Post-Religious Spirituality: Full Circle, Progressive Line, or Dead End?

Can we incorporate our previous lessons and experiences or is the show over?

Image by Charles Thonney from Pixabay

This writing first appeared in Kevin Millers compilation book, "Hellrazed," (October 2017). A few minor time-related updates have been made.

I believe it was Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, ironically, who once wrote that religion is a good place to start life but a detrimental place to end it. In his book, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life,[i] he explains that the primary task of “the first half of life” (which may or may not correspond to chronological age), is to build a strong container—a strong sense of the boundary of self, the understanding of right and wrong, and even security through the certainty in one’s beliefs. But then the task of the “second half of life” is to leave the container—to grow beyond the reliance upon ego with its preoccupation of categorizing and rejecting “other,” and its worship of formulas, doctrines, creeds, and certainties, all of which no longer serve forward (or upward) progression.

Leaving one’s container is not unlike the journey of a caterpillar. It slogs its way through dirt for just so long; but there comes a time to wriggle free of the cocoon in favor of wings. Yes, taking flight to the skies can be a very unsettling, scary undertaking at first. After all, the container provides a strong sense of identity and stability in the early stages of life and spiritual formation, but eventually it begins to weigh its resident down like a burial receptacle, impeding opportunity for evolvement and expansion.

This leaving process describes the last decade and a half of my spiritual metamorphosis, which all began with my quest into the historical development of the doctrine of hell. This came on the heels of many unanswered questions surrounding Bible contradictions and the lack of satisfactory support for many of my core religious beliefs. Despite the shaming, intimidation, and isolation tactics used by my former church friends and leaders, I forged ahead to uncover a multitude of falsehoods surrounding this foundational Church doctrine. Such a discovery naturally provided the impetus to carefully and independently (of clergy or invested leadership) inspect my entire belief system. I have written extensively on my initial search, most notably in my book, Raising Hell: Christianity’s Most Controversial Doctrine Put Under Fire. Following these discoveries, there came an expected season of doubts, uncertainty, loss, insecurity, and even bitterness, but to what end? Did the promised wings await?

Dead End or Temporary Detour?
With a new freedom to fearlessly ask any question comes the birth of an inquiring mind. I carefully scrutinized every major church doctrine, especially those that had never made sense to me, discovering that most of them were based on distortions, mistranslations, and misinformation. The more courageous I became in digging around and asking questions of my “authoritative, inerrant Bible,” the more I realized that almost everything I once believed to be founded on solid bedrock was more like shifting sands. I basically had to let go of everything I had been taught after the highway of certainty I once felt safe and nurtured traveling upon suddenly terminated.

A longstanding struggle with bitterness set in for the ways I felt controlled by fear, misled and even lied to. For at least a couple years, I took a polar approach to my old faith, becoming proportionately dogmatic and certain against my old dogma and certainty! The hypocrisy and non-productivity of that fruitless activity soon became apparent, but it still took time to overcome.

In the years since, I’ve met many people confronting a similar path of questioning. Many don’t make it out alive. Once they get just so far out of their container and realize it’s safe to question, they soon confront the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of evil and suffering, along with other difficult paradoxes and contradictions. If God is supposedly so loving and inclusive, and if this is indeed a “safe universe,” why is there so much injustice? How could evil and suffering ever be justified as a means to any good end (a topic we are currently exploring for my next book)? Many of these people, with seemingly no other perceivable options, venture into atheism or at least stoic agnosticism at this point, believing there is no better alternative.

For me, neither atheism nor agnosticism was a viable option as I felt that I had too many inner evidences and circumstantial “synchronicities” to dismiss my faith experiences as coincidence or imagination. I had to keep pushing forward.

A Fuller Circle
One of the cornerstone doctrines I put to the test early in my investigation—after hell—was that of the modern Christian teaching of the Trinity. Theologians and churchgoers have struggled and failed to describe this bizarre doctrine in any understandable way for all its confusing complexities and nonsensical implications. Did the eternal, imperishable Father somehow get stuffed into a finite earthly body to die? If so, who was available to resurrect Jesus from the dead? How did Jesus “go back to the Father,” who is himself? Did Jesus forsake himself on the cross? Did Jesus talk/pray to himself…and then answer himself? And other fun games one can play.

