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The Tao of Christ is a podcast which explores the mystical roots of Christianity, which Jesus called the Kingdom of God, which church historian Evelyn Underhill called the Unitive Life, which Richard Rohr calls the Universal Christ, and which I refer to as Christian nonduality, unitive awareness, or union with God. This is the Tao of Christ.
The podcast The Tao of Christ is created by Marshall Davis. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
Today we look at the fifteenth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. It is a short, but important saying. Jesus says, "When you see one who was not born of woman, fall on your faces and worship. That one is your Father." I look at both the “not born of woman” part, and the use of the word Father. Father is one of Jesus’ favorite words for Nondual Reality.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode we look at the fourteenth saying in the Gospel of Thomas.
Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth - it is that which will defile you."
This saying deals with the issue of religion, and in particular religious practices or disciplines. Jesus previously dealt with this subject in part in the sixth saying. Here in the fourteenth saying, Jesus goes deeper into the topic of spiritual practices. He mentions the same four practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving and diet. But in this saying he emphasizes the dangers inherent in religious practices.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today we look at the thirteenth saying in the Gospel of Thomas.
“Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like."
Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel." Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like." Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out."
And he took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up."
This saying in the Gospel of Thomas stands in clear contrast with the famous passage in the canonical gospels where Peter gives his famous confession of faith. The Gospel of Mark says:
“Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.”
In Matthew’s gospel Peter gives a longer and more famous answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
The difference between the canonical and noncanonical accounts is the difference between traditional Christianity and Christian nonduality.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today I look at the twelfth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. This saying is different from all the previous ones in that it deals with leadership in the early church. But it also contains some spiritual truth, which we will see in a moment. It reads: “The disciples said to Jesus, ‘We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?’ Jesus said to them, ‘No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.’"
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This is the eleventh saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Listen to what Jesus said: "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it what is alive. When you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"
This is really a collection of sayings. There are four pairs, but they are all connected. The first one is about two heavens. The second one is about life and death. The third is light and darkness. The fourth is about one and two. I will explore them in these segments.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This is the tenth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes." Another translation puts it slightly different: “I have thrown fire upon the world, and look, I am watching till it blazes.” What does this saying in the Gospel of Thomas mean? Spiritual awakening is fire. The world as we know it is consumed as if by fire.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This is the ninth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "Look, the sower went out, took a handful of seeds, and scattered them. Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure."
This doesn't mean what you think it means! Or what the church says it means!
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The eighth saying in the Gospel of Thomas is a big fish story. Jesus said, "The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and easily chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!"
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today we look at the seventh saying in the Gospel of Thomas, which is the Parable of the Lion and the Man. Jesus said, “Blessed is a lion that a man eats, because that lion will become human. Cursed is a man that a lion eats, because that lion will become human.”
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I look at the sixth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. It reads: “His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?" Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."
The topic is spiritual practice. I briefly mention the four spiritual disciplines that the disciples ask Jesus about in the gospel of Thomas. Then I look at the parallels in the New Testament gospels. Then we look at what Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas about these and how that is alike and different from the other gospels.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today we look at the fifth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest." That is a translation of the Coptic text.
The Greek version, which dated earlier, adds another line. Jesus said, “Know what is in front of your face and that which has been hidden from you will be revealed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not become clear and nothing buried that will not be raised.” Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri (200 AD)
This talking about the revelation of the gospel of nonduality. It is saying it is both hidden and obvious at the same time.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode looks at the fourth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus says, “A person old in days will not hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and the person will live. For many of the first will be last and become a single one.” Anyone who is familiar with the New Testament gospels will hear similarities to the biblical sayings of Jesus that center on children.
It is well-established that Jesus used children as examples of what it means to be in the Kingdom of Heaven – the Spiritual Realm, the Presence of God. The saying in the Gospel of Thomas adds a couple of details that bring us further into this teaching. Here he clearly teaches nonduality.
This saying in the Gospel of Thomas is Jesus’ equivalent to the famous Zen koan about your original face. “What is your original face before you were born?” Jesus is directing our attention to what Buddhists call the Buddha Nature. What we might call our divine nature or the image of God. He is saying that we all know this original nature. Every child knows this. The spiritual search is rediscovering what we used to know.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I have taken several trips to the Eastern Mediterranean countries to visit Biblical sites – Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt. One year I took a trip to Greece that followed the journeys of the apostle Paul. One of my favorite sites was not a biblical one. It was Delphi on Mt. Parnassus. It was said that the maxim "Know thyself" was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo there. Today it is called self-inquiry.
These words are the teaching of Jesus, according to the third saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This is the third episode on the Gospel of Thomas, and I am looking at the second saying in the gospel. But as I mentioned in the last episode, this may actually be the first one spoken by Jesus. The previous saying may have been written by Thomas or the editor of the Gospel of Thomas.
If this is the first saying spoken by Jesus, then it has greater significance. It sets the stage for all the other teachings. In this saying Jesus is teaching about six stages of spiritual awakening. I say stages, but I could just as easily use the words dimensions or aspects. But I have opted for the word stages because Jesus seems to be saying that one follows the other naturally.
Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. And after they have reigned they will rest."
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today I look at the first saying in the Gospel of Thomas. It says, “And he said, ‘Whoever finds the correct interpretation of these sayings will never die.’” Another translation says, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death." Another puts it, “Whoever discovers what these sayings mean will not taste death.”
The theme is Life. Eternal life. It is about conquering death. This is the theme of the Gospel of Thomas. It is the Gospel of Life. The purpose of this gospel is knowing eternal life.
In exploring this theme I look at the four ways of salvation in classic Indian thought: the devotional path called bhakti, the path of works called karma, and the path of knowledge called jnana, and the path of meditation called raja. I show how they are present in Christianity.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I begin exploring the Gospel of Thomas, focusing on the prologue of the gospel, which reads: “These are the hidden sayings that the living Jesus spoke and that Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.” I give a little background, and then explain what it means to say that the gospel is hidden, using biblical examples of hiddenness from the parables of Jesus and the epistles of apostle Paul. It is not an esoteric gospel, but a gospel hidden in plain sight. It is an open secret, to use the phrase of nondual teacher Tony Parsons.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Christmas is a very dualistic time in Christian churches. In stories and sermons God is pictured as a theistic deity up there in heaven who sends his Son down here into this world of sin in order to redeem the world and humankind. Those of us who see the universe in terms of nonduality wonder how to make sense of Christmas. The good news is that the heart of the Christmas message is nonduality.
The theological heart of the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus is the Incarnation. When interpreted correctly Incarnation is one of the most nondual teachings of the Church. It says that God became human. That is what sets Christianity apart from other monotheistic faiths. But the question is: Why did God become human? According to the early church father Athanasius, it was so that humans could become God.
In the fifty-fourth chapter of his most well-known work, On the Incarnation, which he wrote when he was only as 23, he wrote this famous sentence, “God became man so that man might become God.” This teaching is known as theosis. It is the heart of the doctrine of the incarnation and therefore the heart of Christmas.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The Bible is filled with fantastic and miraculous tales surrounding the birth of Jesus. There are stories such as the Virgin Birth, the Roman census and the trip to Bethlehem, being turned away from the inn, necessitating Mary giving birth in a stable. There are the shepherds in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night, and the angels appearing to them and announcing the birth of the Savior. Later the magi or wise men appear, following a star until it leads them to the Christ child, after a quick side trip to Jerusalem to get directions.
