Sacred World, Sacred Human: Evolving Spirituality

Sacred World, Sacred Human: Evolving Spirituality in the 21st Century




Introduction: We Are Evolving,  And So Should Our Spirituality

Human beings are hardwired to seek meaning. Fields of study as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, psychotherapy and neuroscience testify to this fact. We look for relationships between our inner and outer worlds, and interpret cause and effect in ways both empirical and superstitious. We struggle with chaos, randomness, death and the presence of evil, both in ourselves and in the world.

The development of human culture is intimately woven through with gestures of worship, ritual and ecstatic awe. These self-aware gestures express an evolving consciousness that, the evidence suggests, crossed a threshold some 110, 000 years ago in the cave-bear cults of the Swiss Alps. What arose in those prototypical rituals was a level of symbolic abstraction that informs religious expression from bear-skull altars and cave-paintings to elaborate cathedrals and enormous statues, from scratches in the sand to revered scriptures to astrological maps of the heavens to best-selling pop spirituality books and DVDs.

Humans have a universal capacity for generating myth and archetype in an attempt to make over-arching sense of reality. Are these archetypes and myths meaningful? Absolutely, but I will make the case that they are better interpreted through the lens of psychology, social conditioning and spiritual metaphor than as literal truths or supernatural presences. Rather, they are powerful signposts to the inner life and potent artifacts of the human struggle with reality.

Spirituality seems to serve both a defensive and a developmental function – as such it is equally the domain of insight, liberation, ecstasy, freedom and compassion and their opposites: delusion, limitation, suffering, bondage and violence.

We cannot realistically deny that the spiritual dimension of human life is complex and important, but the cat is out of the bag. Way out. Something has gone terribly wrong with religion and spirituality. We stand at a critical crossroads defined by a crisis of meaning. I will suggest that this crisis is the product of a kind of impoverishment and developmental arrest of the inner-life.


Old World Religion

The global carnage of religious terrorism symbolized by 911 is the most frightening evidence at hand. When mythic literalist beliefs from a pre-modern world combine with the advanced technology of mass destruction the results are appalling. Yet the response of America (the multi-cultural first world super-power) to 911 hinged on notions of “evil doers,” righteous retaliation and “God on our side” - echoing the very same Old Testament cosmology that launched the attacks. What a different world we would live in today if a truly 21st century spirituality had informed the 911 conversation.

To paraphrase the late Joseph Campbell, in the United States we pray to the Greek gods of liberty, vocation and human excellence six days a week and then to the austere Middle Eastern god of the desert on Sunday and wonder why we end up in the psychoanalyst’s office on Monday morning!

Indeed, a significant percentage of the American people and many of it’s leaders pledge allegiance to a charismatic Christian theology that includes belief in a coming “rapture” – a cosmic event in which true believers will be transported up to heaven, leaving everyone else to suffer and die as the world comes to an end. How are we to make sense of this type of mythology in today’s world? We follow a misguided political correctness and minimize its importance and prevalence or ignore its implications at our own peril.

Of course, the 911 attacks are perhaps just the latest and most theatrical example of religion’s dark side. Inquisitions, crusades, witch-hunts, jihads and the recent pay out of around $1B from the Catholic Church in America to victims of pedophile priests sound a grimly ironic chorus of dysfunctional religion.


New World Atheism

Little wonder then that a boldly resurrected atheism has shot up the international bestseller lists advocating a radical critique of outdated irrational faith, religious influence on political policy, and fundamentalist violence. This critique is quick to point out that religious extremists are not misinterpreting scripture, as religious moderates would have us believe. The point is that they are actually interpreting the stone-age edicts of their holy books altogether too faithfully.

This point of view suggests that it is precisely the outdated irrational and anti-scientific nature of faith that not only causes great suffering and stands in the way of our continuing evolution, but also threatens to end the world itself.

