…and why is it so helpful in calming yourself?  Typically, when we hear we need to “get into our bodies,” we think our way to the body…we think about our legs, our hands our heartbeat. This happens frequently when someone is new to the practice. It takes much gentle prompting to get a client to feel the sensations of a certain body part. 

The bodymind is a term that is showing up more frequently to point to the reality that mind and body cannot be split AND that the body IS its own intelligence with endless information and insight.

This is why I often begin a guided meditation with “body scans” in which we fine tune attention to subtle sensations in the body. Typically, this drops a client more deeply inside of themselves and shifts attention from the hamster wheel of thoughts to the felt sense of the body. People find it really helpful when they are beginning to learn meditation and/or contemplative prayer.  

Try this:

Drop your eyes.  Bring your attention to your left hand.  Feel the coolness of the air on the skin of your hands.  Now, notice any sensation you didn’t notice a moment ago when  your eyes were open…..Imagine you are sending  your breath to your hands.  Do this for a few breaths…breathing in….breathing out….now, fine tune your awareness and notice any sensations in the palm of your hand…if you notice nothing, no big deal.  Just pay attention to the sense of “nothing.” Place your attention on that space of nothing.  Do the same with each of the fingers on  your left hand, noticing sensations you didn’t notice a moment ago.  Breathe into the sensations.  After a few minutes, place your attention on your right hand.  Can you feel a difference between the right and the left hand? Sometimes, simple awareness illuminates subtle sensations in the body.

Let me know how it goes.

I’ve created meditation downloads for each of the types on the Enneagram as each type tends to have certain patterns of holding the breath and holding the body.   You can find them here or on iTunes.  Just put “Leslie Hershberger” in the Search

Rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with Your confidence or joy, which they could not understand.

Seek yourself some sort of simple and loyal community with them, which need not necessarily change as you yourself become different and again different; love in them life in an unfamiliar form and be considerate of aging people, who fear that being-alone in which you trust. 

Avoid contributing material to the drama that is always stretched taut between parents and children; it uses up much of the children’s energy and consumes the love of their elders, which is effective and warming even if it does not comprehend.

Ask no advice from them and count upon no understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance and trust that in this love there is a strength and a blessing, out beyond which you do not have to step in order to go very far!…..But Your solitude will be a hold and home for you even amid very unfamiliar conditions and from there you will find all your ways…

Rainer Marie Rilke

We’ve a need to blame and a desire for revenge when we’re hurt.   I see this in myself and I see how easily I repeat family patterns which cause me to try to get from others what they are incapable of giving me due to their emotional imprinting.  Childhood lasts a lifetime.  

We’ve needy little selves who create drama whenever someone mirrors some past memory that we never quite got around to integrating.  I’ve a rather predictable story and I’m usually cast in the starring role of Martyr.  

I’m finally finding my way to peace and it’s through the simple (albeit occasionally annoying) act of not judging the damn thing.  Loving the Martyr, forgiving the Martyr, not trying to change, fix, advise, save or understand the Martyr.  Love. When I do it, I feel a pop inside of me.

But then I run into a glitch.  It’s you.  You hurt me.  You let me down. You were arrogant and righteous. You didn’t cop to your part in this drama which in my Martyr playbook looks something like a lack of support.

So, I try something I learned when I used to say my prayers at night.  I can’t seem to get there on my own.   I ask for help in forgiving you and forgiving myself.   And, wonder of wonders, it works.  I’m humbled.  It cuts through my righteousness, my arrogance and my need for you ‘fess up. In his book, The Presence Process, Michael Brown writes that

“Prayer is a tool for neutralizing arrogance and gaining an awareness of peace….forgiveness can’t be forced nor accomplished mechanically because it’s ‘the right thing to do.’ So, this is why we humbly get down on our knees and ask whatever we understand our source to be an assist in this matter…by asking for assistance in this matter, we dismantle the fortress of arrogance and neutralize the venom of anger.”

By god, he’s right.

In 2002, a series of incidents and private e-mails from an alarmed parish staff led to my serving as a whistleblower when the pastor of the community where I’d been a member for 30 years embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars.  As in many of these cases, the extent of his transgressions was never made public for a number of reasons.  That’s someone else’s story to tell. 