In my quest for reasoned understanding amid these kinds of difficult cognitive dissonances, at last I encountered the ancient path of nondualism. Ahhh, feel the relief! Finally, a way to think and reason about life that makes room for both sides of the many brain-cramping, tantrum-inducing conundrums. Volumes have been written to unpack this one little word, as it opens up a world of thought-provoking perspectives.

In a nutshell, nondualism unifies the fragmented concepts of Platonic dualism (basically, that matter and spirit are opposed and that everything is categorized as good or evil) by offering ground in the middle where it’s no longer “either-or,” but now there is room for “both-and.” In other words, we can see life as both whole and divided (or shattered) at the same time. Here, the illusory tree of the knowledge of good and evil (dualism) has revealed itself to a few spiritual seers instead as the Tree of Life, where everything ultimately fits together as One. For a simple illustration, the earth is, at any given time, half in darkness and half in light, but no one can argue that it is only one or the other, nor can they say it is two separate earths. It is and always will be one whole earth, both dark and light. The same goes for people, though my religious mindset previously made me categorize people as either/or (good or bad, saved or lost), rather than recognizing the greater complex mixture of light and darkness within each person.

This concept is represented by the popular yin and yang symbol. Opposites must find their balance with each other, neither dominating nor submitting to the other. As we gravitate toward an inclusive nondualistic approach to life, it is important to continue allowing for the inclusion and even the necessity of dualism as a viable part of the whole. Every person is coaxed into a better [butterfly] self through the lessons learned while living within their own dualistic nature, whether through ascent (light) or descent (darkness).

One of my early transformative perspectives on nondualism came via a Jewish rabbi’s exploration of the dualistic natures of the one God, the transcendent and the immanent. The transcendent aspect of God, is the “already perfect” nature that is above and beyond time, space, and creation. The other nature is the immanent God. This is the creative, relational, nurturing, right here/ right now, intimately connected aspect of God who is “becoming perfect through” its creation. In other words, the immanent side of God is expressed in and through a fragmented, becoming-perfect-but-not-yet-arrived creation. Thus, one God is both above and beyond or “outside” creation, and the same God is also intimately bound up “inside” creation as a manifestation of all that is.

I would say, in the interest of the “two halves of life,” the first half is spent looking for and trying to appease that perfect, distant, non-contaminated God “out there,” while the second half of life knows that God is fully integrated “in here,” becoming perfect in and through the messiness of it all known as “me.” It’s so revolutionary and comforting to apprehend the connectedness of “being on the inside” with God after a lifetime of religion telling us that we are always on the outside and separate.

This immanent and transcendent perspective has aided my growth process immensely. Jewish mysticism tells me I am an aspect or expression of God, “a spark out of the Fire.” In other words, I am a microcosm of the infinite. I am able to hold in equalizing tension my own immanent and transcendent self as I go through the pains and disappointments of life. My immanent (caterpillar on the ground) self feels the raw, real, sad, disappointing losses and is free to respond to those in my imperfect, not yet arrived, deflated, or acting out self. My transcendent (butterfly in the sky) self can, at the very same time, be objectively removed and distant from my problems, knowing that they are not an ultimate reality, nor do they dictate who I truly am. My transcendent life is already hidden with Christ in God. It can’t be touched by the disappointments or failings of this life because they do not objectively exist in my “arrived” state. So many of the mysterious statements of Jesus and Paul hint at this transcendent reality. Carrying around the awareness of your transcendent self is an experience of “eonian life” in the now, and “being perfect (Grk. “telos”: arrived, fulfilled, complete) as your heavenly father is perfect” (Mt. 5:38).

Incorporating the views of nondualism into my daily practice, a couple of important things happened. First, I realized that all those doctrines I had set out to disprove could take on new significance when viewed from different perspectives. For example, the Trinity as taught in the earliest Christian and esoteric tradition offers a beautiful picture of a transcendent Father, an immanent Son (humanity, the first Adam), and the intermediary Spirit or unifying force (Sophia, or “Goddess of Wisdom”) that bridges the gap between the two. Rather than making Jesus and God less accessible to humanity, humanity is brought into the intimate space, the family’s inner circle of all that God is. I am (and you are) on the inside looking out. This revelation is at the heart of the Trinity, with everyone included. Yes, Jesus is an expression of God, but so are you, so am I. This is transformative, inclusive, second-half-of-life stuff that Jesus taught his disciples and that I can finally buy into. Being chosen is no longer about an elite few, but about the joyful realization that everyone is chosen in his or her season of readiness.

