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Originally posted by Derek:
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I've often wondered whether this is the same thing as the "kingdom" that Jesus talks about. I find particularly interesting one passage where Jesus tells a scribe, "You are not far from the kingdom of God" (Mark 12:34). What did Jesus mean by that? Interestingly, too, the scribe who was close to the kingdom was not even Christian -- firstly because the word "Christian" hadn't been invented yet (Acts 11:26), and secondly because he had only just met Jesus and therefore couldn't have been one of his followers.

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Originally posted by Shasha:
I do resonate with your description of "the observer looking out from all of creation."

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but when one presses further, it does seem that some of what's being described could well be the experience of Christ in his cosmic aspect (rather than personal, relational presence to us).

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Throughout this discussion on facilitating knowledge of the Self- God union, we have been more concerned with coming to the direct experience of Self, rather than addressing the issue of facilitating a deepening union between Self and God—as between Ego and God. Whether anything can be done to affect the manner of union between Self and God is an interesting question, but one which we shall reflect on here only briefly. On the one hand, we have already affirmed the presence of a natural, or existential union between God and Self. We have also suggested that Self is non-intentional, which would seem to mitigate against deepening union between God and Self. Nevertheless, the Incarnation has established a new relationship between humanity and God. Three possible relationships between Christ and Self suggest themselves:

1. Because of the fundamental unity of the human species, we can minimally affirm that the consciousness of Christ is present in Self, and to awaken to Self is to experience something of his consciousness, even if this is not recognized. In this situation, it is possible that the Ego-Christ relationship effects a transformation at the level of Self through grace. As the Ego becomes increasingly identified with Christ, its ground in Self becomes correspondingly transformed into the consciousness of Christ. If this is the case, then a transformation in the Self- God union can be effected through the Ego-God relationship. What is suggested here is a spirituality of “becoming Christ” through grace—a very familiar paradigm for most Christians. 



2. It may well be, however, that in “becoming sin” through empathic love, Christ became completely identified with all individuals, and thus bonded completely with the human condition as Self. By rising from the dead and ascending to heaven, he would have thus taken Self into his own consciousness, in which case he would not be merely present in Self as another human being, but henceforth present to the human race as Self. Christ as Self: the interface between the human and divine! If this is the truth, then Ego is an individual expression of Christ, and the phrase, “What you do to one another, you do to me” takes on new poignancy.

3. This possibility would be the same as no. 2, but would be applied only to baptized Christians, rather than to the whole human race. St. Paul suggests this when he writes, “You have been buried with him, when you were baptized; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead. . . because you have died, the life you now have is hidden with Christ in God. But when Christ is revealed—and he is your life—you too will be revealed in all your glory with him (Col. 2: 12, 3: 3-4).”67

In any case, the spiritual work called for is the same, only one’s understanding of grace and transformation is shifted from a perspective of “becoming Christ” to “realizing the Christ ‘that I am.’” In the context of this present discussion on facilitating the Self-God union, the first Christology would tend to de-emphasize direct experience of Self, while the second and third would strongly emphasize this—especially for the baptized. My own sympathies are more with the first Christology, but further reflection on the many implications of this view would take us too far afield from the primary focus of this work. Nevertheless, the relationship between theology and spiritual practice ought to be obvious from this brief digression.

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My reading of Michael Washburn's book, coupled with my own experience, is that the Ego as the social self is simply a developmental stage.

What disappears in middle life is the belief that Ego = Self.

Assuming that the personality is solidly formed by this stage, the social self remains, except that it is no longer driven by the fuel of identification with the larger Self.

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Originally posted by Mt:
Apropos enlightenment:

On the other hand, we have Zen and Taoist, and advaitist practices which lead us up, but disable us to go down and use concepts again. For a Zen master concepts are an obstacle to enlightenment, discourse is a "head-trip", propositions are "dualistic" and so on. An adept of Zen is trained in avoiding concepts to a degree that s/he is convinced that they have no metaphysical meaning, only practical. "


Thank you MT for sharing your understanding of
this issue. It's been a great assistance to me in understanding what happened to me when I went to the East. I had felt like my foundation was gone. A no going back as you
said.

MT
"The question is whether what Plato, Plotinus and Aquinas write about is actually the same enlightenment that Dogen and Bankei describe. Zen people will say it's "imperfect" because there's still conceptual thinking. But it doesn't matter, be it imperfect. The loss of the ability to think about God and ourselves in concepts is a price that Christians cannot pay for any enlightenment, because it's extremely difficult to relate to God if we can't think.