Yet, I did learn what happens when you bring forth an uncomfortable truth about a well liked leader:  

Letters to the editor.  (Who IS this woman?  I have know Fr. ________for years and he is a good, caring man).  

Phone calls from the press who have little concern for a traumatized parish. (Why won’t you agree to on-camera?  Don’t you care about the truth?)  

People on the sidelines who want to make you Joan of Arc.  (You go, Leslie.  Bring down the corruption of the Catholic Church).  People from other religions believing Catholicism is the problem and all I need do is try out their church and their god.  

People who go out of their way to avoid you in the grocery store and at Mass.  (I hate going to church, my daughter would say.  I feel like everyone is looking at us).  

People who call out of the blue to see how you are doing and do you need some advice on how to deal with the press and who try to see the complexity of the unfolding story without splitting the players into caricatures of good and evil.

Church leaders protecting their own. (You are on an extraordinarily unchristian crusade, wrote a Jesuit I’d deeply respected in a scathing e-mail).  It hardly felt like a crusade. I felt like my insides were being ripped out and I left the parish broken, disillusioned and in a spiritual dark night. 

Thanks to spiritual direction, therapy, supportive people and work I love, I found my way through one of the most painful times of my life.  The Penn State story brings it back.  The truth is, I understand the desire to stay silent and hope it goes away.  The cost is enormous for telling the truth.   Families are hurt.  Friendships are torn apart.  Children and grownups are disillusioned and innocence is lost.  The accused fall ill under the stress.  

My son gets angry with me when I question whether I did the right thing.  As a Penn State grad, he sees “a campus full of people that are deluded” and that devotion to the sport trumped child rape.  As a former Catholic, he believes religion can do the same thing.   

Groupmind is powerful and will blind decent people when devotion, faith, loyalty and sense of sacrifice to something higher than themselves feels threatened.  One need look no further than the Penn State riots to see what happens when a beloved icon turns out to be a fallible god.  I facilitate groups and have heard from more people than I care to count who are the collateral damage of this groupmind.  Sexual abuse and rape is rampant in families, churches, spiritual communities, the military and in sports and it continues because of the conspiracy of silence and allegiance to the institution and its icons.   It boggles my mind.

I can’t seem to shake the images of the 10 year old, the young coach and the senior coach.  I wonder if Sandusky was a survivor of abuse himself because if we know nothing else, we know that perpetrators were often young victims.  Other images and stories I’ve been told flash through my mind and I consider the long, painful road of trauma, healing (maybe), forgiveness and redemption.  

I consider my experience and know it is comparably mild.  I do know that anyone who has ever had to decide whether to speak out or stay silent when faced with abuse or injustice has had a face-to-face encounter with the darker impulses of their own humanity.   Looking inside they may ferret out a desire for self-preservation, group acceptance, hidden agendas, loyalty to flawed gods and religions, comfort and material security.   When combined with groupmind the ability to rationalize heightens. 

The hopeful part of myself wonders if more of us will take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves how love of the team, the religion, the spouse, the guru or the country compromise our ability to do the right thing. Self-deception is dicey stuff.  No one’s exempt.

Last Thursday, I slid into the back of a church with about 20 other people. I belong to no parish, but occasionally stop in for these tiny morning Masses in the university chapel far from my neighborhood. During the petitions, a thirtysomething man prayed for healing and forgiveness for everyone involved at Penn State. His sincerity moved me.  My self-imposed exile from organized religion has me missing the company of some really decent people.

Yet, I know my place is outside of these walls where I can see with more clarity.  These days, I’m not much into pledging allegiance to any group or guru for it muddles my mind and I’ve a hard time finding my way to the truth.

At the risk of sounding simplistic, I’ve found love works better than most anything else for although it hurts like hell, it holds a space for screw ups, accountability, responsibility, idiocy, selfishness, abuse, suffering, betrayal, forgiveness and redemption.  

When Pema Chodron was Deirdre Blomfield-Brown she said, “There is nothing wrong with negativity.”  Poet David Whyte writes, “Deirdre saw her depression as a thing in itself, like a mountain or a cloud, with its own life, its own necessities, and therefore worthy of respect, more like a doorway than an obstacle.  It was a path to follow, not an error she made that she should eliminate.”  