Those who show up in church after Christmas Day hear the subsequent stories of the presentation of Jesus in the temple and meeting Simeon and Anna. Then there is the Slaughter of the Innocents by King Herod as he tries to murder the infant Jesus, followed by the holy family’s flight to Egypt to escape the murderous king, and their subsequent return to Nazareth. There are so many stories of Christmas. I call them the myths of Christmas.
All the Christmas myths communicate spiritual truth. These truths often get lost when we get stuck on the issue of historicity. This is the problem with literalism. People’s minds are trained to be so closed that they cannot be open to the glory of the eternal Christ in us and through us and in and through all creation. The stories of Christmas are much more profound than literalists imagine. They contain truths for all people and all religions, not just a certain class of conservative Christian who holds the right creed.
The key to enjoying the Christmas season in churches at Christmastime is to listen to the stories with an ear to the deeper meaning. As you listen to the stories, interpret them as being about spiritual Reality here and now. Not events that happened 2000 years ago. These wonderful Christmas myths communicate timeless Reality available always. That is the Truth behind the Christmas myths.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Every Advent I read W. H Auden’s For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. Every year different parts of the lengthy poem catch my attention. Today I want to start by talking about the part of the poem that describes the Annunciation, which is the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mary.
In the Gospel of Luke the opening words of Gabriel are “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Auden sheds a different light on Gabriel’s message. In his poem the first word out of Gabriel’s mouth is not “Hail” or “Greetings” but “Wake.” Wake up! Awake!
In one sense Mary’s dream of a happy engagement and big wedding and living happily ever after will be disrupted by the announcement of the angel Gabriel that is going to change everything. As I read the poem I cannot help but think that there is another layer to this story. A spiritual layer. That when the messenger of God says, “Wake!” he is speaking of waking from the dream of life.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I have been meaning to speak on this topic for a while now. An email I got from a listener a few weeks ago raised the issue, and I have not been able to forget it. I addressed the subject in a blog about a year ago, but I have not addressed it in a podcast in relation to nonduality. This is the question of justice. Those who are exploring nonduality wonder how it addresses questions of justice. This subject is raised in a couple of contexts.
One is that if there is no personal afterlife of the individual because the ego is an illusion, then what about all those people who did terrible things in life. People like Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot or war criminals or serial killers. If there is no Divine Judgment or hell, then does that mean these evil characters get off Scott-Free? It seems so wrong! So unjust!
The other context in which this topic arises is that of working for justice in society today. I am talking about social action. Does nonduality mean that everything is fine just the way it is, and there is no need to try to make this a better and more just world? Does nonduality mean abandoning any sense of social justice or even personal morality?
If Nondual Reality is beyond the duality of good and evil, does that mean that there is no moral arc to the universe? Does that mean that the arc of history does not bend toward justice?
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I have exploring Biblical stories of spiritual awakening for a couple of months now. I am going to finish this series today by talking about spiritual experiences that fall short of full awakening but have some of the same qualities as awakening. I am not sure what to call these glimpses of Nondual Reality. You could call them partial awakenings, mini-awakenings, temporary awakenings, preludes to awakening or glimpses of spiritual awakening. You probably know what I am talking about. You may have experienced what I am talking about.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I continue my series exploring biblical stories of spiritual awakening. There are so many wonderful ones! Today I examine another of my favorites, the story of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is considered one of the greatest prophets of the Hebrew scriptures. In the sixth chapter of his book he describes his opening to spiritual reality firsthand in detail. Often this passage is called the call of the prophet, but it is also the spiritual awakening of the prophet.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today I am exploring another famous story in the Bible that describes spiritual awakening. It is commonly known as the story of the prophet Elijah being taken off to heaven in a fiery chariot. But it is as much about Elisha as it is Elijah. It is also story of the enlightenment of the prophet Elisha.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I am continuing to tell these biblical stories of Awakening. I do this because I think it is helpful to show how, when, where and to whom spiritual awakening happens. This is important because there are so many misconceptions about spiritual awakening. There is no better story that illustrates the circumstances surrounding awakening than the story of the prophet Elijah.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I am continuing the Biblical Stories of Spiritual Awakening. Today I am going to talk about one of my favorite characters and books in the Bible: Job. I resonate with Job because his path was like mine in some ways. He struggled with the same philosophical problems that I struggled with and that many Christians struggle with: the problems of evil and suffering. And in my life it led to a spiritual awakening, just like with Job.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I am continuing to look at stories of spiritual awakening in the Bible. This episode explores one of the most famous accounts - the story of Moses and the Burning Bush.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today I continue to explore biblical stories of spiritual awakening. We have looked at Adam, Enoch, Abraham and Jacob. One would expect to find more stories of awakening in the rest of Genesis. But we look in vain for any hint that Joseph or any of his brothers or sister experienced spiritual awakening. That tells us something about spiritual awakening. There can be long periods of time without spiritual awakening. This episode explores how that was true in biblical times, throughout history and in modern times.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In the last episode I looked at the figure of Jacob in the Book of Genesis. I said that I would be taking two episodes to explore Jacob’s spiritual awakening because there are two stories of awakening associated with him.
Jacob’s first experience was a vision/dream known as Jacob’s ladder, which we looked at last time. That happened when he was running from his brother Esau, who wanted to kill him for tricking him out of his birthright and blessing. Today I am looking at when Jacob is returning to Canaan and he wrestles with an angel. At that time his name was changed to Israel.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today I am back to the series on Biblical Stories of Awakening. I am talking about one of my favorite characters in the Bible, the patriarch Jacob. There are two stories of awakening in the Biblical account of his life. They are both important so I am going to take two episodes to deal with them. The first occurred when he was a young man known as Jacob, and the second when his name was changed to Israel.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I am going to take a brief break from the biblical stories of spiritual awakening to address a question that I am asked regularly by listeners. They may ask the question in different ways but it always comes down to the same thing. They want to know what spiritual practice would help them to spiritually awaken.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Last episode I began a series entitled “Biblical Stories of Awakening,” exploring accounts in the Bible that are examples of spiritual awakening to unitive awareness. I talked about Adam and Enoch. I also mentioned that I would be talking about Jacob next. Well I am changing that. I need to explore another important biblical character before Jacob. I want to talk about Jacob’s grandfather Abraham.
Abraham is a very important figure in the history of religion. Three monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – trace themselves back to Abraham. So you would think that if anyone was an example of spiritual awakening, it would be Abraham. But we do not see this happening in Abraham’s life. I must address the reason why.
I was just going to skip over Abraham and go onto Jacob, but that would be ignoring the issue. Abraham is typically exalted as a champion of faith, but I consider him an example of what can go wrong in the spiritual life. This explains why these three Abrahamic faiths do not - generally speaking - exhibit nondual awareness but have become entrenched in dualistic thinking.
