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Everyone needs the opportunity to go on retreat. If you don't know what retreat is, it is a focused time of meditation, prayer, and teaching that lasts anywhere from a day to three years or more. Before you close this window on your computer, know that most western spiritual retreats are of the one day to two week varieties. Traditionally, retreats across traditions have been prohibitively expensive. At Christ Enlight we see that as a problem.
I completely understand that if you build a modern, expensive retreat center you need to recover your expenses. I have no argument with that at all. I am also sensitive to the fact that, especially if you are going on a week long retreat, you are using your vacation time to go on retreat. If the retreat is away from home, the cost of travel to the city where the retreat is held is above and beyond the cost of the retreat proper. It doesn't take long for the retreat to be prohibitively expensive for most working people - and there probably isn't a discount for your partner should they go with you.
Christ Enlight is working to provide affordable retreats of a reasonable length available to all people. How are we going to do this? We are going to do this by offering several day long retreats on Saturdays throughout the year where participants will bring their own lunch. We will offer a weekend retreat in the Fall with an option to extend that retreat into a four or five day retreat. Details will follow, but all of these retreats will be very affordable and accessible and all will be led by qualified, trained retreat leaders. The presentations during these retreats will be consistent with Christ Enlight philosophy and the groups will be small to afford plenty of opportunity to interact with those teaching the retreat. The good news for 2010 is that if you can afford five dollars you can come on retreat, and your partner can come along for half price.
What could be better?
Mindfulness practice is a very important part of Christ Enlight spirituality - so much so that a page of the Christ Enlight website is dedicated to it. Mindfulness can seem to be a very trendy spiritual practice, and while it has seen an increase in popularity through the work of Eckhart Tolle and others it is actually a very ancient practice that dates back to before the time of the Buddha (2500 BCE). Mindfulness is the basis of all the contemplative/meditative traditions, including Christian contemplative prayer. It is most definitely NOT some new age, exclusively eastern tradition.
Why mindfulness? Simply because mindfulness brings our attention to the present moment, and the present moment is where life takes place. Left to our own devices, we spend the vast majority of our time either planning for the future or reliving the past. If you doubt that, think about the last time you drove home and weren't entirely sure about how you got there. That's not a function of declining memory, it's evidence of having been mentally absent during the drive, lost in either the past or the future. Aside from the obvious danger involved in not attending to the road when we are driving, what's the problem with being absent?
The problem with not being present right here and right now is that we are missing life. The present moment is where life takes place, so if we are not here we are missing life. The past is gone and there is nothing we can do to change it, and the future is not here yet and there is nothing we can do to influence the literally millions of variables that affect a future that we may not even live to see - especially if we keep driving inattentively! To fail to live in the present moment is to fail to live.
How do we learn to live mindfully? Primarily through the practice of meditation. There are many wonderful mindfulness meditation instructions available on line. Meditation doesn't require any special clothing or special furniture. All it requires is that you sit in a straight backed chair with your feel flat on the floor. It helps if you have some sort of timer that you can set for ten minutes (ten minutes is a good beginning time) so that you won't be tempted to check your watch.
The goal is for you to sit ion a relatively upright posture with your back away from the chair. If you have lower back problems it is perfectly fine to put some kind of lumbar support behind your lower back (most teachers don't mention this). If your back is so bad that you can't sit in a chair for very long, this can also be done laying down - don't forget to put a pillow under your knees! Place your hands either in your lap or on your knees, which ever is most comfortable. Direct your gaze to a spot on the floor about eighteen inches beyond the tips of your shoes or close your eyes completely.
Now just breathe and follow your breath. You follow the breath by just feeling it as it leaves your nostrils on you upper lip. If, like me, you have trouble feeling your breath on your upper lip, feel your stomach rise and fall. You may place a hand or hands on your stomach if that helps. As you breathe in silently think "in", and as you breathe out silently note "out". Continue until the timer rings indicating your session is over.
