Confessions IX (To ENGAGE the Tradition)

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

I have been testifying to nearly two decades of experience in a New Age cultural pattern, in which there was either utter ignorance or dismissal of the Catholic Tradition.

Then slowly, I began to approach the Catholic Church. And here I discovered an entirely different pattern for Sacred Culture – one wherein two thousand years of profound inspiration regarding the Christian Mystery was neither ignored, nor dismantled.

And where, as I shall explain, this was not merely honoured at an **intellectual** level – but far more **holistically**, appealing to body and soul.

I entered a pattern of culture, then, shaped on **every level** by Tradition. One where not only first-century Christian scripture was honoured, but also two millennia of further vision and genius. And one where the Sacraments of the Church were honoured in their original entirety.

This is to speak of a context then, in which there was not merely a ‘service with bread and wine’ as still happens in many Protestant Churches – but wherein the Real Presence of Christ was honoured.

And wherein this Real Presence was not limited to the Mass, but also acknowledged in six further Sacraments - for example, the Sacrament of Confession.

Here, we are not dealing with a psychological claim, such as ‘confession is good for the soul’. No, we are dealing with the Mystery of a Sacrament, with Transcendent Grace sanctifying the soul, as transmitted by a Priest.

And although the Transcendent Grace of Christic Absolution via the Priest is central here - I do not want to ignore the fact that the sincere practice of this Sacrament also TEACHES. And it is a teaching that is not merely imparted intellectually – but which is **experienced** on widely different levels.

At least, this is how it seems to me, as I approach a mere man and say: ‘Bless me father, for I have sinned’. Where, kneeling in confession, I acknowledge the reality of the Fall in the most personal, immediate way that I can – because I am acknowledging that my psyche is inextricably caught in it. And that the result of this, is that I inevitably bring real and continuing hurt to real and suffering beings.

Yes, the Reality of the Fall becomes present to me - and not as an abstract concept.

And then I consciously turn to the Reality of Christ, as the answer the God of Love has given to our Fallen Psyches in a Fallen World.

And all of this I do traditionally - kneeling - acknowledging in body, as well as in mind, that I must bow before the Grace of Christ.

And the Christic Absolution which I receive is not without an accompanying sensation. Time and again, there is a distinct sense, often palpable hours later, of what I have called a peculiar wholesomeness. There is also a joyous sense of being more deeply united to the Body of Christ. A small tearing or rupture with the Mystici Corporis feels as though it has been healed.

It is not easy to describe these subtle, yet for me, immensely meaningful sensations. Yet more and more, I feel that it is necessary that we Catholics try. Perhaps I should even mention briefly how on one occasion, the immediate aftermath of receiving Absolution was not this subtle joy - but astonishingly and viscerally profound. Yes, the Mystery of the Sacraments must not be hidden away.

Even if we are not consciously with the subtle sensations I try to capture here, I think it may be helpful to ask – what is it that keeps bringing us back to these Sacraments? Does it not involve a sense - not only of profound meaning, but also of a joy in being with the Mystical Body?

Though I rarely hear people utter such things, I am convinced I am not alone. Even with Catholics alienated from the Tradition, I often sense this mysterious sense of meaning, even joy. There are Catholics who have even come to hate the Church – but often they find the final break difficult indeed. Implicated here I suspect, is a peculiar experience of meaning and joy still buried in their hearts …

Whatever the truth of the matter may be, I testify that in entering the Catholic Church, I entered a world wherein the tradition was not only not dismantled, nor only imparted intellectually through sermons or study, but was a world in which I now live and experience the Tradition in varied manners. From kneeling in confession to receiving the presence of Christ on my tongue ...

And with all of this, I feel I enter ever more deeply into a Mystery, a two-thousand year Mystery that is progressively **humanising** me.

In the comments to these confessions, Sun Warrior has left testimony to the notion that there is a modern longing for a spiritual experience that the Tradition cannot supply.

I concur with his strongly felt sense for this modern hunger. And for years, I would have concurred that the reason lay in the insufficiency of the old traditions.

But now I can only say that the whole 26 years of my spiritual journey has pointed me to the opposite conclusion:
That it is not so much that the tradition is insufficient. It is that the tradition – the entire tradition - is not taken seriously enough. It is not sufficiently ENGAGED.

Now within approximately 70% of world Christianity – Orthodox and Catholic- there does exists a continued effort to take the entirety of the tradition seriously, including the Seven Sacraments.

But how often is this effort entirely obscured and unknown in those countries, dominated by a Protestant and now Secular heritage! Those countries, that is to say, which include the entire English-speaking world, save Ireland. Ireland ... beloved land, where I have had the joy of engaging the Tradition more deeply than ever before.

My experience at least, is that so many in the other Anglophone cultures, have no idea at all about the fullness of the Orthodox and Catholic engagement with the Tradition.

As I had no idea of that engagement, growing up in a Protestant and Secular America and England.

And I confess that I am increasingly disquieted by this ignorance concerning the other 70% of global Christianity, this sheer ignorance that I participated in **completely** for 34 years ...

And I find myself asking, how many thousands pay vast sums for New Age workshops, where for no sum at all the Orthodox and Catholic traditions make present the Reality of Christ, in countless churches throughout the world?

And what difference would it make, if only it were only more widely realised - in the Anglo-American sphere especially - what this 70% of Christanity is still standing for? That it is still standing for a fullness of Mystery in a world hungry for Mystery - as the New Age movement clearly testifies to.

Friends, such questions haunt my soul. And now that I have attempted to render a slightly fuller picture of my experience of two spiritual cultures, I hope to say more about the PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES which, it seems to me, spring from these two very different milieus, based on two very different ideas about the nature of Reality, which ideas are then embodied in very different spiritual practices ...

I regret to say though, that this will need to wait until next TUESDAY. Until then, I pray that Christ Jesus be with you all.

Confessions VIII (More on the New Age Pattern for a Sacred Culture … )

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

Yesterday I spoke of my destiny leading me to drink deeply from two very different **patterns** of spiritual culture. In more recent years, I have explored the ‘pattern’ offered by Catholicism. But before that, I experienced intensively a new pattern of spiritual culture now emerging throughout countless ‘holistic venues’ in the West.

