Author: sebjig

What is Salvation?

sebjig

Christians believe that Christ is their Lord and Saviour. But what is he supposed to save us from? The Romans? The devil? Ourselves?

Paul Tillich has an existential take. In The Courage to Be he writes about existential anxiety and the delusions we construct to defend ourselves against them, namely: a false sense of perfection, a false sense of certainty and a false sense of security.

The first defends us against the despair of existential guilt, the second against the despair of existential meaninglessness and the third against the despair of existential dread. The only way out, according to Tillich (and Kierkegaard), is faith, to be precise, “absolute faith”.

St. Paul famously extolled faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13:13) which suggestively line up with existential guilt (love/forgiveness), existential meaninglessness (faith) and existential dread (hope). You could say that love, faith and hope “save us” from guilt, meaninglessness and dread (the existential anxiety of fate and death).

Christian salvation also seems to imply salvation from the fallen state of the world, or “sin”. Following Rasta tradition, I call it “Babylon”, and following Tibetan tradition, I identify six archetypes on the “Wheel of Babylon”, namely: Diva, Demon, Victim, Addict, Muppet, Muggle.

These six archetypes also suggestively line up with the three pathological defenses identified by Tillich, false perfection, false certainty and false security. The need for false perfection in the Diva-Demon axis leads to condemnation and persecution of others; for false certainty in the Muppet-Muggle axis to extremism and dogmatism; for false security in the Victim-Addict axis to isolation and escapism.

The counter-archetypes thus correspond to St. Paul’s three Christian virtues, faith, hope and love, which, as we saw, heal the wounds of guilt, meaninglessness and dread. The Mystic-Shaman (love) counters Diva-Demon despair (guilt and condemnation), the Philosopher-King (faith) counters Muppet-Muggle despair (doubt and meaninglessness) and the Warrior-Monk (hope) counters Victim-Addict despair (fate and death).

The three virtues and six counter-archetypes are contained implicitly and explicitly in the person of Christ. So we can confidently say that Christ saves us both from sin (despair) and from the world (Babylon), which comes to the same thing. The Christian virtues are free gifts of the Spirit, “through him, with him and in him”. If we try to generate them ourselves through our own efforts, we end up with poor copies that lack potency and conviction. They don’t last.

But our problem is not just with life and the world, it is also with death and God, or to be more exact, the wrath and judgment of God. In death as in life, we cannot stand before God without the mediation, atonement and reconciliation of Christ, the anointed Son of God. In the hour of our death, he can save us from eternal death and eternal damnation and grant us eternal life and eternal blessedness. Or so Christians believe.

Which explains the inscription on the wall of St. Paul’s Monastery in Mount Athos, “If you die before you die, you won’t die when you die”.

Did You Say Something?

sebjig

God spoke the universe into being. It is the song of the Lord.

Listen to the running stream. It is the voice of God.

The Word spoken from the beginning is still being spoken,

For a thousand years is but a day.

The dancers at the end of time

Will dance the dance of God

Until the fat lady finishes Her song.

She will have sung in every language

And every kind of music.

And when silence falls,

She will remember what the thunder said.

The Abyss of Soul-Making

sebjig

John Keats coined the “vale of soul-making” in contrast to the Biblical “vale of tears” to indicate the growth potential of adversity and suffering in the world. Sometimes powerful psychedelic journeys feel more like an abyss than a vale, but “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

To enter the abyss of soul-making and come out the other side requires soul. As Bobby Byrd sang, “I know you got soul – if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be in here.” But what is soul? Fats Waller famously said, “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” The same goes for soul.

To enter the abyss of soul-making and come out the other side also requires daishin, “Great Faith”. But what is faith? If you have to ask what faith is, you’ll never know. Unless and until you do.

If you permit me to offer a working definition, however, I would say that “Great Faith” (or “Absolute Faith” as Paul Tillich calls it) is simply the overcoming of anxiety (both pathological and existential). With faith, there is no more existential guilt, existential doubt or existential dread. You are free to live your life without worry, confusion or regret and without those psychological defences, false perfection, false certainty and false security, that constitute the inauthentic personality.

In the final analysis, soul is zen and faith is zen. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

The Way, the Word, the Work

sebjig

Zen Christian Shamanism follows the Zen Way, the Christian Word and Shamanic Work.

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The Zen Way is mindfulness, headlessness, meditation.

The Christian Word is logos, muthos, prayer.

The Shamanic Work is liturgy, theurgy, ceremony.

o

The Way is forgetting the world through a cloud of unknowing, a via negativa, a self-emptying kenosis.

The Word is remembering God through mantra, lectio divina and faith, pistis.

The Work is remembering God through numinous experience and direct spiritual knowledge, gnosis.

o

Forget the world and remember God.

Forget Babylon and remember Zion.

