Jesus and the Kingdom of God

Hi Mark,

Thanks for responding to my question here, it's one I've been grappling with for a while now... Basically, I agree with you. Yes, the parables of Jesus are a kind of Non-dual pointing-out instruction for Grace, and KW basically employs the same paradoxical reversals as Jesus in the last chapter of "Eye of Spirit": what looks like the Great Search for Spirit is really the lie of the self-contraction, while what seems to be absent (ever-present Spirit), is really radically present right now: i.e. Spirit not hard to find but impossible to avoid...

So yes the parables of Jesus give voice to what Bob Funk calls the "logic of Grace" and can be used as a kind of Non-dual pointing out instruction, shifting the co-ordinates of presence and absence, and ushering in the profound peace of unconditional Grace...

And yes, the paradoxes of Jesus are only really perplexing or offensive to those who live and move within a world of artificial dualities.... That's why Christ was considered a stumbling-block to the wisdom of the ancient Greeks... The aim here is to reach a certain degree of comfort with paradox, to rejoice in the ambiguity of human experience, to live with the questions, and hope against hope...

But when it comes to the advent of the Kingdom (here on earth as it always already IS in heaven) there is going to be a conflict or tension that cannot be avoided or covered over. When the incarnation of Non-dual awareness in Jesus confronts the "powers and principalities" of this world, there is going to be fireworks... And one of the most central aspects of following the way of Jesus is to stand in that place where the world is in pain and groaning for fulfillment... In this sense, Non-dual awareness (Grace) is precisely that Gift which allows us to navigate the deeper tensions of human existence, to go to with Jesus the dangerous and powerless places, to be the heart of a heartless world, and I don't expect that this process (where suffering + love = transformation) will end any time soon...

Thanks again for your post, I appreciate your perspectives here. Cam

--

"Become passers-by" (Jesus of Nazareth)

Dear Christophe, I suspect that your "inner library" is more powerful than the outer one. 

It is great that you are from an European country and can see beyond the "behave well & feel good" mentality while one ironically dictates the rules for others out there through self-serving "compassion".

The problem that I personally see with the "outer library" is that it could be impregnated with fearful-feel-good-books.

There is a lot of stuff published about what has been called (here) "horizontal enlightenment" and of course, the wimp business that comes with it. 

A lot of theorization and very little action. Elite thinking, in other words...  It is not any wonder the word 'activism' is so unpopular in elite environments.

If you notice, the people who 'want' the FACTS more than anything else are the ones eager for social transformation.

There is NO "vertical enlightenment" without social transformation.

I agree though, please don't take me wrong...  certain writings are precious ...and Cameron's in my view are prime.

 Dear Christophe, The way you said what you said -somewhere, somehow in the content of the comment - helped my mind glimpse a possible (postmodern-like) truth, that we are dealing with a lot of mental projections as we speak of God and God's kingdom. I have to piss right now. That is real, not much in the way of a projection. But even it involves a "project", as well as a "projectile" stream. I must mentally project myself out of this chair, as a fellow peeing. We are all in this boat, on this earthly plane. The limitation of being a "human being" is that I must be a "human peeing"! Disequilibrium of the mind. Fractured from my state of equilibrium as I develop and share my (sometimes bizzare) thoughts with you. Broken in a broken, highly relativistic, post modern world. But I go on an piss when I need to. And I meet myself at the mental projection of a "man needing to pee", or "a man peeing".

Below is a bizzare (but I believe profound) poem of the person projecting finding themselves in (actually, by, because of, from) the projected dream of successfully hunting a deer. The poem suggests that the human mind has a means to reclaim its own projections. Gestalt therapy does this routinely. Seeing self in the projection and then applying the insights to self. As one practices this projection reclamation, the distance between projector and the projected image, or the "project"(all we have to do is pronounce the word Project as we would a verb, "to project"), seems shorter and shorter and less and less "real". I believe the mind can look back at itself through its own projections. 

Perhaps we are not talking at all about any discernible thing or being called God. We are talking about our own minds projected out onto a form that we sense can help us reclaim our wholeness, humanity, and love. It is the self inside, which was too bright to look at or see. It is the ultimately authentic, Godly, Spirit within. 

Our words here are but little mirrors that are partially reflecting that inner "truth", yet always partially distorting it (that awareness of distortion or relativity is a valid post modern contribution to the truth). 