How many examples of this New Age cultural pattern have I experienced since 1980? I both visited and lived at the Findhorn community in Scotland over many years. I participated in countless holistic seminars and workshops, wherein people of a New Age persuasion assembled for a weekend, or even a week or two.

And in that short space of time, ‘New Age Culture’ was created in a miniature sphere - wherein the participants could leave behind the mainstream world to live and breath the New Age air.

I even co-founded a holistic educational charity in Cambridge, which offered such seminars regularly and was actively dedicated to expressing what we all believed was ‘the new spiritual culture’.

Thus, at this charity we had a room called a Sanctuary. The Sanctuary was intended as a place of meditation, and was consciously devoid of imagery. Chairs were arranged in circles and a sign hung on the door, with words from my own pen:

‘This sanctuary is dedicated to the idea that there are no words or forms that can express the ultimately REAL without also limiting it, and that no religion or belief may be said to be the TRUTH but only a refraction among many such refractions that serve to guide the way.

This room is therefore dedicated to silence and simplicity that every seeker may feel welcomed there to find within the SACRED REALITY for which no words suffice but from which healing, inspiration and renewal FLOW’.

I relate all of this, because I want to provide a clearer picture of what I mean by ‘an emerging New Age model of Sacred Culture’.

Now that my path is decisively Catholic, I have been asked if I still stand by the words I wrote for that sign. The answer is both yes and no.

Yes, inasmuch as I believe that spiritual reality does indeed transcend the forms human beings use to express it.

No, inasmuch as the words on this door have an agenda I no longer aspire to. That agenda is one of relativising or even dismissing the value of these forms.

For it does not follow - ipso facto – that because the forms necessarily limit the ‘ultimately real’, they are as dispensable as I once believed.

In fact, although the words I wrote suggest the forms are limiting, I now ask whether it is a far greater privation to have no forms at all.

That is to say, whether these limited forms may not serve to open the heart and mind to the limitlessness far, far more than could ever be the case by simply dispensing with them.

Yes, this sign that once hung upon a door to a New Age Sanctuary in Cambridge expresses the New Age Agenda: Drop the Forms which Limit Us and Enter Herein …

Without ever asking whether these limited forms might yet offer far, far more than we New Agers ever imagined.

These days I meditate on the ‘limited forms’ of the Catholic religion. And how my heart and mind have been opened by them, in ways incomprehensible to my New Age experience.

Recently I have been speaking of the universal tragedy of the Fall. This is indeed perceived through a limited form. But how much richer my own life is for having perceived it.

And how much more open, how much more **human** my HEART has become by standing before what the Judaeo-Christian teaches of the Fall …

And how impoverished my previous life appears by comparison. And yes - less **human**. Herein lies more of my pained concern regarding the New Age project for Stripping the Tradition …

So much for these morsels of New Age autobiography. Tomorrow I hope to elucidate the themes of these confessions, by drawing more on my Catholic experience.

Confessions VII (Two Patterns for Culture; Two Models of the Sacred)

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

At the heart of these confessions, is my attempt to voice my ever-growing sense, that the Stripping of Tradition is costing our culture far, far more than is commonly appreciated.

But before continuing to ponder the consequences of the New Age Dismantling of Tradition, I am going to ‘backtrack’ in time. It is not easy to articulate my concerns and I have decided that a little more personal background to these confessions may help to elucidate them.

Thus, once upon a time, I ran a small New Age project in Cambridge, England - which published a little magazine called ‘Sacred Culture’.

That simple phrase is filled with meaning for me – and these confessions are written, looking back on more than twenty five years of my search for a ‘Sacred Culture’.

That is to say, my quest for a Culture in which the Sacred and the Truly Human would be honoured – in contradistinction to so much of the mainstream secular and increasingly brutal capitalist culture.

And in these decades of searching for ‘Sacred Culture’, I have experienced two major PATTERNS for forming such a culture. I will call these two models:The New Age pattern and the Catholic Christian pattern.

There is the New Age pattern, wherein the Christian Tradition of the West is dismantled, to be replaced - in the best instances - by a rich psychological awareness and often-rich human to human contact.

It is filled with certain **contemporary** insights into the human condition – but as I have at least suggested, so often at the cost of psychologising and relativising tremendous insights from the **past**.

Again Matthew Fox, to take a single example, seems to me to dismissive of so, so many of the insights and visions of the tradition. Not least of all, those of that author, who began his Gospel saying “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God … and the Word became Flesh and dwelt amongst us” ...

Then there is the Catholic pattern in which so, so much tradition of the West, including not only the Gospel, but also the preceding Greek and Judaic traditions is honoured. And not only sola scriptura - the Bible alone - but also two thousand years of insight into the Christian Mystery ...

These confessions are formed then, from my intimate experiences of very **different** spiritual milieus. (I have also experienced a rather different, but nonetheless Christian Anthroposophical ‘pattern for a Sacred Culture’ – but I leave this aside for the moment.)

My confessions are formed also from my experience of the ultimate inadequacy of the New Age vision, and also of the utterly unexpected riches I discovered within the Church. Profound riches I had not the slightest inkling of in the New Age world. Riches which even in my darkest times, bring me a joy, consolation and peculiar sense of wholeness and wholesomeness I never experienced in my New Age past.

Yes especially in the Sacraments, I feel this rich and peculiar sense of cleansing wholesomeness. Deep, deep, deep.

And all of these are Christian riches, which I now think the New Age ignores or strips to its peril. And I confess, I think to the peril of the world.

For it seems to me that the unexpected riches cast aside by both secularism and New Age-ism, may actually be critical to the future of humanity. By this, I mean not necessarily the survival of the species, homo sapiens – but certainly to the survival of HUMAN culture.

To me it seems inescapable. The last twenty five years or so since I first entered the New Age world, have seen the rise and rise of the New Age cafeteria. And the last twenty five years have seen an ongoing brutalisation of human culture.