As one who reads Pema often and as one who habitually embarks on a “flight to the light,” I’ve learned there is no shame in darkness.  It’s in darkness where we feel safe to explore the parts of ourselves we may hide in the glare of the light of day.  Maybe, it’s why I like when the days grow shorter and the sun rests lower in the sky.   There’s more time for darkness, reflection and tears. I’m often struck at how quickly people apologize for crying and see their sadness and darkness as a beast to be tamed. 

Why fake some happy version of yourself or why wrap yourself in cynicism in order to shield yourself from arrows if your heart is breaking and life is kicking you hard? What good does this do in the world?

Sometimes I find it a challenge to teach about this triad through the written word because not only does language can fall short, but we also have minimal cultural proficiency with accessing our “felt sense” or what is sometimes called our somatic awareness.  I’ve found the best teaching is through exercises that offer an experience.  So, with that caveat, I’ll do my best (with the help of Zuercher) to offer some insight.  

This triad often experiences life as a struggle so issues of power, control, boundaries and space tend to be themes.  There is a sort of ongoing struggle between standing in the inner world and the outer world.  Each seems to require something different. Surrender can be difficult as it implies a sense of being overwhelmed or what some in this triad say, “annihilated.”  So, there can be a tendency to judge, criticize and perfect in order to gain some sense of control and even moreso, a sense of re.  In a given situation, they have an almost instinctive, “yes, this,” “no, not that,” or sometimes, especially with the 9 space, a sense of ambivalence.  (One One tells me “Trying to come up with the best answer/response creates ambivalence).  Thus, their attraction/avoidance dance is one of obedience/defiance…I WILL/I WON’T. 

Considerations in Contemplative Practice for Body Types

Emotions are felt instinctively and can feel overwhelming so there is a sort of shutting them down almost as fast as they arise so there are a lot of unprocessed emotions carried and armored in the body.  Touching an interior place of innocence is valuable for all three types in this triad as it’s a space of vulnerability before the tendency towards an interior hardening/numbing of their life force that came with life experience.    The hardening/numbing can show up in the body as a sort of rigid stance and in the cognitive/emotional life as cynicism, numbing, complaining, negativity and a general feeling of malaise.   Anger is helpful to access as it is a useful emotion/energy that helps them know what matters and what is important.  Dancing is a useful practice as there is a letting go and allowing the body to dance itself.  I went to Baja with a body type friend of mine and in the distance, saw her dancing on the beach. She returned to tell me she was “dancing with the whales.”  

The perceptual (mental) filter is the buried function for this triad, so journaling is helpful to track and link events and to make connections.  I’ve found this triad amazing when working with metaphor, image and symbol for it evokes emotions and somatic responses that loosen the stuck places and help them shift the obsessive loop of inner thoughts.  I once did an object contemplation exercise with a group and a 9 and a 1 both shared powerful experiences of simply gazing at a flower from their respective gardens.   So, the journaling may simply be images, photos, drawings.  My 9 daughter used to fill her journal with things and images she’d collected; she also wrote a lot of poetry which enabled her to contact the emotional space through a medium that spoke to her.  While the heart types are challenged with going inside the inner space and the head types are challenged with going to the messiness of the exterior world, the body types struggle with both…there is a sort of sliding back and forth between the two with a tendency to get stuck in one and ignore the other.  There is an either/or, this/that quality.  This is why the image work is powerful as it seems to soften the boundary between the two. 

This can extend to work with dreams…record the dream in the present tense, highlight the images from the dream and free associate what the image might mean to the dreamer.  As connections are made, a clearer picture begins to emerge.  One woman I know has been part of a long time dream group and she says it is the one place where she really glimpses the inner meanings that can elude her conscious awareness.  She shares the dream out loud to other participants which fleshes it out more deeply.  This triad can lose perspective on the past as they may hyper focus on a few elements.  Dreamwork and image work help flesh out details and emotions that had previously eluded their awareness.

Vipassana meditation is especially meaningful in this triad for it is rooted in “seeing things as they actually are.”    Thus, they relax into the flow of what is arising in the inner space and the exterior world.  This meditation is about witnessing…noticing…not judging, evaluating and assessing.  Life is no longer a problem to tackle; rather it becomes a river on which one floats.  (Because this triad can be challenged by sleep, it can be helpful to focus attention in the third eye for it is housed in the mental center.  Focusing on the hara…belly center…is not always useful in this triad as it has the potential to induce sleep). 