Abraham experienced a call to spiritual awakening, but he did not take it. He misunderstood it, and therefore missed it.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today I am beginning a series of episodes entitled Biblical Stories of Awakening. People tell me that they appreciate it when I tie the Christian heritage and particularly Christian scriptures to nonduality. So I am going to focus on Biblical examples of spiritual awakening for a while.
We do not find a lot of examples of nondual awakening in the Christian Bible. But they are sprinkled here and there throughout the Bible. The Bible begins with the Book of Genesis. The clearest example of spiritual awakening in the Book of Genesis is Jacob, and I will get to him next time. But today I am going to talk about the first two examples in Genesis: Adam and Enoch.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode comes in response to several comments I have received over the last few months from people struggling with the difference between the traditional idea of eternal life as endless individual existence in fellowship with God and nondual union with God which is often imagined as absorption into God and the loss of any sense of personal identity.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Nondual awareness is the peace that surpasses human understanding. To quote the apostle Paul, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
In this episode I use the story of Jesus stilling the storm as an illustration of the peace that is always present in the eye of the storm.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The title of this episode “I am You and You are Me” sounds like I am quoting the lyrics to John Lennon’s song “I am the Walrus”: "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." There is also the rap by Zico with that title “I am you, You are Me.” But I am not quoting song lyrics here. I am expressing the unitive awareness that we are all one.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode today I will explore how the use of psychedelic drugs relate to nondual awareness.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode was prompted by an email that I received from a listener He wrote:
My question is this: If there is no puppeteer, why do I see circumstances that line up in ways that there is no possibility that they are random? I see this on a regular basis and can give you instance after instance. I used to use this awareness to maintain my dualistic thinking. I believe flow happens in a different way now, but I wondered how you approached perceived providence.
He goes on in this and a follow-up email. He is talking about the sense that at times we sense the pattern that is at work being the scenes. If human history is a cosmic drama, then once in a while we glimpse the script.
I deal with that a bit in the episode where I talk about the closing vision in Herman Hesse's book Siddhartha. We try to make sense of our visions at such times. We use words like Providence, synchronicity, déjà vu, predestination, kismet, divine coincidence, which the pastor at our church calls God-incidence.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Recently I have been talking about how nonduality is integrated into and expressed in everyday life. In the past couple of episodes I have been addressing moral and political decisions, such as politics and war. Specifically I have talked about the Gaza war and dualistic American politics of right versus left, conservatives versus liberals, Republicans versus Democrats.
The responses I have received indicate to me that I am not communicating very well that nonduality is not political position or a worldview or a philosophy or a religion or an idea or a principle or something like that. That means that I need to get back to basics once again. So that is what I am doing today.
I have said before that I see two approaches to awakening to Ultimate Reality. Self-inquiry and God-inquiry. We look inward in search of a self and we look outward in search of a God. Both inquiries end up in the same place: the realization that there is no self and no God.
What I mean by that is that there is no separate self and separate God as traditionally understood. When it is seen that there is no separate self and separate god, it is seen there is no problem. All problems, including the problem of suffering and the problem or evil drop away when Reality is seen.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
We live in an age of outrage. Everyone is outraged about something or other. The most recent outrage is over the war in Gaza. Students on college campuses across our country and around the world are calling attention the unending killing going on in Gaza. That is causing outrage by counter protesters who support Israel and see the protesters as terrorist sympathizers and antisemites.
Politics these days are no longer civil statesmanship. It is the politics of outrage with each side casting the other side as a danger to our nation and our rights. Culture warriors on the right and Social Justice warriors on the left, both outraged at the other. We live in an age of outrage. If you are not outraged about something, then people think you do not care.
It is so easy to get caught up in this outrage. To be outraged by the threats to constitutional rights and freedoms. To be outraged at the destruction of our environment. To be outraged at callous disregard to human life and human suffering and human rights. I am not immune to these feelings and thoughts. No one is immune. It is part of our American culture and even our world culture. Yet when one views all this from nondual awareness something shifts.
This episode explores how nondual awareness changes our perspective on what is happening in the world and in our society.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Christian Nonduality and the Biblical God
Addressing Religious Compatibility and Violence
Marshall addressed concerns about the compatibility of non-duality with the Old Testament God's violent nature, specifically in light of the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Marshall clarified that true Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are religions of peace, and the violence perpetuated in the name of these religions does not represent their true teachings.
Divine Reality and Scripture Interpretation
He also claimed that every scripture, when taken literally, distorts this divine reality, but at its best, it serves as a window to this nondual reality that is the heart of all spiritual traditions.
Non-Dual Perspective on Gaza Conflict
Marshall discussed the ongoing conflict in Gaza from a non-dual perspective, emphasizing the importance of understanding the suffering and complexities on both sides. He urged compassion and love towards all parties involved, rather than aligning with one side or labeling them as 'good' or 'evil'. He spoke of the importance of non-dual awareness in achieving lasting peace and encouraged spiritual people of all faiths to embody peace and speak out for it.
AI-generated summary
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I got an email from a man who is in constant chronic pain. He asked me to do an episode on the topic. I talked about the OT Book of Job and the Problem of Suffering a while back, but this man was talking about something less philosophical and more practical. How do we deal with pain, especially when that pain is intense and continuous?
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode is about the Holy Spirit and how this important Christian belief and experience fits into nondual Christianity.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I talk about how to approach American politics - and especially the 2024 election - from a nondual perceptive as nondual awareness.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I have talked about repentance before in a nondual context, but I have not dedicated an entire episode to it. So today I am. The call to repent is normally talked about in moral and ethical terms, but that is just the surface of it. When followed to its end repentance is a path to spiritual awakening. It is the door to what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. Jesus said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
This episode has a discussion of the difference between awareness and consciousness, including a discussion of this topic by Nisargadatta Maharaj.
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In this episode I explain how to interpret the apocalyptic passages of the New Testament from a nondual perspective.
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In this episode I explain how the traditional Christian teaching on the forgiveness of sins is insufficient and how complete forgiveness is an expression of Christian nonduality.
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In Jesus’ teaching children represented the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Becoming like children is a metaphor that used for what in other spiritual traditions is called enlightenment, awakening, nirvana, liberation, self-realization or any number of other terms. Children know naturally what adults have forgotten. He need to remember what we have forgotten.
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In this episode I show how we can move from the Western cult of the self to Jesus’ teaching of Self-Realization.
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Today I am going to get back to basics. I am going to describe how to abide in nondual awareness, as much as that can be described. If I were to use Christian language I would call this dwelling in the Kingdom of God or living in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is the term Jesus used and is probably best translated “the Spiritual Realm.” This is also called “living in the Spirit” or “walking in the Spirit” or “abiding in Christ” or simply being “in Christ.”
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The phrase “Word of God” is used a lot by Christians. I hear it in church every Sunday. When Christians talk about the Word of God, they are usually referring to the Christian scriptures. In this episode today I am proposing another way of understanding the term – a more inclusive use of the term, which also happens to be the Biblical way of understanding the phrase.
Biblically speaking the Word of God is not limited to a book. We can say the Bible is the Word of God, but it does not exhaust the Word of God. Also it is important to note that the Christian Scriptures – the New Testament - is not called the Word of God in the Bible.