Yes, these confessions are formed by very different experiences of very different patterns for a ‘Sacred Culture’. And before I proceed much further with my thoughts about the New Age Stripping of Tradition, I will delve a little further into my autobiography to try to convey better what I experience and see in these two patterns ...

Confessions VI (Dismantling the Tradition — and its Consequences)

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

I have been speaking of a hidden unity I see in the New Age movement, inasmuch as its apparent holistic, all-embracing spiritual cafeteria does in fact, seem to me much more narrow and selective, than is commonly acknowledged.

That is, it seems to me to involve a ***certain definite complex of related ideas and practices***. These are often important and beautiful in themselves. They often include, for example, the need to be self-watchful, ‘centred’, and not reactive. There is also a marked call for authenticity, optimism, hope – and other important virtues. All of this is frequently expressed in life, I want to add, with genuine and moving beauty.

Clearly no Christian can have concern with any of this – as far as it goes.

However, it also seems to me that the New Age smorgasbord is focussed on this coherent complex, to an often-subtle, but active exclusion of other spiritual ideas and ideals. In this, I see a hidden unity.

And in this connection, I mentioned the former Catholic and now Episcopalian priest, Matthew Fox.

Now as I have said, these confessions are written at a stressed and pained time in my life. And Matthew Fox’s thinking has a significant depth and complexity that I am not sure I can do full justice to now.

I just want to be very personal. I want to confess an internal dialogue with you, Reverend Fox or at least with what I hear you say. What I hear you say - I repeat for emphasis.

I confess I have made a real attempt to listen to you, Reverend Fox, and what I hear you say fits all too well with the New Age pattern I see of dismantling the Christian Tradition.

Yes Reverend Fox, I know that you have done a great deal of heartfelt, careful work with the Christian Tradition. I do not place you amongst those mindlessly throwing aside the tradition, with no attempt to engage it.

But at the same time, what I am hearing involves a continuous reduction or ***relativisation*** , bordering on complete ***dismissal*** of vast amounts of the Christian tradition.

In seeking to establish your theology of ‘Creation Spirituality’ and ‘Original Blessing’, I hear you relativising to the point of negating a vast dimension - which you call ‘Fall/Redemption’.

As though the central Christian ideas of the Fall and the Redemption often amounted to little more than a pathological expression of morbid psychology, power-politics and ‘patriarchy’.

When I hear what I hear, it seems to me that there is no faith in the tradition of the Mystics over the millennia, testifying to a ***vision*** of the Fall of humanity and of God-become-human to redeem humanity.

No I hear only – rightly or wrongly – a ***hermeneutic of suspicion***, in regard to so much of the Christian Mystical Tradition.

Now I often hear penetrating psychological insight in your words, even rich human wisdom and heart.

But for my own ears at least, I hear far too little Mystery and Faith. The Christian Mystery is reduced to … almost nothing.

Yes, occasionally you seem to concede that just possibly the massive over –emphasis, as you see it, on the Fall and Redemption, had limited value in a previous age.

And I confess when I hear these things, I am reminded of New-Agers conceding that Piscean ideas, perhaps, had some value in the age of Pisces.

In what I hear, I feel a link between your view of Fall/Redemption, and the New Age mystics, who honour and embrace you. And who you honour in turn (cf. Original Blessing pg 314).

I hear your concern that Fall/Redemption theology is ‘Christolatrous’. By which you seem to mean ‘idolatrous of Christ’ inasmuch as it is actually too Christ-centred - at the expense of honouring the Creator-Father and the Spirit.

You would also appear to mean at the expense of a low Christology of Jesus, as a prophet ‘who calls others to their divinity’ (see my comment to this entry).

If I understand you correctly, I can only say that I fear your attempt to dismantle what the Church considers the core of Christianity, betrays –I repeat - a deep reductionism, bordering on utter negation of the Transcendent Mystery of Calvary.

The Transcendent Mystery that countless Christian mystics, within and without the Church, endeavoured for centuries to understand, honour and preserve …

Within and without the Church … I confess I have in mind here Rudolf Steiner and his words I have quoted here before: ‘Was heute zu retten ist, das ist das Mysterium von Golgotha’ - What is to be saved today is the Mystery of Golgotha.

A Mystery of Redemption that makes no sense at all, without a profound regard for the nature of the Fall …

I suspect that you might consider both Rudolf Steiner and myself as ‘Christolatrous’ in emphasising the tremendous importance that the tradition gives to the Fall, to the nature of Evil, and to the central role of Jesus Christ in the Redemption …

Now, dear friends, even if I am mistaken in my real efforts to understand Matthew Fox’s writing, I am nonetheless convinced that both within the Church and without, there is an effort to reduce the central Christian ideas.

Often to reduce them to nothing but psychology and power … To be ***replaced*** perhaps by a ‘Creator Theology of the Original Blessing of the Father’? Who knows?

For thinkers in this vein, this kind of replacement will be largely, if not entirely wholly good. To throw out ‘Fall/Redemption’ will mean to throw out a great source of pathology, intolerance, despair and more.

And replacing it by a new spirituality of great ecumenism, hope and non-judgment.

But are there no dangers in this dismantling of the Tradition, I ask myself. Is there nothing to be LOST in what I think Fox is recommending us - that Fall/Redemption theology be jettisoned in favour of a ‘Christianity’ that conforms so very much to the ‘New Aquarian Spirituality’?

Is there nothing of consequence to be lost? I am afraid that not only are great worlds of essential Christian meaning to be lost – but that I also fear the consequence of this loss for HUMAN civilisation may be vast indeed. And I suspect that this is what Rudolf Steiner among others, saw quite clearly.

Without acknowledging the Fall, we can easily lose the sense of universal tragedy. We are more prone to an individualistic New Age doctrine, that each of us ‘creates our own reality’ – as the New Age mantra has it. And that any tragedy that exists is simply an individual tragedy of one’s own making.

Thus is the teaching of the tradition obscured - that not only is there a fallen humanity, with outstanding representatives from age to age - from Caligula to Attila to Mao - but that there are also fallen angels. There are fallen angels of incomprehensible power, who actively seek to bring ruin.