The second transformative effect of nondualism is that it causes me to weigh everything with a more balanced wisdom. I became painfully aware of my handicap of growing up with black and white thinking, and how it led to foolishness in judgments and decisions, as I was only ever able to see any issue from one narrow, exclusive viewpoint. I was taught that gray is always bad and should be avoided because it represents luke-warmness and compromise. In actuality, the more I learn about the ways of Love, the more I find true wisdom in the middle, in the gray. This is the inclusive space of “both-and.” I’m finally beginning the process of thinking with both heart and head, left and right, transcendence and immanence with any issue, not excluding one over the other.

And so nondualism brought into my life great resolve, where many of the beliefs and cornerstone doctrines I came to reject as false teachings were given new life as “the other side of the coin.” Prior exclusive Christian traditions came full circle with a higher, more inclusive reinterpretation. After all, two sides of a coin are still one coin.

Progressing Ever Forward
In the days and years since, I have adopted a more moderate, contemplative approach to life and spirituality, reflecting especially on the writings of the mystics and spiritual free thinkers, past and present. As a result, I have recovered a childlike wonder and openness that floods my thoughts with an endless stream of fresh ideas. Where before I felt stagnated and bored with the “same old” regurgitated dogmatic teachings in books and church, I now feel continuously inspired by new perspectives on old stories. Perhaps this newfound expansiveness is not unlike Belle in Beauty and the Beast when she leaves the cultural expectations and stifling status quo of village life, unknowingly committing herself to a new captivating story within an enchanted castle.

Like Belle (and butterflies), there comes a time when we each are invited to untether ourselves from the security of certainty—to make a clean break from that old cocoon—if we are to progress. But here a large dose of time and patience is needed to unravel the old dogma and reassemble the new perspectives on what is truer to the character of God and the bigger Story.

We are indeed living in the midst of a very complex Story with a relatively indiscernible plot (for now) where the Author has set out to tell a particular narrative in a particular way. Through living and contributing our experiences, you and I are tellers of the story in ways we don’t currently comprehend; yet we tend to make judgments from our single, subjective (grounded) viewpoint. No story can be understood through a word, a sentence, or a paragraph somewhere in the middle, which is comparable to our short existence in this lifetime. To make the leap into unbelief out of impatience, disappointment, anger, or confusion is to make a premature judgment about something not yet understood. Personally, I cling to the belief that there is some objective, sovereignly transcendent view of the Story that I presume we will be privy to someday, and that it will find us all in agreement that it was indeed a good story.

Looking back over the years since I began to take flight, one truth surfaces repeatedly, sinking in a little at a time. Everything belongs. In this Story, nothing need be excluded—not even the dead ends or the darkness. Roadblocks and “impossible” hurdles now provide the encouragement to consider other creative, unorthodox pathways. Everything is ultimately for growth and upward movement. My faith has been an inclusive, spacious journey where dead ends lead to full circles and progressive lines. Says Richard Rohr:

“The contemplative mind can see things in a non-dualistic way, without being rebellious or enmeshed, neither reactionary nor hateful. Whenever you move to a higher level of consciousness, you always include the previous stages. That’s what makes it a higher level of consciousness! You do not hate previous stages, you do not dismiss them, and you do not split and say that the previous group or stage was all wrong. …When you finally come to maturity [second half of life], you can look back at your life and forgive every bit of it. You can let go of everyone who hurt you…even the church that hurt you. Wisdom is where you see it all and you eliminate none of it and include all of it as important training. Finally, ‘everything belongs.’ You are able to say, from some larger place that even surprises you, ‘It is what it is’ and even the ‘bad’ was [for my] good.[ii]

My belief system is no longer about being right or wrong, or about worshiping certainty, but rather about the spacious, sunlit fields of wonder where I’m living outside that old container. It continually invites me toward inner experience and becoming. The wings have arrived, the faith remains strong, and now the once-grounded caterpillar has begun the transformational, transcendent journey of learning to fly free.

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[i] Rohr, R. (2011). Falling upward: A spirituality for the two halves of life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

[ii] Rohr, R. (1999). Everything belongs: The gift of contemplative prayer. New York, NY: Crossroad Pub. Co.