A new kind of Christianity

This is what is written on the amazon write up about this book:


'What would Christianity look like if we weren't afraid to ask questions'

"Wherever the willingness to rethink has been squelched, wherever that sense of quest has been buried under convention and complacency, the Christian faith in all its forms is in trouble. But even there, something is trying to be born. Even now, right here, among us, inside you, inside me. You may feel it as a curiosity, a desire for better answers than you inherited so far. You may experience it as frustration, knowing that there must be more to faith than you currently know. You may know it as hope, hope that God is seeking humble people whose hearts and lives can be the womb of a better future.... In you, your family, your faith community, and circles of friends, among people of peace and faith everywhere, something is trying to be born."
We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in the church. Not since the Reformation five centuries ago have so many Christians come together to ask whether the church is in sync with their deepest beliefs and commitments. These believers range from evangelicals to mainline Protestants to Catholics, and the person who best represents them is author and pastor Brian McLaren.
In this much anticipated book, McLaren examines 10 questions facing today's church - questions about how to articulate the faith itself, the nature of its authority, who God is, whether we have to understand Jesus through only an ancient Greco-Roman lens, what exactly the good news is that the gospel proclaims, how we understand the church and all its varieties, why we are so preoccupied with sex, how we should think of the future and people from other faiths, and the most intimidating question of all: what do we do next? Here you will find a provocative and enticing introduction to the Christian faith of tomorrow.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Kind-Christianity-Questions-Transforming/dp/B004XXVSNI
   
Here are my thought on this.



I like the title of this book 'a new Type of Christianity'. A honest critique of core beliefs has been lacking in Christianity, since its beginning. To 'question more' concerning what Christianity teaches as truth, has never been encouraged within the institutional church. Maybe this is why the 'spiritual but not religious camp' has been growing in recent years. When trapped in our certainties of belief, we become enslaved in our mental concepts of what reality is. When we believe we have the whole truth, all other perspectives will have to be discarded as false, or something coming from the perceived enemy in another. Perhaps greater truth can be realized when we look more closely, with critical thinking, at what it is, that we have been conditioned to believe.

I am no longer involved with the church and mainstream Christianity.  I went through a process, over the years, of deep inquiry into what it is that I truly believe. This happened over a very long period of time, perhaps 7 years. I became more concerned about truth and reason rather then blind faith in what I was conditioned to believe over a 35 year period. I have always had a good relationship with all Christians that I knew. Half my family are Christians. I had a lot of questions that my local church pastor, or  Christian apologetics  could not answer. I searched long and hard concerning core beliefs in Christianity. I researched the history of Christianity and the church, I studied what other world religions have to say and was pleasantly surprised at what I found.  I admire the Jesus character and his  teaching. However, I can no longer  fit my current view of what God is inside a narrow box of belief anymore. I became obsessed about God and spirituality, all through this process. I have read perhaps over 200 books and listened to hundreds of video's on the subject.  I dared to crack open the door of perception and developed an open mind on other ideas. I dropped my certainties on perceived truth and embraced 'not knowing' as my position to most deep subjects.  The search for truth did something unexpected ..it brought a tremendous sense of freedom in my spirit. The search for truth set me free.  I no longer have fear and guilt brought on by not living up to some unrealistic divine ideal. I accept myself the way I am, a work in progress. I no longer feel any separation at all from an external God who is way out there somewhere. I feel the presence of the divine all around me, most of the time. There is a peace that passes all understanding. Jesus said the Kingdom of heaven is found inside us, not out there somewhere . I have sensed a glimpse of this state of being Jesus talked about.  My method of prayer is more meditative/contemplative, with a lot of silence and being still before the great unknown. Life is a journey of many seasons and I love it .

What is truth?

I started asking deep questions about life at a very early age . When I was in my early preteen years I was asking, who am I?, and why am I here? As a late teen, I was asking what is true?

