On Religious Abuse and Authentic Spirituality: Religion offers a potential map…but it’s not the territory
When Anthony deMello was asked what he thought is the core component of the spiritual journey, he responded, “Wake up, wake up, wake up.” He said made no big proclamations about who God is…he said nothing about church and ritual and song.
He didn’t point to the reading of sacred texts as the Rosetta stone of the spiritual journey. Nor did he say much about human immorality or divine goodness. He wasn’t terribly interested in debates on women’s suitability for the priesthood or divorce or the state of the family.
He didn’t suggest people learn their Enneagram style or engage in selfless acts of service. He wasn’t irreligious; he was a Jesuit priest from India.
What deMello discovered is that spirituality isn’t about believing in something or someone; it is about getting to the root of one’s assumptions about God/Reality/Being, about the self, about the little sub-cultures which influence us and about natural world which impacts our awakening.
Why bust assumptions?
So we can have an authentic experience of Being/God which is different from talking or reading about God. DeMello knew we go through life in sort of a coma.
We are asleep to the countless assumptions we make.
And, if we are swimming in a sea of assumptions, how can we really assume we know anything about Reality or God that isn’t conditioned by our egoic blindness or the blindness of our cultural assumptions?
I’m not advocating we do away with rituals, sacred texts, music, service, meditation or prayer as all are valuable fingers pointing to the sun…. but they are not the sun itself. They are simply tools which have the potential power to elicit deeper spiritual awareness.
This seems to be a crucial time in human history to recognize the hazards of religious abuse; we’ve tools of mass destruction at our hands and we are poised on the brink of a massive ecological alteration.
I suppose I’ve a certain sensitivity to this issue as I’m sort of in the business. I’ve seen enough prejudice, misogyny, homophobia and class and cultural warfare all in the name of Jesus/God to make me exceedingly wary of definitive religious and political pronouncements.
Let me also be clear I’ve witnessed heart opening compassion, acts of forgiveness and personal/collective transformation because of one’s rootedness in a spiritual tradition/practice; it’s not about the religion though…it’s what his happening on the inside of us.
Religion provides a map for many, but if we mistake it for the territory, we can get into trouble.
At this writing, the Catholic tradition is using a theologically suspicious argument to continue its refusal to ordain women. Many post-Vatican II Catholics are not buying this as they’ve experienced massive doctrinal shifts to keep up with insights wrought by cultural and scientific evolution.
One need look no further than shifting attitudes about slavery and anti-Semitism to recognize the challenges of resting one’s argument on scriptural literalism; the Vatican and many Christian denominations have developed the capacity to contextualize scripture through the cultural lens and time in which it was written.
In other words, we are a bit suspicious when those in power become dogmatic and magnify and literalize the one issue that well, serves the status quo that maintains their position of power.
No religion or bishop, priest, pastor, guru, or spiritual teacher is exempt from the capacity to use its texts to serve; the wisest ones I’ve seen have a capacity to own their own shadow, observe their illusory fixations and identify the individual and collective compulsions which distort their worldview.
Which brings us back to the notion of awakening as the core component of the spiritual journey. Because of the tenacity of our individual and collective blindspots, the imperative seems to be one in which we engage in practices which elicit awakening.
Interestingly enough, this was central to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. He resisted pharisaical pronouncements and instead invited followers into their own stories and their own experience.
He answered their questions with questions or parables rather like a Zen master giving students a koan to solve which reveals something about the illusions they have about themselves and the world.
(As I shared some of this with my Jewish friend this morning she commented that info about this Jesus has been astonishingly absent in her neck of the woods).
A spiritual practice of contemplation offers an elegantly simple way of inviting the seeker into silence…this takes us beyond our projections about Jesus…God…ourselves. The practice of silent stillness, Beatrice Bruteau says, “…forces us to deeper levels of reality. Deprived of distraction, we must either panic or come to a new kind of authenticity.
To avoid the horror of isolation, we must open ourselves to experience our union with the natural world, with the human world and with God without the cover-up the prattling had afforded us. We must learn to breathe trust, the unspoken communion.”
Thus, when we do engage in ritual, compassionate service, sacred reading, moral decision making, understanding of our Enneagram fixation…we have cultivated an inner compass which is increasingly free of the illusory fixations of our false self.
The spiritual path invites us to shift our focus from God/Being…whatever you call the greater Reality… as one who is worshipped to one who is experienced authentically.
When the people of his time tried to make Jesus king, he ran for the hills. He knew the risk of projecting assumptions about him. Go to your room and pray in secret, he said. So, how do we start?
Contemplative practice.
Contemplative practices include relaxing emotional and bodily tensions, breathing consciously, engaging in a rhythmic, calming routine congruent with the rhythms of nature, cultivating a healthy diet and a healthy body, resting in the stillness of contemplation and/or communal silence, and developing a capacity to self-observe our habitual patterns.
In short, you begin to wake up. See. Remove the plank from your awareness. You will fall asleep again. This is okay. Wake up again. Inside of yourself, you will find the kingdom of God. When you seek, you may be troubled. When you become troubled, you will become astonished as you discover the kingdom…inside of yourself.
Mystics from every tradition share this experience.
And, as you cease to be uptight about yourself, you love more freely. Be prepared…You will fall asleep again You will contract and collapse inside of your own egoic world. No big deal. Simply notice and wake up again.
You will slowly discover you have been one with the One all along who lives and breathes inside of you, others and the natural world in which you live.
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