I am not sure anything I am saying here makes much sense. I am not necessarily trying to make sense. I am trying to speak from a space somewhere between the projector and the projection. Poetry may be a better device to engage in such a "process" of reclaiming, or transcending, the outer projected mind. He is a poem about that (I think!):

Being Found by Yourself (letting a poem be a deer)

I heard this story. I

identified with

it. It

haunted me, hunted me, 

camouflaged as a story. 

But it was a wholesome hunter,

a kind of holy ghost hunter

whose weapon of choice

is a cross

bow strung with the specter

of the unknown, yet committed to 

this, this 

whatever

it is. It is 

a matter of hunting from a blind

for something beyond.

There is a story, 

if that is all

you let it be. 

It can be more

if you seek something

more, more

or less let it seek you.

This is behind the scenes stuff.

It is not the stuff of poetry. 

It is step-by-step preparation,

like buckling up a boot,

like setting up a blind,

and sitting up there, waiting

until the story finally comes around,

out of the wild. 

On the first day of deer season, 

a young man headed 

to a Pennsylvania convenient mart 

early in the morning, at

four something, for something

to eat through the day

while he watched for deer. 

On the way to the store

(one of those all night and all day

gas station stores), driving his vehicle

(I never heard what kind. Was it an Impala? 

More likely a Cherokee 

or an F-150, or an S-10; no matter,

it was the vehicle he chose, 

on the path he chose.), a big buck

appeared out of nowhere

and crashed through the windshield

before the young man 

had a chance

to spot him or aim or count the points.

The two of them died on that road,

leaving everyone

wondering which

was the hunter 

and which the hunted? 

Irony at times seems gruesome, 

tempting a cruel perception 

of poetic justice, like some Edgar Allen Poe 

poem, in which a young man

full of dreams,

who, due 

to a lust for dreams, 

is impaled

by the very racks he longed for.

This is a very dark version of a very strange story.

There is another story

wrapped around the same facts, 

wrapped around the driver,

and run through him, 

having shattered the standard view. 

It is a story of grace, of the 

lithe crossing of life

paths, of sections of life

intersecting, 

of the ghostly thing you look forward to,

finding you so brilliantly

that it is as if it is 

the essence, the holy ghost, of yourself

finding you. Wham!

In this story, hunter and hunted are not at all

at odds, but in a sacred coming together,

out of doing what they were most called to do,

to be, to see

out from the blind. 

In this story, there is no distance

between the young man, his last breath,

and the breathless anticipation of the listener

as he or she hears the story, 

or sees it in the mind, 

out from the blind 

of mere plots plodding along 

without intersecting themes.

In this story, you live like Tristen 

lived in Legends of the Fall, 

committing wholly to your truest path, 

hunted by that holy ghost 

who helps you, as the young man in the story, 

“die a good death”. 

© 2008 Darrell Moneyhon 

 I found this such an interesting post . . . 

having just very recently found myself in the integral world - thrown here from the world of phariseeical Christianity it is nice to find myself coming up and finding air to breathe ;-) . . . at any rate . . . in that world that rails against humanism I have always been one who has said that God was (and is) the original humanist . . . loving man unto the death of Himself . . . 

Laurie

--

"Become passers-by" (Jesus of Nazareth)

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 On this point, unlike the Eastern Enlightenment traditions (as viewed through my Western lens) the Gospel message is not a system of psychological development or a path of ones personal self-realization, it is not a message about self-improvement, and is not new way of re-ordering ones private religious interiority... It is a disturbing and unsettling announcement to the world that “Jesus is Lord” (i.e. not Caesar/Empire) and as Chesterton says: this makes dust and nonsense of comparative religion.

And importantly, we can preserve the unique historical claims of Christianity while still jettisoning its out-dated super-natural baggage. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek has written extensively about this in recent publications, but the basic point is that Christ's death on the cross means that one should drop without restraint the mythic God ‘out there’ as a transcendent caretaker who guarantees the rational order of the Universe and a happy outcome of our acts - Christ's death on the cross is the death of this God, it repeats Job's stance, it refuses any “deeper meaning” that obfuscates the brutal reality of historical catastrophes...

 So we can affirm the historicity of Christianity – where God shows up in as a vulnerable, suffering creature radically present at the heart of flesh - and still shed the super-natural theistic God of the traditional Church. I may have missed something here so feel free to respond...