What is truth? This is a question that has been asked by the deepest thinkers throughout history. There has always been a great debate among philosophers and theologians on what is truth.Then, there is this idea of subjective and objective truth ... what the heck is that ?... philosophy jargon. I won't get into all that.  Basically for the average person, it comes down to what we have been conditioned to believe, the supposed truth of science, politics, ideology or religion  and its scriptures (law) and the perception of truth as a result of experience (Life).  My focus in recent years has been, on the truth of personal experience. Perhaps we all have our own window into truth. Maybe truth is not not always absolute and objective, there may be a case for the truth being more personal or subjective. The whole purpose of humanity may be experimental. Are 'we' living 'our' life or is life as 'a greater consciousness' living in these mortal bodies in order to grow and experience life. Maybe real personal truth is found, in real life, in open minded inquiry, looking within and being less judgemental, in loving and being compassionate toward all forms of life. If there is a choice between the letter of Law (literalism) or Love, wouldn't Love be the highest human-divine ideal and truth?

For most of my adult life I followed a path that seemed to demand that I live a life that strived after some divine ideal. I was trying to meet unrealistic goals that I had set for myself in order to meet a certain standard, to satisfy external expectations.

It has been proven over and over again in history that our need for "the safety of certainty in our beliefs" has killed creativity, innovation and the search for truth. The dark ages in Europe was a good example of how an ideology, one warped version of Christianity, based on a certainty of belief was forced on the masses and it restrained all growth in its wake for 1000 years. For over ten centuries all other spiritual and scientific ideas were persecuted, their books burnt and hundreds of thousands of humans were slaughtered and even burned alive for not believing the same way as this orthodox church. We will never search for greater truth as long as we hold absolute certainty in our current perceptions and beliefs. If we do search for truth beyond what we already believe to be true, it will cause a discomfort to such a degree that we may be forced to abandon our former beliefs and assumptions. This is a very painful process and most of us would rather continue to rest in the safety of our certainty (belief system) then search for the mystery of truth which by its very nature is uncertain. However, it is a paradox that its only when we embrace uncertainty that we can then experience truth and freedom.The truth will set us free to explore the mystery of life. As long as we are trapped in our certainties, we are enslaved in our mental concepts of what reality is.

I believe there is a reluctance to accept what others have to say when we feel our view is the only truth. If other views don't fit inside of our data set of belief, then it gets discarded as false or something coming from 'the enemy'. This dualistic thinking of the imagined enemy, in the other, keeps people in their own dark age thinking. To love our neighbor is to hear what our neighbor has to say. When we hear the world, outside of our conceptual box of belief, and listen to their truth, then we may begin to see clearly, the bigger picture. We may realize greater truth when we clean the dirty window of our perception and see others face to face.


Truth is so expansive, isn't it , it cannot be fully grasped at all, we can know " a truth " but not all truth, because it encompasses all of life. The more we seek after truth the more we realize how little we know, we seek but we cannot find. But, when we surrender to the uncertainty of the "truth", because it is so clouded by untruth, we enter into the freedom talked about in the phrase " the truth will set you free. When we surrender to 'not knowing', after all our seeking, searching and grasping, for that which will satisfies our longing, we will find true freedom. When we stop the seeking and accept, not knowing, then we will find life in its fullest. The surrender to "not knowing" fully is perhaps the most liberating experience in life. When the mind is stilled and the seeking is over, we have found true salvation. It frees us up to be still, and silent before the great unknown power behind life, to the greatest mystery of all, that which is called by many names. "Truth" is just one name among many for this mystery.

The real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery- Arjun Walia

The realization of  truth is really more of a process of learning what is not true. Perhaps the greatest untruth is the idea that we are separate from others and 'God'. The word 'God' is a very loaded word.  My view of  'God' is, more like the source of life, the ground of all being, Tao or universal consciousness. This is a more universal accepted view of what God is. Even atheistic scientists can warm up to the view of a universal intelligence or consciousness that is the matrix behind all that is. How can we be separate from this source of life? What is Life?  We don't have a life, we are life. It is our thoughts that create the illusion of separation. When we see beyond this illusory mind set we find  no separation, at all, and  this allows us to experience unity with God and others. When we allow our egoic mind, the separate self, the false construct self, to control us, we in a sense edge the awareness of God out of our lives. This egoic thinking mind is what causes within ourselves a mere perception of separation. When we see the illusion of the false ego self, it will slowly dissolve, because it has been exposed as false. Our true self, once again, comes to the surface and it becomes so obvious, that this deeper essential self, is who we really are at our core. This essential self, is connected to what has many names, universal Self, universal mind, infinite intelligence, divine intelligence or God Self. When we live from the true essential self also called many names.. the soul,the heart, the center, the essence, the core of our being, there is now no sense of separation from our creator, our source and others. We realize we are all one and we share that oneness with all life. Jesus called this state of awareness, the kingdom of heaven, and he did say it was within us.