So what exactly is the Word of God? In the Bible the phrase refers to God speaking. It is the living Presence and Power of the Divine speaking to us from the depths of the Spirit. It is otherwise known as Nondual Reality, which can be known directly but expressed only imperfectly in words.
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In this episode I interpret the biblical Christmas stories in a nondual manner.
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Humans are a story-telling species. You could say that story-telling is what distinguishes us from all other creatures on this planet. Families tell family stories to strengthen their family bonds. Nations and political parties tell stories that distinguish from others. Religions tell stories of their origin, nature and identity.
As individuals we tell stories about ourselves. In that way we develop a personal identity. At some point we may notice that many of the stories that we tell ourselves do not ring true to our experience, and we begin the process of deconstruction. That is what I did with my evangelical Christianity.
If we go deep enough in this process we see that all stories about ourselves are false. They are fictions that we have adopted to help us navigate a confusing world. In this episode I explore how we can go beyond our stories to discover our true unformed nature behind the stories we tell ourselves.
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There is a common misunderstanding about nondual awareness, spiritual awakening, liberation, self-realization, enlightenment or whatever you want to call it. The misunderstanding is that it is cure-all for everything that ails us. That the culmination of the spiritual search is a cessation of all psychological pain. It is not. This episode explores the brokenness of the human condition, even after spiritual awakening, and how brokenness can lead to realization of our True Nature.
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For many people the news is stressful. I read a TIME magazine article the other day entitled “Where to Seek Help if the Israel-Hamas War is Impacting Your Mental Health.” There are regular senseless mass shootings. A big issue is political discord in American politics.
Political opinions affect churches and divide churches. They divide families. It is only going to get worse in the coming year until the 2024 general election. Then we will see what happens between Election Day and inauguration day.
How does nondual spirituality address this? How does Christian nonduality deal with this? In this episode I address the “us versus them” mentality of the world from a nondual perspective.
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In this episode I ponder the inability of me - or anyone for that matter - to communicate the nature and the experience of this unitive reality that Jesus called the Kingdom of God, and which most of us simply call God, the Divine, the One, or Reality.
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When I look at Christianity I see lots of fear. It seems to have become a religion based on fear. Preachers tell us to be afraid, be very afraid. Fear God and fear punishment for sin and fear Judgment Day and most of all fear going to hell. Fire and brimstone preachers have learned that fear keeps people in the pews and in their particular form of Christianity. At least it used to. People are wising up to the scare tactics. They do not work the way they used to. But still many preachers try to keep people under control by making them afraid to step outside of the parameters of their particular type of Christianity.
Remnants of this fear continue in people’s hearts and minds long after they have left fear-based religion behind. This is especially true if we were trained to fear when we were young. It is difficult to let it go. I run up against this all the time in people I talk to about Christian nonduality. People who have left fundamentalism are still afraid that they might be wrong, that they have fallen away from the true faith, that they have backslidden, that they have committed apostasy, that they are going to hell for leaving their church. They can feel the fires of hell licking at their heels long after they have left the idea of hell behind.
Christians are hesitant to think outside the box of Christianity. It feels dangerous to them. They are hesitant to read the scriptures of other faiths. They are hesitant to explore beyond the Bible. That voice in their head makes them afraid that if they start to question some doctrines of Christianity, then they are falling away from the faith, and Satan is deceiving them to believe in doctrines of demons. They are afraid that if they start to explore other philosophies, then they are starting on a slippery slope to hell.
The worst part of this fear is that it robs us of the spiritual joy that is our birthright. In response to all that fear, I say, “Fear not.” That is the message of God in the Bible, and it can be our experience in the spiritual life.
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I have been receiving quite a few questions recently asking me how I would interpret certain passages in the Christian scriptures. People quote verses that seem to contradict what I am saying, and they want me to explain them.
For example I recently said in an episode that heaven is not a place. It is the spiritual reality not in the hereafter but here and now. Someone asked me how I would explain Jesus saying, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus uses the word “place” three times in three verses, and that seems to contradict my assertion that heaven is not a place. This is just one example. I have received several other comments that quote a verse and say, “What about this verse?” So I thought I would do an episode on how to interpret scripture from a nondual perspective. You could call this a nondual hermeneutic.
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I read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha back in the 60’s when I was in college. It was a rite of passage back then. But I did not really know experientially what it was all about until I was in my sixties. Later in this episode I am going to take a look the closing vision in Hermann Hesse’s book Siddhartha and show how it informs Christian nonduality, and in particular how it informs the nondual understanding of what happens after the death of the body.
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During the summer when the weather is good, we attend an outdoor worship service held by a Congregational church in a neighboring town. In her sermon last Sunday the pastor talked about her ordination exam five years ago. In preparation for the ordination council she invited some clergy friends to send her the most challenging questions that might be asked during the oral examination. One asked, “Is Gandhi in heaven?” He followed up with the question, “Is Hitler in Heaven?” Finally he asked a third one: “How about child abusers? How about a person who abused your child?”
The questions were designed to test the limits of salvation, grace and justice. The scripture text for her message was John 3:17 “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” The pastor did a very good job addressing the questions, coming down strongly on the grace of God and coming close to universalism. Throughout the sermon I kept thinking about how I would preach that sermon and approach those questions. This episode is how I would answer those questions.
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Recently I have been thinking about Jesus and his relationship to Christianity. I came across a quote that stated that Jesus was not a Christian. Here is the whole statement: “Buddha was not a Buddhist. Jesus was not a Christian. Muhammad was not a Muslim. They were teachers who taught love. Love was their religion.” Is that true? In this episode I explore that statement, focusing on the idea that Jesus was not a Christian, and why that matters today.
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This episode explores the final section of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus ends his longest and most famous teaching by warning us to be careful of those who would misinterpret his teachings to promote their own agenda. In other words he advises us to use discernment when it comes to spiritual teachers.
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In the last part of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus focuses on how to enter the Kingdom of God. From a Buddhist perspective this question would be expressed as how to enter Nirvana or how to be enlightened. The Hindu might ask how to be liberated. Different spiritual traditions have different terms for this, but it is the same spiritual reality.
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The section of the Sermon on the Mount that I am looking at today has to be one of the best, as well as the most neglected and misused portions of the teachings of Jesus. It is about not judging. “Judge not, that you be not judged.” I will show how it has its roots in Jesus’ teaching of nonduality.
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I am continuing my journey through the Sermon on the Mount, interpreting it from a nondual perspective. Today I look at one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible in my opinion, sometimes known as the “lilies of the field” passage.
The topic of the section is worry or anxiety. I did an episode entitled “Beyond Anxiety and Fear” immediately before I started this series about the Sermon on the Mount. So I do not want to repeat myself. I will talk about worry, since that is the subject Jesus is addressing. But I am more interested in what Jesus points to in order to help us overcome worry and anxiety.
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Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God, which is his term for the awareness of the Presence of the Divine. His message was the omnipresence of God, not as a doctrine to be believed but a reality to be experienced. That was the gospel of Jesus. But that is not the gospel that has been historically proclaimed by the Christian church. When one looks for evidence of this message throughout church history it is difficult to find. One only spots glimpses of it sticking up like flowers growing between the cracks in a sidewalk, but it is rare.