Yes I confess it appears to me that a radical de-emphasis of the Fall has profound consequences for the spirituality which it shapes. For the ideas that shapes one’s spirituality ARE important, and to exchange one set of ideas for another, is not ***without consequence***. As Matthew Fox and other writers of a New Age cast are definitely aware.

And it seems to me that there may be many ***further*** consequences of exchanging a so-called ‘Christolatrous’ Fall/Redemption theology, for one wherein the Mystery of Christ is radically diluted. If not altogether decimated.

I confess that in my soul, there lives deep concern that among these consequences is a diminishing of human FEELING, of human heart and an all-too-cosy accommodation with the secularist capitalism ravaging the world. And why I feel this, I will soon be attempting to voice …

These confessions will continue on TUESDAY, instead of Monday. May your weekend be blessed, my friends.

Confessions V (Naming the New Age)

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

In speaking of the New Age movement, I am occasionally questioned as to what I mean by this term. I suspect that some reading these confessions may even question whether it is possible to speak of a New Age movement, as I do, as a unified phenomenon.

All of this is understandable. The New Age culture is absolutely sprawling, appears greatly diversified, diffuse and not easy to capture in words.

However, the fact that a phenomenon is not easily distillable, does not mean that it does not exist. In other words, there may well be a distinctive, unified form, beyond the level that words can easily capture.

Personally, after many years experience with this culture, this is what I believe. I believe that we are witnessing the rise of a spiritual movement that is much more uniform than many commentators accept.

Even if words for that unity are elusive, that unity can be suggested rather than defined. Suggested rather defined … this, at least, is all I know how to manage in these present confessions.

I believe we have witnessed over the last decades, a vast movement toward a spirituality that is either without formal religion, or else, if it is tenuously tied to formal religion, often dismisses or relativises vast amounts of that religion.

For me, a good example of this latter tendency is Matthew Fox, the former Catholic priest, proponent of ‘Creation Spirituality’ - at the expense of a vast amount of the Catholic tradition. And despite his undoubtedly sincere and noble intentions, I now believe that the **cost** of this sort of dismantling of tradition to be very expensive indeed. I will shortly be returning to Fox.

For now, I simply want to stress that although it can be hard to see a unity to the New Age movement, I believe that one way its unity becomes visible, is in its dismantling or rejection of tradition and particularly the Christian tradition.

Despite many variations, the New Age idea often appears something like this … There is a new spirituality arising in the world, free of sectarianism and dogma. This spirituality is destined to be the paradigm for a New Age. It is in fact, often linked to the zodiac sign of Aquarius.

In this idea of the Aquarian paradigm, qualities of the previous paradigm of Pisces – including many Christian notions of sin, evil, devotion and so forth, are now no longer seen as appropriate or so appropriate as they once were, in the ‘previous age of Pisces’.

And very definitely, in the Aquarian ideal, the notions of formal codes and institutions to embody spiritual values are frequently seen as suspect.

The New Age movement tends by its very nature to repudiate **formal** definition – and this only amplifies the image of highly diversified, heterogeneous phenomena.

But I confess to you, all my experience leads me to believe that there is an underlying unity - whether repudiated or not. And it is a unity that needs to be named.

Yet I am well aware that even the name ‘New Age’ has many pitfalls. For although in the early days of this movement- the 1960’s and 1970’s - the term 'New Age' was common parlance for this movement of spirituality at the expense of religion, later in the 1980’s, the term came to be associated with commercialism and a vast array of bizarre phenomena.

And many people who had identified with term, became embarrassed to use it. Not just embarrassed – for these were often noble souls on a sincere quest. They were not seeking to make a quick buck. And they were not necessarily enamoured by strange phenomena. They were sincere seekers, with rich insights and warm hearts …

Thus, I am uncomfortably aware that what I call a New Age movement embodies a vast number of people who do not even identify with a movement by that name! I am aware that other names surface, ‘holistic’, ‘alternative spirituality’, ‘Mind-Body-Spirit’ …

Still I believe my forty two years have led me to see the unity behind these different names, a unity I will attempt to suggest ever more as we proceed.

And for this unity which I see, some sort of name must be chosen and used. And I use the name New Age. It is the name I grew up with and it is still the most recognisable name. However adequate it is or not.

And I use the name New Age in deep respect for many, many people within this movement. Please do not interpret me as adversarial to the New Age culture. I mean what I say about the rich insight and heart, one frequently finds there.

Yes, there is often a depth of love within the New Age movement that would and should put many of us Catholics to shame ...

But with real pain, I confess that I also believe that in divorcing itself from tradition and in dismantling tradition, this rich holistic insight and heart is **less effective** in the world than it might be. Far less effective … while the world suffers and burns.

Yes, I confess I see a unity to the New Age movement, unified among other things, under a suspicion and sometimes even hostility towards the Christian tradition in particular - and that the COST of dispensing with that tradition is far, far greater than is commonly appreciated …

Confessions Part IV (The Real Danger of the Holistic Cafeteria)

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

In these confessions, I have been sharing how, for many years I was convinced the New Age movement offered great hope for humanity - and how Christianity remained utterly opaque to me.

Now for years, I would hear Christians criticise the holistic movement, because of what they called ‘pick and mix’ or ‘cafeteria spirituality’. There was this insistent refrain – which irritated me - about why one shouldn’t just pick and choose from a tradition, but honour the whole of it.

I was very suspicious: **Why** on earth was this such a big deal to these Christians?

And strangely enough, even though I become ever more traditional, I am **still** suspicious, when I hear certain Christians bemoan ‘pick and mix’ …

And why? I confess it is because I cannot help but feel that many do not really know **why** they are critical of ‘pick and mix’. It is something they regurgitate reflexively, but they are not always able to give a good REASON for their concern.

At least, in all my New Age years of listening to Christians lament ‘pick and mix’, I never heard a reason which spoke to me. I simply did not get it.

And now that I **do** get it – it seems to me essential that traditionalists find ways to clearly articulate **why** tradition matters and **why** ‘cafeteria religion’ has its pitfalls. (To say the least).