The kingdom of Gaia is within you.

Woodstock Revisited

sebjig

“We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden”

Joni Mitchell

Those familiar with my blogs will know that I have a penchant for lists and a soft spot for the magic number seven. So here are seven ways we can relate to “the garden”. (My version of the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures if you like).

  1. People talk about a secret garden, but I don’t believe a word of it.
  2. There may well be a secret garden, but I don’t care either way. It’s not for me.
  3. I passionately believe in the garden. I long to get there and I’m searching high and low for it.
  4. I found it. It’s reality itself! I’m desperate to get back there but I have no idea how.
  5. I did it! I found the way back. It’s a long way though and I don’t know if I can do it again.
  6. I can get back to the garden at will. I come and go at my leisure.
  7. I’ve moved in. I live in the garden now.

I Am the Soul of the World

sebjig

You are the soul of the world of your body.

The inner life of your body is a whole world of living beings.

To the cells of your body, you are God.

So be a good God. Be a loving God.

As above, so below.

The Mystic communes with God, the soul of the planet.

The Shaman communes with God, the soul of the body.

“The Father” is the soul of the planet.

“The Son” is the soul of the body.

“The Holy Spirit” is the soul of the cell.

As above, so below.

The soul of the world is the light of the world,

The light of consciousness.

“I am the light of the world” means “I am the soul of the world”.

The light penetrates the three worlds,

“God from God, light from light, true God from true God”.

The light is the same light.

The soul is the same soul.

As above, so below.

Meaning and Experience

sebjig

It’s a shame to have the experience but miss the meaning.

It’s also a shame to have the meaning but miss the experience.

To have both, you must deepen both.

To deepen both, you must study and practice,

Meditate and think.

Can the Centre Hold?

sebjig

One of the most memorable lines in all Modernist poetry comes from the pen of W.B. Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Can the centre hold? Not in the Modern/Postmodern world. Not in a secular humanist world. What is the centre in secular humanism? Humanity. What is humanity? Ultimately, whatever human beings say it is. But which human beings? Humans are apt to disagree. The centre cannot hold.

Secular humanists usually point to ethics, science and reason as the centre. We can build human and humane societies according to human values (approximating the Good), human understanding (approximating the True) and the human senses (approximating the True in the sciences and the Beautiful in the arts). But the Good, the True and the Beautiful are transcendental ideals that must be grounded in ultimate reality if they are not to slip and slide into relativism. Things fall apart.

We can see this empirically. Yeats wrote The Second Coming in 1919. Secular humanism has dominated the West (and by extension, the rest) ever since then. Look what happened to the fortunes of the Good, the True and the Beautiful in the twentieth century. Never have human beings been more confused and divided.

Christian humanism is not secular humanism. What is the centre in Christian humanism? The cross. What is “the cross”? It is self-emptying (kenotic) faith and revelation. At the centre of the centre is God. God is One. But everything is God. God contains everything. Somehow the One and the Many are unified. How? Through the Trinity.

The centre can hold. Because it is eternally self-emptying, it can hold all things. As such, it is “omnipresent”. Because it has absolute faith, it can achieve anything, so is “omnipotent”. Because it has infinite understanding, it can comprehend everything, so is “omniscient”.

Christianity is the only religion that has a human being actually present in the Godhead (as the second person of the Trinity) at the centre of reality. Consequently, it is the only truly humanist religion. Christianity invites us to call God “our Father” and to participate in the “Sonhood” of Christ. It calls us to be children of God through the Holy Spirit. It asks us to manifest the imago dei (the image of God) in our human, all-too-human lives.

For Christians, to be human is not just to be homo religiosus in the abstract, but to be actually, existentially, grounded in the One, in God. To be fully human is to be a child of God, and to participate directly in the source of reality and creativity, not through human principles and reasons, laws and commandments, not even through divinely ordained laws and commandments (as in other religions), but through direct spiritual contact with the centre.

Christian humanism implies Christian mysticism and ultimately, Christian shamanism.

We can hold onto the centre, “the cross”, through kenosis, pistis and gnosis, and it can hold us.

Lao Tzu says, “Hold fast to the centre.” (Tao Te Ching, chapter 5).

Escape from Babylon

sebjig

Take the red pill in Muggleton and you will wake up in Muppeton, Divaland, Addictshire, Victimdale, or Demon Close. You will just move on round the Wheel of Babylon.

The only way out is to die a Mystic and resurrect a Shaman. The only way to stay out is to live as a Warrior Monk / Warrior Nun and Philosopher King / Philosopher Queen.

If you slip up, you will have to go back into the Mystic and die all over again.

There is no escape from Babylon, however, until you believe the Gospel, which is the good news of the Kingdom of God.

Until you can say in your heart, “Lord, I believe”, until you can take up your cross and follow Jesus, there is no escape from Babylon.