Cameron

"Become passers-by" (Jesus of Nazareth)

Another great post John, and I will respond more to this later... When it comes to historical facts, there are only a few most of us should be able to agree on:

1) Jesus was a Ist century Jew

2) Jesus taught and practiced the Kingdom of God

3) Jesus was crucified

I totally agree with you that the Resurection is not a historical fact - I prefer to call it an eschatological event... which basically means that I have much more hope in God's creative-redemptive plan in Christ than I have hope for the short-term future of our planet...

I will say some more soon - this is a very important question - does Christianity have to shed it's histoircal claims?  Surely Jesus was a historical person. Isn't Christianity the very place at which God becomes enfleshed, the only religion in which God's own self  shows up in human history? I will have to get back to you on this, but great question... Many thanks. Cam

--

"Become passers-by" (Jesus of Nazareth)

John and Mark,

 This discussion is fascinating to me, because I have just finished a long clinical career within state institutions, and have marveled at two things many times: How a delusion does have an often unappreciated "truth" value to it, but the truth is an emotional one meant to move us in the general direction of a solution. It is a figurative truth that must be further interpreted if the client or the therapist is to get anywhere. On the other hand, if the truth of the delusion is simply discounted, then neither client or therapist can get anywhere as well.

The most effective approach seemed to be to uphold the figurative truth of the delusional client, and to help him or her find more reasonable ways to respond to the figurative truth. "I am God" could get me in a state hospital easily. But if I get help to understand that I either have become disconnected from my spiritual side (and therefore need to remind myself that I am one with Spirit/God), or that I am significant because I (even as a failing human being) am caste from the image of God, then I may not need to go off to a hospital and do the Thorazine shuffle for the rest of my life. I can find rational ways to manifest the truths that I am spiritual and I am a significant human being - that I have access to a Source and that I am a manifest gift "just as I am". 

The differentiation between figurative and literal truths is very important with meaningful myths as well. If we call myths "delusions", then we can't get anywhere with amber religion. If we acknowledge the figurative truths and suggest alternate ways of approaching those truths, such as applying/living the values and principles, then we may not invite the same level of resistance and insistence that the myth is, in fact, factual.

Part of the problem in selling the idea that figurative counts as a valid form of truth, is that there is no poetry in everyday culture. By that, I don't mean the reciting or reading of poems, but the poetic logic about the patterns and flow of the events before our very eyes. Such poetic visions are seen as merely imagination (as if imagination is some weak force to be avoided!), or as a ghost in a machine. I seriously doubt if we really believe we have a "spirit" or spiritual aspect that has enough significance to even acknowledge its existence, or give it "the time of day". 

So, what solace is it to hear "You have a figuratively true idea there, but it is not literally, or factually, true."? Since we have been mis-taught to undervalue the figurative, the poetic sense, then such a statement is tantamount to being called a liar.

I believe we can create a culture, or influences within an existing culture, which help people reclaim a poetic understanding of life. Teaching and reinforcing abstract thinking, encouraging use of metaphors, throwing obvious metaphors into daily conversations without acting ashamed about it, or even good old mind-expanding education and a high value of the educated, broadened, mind. These are either in or not in a culture (to a significant extent). If they are not in the culture, then they cannot "cult"-ivate the mental distinction of figurative truths. 

The integral approach does seem to be a healthy cultural intervention to help us understand the reality of figurative truth. This is one of the powerful messages in The Marriage of Sense and Soul. Both science and religion have a kind of "truth" to offer humanity. I think Ken calls figurative truths "meaning", but the idea is the same. 

                                                                                            Darrell

Great post, David!  We agree with everything you said.

I just read this aloud so that Mark could listen to it.  He said..."good thing that people are coming out of the closet!"

Thanks!  :)

Thanks for you post David. I agree with everything you say, and am intruiged to hear from one who has been getting their hands dirty with the application of Integral in small town communities... Yes, we are dealing with some difficult issues here... I mean integrally-informed people are (generally) brighter (cognitively) and more self-aware (psycho-spiritually) than many others, but there is also this elitist tendency, and we all know that the narcissistic ego just loves to elevate itself by denigrating others... So I sometimes wonder what really motivates people to live an integral life, and am pretty sure its a mixture of an authentic (and rare) creative impulse and narcissistic search for glory

As far as I can tell, this integral elitism is is best dealt with by taking a look at the Gospels, where Christ says "what you do unto the least of my breathen, you do unto me..." As a Christian, to see ones self as 'superior' to others is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck and I honestly feel that in todays world Christianity is the only thing left to put into question the power of the well-bred and well-fed and provide a much needed objection to a complete confidence in the rich…

A great Christian paradox (from Chesterton) is that the man should rule who does not think he can rule… We must take the crown in our hands and go hunting in dry places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself unfit to wear it… In other words, we should not crown the exceptional man who thinks he can rule but the far more exceptional man who knows he cannot...