I will spend the rest of my earthly life peeling back the many layers of untruth that I have been conditioned to believe. It is this deliverance from illusion that sets us free. I am convinced that  we should all question our core beliefs to see if they can stand the test of truth. It may result in  a loss of certainty but it will open up our door of perception, and we will gain a greater understanding of reality.

Cosmic Intelligence

https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/relationship-with-the-silence/

Relationship with the Silence

• by Paul Mulliner
• in Dialogues, Space
• 0 Comments

by Paul Mulliner



The conventional explanation for the existence of consciousness is that it’s generated somehow by the brain. It’s possible, though, that the brain acts as a window into a field of consciousness which is present everywhere in the universe. Indeed, if we gently hold a focus of attention in the inner core of ourselves, we can quite easily reach an intuitive realization that the conscious awareness we have inside us exists also in the space around us.

It seems that the ‘I am’ awareness, which exists, apparently separately, inside each one of us, is an intrinsic property of all space everywhere and is simultaneously present inside all of us. Cosmic consciousness seems to be a core attribute of all space everywhere and the primary stuff of the universe, and this consciousness isn’t something limited to our human brain or to planet Earth. Our brain is immersed in this spatial consciousness, allowing each one of us a unique window into the cosmic field-awareness.

We can’t think our way to this realization though, because it’s not a concept. Instead, we need to pay attention to the presence of the conscious space inside ourselves. This is easy to do, and requires that we focus our attention inwardly for a few minutes occasionally rather than just exclusively focussing on the world around us.

If we find time every day to let our thinking subside and take a focus of attention inward, we can begin to intuitively realize a connection into the living cosmic intelligence which is generating the universe out of itself.

A spatial cosmic intelligence seems to be the core stuff of the universe and everything visible is a continuously generated expression of it, a real time vibrational altering of itself that allows it to become visible and touchable as trees, flowers and human beings. Cosmic intelligence seems to be making itself visible to itself.

The cosmic intelligence field-organism, which fills all space everywhere, is expressing itself as a visible world by facilitating the continuous dynamic emergence of clusters of quantum-scale resonance vibrations, which we interpret with our senses as the branch of a tree or the shape of a flower. Tuning in to this field helps us to know ourselves as cosmic intelligence expressing itself as a living being, and this can help us both live better and re-consider our notions about dying. Rather than the onset of an abrupt nothingness, we might consider that dying in a meaningful, living universe is a dissolving into an immense intelligence that we suddenly recognize and know – an intelligence that seems very familiar and has always known each one of us, during every moment of our life, as an expression of itself, a cosmic intelligence that helps us know ourselves as expressions of itself who took on a human form for the lifetime of a human being.

Keeping in touch with the living cosmic field-intelligence organism which is our source, by taking a focus of attention inward, is an inner work which helps us be happy, a crucial part of our everyday life in the world.

The living presence of cosmic intelligence always exists within us, waiting for us to reach into it with our attention. As we inwardly focus our attention, the deep silence of this intelligence field tugs us into itself, dissolving our separation from it, helping us into itself. As we reach into the silence with our attention, we become the silence.

During our life, as we tune in to this intelligence, we can begin to feel more at home in the universe and on this planet. Our connection with cosmic intelligence re-awakens an intuitive realization that we are cosmic beings, the continuously generated vibrational expressions of a field of cosmic intelligence. Human beings are allowing cosmic intelligence to consciously realize and know itself within the context of a sentient living being.

Even though the events of our daily life on planet Earth can seem challenging, regular contact with the cosmic intelligence which is generating all of us in real time out of itself can help us find the resilience and intuitive inspiration to find solutions to the issues we have to deal with.
One conscious, no-boundary spatial cosmic intelligence, which exists prior to thought, is present in all space and is where all seeing and knowing occurs. As we take a focus of attention inward, we become conscious of this cosmic intelligence or, we could say, it becomes conscious of itself within us.

Within each one of us is the whole conscious space in all of us