Finally, the practice I’ve found most reliable in this triad is connecting to the natural world.  A walk in the woods or on the beach is not about struggling, fixing and perfecting.  Life in all its power and simple beauty simply exists as it is.  The body types often see themselves as one participant within the vastness of the cosmos.  It offers perspective without the need to judge it.

This triad’s autopilot stance is through the mental faculties.  Thus, some sort of sensory prayer/awareness is crucial. (Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy as Frederich Buechner says).  It takes them out of the dryness of their cognitive loop into a felt sense of their own experience.   They tend to become fascinated with spiritual ideas, concepts and inquiries. They’ve a quest for truth and meaning certain there is a truth that will make sense of a messy world.  The messiness of the outer world can feel overwhelming for this triad and they can become paralyzed in the inner space with all the thoughts searching for data and analysis.  

Integral Theory is oriented in this space and tends to draw many people from the mental triad.  If you consider the Integral notion of native perspectives:  3rd person (objective), 2nd person (intersubjective) and 1st person (subjective), then this triad tends to privilege the 3rd person which is why Integral articles can often have a felt quality of dryness.  The inward turn of meditation/contemplation can be an escape from the outer world rather than a truly contemplative experience.  The primary attraction/avoidance dance is: trust vs. non-trust.

Considerations in Contemplative Practice for Head Types: 

So, if we consider this type’s orientation towards 3rd person perspectives in a quest for meaning and truth, an antidote is often contemplative processes that take them into 2nd and 1st person experience.  This might include what Zuercher calls “dialogical prayer” which presupposes a holy Other.  So, that might include some sort of devotional prayer like body prostrations in which we bow to an image of the divine in humility.  I reside in this triad and as I do my prostrations, I see the massive white pine outside my window and I see it as a solid, elegant manifestation of Creation.  There is a quality of being humbled when standing receptively before the magnificence of the natural world.  I also do a heart prayer taught by Sally Kempton.  As I breathe, I breathe into my heart chakra and through the other side.  As I do this, I tend to first experience a felt sense of overwhelm because I begin to feel my body, my heart…emotion shows up.  My practice is to welcome the emotions trusting a more expanded Presence to hold them.   

Petitionary prayers can lift mental types from the potential dryness of the inner space.  When in earlier stages of faith, this may manifest as asking God to heal someone or grant a desired outcome.  As one matures, this may manifest as a simple holding of another in the expanded field of Presence…in the silence.  It opens the heart to another and offers a felt sense of interconnection.  Chanting does the same as it attunes one’s heart to the field of Love.  The whole body can attune to the music of the chant.  Body prayer is important.  One 5 says his tai chi practice allows him to attune to his entire body and has opened him to affective experience in surprising ways simply by practicing the forms with his whole self.

Communal prayer and devotion is helpful for head types.  The caution is that it is done not out of duty and obligation to the authority, but out of an intention/desire for connection (and to notice the ambivalence in making such connections).  I used to distribute Eucharist at Catholic Mass and often found a challenge in saying, “The Body of Christ” as I would be overwhelmed by the emotion of seeing the unique beauty of each hand: tender and young, manicured and flawless, tattooed and ringed, old and shaking, chewed fingernails, dirty and dry.  This exterior act moved Eucharist from a challenging concept to explain and understand to a felt sense of the universality of One Body.  

I’d like to share something Zuercher wrote that exquisitely articulated my experience of contemplative life in the natural world: 

Nature is ordered and planned, testifying to a providential Creator.  The vastness of sea, sky, and mountains offers consolation. While they may make a person feel small, they also make one feel safe in an ordered whole that does not overpower and where limits and boundaries are present. Things are in their fitting and right place. Everything has such a place in the world, and there is a Limitless One who designs this.

When I’d read the above, I’d just returned from a walk with my 17 month old grandson; we had picked leaves, pointed to changing colors, hollered at the tall tower in the woods, run up the steep hill leading to the creek.  Everything fit.  Everything belonged. I felt at home in the world. 

With all of that said, because these types live in the mental realm looking for truth, it is helpful to have one constant, steady practice which allows them to drop all thoughts, feelings and sensations and relax the mental busyness.  The above practices are supplements to this core practice.  