So rather than claiming the high ground of second-tier maybe IL we would do well to seek the opinion of those who are too modest to offer their opinion, trust those who do not trust themselves, or as Chesterton says: "The great man knows that he is not God, and the greater the man, the more he knows it..."

I could go on, but this will do for now... Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences. Cam

--

"Become passers-by" (Jesus of Nazareth)

Hey Robert,

Along with being concerned about a general feeling of elitism in the integral world -- a feeling of looking down upon and excluding people who, perhaps, are less cognitively developed -- what also concerns me is the idea that one can enter "The Kingdom Of God" without immersing ourselves in day-to-day life. In other words, I've come to believe that a major part of "the practice" of entering into The Kingdom that Jesus talked about is to be engaged in the world. It's not about achieving some exalted state and then, while acting from this exalted state, one returns to the world loving and caring for the lowly and disenfranchised. Rather, it is about loving and caring for the lowly and disenfranchised as a path to awakening. Or, said another way, as a path to anchoring, establishing, grounding, and expanding whatever awakening we may already possess. I don't see this as a path that excludes classical meditative practices (or other kinds of vital inner work), but, rather, as a path that compliments, expands upon, and helps ground these practices, along with whatever authentic awakenings emerge from them.

One of the best ways I know to flesh this idea out revolves around shadow work. Now that shadow work appears as one of the four core modules of Integral Life Practice (which is definitely where it belongs in my mind -- a fundamental, core practice), I think there is a need to expand on this. Specifically, it is clear to most people who have done any serious shadow work that shadow material primarily emerges in our relationships with others. This is where we get a very clear look at our shadows and also where most of our shadow work takes place -- in our relationships with other human beings and, by extension, the external world. Why isn't this promoted as a core module? In the circles I run in, I have repeatedly said that I think relationships should be the fifth core module. The point being that the emphasis that Jesus had on service, love, relationships, community, making things happen in the outer world was not simply about making things better in the outer world, nor was it simply about bringing The Kingdom of God to Earth. It was HOW "The Kingdom Of God" was manifested, both inwardly and outwardly. In order to fully experience (and ground) The Kingdom of God within ourselves and within our world, we need to adopt daily practices that actively engage our external worlds by attempting, for example, to embrace, include, honor all the different kinds of people and forces that Jesus embraced -- especially those that are traditionally excluded. This, of course, is classic shadow work: in order to achieve personal healing, we are called to embrace the aspects of ourselves that we find objectionable, repulsive, unclean, which, not coincidentally, are also reflected to us in the outer world by people and things we find objectionable, repulsive, unclean. In this way our inner and outer worlds support one another, and, together, create an integrated path of development.

Once last point to drive this home: we are all aware that it is possible to experience exalted states of consciousness and still be a scoundrel as a human being. I think the path that Jesus advocated -- and the path that the integral model advocates (at least theoretically) -- is the antidote to this problem. If our intention is to live fully integrated lives, to experience exalted experiences in consciousness and have those states turn into permanent stages, we must take care of the business of bringing these impulses down to earth, in our earthly relationships and activities. This, in my view, is the way we ground these experiences AND pave the way for them to take place.

What are your thoughts on this?

------------

David Sunfellow
Integral Rising
Integral NHNE
Integral Organizers

David,

As you might guess, I agree wholeheartedly with literally everything you have said, every word. Let me put it in my own terms. I see "shadow" as being primarily about the ego--the shadow being that portion of the ego that we do not see, which is most of it. As I use the term "ego," it refers to a profoundly deep-seated concept within us that says "I am me alone. Hence, I alone am what matters here. I am sun, you are satellite. I am end, you are means." From this perspective, we place everyone else in one of three categories: irrelevant, obstacle, or food.

I think the reason this concept isn't truly uprooted by transcendental experience is that the two are on such different levels. It's like hoping that the shining of a pristine and beautiful star will uproot a mole. The star is on too different of a level to seem relevant to the mole. So the star can shine and, at the same time, the mole can go about its business. They can coexist quite nicely.