Please know that your mind will drift. At some point you will notice that you aren't noting your breath anymore but instead are thinking about what you will have for dinner or what exotic vacation destination you would like to visit. That's perfectly fine, it's completely natural, and when it happens all you need to do is return to noting your breath. Even if it happens one hundred times in ten minutes, it's perfectly fine, just return to the breath. Nothing is wrong, all is well. There is no good or bad in meditation, there is just what is. Be gentle with yourself.
I recommend you meditate once a day for ten minutes for two weeks, and then increase your time to fifteen minutes. If it works better for you (and your timer), after two weeks increase your time by one minute each day for five days. There isn't any goal to be reached, no race to be run. The whole point in the meditation, not perfection or any other artificial goal. We also recommend you find a meditation teacher in your area. If you can't find one in your area, consider the many excellent meditation podcasts available at no charge on ITunes. We also encourage you to visit the Christ Enlight website, where by the end of January there will be meditation CDs available at no charge.
Christ Enlight believes that no one religion is superior to any other. We do believe that, quite often, the development of institutional religions around the teachings of a spiritual teacher very often distort the teachings beyond recognition. In the case of our wisdom tradition, Christianity, we believe the life and teachings of Rabbi Jesus have been so distorted by the institution that we can in good conscience no longer identify ourselves exclusively as Christians. We have come to believe that "followers of Jesus" more accurately describes our spiritual identity, and we refer to our perspective as "interspirituality."
As followers of Jesus we believe that any system of spirituality or religion that has at its core the value of compassion, the value of and love for all human beings without exception, an affirmation of non-violence, and an affirmation of human potential and dignity to be good and of value. We see no benefit in comparing spiritualities with an eye toward determining that one is better or worse than another because spirituality is inherently very subjective. Which spirituality an individual is attracted to is determined by a number of factors, and so to assert that any one spirituality is good for all people at all times is naive at best and manipulative at worst.
At Christ Enlight we band together with our brothers and sisters of all traditions to make this world a more loving, more compassionate, more peaceful place. Nobody is excluded from Christ Enlight for any reason, including religious or spiritual background. There is nothing about anything that Jesus ever said that prohibits studying under other spiritual teachers from other traditions - it has been the institution that has said those things, and the institution will say whatever it need to say to perpetuate itself. Such things are the nature of institutions.
If we think of God as a mirror ball we quickly recognize that the part of God that we see is but one section, one mirror, of the entire ball. Our spiritual journey moves us around the ball and allows us to discern more of God, but we must also acknowledge that there are other folk from other traditions who view the ball from other perspectives. Me must learn to come together to share what we know of God. In this way other religions move from being threatening (as the institution wants us to see them) to being helpful. We learn that we can walk together toward God and learn from each other's experiences.
The day is overdue when we must come to see other people as our brothers or sisters in God. Nothing less will do, for it is only with other people that we will come to know God.
I believe it is part of human nature to want certainty, and part of reality that we can't have it. The reason we can't have it is best explained in the Buddhist notion of impermanence, which says that everything changes. You may want to resist that notion, but allow me to remind you of a few truths.
1. When you drive your new car off the lot it depreciates thirty percent because driving it down that driveway changed it from new to used.
2. Children grow every day, and in both children and adults cells in our bodies change minute by minute.
3. You aren't as thin, fat, tall, short, balding, hairy, attractive, or ugly as you were last year.
4. You can't run as fast or as far as you used to, you can't jump as high as you once did, and no matter what it is you can't do it as long as you once did.
5. You are one day older than you were yesterday.
I could go on and on, but unless you are in complete denial you see the point. Even from moment to moment we change because we have had different experiences since the last time you encountered us. If you doubt that we struggle with that as a culture, look at all of the advertising that promises to make us look younger, from skin care products to new work outs, cosmetic surgeries, herbal remedies, diets, and a host of others, denial around change is a multi-billion dollar industry. The sad thing is that no matter how much you buy into that industry everything is still changing all the time.