Christianity could have been a movement that preached and lived the firsthand direct awareness of the presence of God. Instead it became a religion of doctrines, a legalistic and hierarchical institution that replaced experience with dogma and replaced direct awareness of God with faith in the authority of the Church. The gospel of the historical Jesus very quickly became a gospel about the Christ of faith, invented by men who did not know Jesus, did not hear him preach and did not experience or understand what Jesus was talking about.
Christianity lost its way. How did this happen?
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Today I will finish the section of the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus dedicates to nondual spiritual practices. Here he deals with fasting and possessions.
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Last time I started the section of the Sermon on the Mount that deals with Spiritual Practices, but I only got as far as almsgiving and prayer. I did not even get all the way through what Jesus says about prayer. I wanted to devote a whole episode to the Lord’s Prayer, because it holds such an important place in Christian tradition. So today I am giving a nondual interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer.
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Today I continue the interpretation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from a nondual perspective. Last time it was the nondual ethics of Jesus. From there Jesus goes on to talk about spiritual practices. So I am calling this episode “the nondual spiritual practices of Jesus.”
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In this episode I will show how nonduality underlies Jesus’ ethics. His ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount have a pattern. First Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said…” and then he quotes a passage from the Torah. Then he adds, “but I say to you.” Then he give his teaching. In other words he says, “The Bible says this, but I say this.” He was not negating what the Bible said. He was building upon it and completing it. He was fulfilling it.
I am going to take each of these sayings in his section of the Sermon on the Mount and see how his teachings reflect a nondual ethic that goes beyond dualistic understandings of right and wrong, us and them. Living in nonduality is entirely different than living by moral rules and laws. When one is aware of the nondual Reality that unites everything, we live naturally out of this nondual nature rather than trying to figure out with our heads what we should do. Paul calls this walking in the Spirit as opposed to obeying the Law.
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In this episode I expound Jesus’ nondual approach to Scripture found in the Sermon on the Mount.
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I finished the beatitudes of Jesus in the last episode. I may continue a nondual interpretation of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount in the future, but today I am going to take a break and address another issue, which is related. The issue is: Did Jesus really teach nonduality? I have been asked that on occasion.
A few weeks ago I was on a Zoom call with a psychologist who is a listener. He asked about my nondual interpretation of Jesus’ apocalyptic teachings, and I started to expound them the way I normally do. He interrupted and said, “I understand that this is how you interpret it, but is that what Jesus really meant?” That was an important question, and it began a very interesting conversation about the historical Jesus.
This was not the first time I have been asked something like that. I was interviewed on a podcast, and the interviewer asked me, “Do you REALLY think Jesus taught nonduality?” I could hear the incredulity in his voice. People have a difficult time believing that Jesus really taught nonduality. And it is right to be skeptical. So I want to address this today.
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In this episode I am looking at the eighth and final beatitude in what I am calling the Eightfold Path of Jesus. It says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It is immediately followed by what some consider a ninth beatitude, but is actually an expansion of the eighth because it deals with the same topic.
Jesus simply shifts it from the third person to the second person. He says, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” This is Jesus’ way of making it clear that he is bringing this set of nondual beatitudes to a conclusion and applying them directly to the reader.
The topic of this beatitude is persecution.
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Today I look at the seventh of the nondual beatitudes of Jesus. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” Nondual awareness – unitive awareness – is characterized by peace. Inner peace that promotes outer peace. This is the peace that passes human understanding. It is the peace of God, the peace of Christ, the prince of peace.
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Today I look at the sixth of the eight blessings of Jesus in which he describes nondual awareness. In this one he describes it as pureheartedness. He says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” It so happens that at the present time I am rereading the Ashtavakra Gita, which is one of the classics of Indian nondualism. He talks about “pure of heart” in chapter 17, which I was reading just before I shut off the light to go to sleep last night.
It says: “The liberated soul abides in the Self alone and is pure of heart.” That gives us a hint as to what Jesus is talking about when he says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Using similar language Jesus, speaking as the Divine Self, says, “Abide in me and I in you.” When we abide in the True Nature, the separate self dissipates and the Divine Self shines through easily. We are transparent to the presence of God. The smog of the ego clears and we see God.
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This episode explores the fifth of the eight nondual beatitudes of Jesus. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
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Today I am looking at the fourth of Jesus’ nondual beatitudes. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” This may be the most important of the eight beatitudes. At least it has been in my life. It is the one consistent characteristic in my search for truth, and it eventually resulted in the shift that is often called spiritual awakening.
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Today I am looking at the third beatitude in Jesus’ eightfold path of nondual awareness. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
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In this episode I explore the second beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount from a nondual perspective: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
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Jesus was a teacher of Nonduality. He called it the Kingdom of God. The Sermon on the Mount is the best known and longest sermon by Jesus. So it makes sense that the Sermon on the Mount would be filled with teachings about nonduality. And it is! But this is missed by most Christians because preachers interpret it from the perspective of their dualistic theologies rather than nondual awareness. So today - and for a few episodes at least, I will interpret the Sermon on the Mount as teachings on nonduality.
The sermon begins the Beatitudes. These are eight blessings with a ninth that serves as an epilogue. I call it the Eightfold Path of Jesus. The Buddha had an eightfold path, the Christ had an eightfold path. The teachings sound different, but that is only because they are the products of different cultures one Indian and one Jewish. Yet they are both pointing to the same Nondual Reality – whether it is called Nirvana or the Kingdom of Heaven.
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In this episode I talk about anxiety and fear. According to recent articles there is an epidemic of anxiety not only in the United States, but in much of the Western world. Addressing fear and anxiety can help us be happier and healthier emotionally, as well as decrease violence in society. Awakening to our true nature and the true nature of reality can eliminate, or at least reduce dramatically, fear and anxiety.
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Christianity tends to focus on love. At least at its best it does. Historically Christianity has too often focused on secondary matters like doctrine, tradition, rituals, rules, or church structure – or at its worst money and power. But the New Testament says God is love, and Jesus said that the spiritual life can be summed up in the two commands to love God and love one’s neighbor. So love is at the heart of Christianity.
Nonduality tends to focus on consciousness. It is sometimes summed up in the three words Sat-Chit-Ananda, often translated Being-Consciousness-Bliss. I am not saying love is absent. Love is present in the Buddhist teaching on compassion. But it seems that the nature of consciousness and reality is the main focus. In Christian nonduality I try to show how these two – love and consciousness - are connected, and are in fact one: nondual.
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In Christianity there is a lot of talk about who Jesus is. The Gospel of John is famous for its seven “I am” statements in which Jesus identifies himself using symbols and metaphors. “I am the Bread of Life. I am the Light of the world. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” and so forth. They are all based on the famous “I am” statement in the story of the burning bush in Exodus, where God says “I am what I am.”
These “I Am” statements got me wondering if there were also “You are” statements made by Jesus, telling us what or who we are. So I did a search for these words in the gospels. I was not looking for what the apostle Paul or Peter or James says about us. I was not looking at what later Christianity says about us, but only what Jesus taught about us.