Here then, is only one such attempt to articulate why I am now concerned about ‘pick and mix’ – the New Age smorgasbord …

I am concerned that without honouring the tradition, vital qualities for the development of human spirituality and human evolution are being LOST.

Now it will take the rest of these confessions for me to explain what I mean by these ‘vital qualities for the development of human spirituality and human evolution’ …

But today, I will just say that although New Age thinking appears to be a vast, sprawling, highly diversified and heterogeneous movement - again, embracing a wide spectrum from from wacky phenomena to rich psychological insight – I believe that there is more uniformity to it than is often supposed.

I believe that the New Age smorgasbord of ‘pick and mix’ does not necessarily offer the vast range of diversified options, which many would claim it does.

And that in fact, its options are limited by an often subtle and elusive, but definitely positive disregard for many elements of the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

This is also to do with what I meant two days ago by ‘Common Factors … relativised, dismissed or not very present in' much New Age thought.

These common factors I will say now, have much to do with what the Tradition tells us about the Fall, the nature of Evil and sin, universal tragedy, the Redemption ...

Yes, these things in my experience are not much on offer in the New Age smorgasbord. For definite reasons, I think.

Such that in my experience, even when I am speaking to highly educated and deeply thoughtful people of a holistic persuasion who deeply impress me (and there are many such people), the fact that I express such ideas often seems radical, startling, foreign to them.

They simply have not come across these ideas in their often-long journeys through a movement that is supposedly holistic and all-embracing. As I had not come across them, in my nearly twenty years of imbibing all kinds of holistic thinking, so-called.

And yet for reasons which I hope to make clearer, it is hardly without consequence for the West, that the holistic and New Age approach may perhaps be its dominant form of spirituality now – at least in much of Europe.

This is why I confess I struggle with these issues, every day of my life. Because I believe there are indeed very significant consequences to the rise of the New Age cafeteria. And the consequences may be, as I stress again, of vital import, not only for human evolution, but for preserving a truly human and humane culture.

I struggle, I struggle and why I struggle, I hope to make clearer as we proceed.

Confessions Part III (What Was Not on My Radar Screen)

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

I am – as I have been confessing to you – haunted, haunted by the idea of humanity not developing the requisite spiritual maturity to meet the crises of our age.

Now in my youth, I hardly saw everything that such 'requisite spiritual maturity' would involve – including not only rich psychological Feeling and awareness (which I did experience at Findhorn in certain ways ) but also rigorous Thinking and Will.

Thus the all-too-common New Age dismissal of the intellect (implied in‘head-tripping’, ‘mind-f******’ etc) did not especially bother me.

I did not appreciate how much our collective need for spiritual development, mandated not **dismissal** of the mind – but its deep regeneration.

But the profound Christian esoteric thinker, Rudolf Steiner saw this all too clearly. And how often over my years in the New Age, did I hear Rudolf Steiner written-off as ‘too heady’ or ‘too Christian’.

But Rudolf Steiner knew, Rudolf Steiner knew that the ENTIRE trinity of Feeling-Thinking-Will had to be regenerated, if humanity or at least humanness were to survive ...

But Christianity, neither esoteric nor exoteric, was not on the horizon of my New Age youth. In my American adolescence, I had known hardly anything but a caricature of Protestant Christianity, with its strong taint of **individualism**: ‘Jesus is **your** personal saviour; if **you** believe in him –and the Bible (literally) - **you** will not go to hell'.

And I knew nothing of the Catholic Mass celebrated every hour of the day, in nearly every corner of humanity, which seeks to ‘advance the peace and salvation of all the world’ …

And so, as with many New Age folk in the Protestant countries, Catholic Christianity was not on my 'radar screen' at all. Catholic Christianity with its hour-by-hour Communion with the Heart of the World.

And if someone were to have suggested to me, that this holy intermingling with the Sacred Heart, had anything significant to offer to the planetary crisis – for example, in rousing the stone-cold heart of neo-liberal economics - I would probably have smiled indulgently.

But looking out at the heart of flint of modern capitalism, and at the increasing social and environmental suffering, real **suffering** it brings, looking out at Lovelock’s vision of a planet **burnt** …

I confess, I confess to you, dear friends, that I no longer smile at the ‘irrelevance’ of what it now seems to me – tragically - is the Catholic Church’s ‘best kept secret’. (A near secret, at least in the secular Protestant West).

That is to say, the communion, the interpenetration, the intermingling with the Sacred Heart and the cleansing, healing and strength it brings, when entered into sincerely and regularly.

No I no longer smile, because I feel the radiance of the Sacred Heart of Humanity making me ever more human, as I regularly receive it in the Sacraments.

Yes, I admired and still admire many qualities of psychological sensitivity in the New Age movement. At the same time, I have come to feel how traditional Christianity (Catholic and Orthodox) with its ongoing Sacraments of Communion with the Sacred Heart, has done still more to deepen my human FEELING.

Yes, none of this was on my ‘radar screen’ at all before.

I looked out at the world, with a certain upbringing. I was raised in secular and Protestant countries in which I saw a Christianity that made no sense.

I saw a psychologically acute New Age movement that appeared far more vital to me. And I saw modern humanity’s need for the Spirit in living and accessible ways.

I did not know the Catholic Sacraments, healing the human heart.

I also did not know the vastness of the Catholic intellectual effort over the centuries. I did not know, for example, Catholic Social Teaching and its radical and extensive challenge to modern capitalism, articulated on many fronts. (For more on this, see my comment to this entry.)

I did not see the Will that had built countless hospitals, fed countless hungry people, brought the living Sacraments to countless more ...

But I now agree with Rudolf Steiner that the entire trinity of human Feeling, Thinking and Will must be addressed more than ever at this time …

And my entire spiritual journey, it seems to me - with many arduous trials and struggles to clarify my perception - has brought me to this point of truly beginning to SEE the Church at this hour of humanity's need.

Confessions Part II (My New Age Dream)

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

As I have said, these confessions are based on my own looking-out at the soul of the world and the suffering of the world. They are based on many years of searching for ways to a more humane culture.

