily received or understood

Compassionate - showing empathy

Competent - having requisite or adequate ability or qualities

Considerate - thoughtful of the rights and feelings of others

Consistent - marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity

Cooperative - a willingness and ability to work with others

Courageous - mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty
Co-Responsible - being a co-responsible agent doing at least your approximately one six billionth fair share part to co-evolve our shared world toward the necessary improvements that you see and know need to be made.

Creative - an ability to create beauty and or art in ones life as well as bringing increased levels of creativity or co-creativity to solving the problems of life

Decisive - to find out or come to a decision about by investigation, reasoning, or calculation

Devoted - consecrated to a purpose

Direct - free from evasiveness or obscurity

Discerning - showing discriminating insight and understanding

Eco-Friendly - displaying environmental co-responsibility and sustainability

Ethical - guided by that which is morally good

Evolving - moving oneself forward physically, mentally and spiritually

Fair - characterized by frankness, honesty, impartiality, or candor; open; upright; free from suspicion or bias; equitable; just

Flexible - characterized by a ready capability to adapt to new, different, or changing requirements

Forgiving - allowing room for error or weakness and to give up resentment

Generous - showing or suggesting nobility of feeling and generosity of mind

Good - possessing moral excellence or virtue

Grounded - having a firm foundation

Honest - free from fraud or deception. Marked by integrity. Marked by free, forthright, and sincere expression

Hopeful - desiring some good, accompanied with an expectation of obtaining it, or a belief that it is obtainable

Humane - compassionate, sympathetic, or considerate towards humans or animals

Humble - not proud or haughty: not arrogant or inappropriately assertive

Inclusive - broad in orientation or scope

Integrative - forming, coordinating, blending or integrating parts into a functioning or unified whole

Interconnected - to be or become or understand our mutually connectedness in the web of life

Interdependent - understanding that both or many parties are needed to be successful

Just - rendering or disposed to render to each one his due; equitable; fair; impartial

Loving - feeling or showing affection

Loyal - true to any person or persons to whom one owes fidelity, especially as a wife to her husband, lovers to each other, and friend to friend; constant; faithful to a cause or a principle.

Ministering - to supply or to things needful; esp., to supply consolation or remedies

Open-minded - ready to entertain new ideas

Patient - good-natured tolerance of delay or incompetence

Peaceful - peacefully resistant in response to injustice

Productive - producing, or able to produce, in large measure; fertile; profitable, also creating or maintaining productive, equitable and ethical relationships of exchange with others, society and world

Responsible - to be reliable; to be trustworthy

Self-Disciplined - correcting or regulating oneself for the sake of improvement
Sufficiency - the quality or state of being sufficient, or adequate to the end proposed, knowing when "enough is enough" particularly in relation to the excesses of materialism

Tolerant - showing respect for the rights or opinions or practices of others

Trustworthy - taking responsibility for one's conduct and obligations. Worthy of trust or belief

Truthful - conformity to reality or actuality

Willing - voluntarily disposed or inclined towards

If you have not done so already click here to use our online tool to rate your relationship and life application of the virtues listed above. This online rating tool will make it far easier to accurately see just how balanced your current application of the virtues actually is.

For more recently added information on the values of an integral citizen in the integral age,click here.

For information relating to where the virtues have come from and their relation to both spirituality and nature click here for more on Evolutionary Spirituality. To discuss your ideas on the virtues, click here.

Make the Institutional Church History, says Theologian

Mon, 3 Mar 2008 18:46:47 -0700

A Protestant theologian, who has written provocative books about Archbishop Rowan Williams and the disestablishment of the Church of England, says that Christianity must dismantle the concept of church and become a faith of spontaneous celebration and action.

Theo Hobson is author of 'Against establishment: An Anglican Polemic and Anarchy', 'Church and Utopia: Rowan Williams on Church'. Writing recently in The Guardian newspaper, he claims that "the dominant trend of contemporary Christian theology might be called ecclesiastical fundamentalism."

Hobson criticises forms of church life that model top-down approaches to power, reproduce rigid thinking and exclude those who think or behave differently. He says that Christianity must move beyond institutionalism, taking the experience of Carnival as the appropriate contemporary idiom for Christian expression.

Hobson says that "Christian culture needs to cultivate an anarchic lightness, a lust for freedom, a celebratory spirit." He cites Glastonbury, Notting Hill and Gay Pride carnivals and Chinese New Year as having something of this ethos.

In recent years there has been a huge turn away from institutional religion, especially amongst the young. Sociologists of religion often speak of the shift from traditional belief to new age style spirituality, and towards believing without belonging. But there is also a significant trend towards alternative church and emergent church in the post-Christendom era.

Another writer, Alan Jamieson, has described the phenomenon of Christians who have stopped going to traditional churches altogether. Sometimes they form small groups, support networks or internet communities to express and explore faith.

Theo Hobson ends his call to make the centralised church history by calling for Easter Day 2006 to take place in Hyde Park, London. He writes: "There will be drumming, dancing and parades. Lets have 2 million of you out there."

If Hobsons plea works, it might turn out to be the first mass expression of Christian community constituted by flash mobbing, the spontaneous gathering of crowds through mobile phones and email.

Theological news from ekklesia