Even institutional religion gets into our fear of change by offering black and white solutions to very gray situations and questions. The Ten Commandments, the Bible, and the teachings of this or that denominational hierarchy encourage you to "just do this" and everything will be fine. Give the Church all your money and you will get it back tenfold, and if it doesn't work well you just didn't have enough faith. Stay with your husband even though it is an abusive relationship or else we won't give you the Sacraments. Get into ex-gay therapy. Anyone who has tied to apply this kind of approach for more than a day or two has come to realize that life is not a one size fits all proposition, and these concrete solutions just don't work. For my part, I believe this kind of dynamic is a big reason for people becoming disenchanted with institutional religion - what they are selling simply doesn't work!
A healthy spirituality, on the other hand, should help us to cope with life's changes and to face the truth that life's issues are not black and white. It needs to move us toward accepting the truth of impermanence - and of the related truth of interconnectedness. Not only does everything change all the time, but all of us - as well as all of the creation - are interconnected. Everything we do affects everyone and everything else, either directly or indirectly.
Will we get older? Yes, and eventually we will die, so why not enjoy the journey for what it is - openly, honestly, being attentive to the present moment so that we actually experience what is going on rather than sleep through life? Let's face death honestly too, realizing that it is not the end but only a transition. Let's also recognize that transition can be understood many different ways - as a trip to heaven, reincarnation, rebirth, and a host of others.
Above all, let's recognize the we need to get comfortable with uncertainty and change, because they are what makes the world go 'round!
Allow me to propose a hypothetical question. What would you do if God showed up at your door tomorrow and told you that your religion was mostly wrong about God? To make things even more complicated, what if God told you that all religions pretty much had it mostly wrong? Suppose that God had a driver's license and an autographed picture of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus to show you so that there was no doubt in your mind that this was, indeed, God. Finally, suppose that God left you with no instructions about how to proceed except that you should look within you and look at the world around you for the answer.
First and foremost, whether you belong to a religion or not, would you tell anyone about your encounter with God? What do you think either telling or not telling says about what's important to you? How would you deal with cynicism in response to sharing your story? If you currently belong to a religion, would you tell the people at Church, Temple, Mosque, or other place of worship? How do you suppose they would receive your news? If they received it poorly, what would you do. No matter how it was received, would you continue to attend your current religious institution?
These questions, and others like them, are very important because they help us to identify our true loyalties and our true priorities. Our answers can show us how much we allow ourselves to be influenced by peer pressure and the pressure of authority figures on our spiritual journey. In short, they tell us whether we value acceptance or union with the Divine more.
In the United States some forms of institutional religion (despite it being against IRS regulations and a violation of the tax exempt status of churches and other non-profits) presume to be able to tell us what our politics should be, who or what we should vote for and against, what our social lives should look like, what we do in the privacy of our bedrooms, and a host of other things that we would never let any other complete stranger determine for us but we only to willingly yield to religious authority. Very often we do this, allegedly, because the institution has convinced us that God wants us to do what the institution says. For Christians, that flies directly in the face of what Jesus taught when he said give to God what is God's and give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
How you answer these hypothetical questions identifies for you who is truly God in your life - your religious institution or the transcendant God of the Universe. If you answer the questions honestly, you will come to see how much of your authority you have yielded not to God but to the institution. That would make God's first hypothetical statement - that all religions are pretty much wrong about God - pretty accurate.
I'm not telling you it's a bad idea to belong to the institutional Church (even though I personally think it is a bad idea). I am telling you that if you ever have any hope of encountering God, of moving along the path of Sanctification, of achieving Deification, or of making any spiritual progress you are going to have to take your power back. The first step is thinking and feeling for yourself and stop taking the lazy way out by letting the Church do it for you. As you do so, watch how your Church reacts and ask yourself if the reaction you are seeing is healthy, or not.
As Jesus said, you cannot serve both God and money. At this moment in the United States, the Church is big money. Take a step back and notice how much time your church spends talking, worrying, planning, and strategizing about money. Attend some finance committee meetings and take a look at the budget. Is your institution serving God or money?
This much is certain: We will never have an authentic spiritual journey unless and until we clear most if not all of the distractions out of the way. God couldn't care less if you vote Democrat, Republican, Independent, or not at all. Your building fund to expand your education wing will not bring anyone closer to God, but it will increase the institution's ability to make people dependent on it, rather than free in God.
God is knocking at your door right now and wants to ask you some questions. Will you answer?
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