After sifting through these “you are” statements, I found three statements that Jesus made about who we are. So let’s see what Jesus says about us. What did Jesus teach about our spiritual identity?
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Many people have outgrown the religion that they used to be a part of. I explore how and why people outgrow religion, especially conservative forms of Christian religion. I also look at the idea of spiritual growth. Is growth real, or is it better seen as a sudden awakening to the Nondual Reality that is always present? Or are they both metaphors? Jesus talked a lot about the growth of the Kingdom of God. I explore several of those stories, especially the Parable of the Sower.
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The inspiration for this episode comes from an email I received from a spiritual friend in Melbourne, Australia. He sent me an interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the two foundations. Jesus used the illustration or two men who built a house on the sand and the rock. I tie this into Jesus’ response to Peter’s profession of faith that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus replied, “On this Rock I will build my church.” They both refer to Nonduality as the bedrock of reality.
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In this episode I ponder our true identity in Christ. Then I explain how this can be experienced by means of meditation on scripture.
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A while ago I read about the early life of Ramana Maharshi - how when he was a teenager he was overwhelmed by a sudden, extreme fear of death. Then he lay down on his back and imagined he was dead. I think I read this in the preface to a book of his teachings, but I couldn’t find it. So I did an internet search and found the details of the account on his official website.
It happened in July of 1896, and it was actually the event that precipitated his spiritual awakening. His account is meaningful to me because it has many similarities with the experience that prompted my spiritual awakening.
In this episode I read his account and compare it with my experience. Then I describe a spiritual practice of dying that may help those who are seeking to awaken to True Self.
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When people ask me about spiritual practices or disciplines, I generally do not recommend any. The reason I don’t recommend any is because people tend to view practices as a means to an end. They think that if they do certain things then they will result in a spiritual goal.
Yet even when I don’t recommend practices, people will press me on it. They say that they know it is all grace and that there is nothing they can do to wake up spiritually, but they are hoping there is something that might help in some small way. Today I am going break my pattern and suggest a practice.
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We are deep within the Christmas season now, and holiday activities are in full swing. So it is a good time to contemplate the meaning of Christmas. Too often the choice seems to be between Santa Claus or the baby Jesus, secular or theistic, or perhaps opt for celebrating the winter solstice as an alternative. But it is possible to celebrate Christian holiday spiritually from a nondual perspective. The holiday of Christmas expresses the oneness that is our true nature and the nature of the one reality.
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Having been a Christian for all of my adult life and a Baptist pastor for nearly all of that, I can say from firsthand knowledge that the essential difference between Christianity and spiritual awakening is that the first is secondhand religion and the other is direct realization.
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I receive a lot of emails from people who used to consider themselves Christians and were active in the church but no longer. They can no longer accept the literal interpretation of Scripture and the dogmatic nature of the Christian religion. They have dared to think outside the traditional Christian box, they are either been rejected by the church or feel alienated from the church and from Christianity.
Some people have had spiritual experiences – glimpses of nondual reality – and are no longer comfortable with the dualistic language, theology, and rituals of the church. They are especially not comfortable with the Christian attitude that only Christians know the truth. For that reason they have left the church and explored other spiritual traditions.
Yet a part of their heart is still in Christianity. A part of them misses the church, misses Jesus, and misses Christian worship and fellowship. They wish there was a way to be a part of a church but express their Christianity in a way consistent with their new broader awareness of spiritual Reality. That is the type of person who listens to my channel and many email me.
The good news is that Christianity and nonduality are not incompatible. I call it Christian nonduality. In fact the original message of Jesus, whom we call the Christ, is the nondual Reality that is at the heart of all spiritual traditions. So we can be followers of Jesus and affirm nondual awareness. But can we still be part of a church? Can we still go to worship in a church? I say yes!
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There is a theme in both the Old and New Testaments that points to the heart of nondual awareness. It is expressed most clearly in the Book of Exodus. Moses asks to see God’s glory and God responds, “You cannot see My face; for no one shall see Me and live.” The Bible repeatedly says that no one can see God and live. God is described as holy, and no mortal can be in the presence of the holy God according to the Bible.
In other words the ego – the separate self – cannot survive the presence of God. The little self is consumed in the fire of the One Self of the universe, who is God. The false self burns up in the presence of the true self. In the Presence of the One True God, the One Divine Self, all false selves disappear. There is only one Reality and that is God. This is a nondual Reality. Like a fire it consumes all others. It shakes the foundations of our lives (to use another biblical metaphor) and what remains – what is unshakeable – is Real.
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The common understanding of our place in the universe is that we are tiny human creatures on a planet in a solar system in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies in a vast universe. Anyone who has laid on their back on a summer evening watching shooting stars has experienced this sense of wonder at how small and seemingly insignificant our place is in the universe. There is something to be said for this state of wonder. It is a type of spiritual awe.
But that is only half the story. From a physical point of view we are insignificant short-lived lifeforms in a vast universe. But there is another side of the story, a spiritual side. Together those two sides make one whole, like the Yin-Yang symbol shows two sides of a whole. From a physical point of view we are in the universe, but from a spiritual perspective the universe is in us.
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Sometimes I wonder if there is anything more to say in these episodes. Then I get emails from listeners which remind me there is still more to say because the gospel of nonduality is so easily misunderstood. Nondual awareness is so simple it is missed. It is so close that people don’t see it. It is hiding in plain sight. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and people do not see it.” Tony Parsons calls it the open secret.
The common mistake I hear in questions and remarks is that people assume that what they are looking for is not here now. That it is out in the future. It is one practice or one insight or one teacher or one retreat or one teaching away. Then they will get it. They assume something is lacking now.
The only problem – if you want to call it that, which it really isn’t unless you see it as a problem – is that we forget who and what we are. We have spiritual amnesia. The misapprehension of our essential identity is evident in most of the questions that people ask. Alan Watts has a famous book entitled “The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.” That title sums it up. I read it first over fifty years ago, but it was only ten years ago that I knew what he was talking about.
Watts was right. People don’t know who they are. That is the problem. For that reason every question they ask comes from who they are not. In other words it is a case of mistaken identity.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Love is still alive and well in spirituality. It is the heart of what I call Christian nonduality. Love is the way of spiritual awakening. It is the Tao of Christ, the Way of Christ. Love may seem to be a dualistic activity because it appears to be about relationships, and relationships imply two or more, hence dual. But in actuality love transcends duality. It is an expression of unity that transcends and embraces duality.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
It is election time in the United States. Elections always raise the issue of how nonduality is expressed in such a dualistic exercise as politics. There is no better example of duality than American politics, especially the polarized form of politics that has emerged in recent years in our country.
Nonduality can be expressed in all dualistic activities, including politics. We do not have to go off into the forest or a monastery or an ashram to live a spiritual life. The apparent tension between nondual spirituality and politics is not real, because in nonduality there is no real tension. It is only apparent tension. Indeed in nonduality all dualities are resolved.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The topic of this episode comes from a listener. He wrote in part:
“Your videos are infused with insights that aid the nondualist in speaking with dualists. However, there is not (or at least I did not see) a single video that addresses these insights together. This request may seem counterintuitive: why should a nondualist need to defend themselves? Sadly, I come from a large family of Fundamentalist Christians, and I am constantly harangued because I am not a Fundamentalist. … Unfortunately, as you may imagine, I do not get very far when I share my view in this way, and so, I would benefit greatly by a video of the aforementioned suggestion.”