I think we need to uproot the ego on its own level. I believe the ego is most manifest in how we perceive, feel about, behave towards, and affect other people. Thus, to transform our fundamental stance (internal and external) toward other people is a direct transformation of the ego on its own level, where it lives. I believe that Jesus' teachings were to a large degree aimed at exactly that. They weren't so much a moral code ("perform these noble, sacrificial acts toward others and God will class you as good") as a radical transformation of our entire stance toward others. They represented a reversal of feeling and behaving toward others based on those three categories: "If you are irrelevant to my interests, I'll ignore you. If you are an obstacle, I'll attack you. And if you are tasty food, I'll treat you well (at least until dinner time, or if you prematurely escape from the fridge)." His teachings invited us to step outside that system, completely.

To actually do that, I personally believe we do have to do the things you are talking about: Get in touch with our shadow, see the real nature of our destructive stance toward others and own it as ours, not thrust on us by them. And then do the work to turn this stance around. And do all this, as you say, while engaged in actual relationships, in the world.

Anyway, that's just my way of expressing the same points that I hear you making.

Robert

 It has been awhile since I read Werner Lange's Social Spirituality book, and it is doubtful anyone else has heard of it. I was fortunate to come upon it because the author happened to be a sociology professor to my youngest son in college. The book is probably self-published, and it reads a bit on the academic side at times, but I was enthralled by it. One of the truths the book spoke was a distinction of Christian narcism. Similar to things Robert, above, and others said recently - that the Kingdom of God may not be only about personal enlightenment, but may also involve (or even require) social transformation, and more investment in the lower two Integral quadrants of we (cultural) and its (social/political). 

Back to the Lange's concept of Christian (and now Integral's) Narcism, he simply notes that Spirit does not stop only at individual, every man for himself, transformation, as though all are staring narcisistically into a mirror, but yearns to lift the collective and to help the disenfranchised. I believe that he is right in suggesting that spirituality needs to be social as well as personal, and that he is right in implying that Christian narcism is actually a tool to help the social elites maintain the current (pathological, rigid) social heirarchies - a kind of (intentional or not) "divide and conquer" technique. I feel called to create a new social paradigm and a new social structure based on that (interdependent, one body) paradigm. 

But I must also do the self-work if I am to be a change agent. Lord, make me an instrument of thy social transforming!  As I asked Dora way above in an earlier section, are we Neo-Zionists? Not the ethno-centric God's Chosen people's "heaven" on earth, but the God-choosing, co-creating, integral, inclusive, form of creating a healthier, more heavenly, world/society?

I believe this to be part of the meaning of the Tree of Life, a stage in which we understand our interconnectedness and our synergy, rather than being mentally governed by discrete knowledge and facts and amber (?), dualistic(?), morality that overshadows spiritually-based, and spiritually-informed, morality. 

The green economic revolution, that Thomas Freidman and Obama speak of, also calls for a "green mind" revolution which includes such interdependent/interconnective/dynamic thought as Ken's Great Nest of Being and the Integral View/Map. We, each in our own little way,  are growing the firstfruits of the Tree of Life.  

Thanks for your contribution (of paradigm-challenging, or paradigm-changing, thought) toward this culture change.

                                                                                                   Darrell

 Dear Robert,

   When perusing these comments, I thought of the scene from the movie Field of Dreams in which the angel (the main character's deceased father) asks his son, "Is this heaven?" The son thinks awhile and says maybe it is. Heaven, or God's Kingdom, may be right under our noses, in the form of an incarnational mysticism called blogging. The mystical unknown of the spiritual realm/aspect of existence may be right here in this discussion. I shared with Cameron a long discourse that related mental openness to spirituality. I even recall the minister Robert Schuler making the same point many years ago on his TV ministry show, Hour of Power.

  When I think about the father/angel asking me if this is heaven, I look at this blog discussion (instead of Kevin Cosner's looking at his Kansas farmhouse) and say, "Maybe it is". Why? because our minds are open to exploring the concept of God's Kingdom. That process itself may be a microcosm, a holographic representation, of the Kingdom of God. Ask and Ye shall receive. Perhaps we are receiving the Kingdom, or Heaven, now - right now. And we are "angels unaware" to one another.    

                                                                                                             Darrell