The Harried Mystic

In general, I focus on direct experiences of the sacred instead of beliefs about these experiences. My aim is to get beyond beliefs to the mystical center that we colorfully dress up in diverse ways through our beliefs.

Nevertheless, as a philosopher-theologian, thought is another path to help transcend belief, but the first task is to know how I clothe my sense of the Spirit. It is a valuable practice to take stock and check the state of belief as sincerely as I can at various points in time.

Today is just such a time as I pose the question: What is it that I believe ( i.e., my dogmatic theology)?

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Six Meta-affirmations –

✠ All my beliefs are hypotheses, a framework that I erect and use to navigate my experiences, make sense of them, and on which I base my choices.

✠ All “isms” are collections of beliefs and have the character of religion.

✠ All those who subscribe to any “ism” will always find evidence to support it. There is no sense or purpose in arguing them. Instead, it is best to see where all religious beliefs converge – what binds them all together.

✠ Mysticism looks past the metaphorical “clothing” applied to dress up sacred mystery, and seeks instead the naked experience behind the trappings. As such, it is esoteric in character. The churches and temples are often breathtakingly beautiful, but even the most inspiring are weak approximations to the power of our direct encounters with the sacred.

✠ Every orthodoxy derives greater definition and boldness by having a heresy to war against. Putting aside all notions of one set of “right” beliefs, leaves heresy meaningless and so ideas can become poetry, prose and iconography in search of the miraculous.

✠ Science is another lens on mystery. It too reveals the “footsteps” of G-d and in studying those footsteps gives us so much more on which to meditate in the service of our spiritual adventure and clarity.

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Eighteen Theses –

1. All ideas about G-d are constructs, mental models, and say more about our own state than the character of the Sacred.
2. The image of the One to whom we pray is primarily a result of social learning, cultural traditions, and projections of personality.
3. That we pray attests to our need to stay connected to the One, the core of Being, and allows us to become better attuned to the infinite and timeless.
4. As G-d is not organic ( without genetic or neural substance) the Divine Presence cannot be said to express or embody what we experience in terms of ideas, emotions, intentions, pretensions, expectations, reasons or the lack thereof. So, in G-d ” there is no male nor female,” as G-d does not feel, think, or act as we know those things.
5. In G-d, whose vantage point is infinite, there is no time; no past, no future.
6. G-d is pure essence, the ineffable matrix on which everything rests and is ever Present, ever manifest in the Sacred “Now”.
7. The sacred presence is a meta-archetype that makes all that emerges in space-time coherent, intelligible, and evolving: a root field on which literally everything rests and, according to which, all things derive their nature, shape, and attributes.
8. All other archetypes are branches off of this root meta-archetype of the Sacred adding further dimensionality and particularity to the process of diversification and complexification of the “prima materia,” the elementary particle nature of the Cosmos.
9. In G-d, all things evolve consistent with their nature and assume a pattern over time that is increasingly more stable and adaptive.
10. Absolute Love, in terms we can understand, is not emotional or ideological compassion, it is patient demonstrated commitment to giving all things and persons what they need to flourish spiritually. It recognizes that all diversity arises from a core unity and that we are of a piece.
11. Good is that which affirms the qualities and spirit of absolute love with our choices measured against those qualities and that spirit.
12. Evil is the choice to act to subtract from the dignity of things and people, and assert separation and independence from the unified fabric of creation: i.e., acting in opposition to absolute love.
13. Happiness, joy, and suffering derive from our life circumstances as creatures, from our bio-psycho-social process: the way we think, the environment, the challenges we navigate, and the personalities we project.
14. Whatever happens in finite space and time, our attributions to G-d are mostly about our desperate need to make sense of events. It’s all about us and says nothing whatsoever about     “G-d’s Will”. Suffering happens because it is in the nature of systems to wind down (entropy being another fundamental tendency of systems).
15. With moral implications of absolute love in mind, we can choose to act in support of what helps reduce suffering. This is consistent with the return to wholeness, unity, and movement toward pattern coherence, robustness, completeness, and the personal actualization of the archetype of the Phoster ( Light-Bearer).
16. As we are persons among persons, it is self-evident that it is in the nature of the meta-archetype from which the evolution of the universe arises to itself become personal: consciousness springs from dark and luminous matter. So, G-d is a “Person” and we meet the Spirit directly when consciousness is stripped of distraction, illusion, allusion, ego and small ideas.
17. For the Abrahamic faiths, Jesus is the Anointed One, the “Christ,” in being a mirror of the Christic archetype of the way of G-d incarnate. As such, he is the “Way, the Truth, and the Light” which, in no way, denies that Buddha (having attained enlightenment, or Buddha nature) was also a pure mirror of the sacred. Both were spiritually transparent exemplars of the scared meta-archetype, completely consumed by them.
18. Religious and spiritual practice exists to condition consciousness for deepening and expansion, and to realize the “Knowledge of the Heart.” Through images, poetry and movement, consciousness bends toward the sacred and this is the process of conversion and revelation.

Having codified these beliefs, I continue my hero’s journey in a quest to unlock my beliefs, face their essential incompleteness and poverty, and carry on, with vigor the good work of getting beyond them. I also continue the voyage toward the hypothetical “Omega Point” of Teilhard de Chardin, the “Pleroma” (or the Fullness).

I recommend the practice.

© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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