Fostering An Integral Vision For The World

Atheists and All of Us: Confusing the Map and the Territory

Cynthia Bourgeault

The word religion means “to bind together” although it often does not seem that way. I need not expound on the danger of religious zealotry and exclusivist claims of salvation. We need to look no further than the new atheists (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins) who have been calling religion to task for the destruction we have witnessed over the centuries…this is not a bad thing.

Yet, they are missing an important point that all of us often miss. Every religion has an inside and an outside and we confuse the map (the outside or exoteric religion) with the territory (the inside or esoteric religion). The critique of religion is usually a critique of “outside” religion.

It tends to start like this: People have an “inside” encounter with a Master or teacher (Jesus, Buddha, Krishnamurti) and the community and/or teacher experience the sacred and a deep sense of the Source of all creation. They share their revelations using metaphorical language.

Why metaphor? After all, literal interpretations of metaphor in sacred texts have engendered much human suffering and misunderstanding.

This is true, but how else does one describe the feeling and spiritual insight after a deep encounter with divine mystery? It’s the same reason we use metaphor to describe love… the actual experience is difficult to convey…music, poetry, metaphor and story convey the feeling and the mystery of the ineffable. Inside religion invites us into this inner experience.

Outside religion is created as the community develops rituals, practices, music, moral prescriptives and doctrine to honor and celebrate the mystery. They create a sort of map which points to the territory of inner spiritual experience.

Each informs the other. As new territory is discovered through ever evolving encounters with the divine; maps and metaphors are redrawn which illuminate insights to each new generation.

Outside religion goes awry when the community begins to confuse the map with the territory. Understandably, we tenaciously cling to old maps because they offer security, clarity and familiar signposts.

Yet, this is like following your outdated GPS and insisting that Highway 25 is still there “because it says so on the GPS” when Hwy 25 was washed away in last year’s hurricane. Imagine using a map from 300 AD to get to your next appointment.

The earlier map wasn’t wrong; it was accurate for the time. Yet, as we evolve, our ways of knowing the divine mystery evolve. So, new maps are created for evolving communities.

Yet, it would also be shortsighted to trash the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist sutras, and the Tao. These texts are rich with metaphor and spiritual insight which invite us into own encounters.

As we mature, our challenge is to develop a deeper trust of the still voice of Spirit inside of ourselves. In community, we share our encounters and identify the ways in which we get lost.

We may also find ourselves pulling out other maps and reading sacred texts from other traditions to expand our ways of knowing the Greater Reality. We may develop evolving moral codes that are congruent with new insights we’ve gained.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who hasn’t found their faith deepened by an authentic encounter with another spiritual tradition. After reading the Tao, the poet Rumi, the Bhagadvad Gita and countless Buddhist texts, I read Jesus’ words so differently. It was if scales fell from my eyes as I asked myself, “How did I not see this before?”

Yet, in the timeless realm, these texts and communities are simply useful maps. The territory is the profoundly simple recognition that we never were separate from the divine who waits for us moment by moment and asks us again and again, “Who do you say that I AM?”

It is in the silence, for which there is no substitute, that we find the intimacy with the One that we seek. Everything emerges out of silence and returns to back to the silence. Divine territory…not up there or down here, not before that life or after this life. We are swimming in it right now.

The Sufi poet, Rumi writes:

There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite the Beloved to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.

Only words on a paper unless we relax into the silence and try it for ourselves. With time and practice, the individual and community binds together, relating to from the inside and on the outside in a sort of cosmic dance of “I” and “WE” and the “I AM” which is the very Source of all creation.

————————————————————————————————————
Books which invite us to an “inside” perspective of religion…a religion that truly binds together:

The Wisdom Way of Knowing…Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart by Cynthia Bourgeault (Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest, writer, retreat leader and director of the Wisdom School and the Contemplative Society).

Kabbalistic Healing…A Path to an Awakened Soul by Jason Shulman (Shulman is a recognized teacher of Buddhism and Kabbalah, which is “inner Judaism.” This lovely book focuses on the healthy integration of ego and its relationship with transcendent reality…the divine).

Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self by Kabir Helminski (outstanding intro to the Wisdom path by a Sufi teacher)

Lost Christianity by Jacob Needleman (Needlman is from the Jewish tradition and this is his exploration into the Christianity he intuited on one level and decided to research it…amazing insights and fascinating read).

The Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World’s Religions by Huston Smith (Smith is the foremost scholar of comparative religion, a Christian who studied and practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and Sufism for over ten years. Smith has been interviewed by Bill Moyers on PBS and his tape series, The World’s Religions, is a must see for anyone interested in the deep, common vein running through the world’s religions).

Howard Thurman: Essential Writings (an African American mystic whose deep identification with God…inside religion…gave birth to a life which invited students and congregants to deeply engaged in the civil rights movement..an expression of outside religion. His quote: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive” is oft cited by poets and teachers who are inviting others to “Begin within.”)