That is a difficult argument to refute given the preoccupation with Armageddon and the longing for a transcendent, spiritual world beyond this one that is at the heart of traditional religion. The cure: break the social taboo against questioning, dismissing and poking fun at highly improbable fantasy beliefs and encourage people to find awe and perhaps even reverence for the natural world, human beings, and the wonders of science.

Do rational thought and scientific method render spirituality meaningless, and does the stubborn persistence of old world fundamentalist faith in the face of science and reason threaten the future of humanity?


Alternative Spirituality

On the other side of the spectrum, the growing alternative spiritual demographic seems to have responded to 911 by diving deeper into wishful thinking and fluffy fantasy. Nowhere is this more perfectly evidenced than in the two mega-selling spiritual movies of the past few years: What the Bleep and The Secret.

Inspired in part by  teachings like those of a woman who claims to "channel" a 35,000 year old “Lemurian” warrior king named "Ramtha," these two dreamy films capture the zeitgeist and belief system of New Age spirituality. The promise is that if anyone, regardless of any external variables, thinks just right they can “create their own reality.” This worldview heralds the dawn of a new age of psychic abilities, interaction with otherworldly beings and effortless peace, love and prosperity.

While religious fundamentalism perpetuates a split between the spiritual and the scientific, central to this alternative philosophy is a proposed synthesis of the two that does neither any favors. It distorts and oversimplifies theoretical quantum physics as a bogus proof of a magical reality – taught patiently by channeled spirit guides and alien intelligences, reiterated by psychics and astrologers and claiming a significant slice of the financial pie in publishing and media.

Does spirituality have to include supernaturalism, pseudoscience, magical thinking and a flimsy but willful denial of reality?


Another Possibility

My premise is that there is another possibility. There is an important role for mature, existentially honest spirituality in today’s world.

As much as we understand the rational outrage expressed in the “new atheism” of writers like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, and might agree with Bill Maher’s critique in the movie “Religulous,” there is an essential dimension to the subject that they do not address.

As much as we may support the positively empowered multiculturalism of the ubiquitous New Age ideology, there is so much oddly awry in that movement.

And, while it is important to acknowledge the significance that traditional religion holds in the lives of so many, something has to change. We are evolving and so should our spirituality.

Part One of this book will examine the pervasive split between reason and faith, between spiritual belief and critical thinking, between science and religion. I will argue that we are in many ways stuck in a version of spirituality that has yet to catch up with the scientific and philosophical revelations of the last three hundred and fifty years, and that we specifically create this internal apartheid in order to protect an outmoded metaphysics we mistakenly feel is our only option for a spiritual life.

I will propose a contemporary vision of spirituality that sacralizes both the complete human being and the world in which we live, by celebrating intellect, embodied aliveness, and the mysterious depths of the psyche. We will also explore the vital importance of “shadow-work” – a willingness to examine and address suffering, difficult emotions and the disowned qualities we project onto other individuals and cultures. Shadow-work and lucid critical thinking are powerful medicine for many of the ills I describe above.

Lastly, Part One will touch on the work of unparalleled world mythology scholar Joseph Campbell and present a way of thinking about both the psycho-social function and the deeper psycho-spiritual meanings of myth.

Part Two will look at the developmental models of Piaget, Kohlberg, Gebser and particularly Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory as a way of understanding cognitive and spiritual growth. It is also essential to examine the various pathologies and reversals that arise in what Wilber calls the “lines of development” as they move through these stages. Understanding that each personal and collective stage will generate its own worldview and spirituality helps us to make sense of the competing philosophies vying to control and in some ways threatening to destroy the world in which we live.

Part Three will present an inquiry-based approach to spiritual practice based in yoga, meditation, psychology and an engagement with the intuitive and mystic aspects of human consciousness via poetry, mythic archetype and embodied expression. This approach goes beyond supernaturalism, magical thinking and mythic literalism into a profoundly existential awakening of compassion, emotional honesty, spiritual presence and intellectual depth.

It should be quite a ride!