Christianity and the Inner Life; Don´t Ignore the Quakers, Schleiermacher, Washington Gladden, and the Beatles

Jim Palmer 7 hrs · The below picture sums up the problem we have. Religion has taught too many people to look up into the sky to "God" for our liberation, power, guidance, freedom, and well-being. We have also been trained to look up into the sky and pray for divine intervention to solve the problems of our lives and world. The Christian religion has taught people to look up into the sky to find God and Jesus. Meanwhile, Jesus himself taught people to find their liberation, power, guidance, freedom, and well-being within themselves. Jesus often spoke of the necessity of his death, which upset his closest followers. He explained that his death was a necessary step to shift their attachment from the physical person Jesus to the higher spiritual nature that was within them. Unfortunately, the Christian religion has failed to make this shift; they pay homage and place the focus on the physical Jesus but have not embraced and manifested their true spiritual nature. The salvation of our world is not going to fall down out of the sky. Heaven is not a location above the clouds with streets of gold. The salvation we imagine is not somewhere over the rainbow but is inside each of us! Jesus taught and demonstrated this reality 2,000 years ago, and then we proceeded to hijack his message and called it “Christianity.” People are waiting around for Jesus to return not knowing that any return of Jesus is what we lift up out of our hearts. Institutional Christianity built a religion around the physical Jesus, while Jesus himself taught that the same nature of his being was equally our nature, and that we should listen, heed and actualize that nature. There is no Jesus that is going to float down from the sky to save the world, but each of us is a manifestation of the same primordial, ultimate, infinite, whole and pure nature or essence that we can actualize to birth a new world. The Christian religion’s version of the salvation of the world is that the physical Jesus will someday return to earth and straighten everything out. Where is the logic in this? Jesus was already here once and the mess and misery of the world were not resolved. In fact, Jesus never said his mission was to single-handedly save the world. Instead, he said that his mission was to bear witness to and demonstrate the truth that would. The colossal mistake of the Christian religion was building its salvation plan around the physical acts of Jesus in the world rather than what they meant in the spiritual realm—that is, in the “heavenly dimension” in us. It is an elevated state of mind. That is where we experience the reality. This is one of the central points I discuss in Inner Anarchy -> http://tinyurl.com/jwkh932 Stop waiting for the physical Jesus to drop down out of the sky, and start lifting out of yourself the Spirit of Jesus that is deep in your heart. You don't have to be a Christian or religious person to do this. Jesus used language that readily available to him and his cultural and religious background such as "father", "spirit", and "kingdom of heaven", but you have to do the work to realize that these words are pointing to a universally available, relevant and significant spiritual reality that each of us can actualize for ourselves. Jim Palmer 5 Comments Mark Rego Monteiro Palmer refers to institutional Christianity once, but ignores any example of divergence and innovation. It´s irresponsible for a public writer. The Quaker-Friend Christians led in being co-founded by George Fox, are an astonishing example of a neglected account in spirituality, as remarkable or even moreso than Lucretia Mott, Gandhi, FDR, Albert Schweitzer, and Rev MLK. In the 1650s, as Newton and Locke et al were part of those driving the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, Fox innovated silent waiting meditative prayer on the Inner Light of Christ, for God. He valued individuals more intensely, he stopped bowing to aristocrats, he valued women significantly, and protested injustice. Fox had little education, in fact, although the UK and the areas of London might be understood as having greater influence of education, going back for example to Alcuin of York who was called to the courts of Charlemagne at Aix le Chappelle/Aachen. No less illuminating is that Descartes, famous for his pioneering work summed up in "I think, therefore I am," but also the Cartesian "mind-body (spirit/nature) split". He was a French Catholic, raised in Jesuit institutions, and identified as having used a "devil´s advocate" device in his philosophy that corresponds to no one as that of Therese d´Avila. The nun monastic wrote The Interior Castle that became a widespread success at that time after the 1580s. Just as imporantly is understanding the significance of Universities, which were established with the pivotal work of the monk Thomas Aquinas. The problem of the later educated monk Martin Luther is another thing, but his successful act of criticism and inspiring social change remains. Then came the Quaker-Friends, among others, with Biblical criticism an educated movement with F Schleiermacher, the "Father of Liberal Theology," significantly identifying religious intuition or feeling. John B Cobb was a Methodist who embraced AN Whitehead´s legacy Process Philosophy in C Harteshorne´s Theology. He referred to the problem of a lack of spiritual practice in Protestantism back in the 1970s, I think. That is also where the Social Gospel started in 1877 is worth noting. W Gladden´s The Christian Way was addressed largely to businesspeople and talked about meditative reading and living the message. By 1893, a Swedenborgian and dissenting Presbyterian organized the Chicago´s Parliament of World Religion that invited Swami Vivekenanda, Buddhists, and a wide range of world religious figures. Alan Watts´ leaving his ministerial training for interfaith seeking and the Beatles´ visiting India involving Transcendental Meditation, yoga, tai chi, and Buddhism all more generally involve efforts not rejected, but certainly supported by many or most progressive Christians. Getting mad at fundamentalists and evangelicals is a sad testimony, no less, to the confusion spread by the business profiteers who have very tangibly concocted Billy Graham style doctrines that whipped up anti-communist fears by those in fear of their souls and jobs. That would include smearing the pro-social of many kinds.