I’m always interested in what angers each type and lately, my attention has been on Nines, who are the most out of touch with their anger.  It’s not uncommon for people to say that they notice the anger in their Nine partner/child/co-worker/friend before the Nine herself knows its there.   Some thoughts on Nines and anger:

1. We often hear about Nines and conflict avoidance, but a lot of us avoid conflict which we typically see as a disagreement with another.  But, if we fine tune the word, consider the term “emotional conflict” which is more about clashing and contradictory emotions within a person and you can get  a deeper sense of the Nine avoidance.  For Nines, in day to day life, this shows up as a desire for comfort.   Nines gets triggered when their comfort is disrupted by an opposing perspective, a new idea/mindset that knocks them out of their comfort zone, a person who draws them into deeper engagement with something going on in the family, a partner, the workplace and/or the world.   (Notice the emphasis on and/or.  Some Nines are comfortable engaging in social issues, for instance, but far less comfortable working through something difficult with say, one of their kids or their partner who they simply wish would quit creating turbulence in the relationship).   Aware Nines tell me they practice staying with the discomfort just a moment longer so they build a capacity to tolerate disagreement and disruption to their idealization which is “I am peaceful.”   

If you are a Nine, notice when you feel uncomfortable.  Where is the discomfort and corresponding anger housed inside your body?  Can you breathe into it with an attitude of welcoming acceptance?  You might even want to time it and stay with it for 90 seconds while breathing gently into the discomfort.

2. If you think you can force a change in thinking on a Nine, I have an elephant for you to move.   I’ve been partnered with a Nine for over 30 years and my daughter is a Nine and forcing movement is not terribly effective.    Nines have a conservative streak (don’t think politics and religion, think of conserving energy or a closely held perspective that offers familiarity and comfort).  This holding pattern makes forcing action difficult.   Nines are the great exemplars of the notion that change Begins Within.  The more you push from the outside, the more the Nine feels the resistance inside and will tend to go stubborn. And, because this is an instinctive type, they can smell someone trying to “push the river” a mile away so let go of any notions you can sneak your desire for them to take action or change in through the back door.  

If you’re a Nine, notice when you are trying to conserve your energy if feeling pushed into action or change.  Often, this conserving ends up having the opposite effect and draining you.  Stubborn resistance is exhausting.  This does not mean you must take action or change your view.  Rather, it invites you to allow space for your anger when you feel an outside push.  The anger helps you get clear about your position without stubbornly refusing consideration of other views.  

3. Practice radical acceptance.  Acceptance is the elixir for Nines since they tend to diminish their own worth or not accept “unacceptable” emotions in themselves and others.   This isn’t about agreement; rather, it’s accepting what’s showing up.   Often Nines are told they’re comfortable to be with because “they’re so accepting” which is sometimes true…except when it’s not.   Some Nines tell me their internal state is more anxious than what they reveal on the outside.  It’s dicey and takes a good capacity for self-observation to recognize the difference between accepting and the tendency to “numb out.”. In contemplative prayer, there is a prayer called “Welcoming Prayer” in which we respond rather than react to any given situation by welcoming the divine indwelling in the thoughts, feelings and sensations inside of ourselves…radical acceptance.   

If you’re a Nine, notice the difference between acceptance and numbing out.  You might find it useful to sit in nature and allow whatever comes into your sphere of awareness.  It might be helpful to engage your body and hold out your arms in a spirit of surrender and acceptance. This includes all of you…that which makes you comfortable and uncomfortable.   Sometimes, singing or chanting is useful as music allows you to relax into the total flow of Life beyond the habitual thought loops of what is often called the obedience/defiance loop common to this type.  (I will.  I will NOT.  I will.  I will NOT.)

I’ve a close friend who is an Eight and we talk often about anger.  I used to see it as a bad thing..embarrassing, out of control and frankly, overwhelming.  She’s pointed me to a different view in which anger is an instinctual energy which is wired into our reptilian brain and is registered in our bodies.  It comes up on its own.  My 16 month old grandson helps me see this regularly.  He expresses his anger and is done with it.  

