Through the Lens of Grace

Seeing the chaos of this fractured world through the lens of God's Grace suddenly reveals that all is happening according to plan, and the world doesn't appear crazy anymore. But its not the plan of the human intellect. 

St. Simeon wrote, "one who is blind in relation to one thing, God, is totally blind in relation to everything." C. S. Lewis said, "I believe in Christ as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." 

Through the clear lens of Christ, I see things I was too afraid to acknowledge before. I see not only the hallowed radiance that envelopes every dust mote, every morning glory, and every electron of matter, I see some hard things too. I see that there is evil in this world. If I don't begin there, I stumble blindly. I see that my human ego dwells in a perpetual state of self-destruction narcissism, which Christians call "Sin." If I don't diagnose the illness, I will never find the cure. 

Does this sound harsh? "Fundamentalist"? No harsher than Buddha's teaching, that the first noble truth is Dukka, suffering. No more fundamentalist than Shankara's teaching, that the world is Maya, illusion, ignorance, until perceived through the eye of Nonduality. 

In reality, the cauterizing Christian diagnosis of Sin, the sobering Buddhist insight into Dukka, and the clarifying Advaitist perception of Maya, all reiterate the same truth, in three different religious languages.

So if you think I've become too "Christian," and it makes you uncomfortable, gently forget me and move on. I don't mind. But great spiritual journeys begin with discomfort. Buddha's teaching begins by acknowledging the mind's perpetual discomfort. Advaita begins by telling us that we are living an illusion. When the doctor tells you about a serious problem in your heart, is his discomforting news not a blessing? So, in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says: "One who seeks will find. One who finds will be troubled. One who is troubled will be astonished, and rule over the All."

Actually, I'm not too Christian by orthodox standards. But Christ is not someone to be abandoned by the New Age seeker. Christ is someone with whom to get reacquainted, refreshing our understanding of him. Time to update our Christian software. The update began in the twentieth century with Teilhard de Chardin, and with our old pal Paramahansa Yogananda. It continued with the Urantia Book, and The Course In Miracles, which some say was dictated by the voice of Christ. The update continues with our understanding of the Aramaic Jesus, Yeshuah. 

The essence of this new revelation is a shift from the intellect to the intuition, from the theological to the mystical. We do this with Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi traditions; why do we not do it with our own? Are we still stuck in old stories that we claim to have outgrown? Have we thrown the ever new-born Christ out with the bathwater of Medieval dogma? 

I do not regress into a bygone Christianity; I evolve toward the Parousia. "Parousia" is the New Testament term improperly translated as "second coming." The word "para" means full and complete, not second. "Ousia" is the participle of the verb "to be," not "to come." So Christ's Parousia means "fullness of Being," the flowering of Christ in our hearts.

The real second coming happens now, happens wherever Being overflows with Consciousness and Bliss. This overflow permeates Matter with divine light. The grace of Christ does not just infuse the soul, but the embodied earth. It makes us not more "cosmic," but more human.

We new-age folks may not be as enlightened as we think. We are actually in a crisis of depersonalization. Our culture has become so stressful, our choices so confusing, that we no longer want to feel our pain, our fear, our sexuality, our grief: so we try to escape into "Oneness." Escape into the cosmic, the universal, the "quantum" field of energy, beyond the embodied human I Am. We flee into the collective, both spiritually and politically, as if all our problems arise from being a unique, individual, response-able Person.

This escape from personality has reached its limit. We've become so "collective" that we're incapable of intimacy, privacy, and particular relationship. But Christ in his passion stands gently-boldly, starkly-softly, against all that is impersonal. In his cross is the meeting of opposites, the marriage of divine and human, the anointing of matter with Spirit. And when I speak of Christ, I no longer speak merely of a "cosmic Christ" or "Christ Consciousness." I speak of a Person.

 

No longer am I afraid to entertain Jesus, the Friend, in my heart. For, though God is formless, God is not impersonal. Nondualists have really done a job on us, relentlessly drilling"oneness" into our heads. But "one" can be a very cruel word, used as a bludgeon to suppress the play of devotion, the waves of divine Friendship. The ocean is all one, of course, yet it plays in waves and celebrates its wholeness in a drop.

I hope that you will someday meet your divine Friend, the Friend who waits in a place that is deeper inside you than your soul. There is no sweeter Companion than your own heart. If you cannot find the Beloved in your heart's core, how will you ever give your love to anyone else? This opening of beauty and truth in my life is like a late Winter flower. For this grace I thank my sweet Lord.

Image: Notre Dame, Paris, www.friendsofnotredamedeparis.org