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This writing is dedicated to all those persons of faith who are seeking to bring a spiritual, contemplative message to the churches, and who, as I, find the tide of mentalistic religion to be consciously and unconsciously oppositional to what St. Paul called being one of the pneumaticoi, lit. "spiritual ones." May the Spirit of Christ give Grace to those who teach the spiritual way, and may they be faithful, in Christ and through the Holy Spirit, to the oceanic Vision, the One Who is Truth. Bless your Eagles, Spirit of Truth! Amen.
Story: Restricted by Ideas
The Master was exceedingly gracious to university dons who visited him, but he would never reply to their questions or be drawn into their theological speculations.
To his disciples, who marveled at this, he said, "Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well--or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?"
-Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom
Scripture: St. John 18.33, 37-38 (ESV)
33So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus.... 37Then Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world--to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." 38Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"
Comments
One of the hardest emotional attachments to die to is our ideas, or ideology. The greatest battle within the churches is between those who worship ideas and those who worship Truth.
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The Truth Jesus witnesses to is Reality--His Father--, God, is the Truth: living and personal, not truth as truths. Pilate, like the frog in the well in de Mello's story, missed that altogether. But so misses the majority in religion.
The "average" Christian in the States is nominal, not spiritual. The nominal Christian lives in the domain of emotional allegiance to ideas. Nominal Christianity--which is really a misnomer--substitutes the letter of truth, or truths--even the letters in Scripture--, for the ineffable, spiritual, and Divine One, Who is the Truth. The mentalistic idol struts in churches and theological schools like a proud rooster.
There are different truths. One truth is truthful. However, the truthful can be a spiritual truth or simply a bare fact. A second truth, if we may misapply the term, is false, though it is claimed as truth. But there is Truth. This Truth is the whole of Reality in the Real, or is God, and only in this Truth can we go beyond, or outside, our minds in loving ecstasy, into Loving Union with Truth, a personal, vitalizing, and transforming relationship of ineffable, blissful, and spiritual Union.
Frogs in the well of ideological faith will never understand Truth in a personal, mystical way. Do not waste time fussing with ideological devotees. Let them play with ideas, fascinated with toys of thought, and esteeming themselves wise, enlightened beings. And oh! how ready are many of these well-dwelling frogs to reprove the oceanic Truth they do not understand and those who do grasp intuitively the oceanic Truth.
The turtle mind might esteem itself an eagle mind, and it oft does. But it shall never fly in the Sublime Heights, or among the saints and sages who perch in Rare Air.
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