I’ve learned that anger helps us know what matters to us and when we ignore it, it tends to erupt and/or get projected onto other people. Finding channels to work with this powerful energy is useful in harnessing the energy to effect change and gain clarity.  Nines have a wellspring of energy and often anger which gets pushed down in the name of being comfortable.  The practice isn’t about being peaceful.  It’s about being real, showing up and flowing in the river of change even when it knocks you around.   

If you don’t know your type and would like to register online for a typing interview over Skype, click here.

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When my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer 5 1/2 years ago, my initial response was the requisite, “Why her?” She’d experienced a number of life challenges and I felt as if she’d had her fill.

Yet, that was then and this is now. 

Janice took an unconventional approach to cancer by treating it not as an enemy with which to do battle but as a rather unwanted companion who had shown up to offer her insights into her feelings, her body and her relationships. 

She reflected on thought patterns that had created undue stress and began to change the way she saw the world and let go of her propensity to worry about things beyond her control. 

She chose not to reduce her interaction with the health care system to oncologists, surgeons and cell destroying meds. Nor, was she going to rely exclusively on conventional medicine to heal as she intuitively knew that she was far more familiar with her body than an oncologist whose attention focused exclusively on her cancer. 

Instead, she chose to view her body as a living organism which wanted to cooperate with her healing. She participated in an acupuncture study at Tri-Health Integrative. She received therapeutic Healing Touch the morning of each chemo treatment. Bethesda generously allowed Ceece, her Healing Touch practitioner to do a treatment pre-op and post-op. Ceece created a loving , healing environment for all of us in the waiting room as she is aware of the impact a family’s stress can have on the patient. As she worked with me, I could feel a spaciousness inside of me that facilitated a deeper level of acceptance.

Yet, it did not stop there. Recognizing the power of the mind to facilitate healing, Janice listened to guided imagery CDs which have been proven to alleviate stress and promote positive surgical outcome; her surgeon noticed that bleeding was remarkably minimal. Janice also used a set of CDs designed to invite the power of the mind to assist her in navigating the debilitating effects of aggressive chemotherapy. Her oncologist remarked upon Janice’s surprisingly minimal side effects.   (She told him her approach once her treatment was complete; she didn’t want to risk his skepticism clouding her commitment to the path she’d chosen).

She also chose to examine relationships which served her healing and those that would create stress. (This sometimes included me as she told me I loved her so much that she could feel my fear). She set clear boundaries on relationships as she reflected on her energy capacity for different encounters. She used her cancer to consider which relationships were life giving and life draining and she made necessary changes.

While she has no desire to repeat this cancer journey, she recognizes this uninvited guest became a companion that engendered a profound personal and spiritual transformation for which she is abundantly grateful. She has, in her characteristically unobtrusive fashion, offered these insights to other women experiencing cancer.

Today, we walked our 5K with my daughter and her hub, my niece, my brother-in-law and of course, withAlejandro, my grandson who thinks his Tia Janice is the next best thing to Pepperidge Farm goldfish.   

“One way to transmit sacred teachings was by veiling them in symbolism or hiding them in metaphors. Like the spiritual lineage that preceded him, Evagrius argued that the physical reality of the manifest world displayed in the heavens, is a metaphor that reveals divine secrets.”  Helen Palmer

I’m often asked about the origins of the Enneagram.  I heard this excellent presentation by Helen Palmer and Ginny Wiltse.  Outstanding research and elegant weaving. 

The search for Enneagram origins has produced many insights but few substantial answers. Where did the diagram come from? Why just nine types? Why a star-shaped diagram with a gap at the bottom? And why this specific order of the types around the star? Answering these questions required a trail leading further back in time than the meticulous observations of a fourth-century monk Evagrius of Pontus, who codified nine distinct personality barriers that impede the experience of prayer and meditation. 

Read more here. 

I just had a conversation with my friend who was raised in a secular Jewish household by liberal parents.  She studied for years with a spiritual guru and is one of my more interesting friends. She’s the one of the most honest, reflective people I know and she has no interest in impressing anyone except maybe her boss.  

I first met her in an Integral Theory program at JFK University and frankly was intimidated by her intellect and her low tolerance for anything I might call inauthentic drivel which I engage in occasionally.   We’ve become friends who talk regularly about Integral, our families and our lives. She encouraged me to pursue my idea of an online sangha (community) for people interested in post-traditional Christianity.  