I have no idea how to achieve enlightenment through discursive meditation, although sometimes when I read Western philosophers I experience enlightenment by means of their discourse. I think we have to invent a middle way for Christian enlightenment, between traditional dialectic (which isn't a living tradition anymore) and Zen-type meditation. Available practices:

- Assagioli
- sitting in silence, following the breath, 20 minutes a day
- contemplation of Nature or religious art/architecture
- repeating "Jesus prayer"

Being attentive is, of course, the key. All those provide an experience of inner quietude, which is very good, even if the person never attains to full enlightenment.

At the same time, this person should be conscious that it's not a prayer, natural or supernatural, but a different, non-relational practice. This practice should be done with an intention to overcome sin, serve God better, open to his grace etc. If experiences of non-dual consciousness come, the person should know that it's not a mystical knowledge of the Trinity, but oneness with everything that exists in the Existent One. One should thank God for this experience, but recognize it is of the natural order.

Maybe we would need a language to speak about such experiences, that is less dependent on writers like Wilber, Tolle or others with mainly Buddhist framework. For example, we shouldn't use B. Roberts' notion of "no-self" or her strange idea that the Trinity is the oneness of the seer, the seen and the seeing itself, but some of her terminology is fine with me - like "That Which Is" or knowledge "that God IS everywhere".

Those who feel attracted to such practice should be very careful not to neglect the eucharist and confession, lectio divina or some other active prayer. And not think that lectio is a lesser practice than sitting in silence, because we use concepts or images, or affects. However, proportions are an individual matter. There might be times when a call to silence is more powerful and more time will be spent in it. A balance should be maintained.

I suppose the minority of Christians would be interested in that. Not everyone is inclined to sit in silence, some people just don't seem carved for this. But it'd not be easy to get to those Christians, to compete with so many spiritual authors that are influenced by Buddhism or Hinduism, sometimes powerful personalities. And leaders like Keating, Freeman, Rohr, Barnhardt are already not clear about what is enlightenment in Christian spirituality.

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One possible way of envisioning the human passage is the following. We think of ourselves as originally emerging from the unknown, from darkness, nothingness or non-existence into the light of consciousness. But as consciousness develops we discover the increasing ability to see in the dark, see into the nothingness or mystery within ourselves and eventually realize that this darkness and nothingness is the divine from which we emerged and with which we are one. Thus we discover that our original darkness IS true light. Midway in this passage, divine light (darkness or unknowing) and the light of consciousness are in balance, with neither outshining the other. But as we move beyond this mid-point, divine light begins to outshine the light of consciousness until, in the end, the light of consciousness goes out and only divine light remains. From this vantage point we look back on the passage and see that although consciousness was the veil that dimmed the light, this dimming was necessary in order to make the human dimension possible. But if consciousness makes human existence possible, it is also not separate from the divine, nor does it completely hide it; on the contrary, consciousness or self is man's faculty or medium for experiencing the divine -- so long as it remains, that is. Our passage through consciousness is the gradual return to the divine; we leave the divine unknowingly and in darkness, but we return knowingly and in light.

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Originally posted by Derek:
The proposition that God is initially seen as a darkness or unknowing is widely reported by Christian mystics, beginning with Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite and continuing on through St. John of the Cross. However, this darkness or unknowing is only an initial impression. Bernadette Roberts writes:

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Originally posted by Mt:
cut... Have I regressed? Am I "lower" now than four years ago? It doesn't feel like it. I no longer practice Zen, and I don't know how it would be assessed by a Zen master, but I don't care.

cut

I tell this story, because I'm quite sure that my experience of the emptiness of concepts from 2006 would've been less excruciating if I understood the nature of this experience in a Christian context.


" I was thinking that this non-dual light was a higher degree of contemplation, like Father Keating and others taught, but I felt cheated and angry, because there was no Jesus and no God in this "higher contemplation". What I did wrong? - I was asking myself. I did nothing wrong, but I couldn't use advice at this time, because my mind was so conditioned by non-dual ideas (what a paradox...) that I couldn't even read James Arraj "God, Zen and the Intuition of Being" without irritation and headache (the headache was more from kundalini, too much conceptual thinking).