His actual suggestion was worded as “How to talk to a dualist.” I am calling this episode “How to Speak with a Fundamentalist” but it applies to non-fundamentalist theists as well.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
There is one question I am asked often. In various ways people ask what they can do to help them wake up. In this episode I answer that question using the Book of Ecclesiastes as a source. I explore three ways of awakening: Self-inquiry, God-inquiry, and Life-inquiry.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I tell some stories about idol-smashing, beginning with the Midrash about Abraham destroying the idols of his father’s idol-making workshop. In telling these stories of idol-smashing I discern the spiritual meaning behind iconoclasm. I am talking about smashing spiritual and religious and intellectual and theological and philosophical idols. Idols of the heart. The spiritual search is an iconoclastic process. In particular I address the idols of Christianity, but I also address the idols of the nondualism spiritual movement.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Many Christians talk about having a relationship with God. Evangelicals in particular speak of the importance of having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They say this begins when one “receives Jesus into your heart” or “accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior.” This relationship is thought to continue after death in heaven, where one will have a relationship with God and Christ forever.
Evangelicals frequently distinguish themselves from other Christians – like mainline Protestants and Catholics - by saying that these groups only have religion, but “born again” believers have a relationship with God, and that makes all the difference. The slogan goes something like this: “It is not a religion. It is a relationship” or “It is not about religion; it is about a relationship with God.” You can even buy t-shirts, mugs and caps with that slogan, if you are so inclined.
I go one step further. I say, “It is not about religion or relationship. It is about realization.” By “realization” I am referring to Self-realization or God-realization, waking up to the Spiritual Reality that Jesus called the Kingdom of God. Others call it spiritual awakening or enlightenment.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode comes out of some responses I received to a recent episode entitled, “What does nondual awareness feel like?” I realized that some people confuse nondual awareness and consciousness. They mistake what Jesus called the Kingdom of God - and what others call spiritual awakening or enlightenment - for a state of consciousness. I want to address this subject in this episode. I am going to explore the difference between consciousness, cosmic consciousness, nondual awareness and Nondual Reality.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode is on the Tower of Babel. It is the last of a series that I have been doing on interpreting the Book of Genesis from a nondual perspective.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I am returning to the Book of Genesis and interpreting it from the perspective of nonduality. Today I am going to look at the well-known story of Noah and the Flood.
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What is nondual awareness like? What does it feel like? That is the question that I have been asked several times recently. This episode is an attempt to answer that question.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I talk about nonviolence as an expression of nonduality. I explore the origin of violence by looking at the biblical story of Cain murdering his brother Abel. I see the solution to violence – including gun violence - in nondual awareness.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I explore the second part of the the third chapter of Genesis and interpret it from a nondual perspective. I look the banishment of Adam and Eve to the land east of Eden. They were banished from the Garden of Nonduality to live in the Wilderness of Duality. The characteristics of this banishment can be summed up in two words: separation and suffering.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I look at one of the most famous passages of scripture and interpret it from a nondual perspective. It is the story in Genesis chapter 3 that is normally referred to as the Fall. The story takes place in the Garden of Eden. The characters are Adam and Eve, the serpent, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I explore the myth in Genesis 2 about the creation of man and woman from the androgynous figure of Adam. This ancient teaching, which is found in various spiritual traditions including early Judaism, taught that the original human was non-binary. The original condition of humankind was nondual. This primal androgyne is split in half, and two separate beings are created – a man and a woman. I explore what this has to say about nonduality and gender identity.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I look at the second creation story in the Bible from a nondual perspective, interpreting the human soul as the World Soul.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode look at some famous verses in the first chapter of Genesis about the creation of human beings and talk about what it means to be made in the image of God from a nondual perspective.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
There has been something I have been meaning to talk about for a while. I am going to go through the early chapters of the Book of Genesis and show how they are expressions nonduality. This episode focuses on the first creation account in Genesis 1.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I give a Christian nondual interpretation of the words of the apostle Paul in his Letter to the Philippians: “Do not be anxious about anything. Instead, in every situation with prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God. And the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The most frequent inquiry I receive from listeners is various forms of the question: “How do I wake up?” I reply to each inquiry individually, but I thought it would be good to do an episode addressing the topic
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode is an exploration of Psalm 46:10, interpreted as an expression of Christian nonduality. “Be still and know that I am God!”
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I talk about the Apostle Paul and how he and his teachings fit into Christian Nonduality. I explore this Damascus Road experience of Christ and his later experience of nonduality. I show how and why there are both dualistic and nondualistic elements in his writings.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I got an email a while ago from a listener who asked about integrating unitive awareness into everyday life. Let me read you part of what he wrote:
“The act of remembering to let go and live out of one's True Self seems to be part of integrating unitive awareness into everyday life. But could you speak about your process of integration? Is it more or less a process of remembering - to be more aware of when one experiences separation/suffering, and creating positive feedback loops for returning to a state of unitive awareness? Or, is it based on having faith? If so, is faith the deep knowing of this nondual reality, like a pool that exists within us and we can always return to? I'd love to hear your thoughts.”
So that is what I address in this episode.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I talk about the value of reading the scriptures of faiths other than our own. I also explore the concepts of the inspiration and authority of scripture from a nondual perspective.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Recently I have been reading a chapter from the Indian spiritual classic the Bhagavad Gita as part of my daily devotions. As a Christian with a nondual approach, it is natural to me to read from scriptures of other religions that also connect with nonduality. In this episode I share insights about Christian nonduality from reading the Bhagavad Gita.
I deal with three overarching themes that make up the framework of the Gita. Each of them can be described in terms of a picture in the mind’s eye. The first picture is the chariot. The second is the battlefield. The third is Arjuna and Krishna in the chariot having the discussion on the subject of war.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The children’s nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty is a good metaphor for how the illusion of the self is shattered and one wakes up to nondual awareness. One might call it the parable of Humpty Dumpty. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.” That in a nutshell – or more accurately an eggshell - is the story of spiritual awakening. It is the story of the end of the self.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In the previous episode I interpreted the Cross as an expression of nonduality. I argued that the meaning of the Cross is the death of the physical and psychological self, not the theories of sacrifice and substitutionary atonement that came to dominate later Christianity.
In this episode I talk about the other half of the story, which is the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection also points to nondual reality. I uncover the three layers of the biblical Easter tradition – visions of the risen Lord, the empty tomb, and bodily resurrection appearances - and show how each communicates nondual awareness.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I interpret the Cross and the crucifixion of Jesus as an expression of nonduality. Next time I will deal with the empty tomb and resurrection appearances as expressions of nondual reality.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode is in response to an email I received a few weeks ago from a listener in Western Australia asking if I would address the topic of spiritual bypassing. I responded that I had never heard the term. So this listener replied with a definition from Wikipedia: Spiritual bypassing is a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks."