How many years have I been with this and how many years did I believe that the rapidly ascending New Age culture held the key …

For as I look out on the new millennium, it seems incontestable to me, that the challenges we face will require the greatest degree of spiritual maturity and spiritual strength that humanity has ever marshalled.

The challenges are just SO great. And as I have written here before, I have never been able to muster faith in solutions solely of a political nature – a new economic system, a new set of laws, a new kind of government …

All my adult life, I felt that **by themselves** these could amount to nothing but a superficial panacea, a quick fix, a band-aid for a far deeper and more structural problem. The only real answer I could imagine was not in essence political, but spiritual.

Now as ludicrous as it will no doubt sound to many Christians reading this, for years my greatest hope for developing the requisite degree of spiritual strength and maturity was the New Age or holistic movement.

This may sound ludicrous in part, because of the popular image of the New Age: one of channelling, crystals, UFO’s, astral travelling, pyramid power …

And God knows what else besides. Here is the place to clarify that this is NOT the New Age movement I knew in my nearly two decades involvement with it.

No. Starting with my life-changing visit at age 16 to Findhorn in Scotland – a major centre of holistic culture in the world – I knew a very different New Age.

The New Age movement I knew was a site of very sincere and open-hearted endeavour. Its spirituality had far more to do with depth psychology than wacky phenomena.

At Findhorn, the psychological practice originated by the depth psychologists, wherein one person (the analyst) took **seriously** the life issues and life suffering of the other (the analysand) had become generalised to the entire culture.

That is to say, people at Findhorn listened to each other, really **listened** to each other. They made real ‘the reality of the other'.

And in the psychological safety that people experience when they are taken **seriously**, I witnessed people opening up, becoming creative. The New Age I knew then, was marked by authenticity and personal growth– not crystals.

All of this was far, far more convincing to me than the world of (Protestant) Christianity I had experienced – which seemed simply desiccated by comparison.

And for years, I truly believed that this new spiritual holistic culture would grow, transform and open the heart of the mainstream culture.

I certainly did not expect that the growing coldness of the heart in 1980’s Reaganism and Thatcherism would continue, let alone DEEPEN. I did not expect materialism to keep **growing**.

As it now seems to me, that unless there is radical change at the **roots** of our culture, it will keep growing - impoverishing our souls and making ever more demands on the biosphere …

I read not so much wacky New Age channelings, but holistic and spiritual thinkers such as David Spangler, William Bloom, Richard Moss, Ken Wilber, Peter Russell, Caroline Myss, William Irwin Thompson, Stanislav Grof, Matthew Fox, Krishnamurti - people who deeply impressed me, and often still impress me …

And I did not notice the **Common Factors** that now seem absent - to one degree or another - in their thinking. Common Factors which so often seem to me either relativised, dismissed or not very present in the consciousness of such thinkers, but which factors are embodied in the Christian Tradition of the West.

And which I suspect are essential to 'radical change at the roots of our culture'. I shall be returning to these Common Factors that seem missing in New Age thought ...

Yes, there was so much I failed to remark. But looking back, I can understand why, in my youth, I really believed that New Age spirituality held the key to the challenges of the new millennium.

And how long it took me to begin to see its radical insufficiency and **why** it was insufficient …

Confessions – Part I (Introduction)

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

For weeks now, it has been a very, very trying and painful time on all levels. Practical, emotional, spiritual.

And in the midst of this ongoing trial, I found myself, some days ago, writing yesterday’s entry – which has a far more personal tone than much of the material that has appeared hitherto in this weblog.

At the time, I was seriously feeling I might have to give up this project. At least temporarily.

But inwardly it felt wrong to stop – and I have found, almost miraculously, a way to continue, which feels right.

Over the space of just a few hours, I found myself writing a long piece that will now be serialised here, under the title ‘Confessions’.

I use this term for several reasons. One is to indicate a point of departure. For the next days at least, this weblog will take a far more personal turn. Though it will not address personal events in my life, it will focus on issues in this weblog – including the world situation, world spirituality and the Church – in a more personal way.

Another reason I use the term 'confessions' is that I deliberately want to call attention to the fact that, while previously I presented much material that I pondered and researched over years – the following will be a little different.

Some of it, for example, will be very fresh material emerging in my mind. Things that I have not researched sufficiently yet, to present in the previous format.

Instead, I only want to say, I confess, dear friends, I confess, this is how the world appears to me at the moment. These are also 'confessions' as to my concerns, and as to what drives me in this effort …

Under this heading of 'confessions', I am going to say a number of controversial things about Christianity, the New Age movement, the World Soul as I see them.

I am going to go further than before. Go further, as I look out at the growing suffering of the world, suffering under a soulless, secularist and capitalist system.

And as I contemplate the developments, decades down the line, if the present trajectory continues to amplify in its effects …

I will go further in saying why this contemplation leads me personally to an ever more traditional position, an ever more traditional Catholicism. Even as I strive for a traditional Catholicism, which is deeply open-hearted, respectful of other traditions and socially and environmentally engaged.

And why, for example, I cannot help but feel New Age attempts to replace the tradition of the West are inadequate to the task at hand and fatally flawed - rooted as they often now seem to me, in ignorance of the tradition, reductionistic psychologising and a hermeneutic of suspicion. Rather than profound and rigorous reflection …

And why I feel it is my painful duty to raise these issues …

And what I see the alternatives are.

Though nothing **comprehensive** is promised and what is in store will be very personal and fragmentary, this at least gives indications of what will be forthcoming.

Please note the refrains here: about appearances and feelings. How things feel and appear to me.

These are my confessions. Confessions as I look out on the modern state of the Soul of Humanity and its spiritual and religious **needs**. Or at least, what it seems to me, is so burningly needed in our world - after years of struggling with these issues.

Yes, in all these matters, I struggle to clarify and sharpen my thinking. And perhaps some of you, who struggle too, can help me.