The other day, she sent me an e-mail in which she wrote: 

one of these days i want to talk to you about the idea of someone sacrificing for your spiritual advancement.  the whole christ died for your sins thing is completely weird to me. 

It never made much sense to me either. So I explained to my friend that this misinterpretation is rooted in sketchy theology.   The Greek word being translated as “salvation” is what scholar Lynn Bauman might call “restoration to fullness of being.”  It isn’t about anyone dying FOR anyone in the typically sacrificial sense.  

Rather, it is about entering into deep communion…loving so deeply, so fully that this love unites the I and the Thou.   I’m not talking about sentimental, gushy love.  I’m talking about a fierce love which stands solid and steady in a state of open surrender to what IS in the midst of some of the biggest curve balls life throws you.  (The Buddha’s insight helps here.  Life is suffering.)

I also explained that there are other texts beyond the four familiar gospels which help flesh out the Jesus path.  This is helpful as the four gospels in the canon have been interpreted in some pretty frightening, misogynistic ways.  

These other texts include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Philip. They predate the canonical gospels and Jesus has a distinctly Buddhist feel in these texts.   For instance:

If you bring forth what is within you, what you will bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.    (Nothing like the shock of recognizing our hidden selves).  

These other texts also place Mary Magdalene in the front of the room…as the one apostle who fully understood Jesus’ radical message of love.  

So I said this to my friend: “It’s as if the path of Christ consciousness hasn’t been fully realized or understood by mainstream Christianity.  It’s a case of mistaken identity.  And I see many people embarrassed and ashamed to be Christian these days and I understand that as well.  But, there is a wealth of inner, contemplative wisdom in these texts.  There is a well worn path of love.  

She said “You wouldn’t know it by what you see out there.”  

That’s because they don’t get attention.  Loud people do.  And, while I’m not a traditional Christian, I do find many traditional Christians leading a life of love.  They’re in hospices and homeless shelters feeding dying people.  There are also countless Christians, traditional and post traditional, practicing contemplation born in the wisdom path of conscious love in which the divine is not out there in an elusive far away place called heaven.  Rather, it is in the stillness of our hearts for we are participating with a divine force of love some call God.    

Renowned scholar, Huston Smith, distills Christianity to this:

We’re in good hands, and in gratitude for that fact it would be well if we bore one another’s burdens.

She found this helpful.  She said it makes more sense than using religion as what she calls a “political bludgeon.” She found Christianity frightening as a kid growing up.  No big surprise from a woman from a Jewish household.  

We also talked about the “spiritual but not religious” postmodern tendency to meld all religions into one ignoring the distinct contributions of the world religions which is useful in moving past “my way is the only way” mindset of traditional religion, but it often tends to distill wisdom to pablum.  

So, we might ask, why start over? Why throw the baby out with the bathwater?  Why not integrate ancient practices with modern and postmodern insights?   Traditionalists have much to offer in a world in which Girls Gone Wild is often seen a distorted pinnacle of sexual freedom.  

She wants to tape a conversation in which she asks me some of the more difficult questions.   I’m open.  While I’ve no interest in Christian apologetics,  I do have an interest in contributing an alternative perspective that often gets lost amidst the clamor.  

It isn’t until I enter the silence that I fully realize the extroverted life I have chosen for myself.  

Dave and I spent today driving through mountains, eating lunch in Aspen and closing out the day St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass for the first time.  When a monastery is within 100 miles, I’m a moth to flame as if I’ve found my people.   No greeters at the door telling me to have a nice day.  No signs pointing us anywhere except away from the cloistered silence of the monastic monks.  No shops with kitschy mugs and politically correct bumper stickers.  No explanation of anything except the intimations of Nature who has a language of her own.

I walk into the bookstore and icons of the Christ line the walls and my favorite authors’ books are set out on tables.  Merton. Bourgeault. Wilber.  Zuercher.  Ilia Delio. Chodron.  Aurobindo.  Enneagram weaves with Integral weaves with Buddhism weaves with contemplative Christianity.   I am away from the religion and politics that dilutes wisdom to a shadow of itself and feel no need to explain the path I’ve chosen.

I walk outside and Dave sits on a bench under the aspens.  As I sit behind him, I know that some day soon I’ll come back.  Maybe not to Snowmass, but to a longer period of silence in the natural world that waits for me.