Many "Spiritual, Not Religious" seekers have trouble accepting the possibility of a personal God because the only image they've been given is that of an old man sitting in the sky. Rejecting this image, they end up moving to its polar opposite: God as completely identified with impersonal energy. However, both of these images are based on a dualistic Western logic where Divinity can only be viewed either as a literal person or as literal energy. By contrast, mystical logic - sometimes called "Crazy Wisdom" - understands that personal and non-personal qualities are readily able to transform themselves INTO one another.
Speaking from
my own experience, I realize that whenever I begin, for example, with an
image of the person of Jesus, I am led by the Spirit to move THROUGH
his eyes and form into a non-personal light, warmth and spaciousness,
albeit one that is suffused with love. Similarly, when I hike to the
most non-personal places I can find; namely, the wilderness spaces of
mountains, deserts, badlands and wide-open skies, a sense of personal
presence suddenly appears within those non-personal spaces - one that
is, paradoxically, emptied out in bliss into those very spaces.
It is time, I'm convinced, for all of us to move beyond a black-or-white, either-or, dualistic kind of logic and travel instead into the wonder of a mystical logic where opposites are continually shapeshifting into one another. Here, the personal aspect of divinity shapeshifts - surprise! - into the realm of the non-personal, just as the non-personal aspect shapeshifts - surprise! - into the realm of the personal. What else could we possibly expect, when even a scientific field like particle physics teaches us that the 99% empty space composing an atom manifests itself on a regular basis as solid matter?
Photo: An Engelmann Spruce tree with its top sheered off in an avalanche, with rocky spires in the background, above Emerald Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, January 19, 2015
It is time, I'm convinced, for all of us to move beyond a black-or-white, either-or, dualistic kind of logic and travel instead into the wonder of a mystical logic where opposites are continually shapeshifting into one another. Here, the personal aspect of divinity shapeshifts - surprise! - into the realm of the non-personal, just as the non-personal aspect shapeshifts - surprise! - into the realm of the personal. What else could we possibly expect, when even a scientific field like particle physics teaches us that the 99% empty space composing an atom manifests itself on a regular basis as solid matter?
Photo: An Engelmann Spruce tree with its top sheered off in an avalanche, with rocky spires in the background, above Emerald Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, January 19, 2015
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