(Comments to this weblog are very gratefully received. I work necessarily in a certain darkness, as I send out these messages. Believing in them, but having little idea as to their reception - beyond the fact that a silent majority seem to visit here every day. For which I am very grateful.)

These confessions should resume in earnest on Monday. May your weekend, dear friends, be blessed, inspired and meaningful.

To be not ABSTRACT …

We live in a world of incredible suffering. Suffering so incredible that we must of necessity, remain largely asleep to it. For obviously, none of us could bear to be fully awake to all that it means. Only beings of the Angelic hierarchies can perhaps begin to bear the state of the world …

And at the same time, I see - however superficially - that every minute of every day, I contribute to the suffering of the world. And for this I pray to be forgiven, for ‘what I have done and what I have failed to do …’

And this, it seems to me, indicates a dimension to sin not emphasised enough.

For the term ‘sin’ has become caught up with abstract ideas of abstract violations of abstract virtues. Or else it has assumed morbid overtones.

Yet I have no wish to speak of sin in terms of breaking abstract rules. Nor do I want to invoke notions that we are completely and utterly wretched (as John Calvin maintained in his doctrine of the so-called 'total depravity' of the human being).

No, that is not what I mean at all and I have not the least wish to affirm extreme Protestant doctrines of 'total depravity', where the GLORY of human nature, human love and human effort count for nothing … absolutely nothing.

At the same time, I wish to face the fact of what sin **really** means. I wish to face the fact, with greater honesty, that I am **hurting** all of life. That my very existence brings pain – day in, day out.

At the same time, I pray not to forget, that insofar as my human nature and human love is wedded to Our Lord (by whatever name, we choose to give the sacred heart of divine humanity) - so also are my human efforts, not without effectiveness or meaning … Not even the very least of my human gestures.

Twenty-five years ago perhaps, I ventured one evening into a pedestrian subway in Chelmsford, Essex.

A woman passed by and smiled at me. I have never forgotten that smile. I imagine now that it must have been filled with profound human warmth. (That is to say, suffused by a truly Christic feeling, again by whatever name we choose to call it).

And I wonder now, whatever this woman in Chelmsford has ‘done or failed to do’ in her life, however she has added to the suffering of the world, I wonder what will happen when she dies, as we all shall die …

Will she die and see the unforgettable memory that gesture of warmth created in the mind of a young stranger in Chelmsford, one evening in the early 1980’s?

Will the profound warmth that radiated through her smile that night, which in all likelihood, also radiated to countless others in her life, come back to her as something she added to the world, without ever realising how much she added …?

For though little do we *truly* realise it, but we are all going to die. We are going to die in a universe, where justice will prevail. And just as the suffering we cause others matters, so does all we do to alleviate suffering … Including the subtlest of our human gestures.

All we do to love, in other words. That is to say, every sincere smile in a darkened Essex underpass, every prayer, every kind word, every effort to make real the reality of the other, every effort to bear another’s pain and not to reflexively push it away, push it away into the darkness of unconsciousness …

Yes pain is difficult and how often do we push it away. But every effort to overcome non-love in our lives counts and will count, in this world and in the world to come. And thus of course, also every effort to address the religious, social, political and environmental crisis of the planet.

And when we really die, we will see, we will feel, how we added to the suffering of the world, and also how we acted to alleviate that suffering.

The Reality of the Other, Part II

Yesterday, we spoke about the Path of taking the Reality of the Other as SERIOUSLY as possible.

And we quoted Anonymous d’Outre Tombe to the effect that this spiritual path differs from an approach associated with the East, where the way is NOT to the take the Reality of the Other – or the Self - seriously at all. In this way one seeks, in fact, to negate the Reality of Personality.

Now the more one studies the thought of Anonymous d’Outre Tombe in his magnum opus, Meditations on the Tarot, the more one sees that the entire book appears to be focussed on distinguishing between these very different paths:

The First a path of Monism where the Reality of Personality is suppressed, with the result that one weeps no more … (cf. 35-38).

The First a path of liberation through the crown chakra, rather than a transformation of all the chakras into heart (cf. 227-229).

The First a path of power and superhumanness and transcendence … (So many references - direct and indirect - throughout the book, including, but hardly limited to 151-152, 450-452, 157-159, 82, etc).

And the Second, a path of love incarnated fully into the world through Our Lord … A path of tears and of PERSONALITY.

In the time ahead, I hope to explore this theme further, and why I think it is **vital** to distinguish different spiritual paths, within the vast milieu of modern spirituality.

However today, I just wish to continue directly from the quote from yesterday, where having indicated the Christian Path of taking seriously the Reality of Personality - the author begins to speak of how **practically** this path is to be achieved, how one becomes able then, to attain the Great Work of Love:

“To be able to attain this, one has first to love one's neighbour as oneself. For love is not an abstract programme but, rather, it is **substance** and **intensity**.

It is necessary therefore that one radiates the substance and intensity of love with regard to one individual being, in order that one can begin to ray it out in all directions.

‘To be able to make gold one has to have gold’ say the alchemists. The spiritual counterpart of this maxim is, that in order to be able to love everyone, one has to love or to have loved someone. This someone is one's ‘neighbour’.

Who is one's neighbour, understood in the Hermetic sense, i.e. meaning at one and the same time in a mystical, gnostic, magical and metaphysical sense? It is the being nearest to one at or since the beginning; this is the sister-soul for all eternity; this is one's twin-soul, the soul together with whom one beheld the dawn of mankind.

The dawn of mankind: it is this, which the Bible describes as paradise. Now, this was at the stage of existence that God said: "It is not good that Adam should be alone" (Genesis ii, 18).

To be: this is to love. To be alone: this is to love oneself. Now, "it is not good (tov) that Adam should be alone" means to say: it is not good that man loves nobody but himself.

This is why YHVH-Elohim said: I will make him a helper similar (corresponding) to him. And as Eve was part of Adam himself, he loved her as himself. Eve was therefore the "neighbour", the being nearest to Adam ("bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh"- Genesis ii, 23).

This is the origin of love, and it is common both to love which unites man and woman and to love of one's neighbour. In the beginning there was only one love and its source was one, since its principle was one.

