Pathways and Roadblocks to Salvation

An unfinished thought occurred to me the other day in a previous article and I did not go with the flow. A lot of talk, thought being stirring up in the religious press because of Brian McLaren who knows that Christianity is doomed if it chooses literalism over flexibility in a world exploding with technology and knowledge. Many interesting stats, that by 2050 America could be a nation with a majority of non-believers. Rather a soul-less world so to speak of or envision. Kind of like France.

Viewpoint: Not every brand of Christianity can be the right one

In an interview with Christianity Today, Brian McLaren said "I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'? When I read the Bible, I don't see it meaning, 'I'm going to heaven after I die.' Before modern evangelicalism nobody accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, or walked down an aisle, or said the sinner's prayer. I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy." ("The Emergent Mystique," Christianity Today November 2004).

In Mclaren's case I guess I don't know where he thinks the saved go after they die. He can't seem to define what it is to be saved, he has no "right" gospel message to give. Someone is wrong.

Why Christianity Must Adapt -- Or Perish

…A literal interpretation of the Bible offers regressionism and leaves little room for progress. This is exactly where McLaren finds the inherent problem with modern Christianity, and the exact thing that must change: the Bible is a ballast.

What of a new Bible, one that makes more sense examining the past and is pro-human when applied to the future, releasing past dogma for improvements and corrections? As you may have guessed, it is not necessary to replace the physical work and words of the Bible; it is sufficient to have it become a new book via a fresh reading.

The thought I had started the other day had to do with looking at bible passages and rather than accept them literally, to look at them in terms of human energy and or the energy of the Universe, a force of God. Of course that energy could also be represented not only by human words but also by simple symbols or common elements.

Except a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God [John 3:5].

I think the above is one of the most perplexing quotes in the new testament. It also is a keystone of modern evangelicalism and their “born again” agenda as a marketing selling point.

Maybe, just maybe, the birth of water and the spirit is a birth of soul out of water and fire.

Very basic symbols but think about it. If you are mediocre and conform or never think much about passages in the bible or how they might be reapplied in a modern age or modern situations, maybe your way to heaven is a very dimly lit corridor on the other side of life.

But if there is a maximum of energy spent in the conflict between thought and non-thought, belief and non-belief, water which is life on earth and fire which is the fire of the spirit of God, the final victory over life is in having more fire in life to withstand the water of living of your everyday life.

The spirit, the soul, the divine spark within must dominate over the water of the perhaps drudgery of life which if in proper balance could be the kingdom of God on earth – to reflect the fire which should be within and recognized, cultivated and multiplied.

Life is a balance of yin and yang, water and fire, thought and soul, actions improper and proper. Life after death is a reflection of a life lived by your input and manner.

Salvation can mean much more and mean many more things than any sentence of words in black ink on paper from John.

To be a prisoner of words sometimes means being a prisoner locked away from truth, light, freedom and rebirth here and forever.

the found spirit within

(image above – Spirit Within Me, Oleg Zhivetin)


I remember seeing a few seconds on TV once how John Paul II had gotten into his private prayer as he was focused in on the God of his religion. Anybody looking at him might marvel and wonder if his religion is a true way, a one pathway to perfection.

John Paul’s pathway was true to him. He was surrounded by all the symbols and ritual of that religion. I believe that in a lifetime of prayer and meditation John Paul transcended all the worldliness, clutter, dogma, ritual and found his inner spirit, a piece of the universal whole, of God.

I believe that “the found spirit within” leads to rebirth after the physical death to the immortal soul. The physical body is theory on the other side of death, just as the soul is theory looking forward in time, beyond our time here.

I believe that some people can follow John Paul along his path to God and along his or her own religion, ethical and spiritual belief system. When we consciously do what is morally right over what is wrong and in recognition of a greater whole of the community, we are being spiritual, we transcend the body and touch the spirit within.

The pathway to God is a true pathway. There are many, many smaller paths that lead to that one major road to soul.

So too, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and a hundred other religions and sects are capable of transcending the physical and attain a communion with the spiritual realm of the universe.

People who withdraw from religion do so sometimes because it can become a road block to development of the spirit within.

People who live with the words and ritual of formal religion may also be closer to oneself and one’s inner search and in transcendence to spirit and soul.

There is not one right way to enlightenment. It is an individual choice. Whatever works for you. Because it is right for one, it may not be right for another.

