Phil:

Somewhere along the way we had a thread or two that touched upon this by way of discussing the differences between Zen and Christian povs. There was also a woman you and Arraj dialogued with who recognized an intellectual difference between immanent and transcendent presence, but seemed to ultimately collapse them.

So I'll start off sharing what I probably posted somewhere in those previous threads.

The more I practice Focusing, Sedona Method, Core Transformation, Internal Family Systems Therapy and other such alchemical systems, the clearer the differences are between natural grace and supernatural grace, or immanent presence and transcendental Presence.


Here are the two different kinds of experiences I've had which contrast and nurture each other's unique importance:

1) While doing Focusing some years ago I experienced two opposite states, one of deep lustful passion, and the other of reverence, dissolving into each other, yielding a state of pure peace that filled my entire my body, slowly, without any trance state; this seemed to be a prolonged, integrative true-self experience, and a product of the soul's faculties via alchemy of opposites via natural grace, leaving the faculties mostly, but not entirely at rest, i.e, it wasn't permanent, and was vulnerable to the quality of my attention. And so this experience of true self was preceded by, and dependent upon, the effort to maintain internal attentional space in a certain way.


2)Being completely known by an unknowable love, the faculties put completely to rest by a Presence completely beyond the faculties, including attention itself. This experience of graced contemplation happens more frequently nowdays, and is preceded by Presence releasing my attention into Himself as I rest in the awareness (my own knowledge) of His love for us.


From these two types of experience, I find the faculties can never of themselves permanently stabilize non-dual awareness, since they are dependent upon mortal sensibilities constantly undergoing change/deterioration, with the natural grace giving them their function dependent upon trancendental grace wherein the faculties are given rest beyond their own doing.


This is quite encouraging personally, but also frustrating as I see more how Buddhists, for instance, really struggle with the goal of non-dual awareness via psychic faculties never meant, or designed, to sustain that clarity. The rest of prayer would, it seems, do wonders for the ability to stay in the present moment, but Buddhist philosophy sadly doesn't allow for an intimate experience of transcendental Holiness.

The inherent instability of the fallen faculties seems to reveal a relationship between supernatural and natural grace in terms of spiritual formation and the various attempts in psychology to approximate a comprehensive model of healing and wholeness. IOW, the limits of the faculties are also openings, through their endowment of natural grace, to transcendental grace, and particularly the way TG befriends, heals, transforms, and purifies the organism, where the Trinity, through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus, makes His home within us.

The subconscious tendencies arising from the archetyal world of polarities are conditions of our fallen nature. Polarization is, psychologically, the essential state of separation, not just from God and each other, but within the ongoing, disparate state of our internal lives. Yet within these polarized cravings and aversions have always been the existential longing for giving and receiving love, which is an indication of humans having lost their likeness to God, but retained His image. Hence the failures of oriental spiritual paradigms when they attempt to equate likeness and image, leaving their adherents with gurus who at best serve as incomplete openings to God, but often degenerate morally.

So via the fall, our separation from God, in which natural grace is retained as the existential path leading to longing for reconciliation, we can discover the mystery of the incarnation making itself known within the very places of pain and suffering we'd least expect to find healing, even though theologically it makes plenty of sense to consider Christ dwelling in His crucified form in our hearts, as Lord of the bodily temple. But perhaps we think of this as the rare, extended state of purification within the saints, when in fact it is the primary graced state of baptised Christians, and perhaps non-Christians via the universal, cosmic impact of His life, death and resurrection.

Julian of Norwich was graced with the mystical vision in which she saw her soul within her own heart, and at the center of her soul Jesus Christ himself (I've posted elsewhere this passage from her "Shewings" on a thread by her name). This is a great encouragement, clarifying as it does the theology of Divine Indwelling, wherein Christ becomes Lord of the subconscious, making it possible for us to find His presence throughout the false self energies that still know, through these graces, natural and supernatural, their way back into our hearts where He dwells in secret.

The Kundalini arises from the Holy Spirit in the act of creation, and retains the living image of Christ's fullness of human experience sanctified by His life, death, and resurrection. IOW, we can trust that these energies, however unruly they may be at times, to want Him more than any other moment of lesser gratification. Just as we want, for instance, true love making over the objects of lust (the false self's hoping to find safety in the latter without the former's vulnerability), these energies seek their Beloved so as to become charitable expressions for each other. That may sound, again, like the fruit of mature spiritual development, but it is our heritage, our sacramental birth-right in Him. And so it shouldn't come as a complete surprise to find that within the distortions of these energies there is both the need, and the ability, to contain them toward this end of re-unification to which they are naturally drawn. Just as surely as Christ dwells in us, these energies remember their Source, and if we can be patient, and diligent in finding inspired ways of tending them with curiosity and trust, they will show His imprint to us.

I would add that the ability to develop this capacity to be with polarized energies unto their alchemization within the heart is infused in us through Him. Cultivating conscious presence (the disposition of curious, non-grasping/fixing/controlling attention based upon natural grace within the soul) activates hidden presence/Presence (which is both the essentially good exiled parts of self, and Him who is the head of all our "members," who loved us before we loved Him).

Zen will never have a scripture or a teaching on The
Song of Songs, Canticles, Song of Solomon or whatever they are calling it nowdays. Christianity acknowledges longing and desire and passion. What's even better is that it's a two way street and The Bride is the object of The Bridegroom's longing as well.

Zen seeks to bypass all of this, and there is a time and a place for this, but since I have heard that only one in ten thousand practitioners reach
"enlightenment" through Zen, I'll avoid those odds
and try Las Vegas instead.

I often think of Houston Smith, ten years in Zen, ten years a Sufi, and ten years in Vedanta, only to wind up back where he started with the Methodists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Smith