All forms of love (charity, friendship, paternal love, maternal love, filial love, brotherly love) derive from the same unique primordial root of the fact of the couple Adam-Eve. For it is then that love - the ***reality*** of the other - issued forth and could subsequently branch out and diversify.

It is the warmth of love of the first couple (and it does not matter if there was only one couple or if there were thousands of them - it is a question of the fact of the first qualitative issuing forth and not of the number of simultaneous or successive cases of this issuing forth) which is reflected in the love of parents for their children, reflected in turn in the love of children for their parents, reflected again in the love of children amongst themselves, reflected lastly in the love for all kinship of human beings beyond immediate kinship, by analogy, for all that lives and breathes.

Love once born as substance and intensity, tends to spread, ramify and diversify according to the forms of human relationships into which it enters. It is a cascading current, which tends to fill and inundate all.

This is why when there is true love between parents, the children love their parents, by analogy, and love each other; they love, by analogy- as their brothers and sisters by "psychological adoption" friends in school and in the neighbourhood; they love (always by analogy) their teachers, tutors, priests, etc., through reflection of the love that they have for their parents; and later they love their husbands and wives, as their parents once loved one another.”

The Reality of the Other

Yesterday I offered words from the Catholic deacon, Eliphas Lévi in 1868 about the nature of love, which touch me deeply.

Among these, was a simple trinity of sentences, which just-in-themselves I feel, say so very much:

“To live in others, with others and for others is the secret of love … To love is to live in those whom one loves. It is to think their thoughts, fathom their desires, share their affections.”

Love then, is to take the REALITY of the Other seriously … and ever more seriously.

Now these words on taking seriously the Reality of the Other, find a tremendous amplification in the thought of the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot (who much later in the twentieth century, would embrace the deceased Hermetic deacon of Paris, with profound love).

This amplification has tremendous personal meaning for myself. (So much so, that I feel like adding very personally, that it was read at my wedding to Kim in 1999 ... ). Here it is:

“We are surrounded by innumerable living and conscious beings-visible and invisible. But rather than knowing that they really exist and that they are as much alive as we ourselves, it nevertheless appears to us that they have a ***less real existence*** and that they are ***less living*** than we ourselves.

For us it is WE who experience the full measure of the intensity of reality, whilst other beings seem, in comparison with ourselves, to be less real; their existence seems to be more of the nature of a shadow than full reality.

Our thoughts tell us that this is an illusion, that beings around us are as real as we ourselves are, and that they live just as intensely as we do.

Yet fine as it is to say these things, all the same we feel ourselves at the centre of reality, and we feel other beings to be removed from this centre.

That one qualifies this illusion as "egocentricity", or "egoism", or "ahamkara" (the illusion of self), or the "effect of the primordial Fall", does not matter; it does not alter the fact that we feel ourselves to be more real than others.

Now, to feel something as real in the measure of its full reality is to love.

It is love, which awakens us to the reality of ourselves, to the reality of others, to the reality of the world and to the reality of God.

In so far as we love ourselves, we feel real. And we do not love - or we do not love as much as ourselves - other beings, who seem to us to be less real.

Now, two ways, two quite different methods exist which can free us from the illusion "me, living-you, shadow", and we have a choice.

The one is to extinguish love of oneself and to become a "shadow amongst shadows". This is the equality of indifference. India offers us this method of liberation from ahamkara, the illusion of self. This illusion is destroyed ****by extending the indifference that one has for other beings to oneself****.

Here one reduces oneself to the state of a shadow equal to the other surrounding shadows. Maya, the great illusion, is to believe that individual beings, me and you, should be something more than shadows - appearances without reality. The formula for realising this is therefore: "me, shadow-you, shadow".

The other way or method is that ****of extending the love that one has for oneself to other beings****, in order to arrive at the realisation of the formula: "me, living you, living".

Here it is a matter of rendering other beings as real as oneself, i.e. of loving them as oneself.”

From the Radiating Heart of Eliphas Lévi

I wish to rebegin this weblog with a few words about the heart, from a Catholic Christian Hermeticist, who was filled with sheer heart.

This then, is what Eliphas Levi, lover of Hermeticism, lover of the Church and lover of humanity, wrote in Paris in 1868:

“Up to one’s last breath, one may retain the simple joys of childhood, the poetic ecstasies of the young man, the enthusiasms of maturity.

Right to the end, one may intoxicate one’s spirit with flowers, with beauty and with smiles; one may ceaselessly recapture the past and always recover what has been lost. A real eternity can be found in the fine dream of life.

‘How can this be achieved?’ you will surely ask me. Read attentively and meditate on what I am going to tell you: It is necessary to forget oneself and live only for others …

When Jesus said: 'If anyone wishes to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and come after me,' did he mean us to bury ourselves in some lonely spot?

He, who always lived among men, who took up little children and blessed them, who restored fallen women, despising neither their show of affection, nor their tears, who ate and drank with the outcasts of pharisaism [and] healed the sick …

How dared the author of a celebrated treatise, which recommended isolation and concentration on oneself, call such a book The Imitation of Christ?

To live in others, with others and for others is the secret of love …

To love is to live in those whom one loves.

It is to think their thoughts, fathom their desires, share their affections.

The more one loves, the more one’s own life is enlarged.

The man who loves is not alone and his existence is in many places at once … He talks baby talk and plays with children, joins in the enthusiasm of youth, holds a rational discussion with the middle aged and clasps the hand of the old.”

I confess, dear friends, that I do not yet know The Imitation of Christ. But how deeply do I relate to what this man of radiant heart says about Christianity.

Christianity is not a path of isolated, spiritual pursuit, but of bearing the burden of the Other, whether the Other is one’s neighbour, the social and political situation of humanity, or the ecological suffering of the environment we are raping.

And it is also about the sheer joy of being 'enlarged' through the wonder and the miracle of love.

New material in this weblog should begin in earnest by Thursday, at the latest. But first I will offer more about the nature of love, from the Christian Hermetic tradition. For these gems, I hope will serve as foundation stones for what will then follow...