Man is religion. I talk of roadblocks to spiritual development. When a group of individuals believe and follow some social spiritual pathway it might be good for a small group. The individuals involved determine the quality of any quest or its ultimate destination.

Along the timeline of history past in the west, a groupthink, a goal for political oneness has overshadowed or stifled individual effort and energy in many personal spiritual quests.

In one sense the game that came down to us as organized religion was a package deal. You denied yourself the right to individual search and individual achievement. Your reward was a charter bus tour to heaven. Individuality was an unevolved alien concept in the past.

In essence, the teacher Jesus says that salvation is salvation. It has no real sense of measurement. It just is what it is. The laborers in the vineyand getting the same wage at the end of the day is the same no matter what the effort. The important thing is join in the labor of the vineyard. The search.

I have heard of and seen the aspects of Buddhism. The search is one of inwardness to inward calm and peace. While this is not necessarily soul it would appear to be spirit and the goal of an achievement of closeness to an inner self and or inner spark. Is that spark devine?

Buddhism changes from country to country and geography to geography. Buddha as a man is treated with great respect. Only in a few instances is he confused with “God”.

We in the west have confused Jesus with God and or the universal whole. With the collapse of our religious historic base in recent decades, people do not realize how free they are politically and freedom brings responsibility and the tools to be moral and spiritual on an individual basis. To worship the idols of materialism and consumerism would seem to become blind to the pathway to inner peace and inner soul.

This is what is happening in regards to the dying, in a cycle, of organized religion. The one size fits all dogma no longer reaches out and grabs individuals as it did in the dark and medieval ages. Man is lost somehow these days. Free to seek spirit and diverted away to hell so to speak by advertisements from Hell Central ( Madison Avenue ).

Who am I to judge?

I should attempt to understand Islam more considering its vast global reach. I have a classroom textbook view of it. I don’t yet have an inner grip gut feeling for it. The group thing, the charter tour bus to heaven or Paradise is I think a take it or leave it proposition for some? In my ideal global culture everone should have options beyond a local setting. Otherwise how can it be called global?

While there may many similar aspects of Islam with Christianity, there seems to be no option for some of other pathways to seek. In other words it is a crime punishable by death in parts of the Islamic world to part with Islam. That is a concept repugnant to me in the west with our tradition and its centuries old struggle for individualism directly and indirectly since the Protestant Reformation.

The west I believe has evolved passed faith to a secular civil substitute for faith, with no forced entry upon the path to enlightenment. This opportunity for religious freedom or spiritual enrichment is more than likely been vetoed by many with a day at the Mall.

The middle-east seems to be forever locked into no choice but the “only right” choice paradigm game. The “one true religion” path. Have heard that somewhere before, haven’t I?

Seems a bit like medieval Spain and the era of the Inquisition that lasted officially over three centuries to root out Judaism and Islam. The Spanish and the RC church standing by this extreme church/state matter forever killed faith in some ways and built up a permanent roadblock to spirituality amid the increased idol need for outward ritual over inner love.

In any case the yin and the yang, the eternal differences between east and west are no doubt programmed into the genes of the greater matter of all things. Conflict may be at the core of all universal physics as a key to a treasure chest of better understanding.

The global culture at present and its reality and its future shape is way beyond my puny parochial way of seeing or looking at things. That is a good thing.

The Global Culture is. The Global Culture will be. Being part of Global culture is one thing. Being is quite another. Worth repeating - being is quite another.

peace

Opening The Heart

“When the eyes of the heart open, we can see the inner realities, hidden behind the outer forms of this world. When the ears of the heart open, we can hear what is hidden behind words; we can hear truth.

Opening the heart means coming closer to God. God said through Muhammad, ‘I who cannot be fit into universes upon universes, fit into the heart of the sincere believer.’ The heart is a temple that can house God. All hearts are temples, and to open our hearts is to allow in the divine presence.

The heart of hearts in each of us houses a spark of the Divine. This is the meaning of the biblical (and also Koranic) quote, ‘And God breathed the breath (ruach) into Adam.'

The primary meaning for the Hebrew word ruach is ‘spirit,’ so this sentence might be more accurately translated ‘And God breathed divine spirit into Adam.’ As our hearts open, we come more in touch with the wisdom, love, joy, and inspiration from the divine spark within.

All wisdom is already within us; all love is already within us, all joy. Yet they are hidden within us until the heart opens.“


- Essential Sufism,
by James Fadiman, Robert Frager
HarperSanFrancisco, 1997
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