The email went on to explain “It occurs when one is unconscious of the ego having "shapeshifted" itself to take on a spiritual identity of sorts. For e.g. "I am not addicted to gambling because there is no self who is addicted. I am not the doer, I am not the gambler. Gambling is happening!" Of course, there are much subtler examples of this type of bypassing where people use spirituality to live in denial of mental, emotional or physical issues. Using God as a crutch or a scapegoat so to speak.”
I came across the term again recently. I was reading a 2020 book by Matthew Fox about the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich. In the Preface Mirabai Starr describes spiritual bypass as a term from contemporary Buddhist psychology and says it is “the impulse to check out of painful experiences by means of religious platitudes and practices.” In this episode I explore this topic and how Christian nonduality addresses it.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I explore the topic of free will. I look at the traditional Christian theistic perspective, the scientific evidence, and then view free will as an expression of nonduality. I look at what it means to ask if the human self has free will versus saying that nonduality is perfect freedom.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I explore what we are if we are not the physical body or the individual self. I use Jesus’ parable of the empty house and the Zen koan of the burglar entering an empty house as aids to explore the Reality behind human nature.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode is a response to questions I receive every once in a while about pain and suffering and how they are addressed in Christian nonduality.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I explore how the figure of Santa Claus can teach us about the illusory nature of the self and point us to nondual reality. It was inspired by an article by Paul Jordaans, entitled “The Santa-Clausness of Life.” Here are the links to his site and two articles:
http://www.parkinsjordaans.nl/downloads/16_The_Santa-Clausness_of_Life.pdf
http://www.parkinsjordaans.nl/
https://cysticfibrosisnewstoday.com/forums/forums/topic/sunday-morning-37/
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The title for this episode may at first sound like a self-help guide ... or in a nondual context a no-self help guide. I assure you that is not what this is. This is not a step-by-step guide to experiencing no-self. It is a description of two times in life that I saw that I was not a self, culminating in a third time which was an abiding realization of this reality.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The topic of this episode comes from a Zoom talk that I did recently. The leader of a nondual group in a nearby town here in New Hampshire asked me to do a 90 minute satsang with his folks and others from the nondual community. When I got the Zoom link it had the title “Jesus as Nondual Teacher.” So that got me thinking about this topic. I thought I would give some thoughts on the subject in this 15 minute episode. I have mentioned most of these points before, but they are here in one place.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
There is a spiritual revolution underway similar to the Copernican Revolution in astronomy. Just as Copernicus and Galileo moved science beyond the geocentric view to the heliocentric view, so now there is a movement moving spirituality from an egocentric to a noncentric awareness of reality.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I just finished watching a Netflix show in which the main character wakes up to discover that she cannot remember the last few months of her life. She has amnesia. Amnesia is a very rare condition in real life, but it is a common theme in films. Some of the best movies on the subject are The Bourne Identity, Total Recall, and Paycheck. Two of those are based on stories by one of my favorite authors Philip K Dick. Other films on the topic are The Majestic, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento. There are a lot of books on the theme also. This fascination with amnesia makes you wonder why it is so popular.
I think it is popular because at some level we recognize that this is our condition. It reminds us that we have forgotten the basic truth about our existence. We have forgotten who we are. We know we are not these fictitious characters that we have spent our lives creating. We are something more. We spend our lives trying to remember our original identity. That is what the spiritual search is all about.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
What is the Eternal and how does one come to experience it? Eternal life is a matter of what you identify with.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I explore the idea that our cosmos is a dream that we can wake up from. I look at this concept from both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions.
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In this episode I answer a question that a listener asked me a few weeks ago. I had a Zoom conservation with a young man who is a Christian who has had a spiritual awakening, and he asked me what my first thought was when it happened.
No one had ever asked me that question. I have never asked myself that question. I thought about it for a minute and answered him briefly. The question has been returning to my mind every once in a while ever since, so I thought I would give a more complete answer.
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In 1970 when I was twenty years old and in college, I read a newly published book entitled “The Experience of Nothingness.” The author, philosopher Michael Novak, was visiting our campus, and I wanted to know what he had to say so I could engage him in conversation.
I still remember his visit vividly fifty years later. I sat on the floor before him in a room on the top floor of the Student Union and asked him questions. His ideas resonated with me. At that point in my life I considered myself an existentialist, although I was seriously exploring spiritual traditions. In fact later that year I declared myself a Religion major, going “all in” on my spiritual search.
His book described my experience. It was a powerful awareness of the indescribable depths of existence. The only vocabulary I had to articulate my experience at the time was the language of existentialism. This Depth was neither something nor nothing. Nothingness described it as well as any word. Yet this awareness of No-thing-ness felt very spiritual, hence my attraction to spirituality and religion.
The existentialist author Camus called this “the absurd.” He saw it as evidence of a universe without meaning. Sartre had a book called “Being and Nothingness.” Popularly the experience was called “existential angst.” These days that phrase is a cliché that means little more than a teenage or midlife crisis, but in the post-WWII, post-Holocaust, era it was powerfully fresh and profound. One was called to live an authentic life in the face of the emptiness at the heart of existence.
Now I look back on that time in my life and realize that I was in touch with the Holy and did not realize it. I was aware of the essence of the universe and human nature. This was God without all the fluff and religious tradition. This experience of bare essence that was powerfully present and real to me as a twenty-year old is what I would now call Reality, the Divine, the Holy, Godhead or God Beyond God. It is Godness, for want of a better term. God beyond images. It is Nothingness in the sense that God is not a thing among things or a being among beings.
I tend to call it the Ground of Being or Being Itself as Tillich does, but I could equally call it Non-Being. It is the Source the duality of Being and Non-Being come from. I call this reality God, but this is not the traditional theistic Deity of Western religion. It is older than God.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I am presently in the process of writing a book, which I am calling “The Gospel According to Jesus.” It is the gospel story told from the perspective of Jesus, as a teacher of nonduality. In involves me very slowly studying the Gospel of Mark, both in English translation and the Greek text. Then comparing the passages to parallel accounts in the other gospels and the Gospel of Thomas. This process enables me to see things that I might not ordinarily see, and ponder things that I would not normally ponder.
Recently one passage caught my attention. It is the story that takes place early in Jesus’ ministry where Jesus’ family comes Capernaum to find Jesus and take him home because they thought he had “lost his senses,” as one translation puts it. Today we would say he was mentally ill. A parallel passage in John’s gospel says that “he has a demon and is insane.”
People were saying that Jesus was demon-possessed, which was the explanation in the first century for all sorts of mental and physical illnesses, from schizophrenia to epilepsy. According to the story scribes from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.”
It got me thinking, “Was Jesus mentally ill?”
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What if we had a gospel written by Jesus himself? Unfortunately there is no evidence that Jesus wrote anything. If we can’t have a gospel written by Jesus, wouldn’t it be wonderful to at least have a gospel written from the perspective of Jesus?
Lots of celebrities today use “ghost writers” to tell their autobiographies. Would it be great to have a ghost writer or should I say “Spirit writer,” write an autobiography of Jesus? A gospel from the perspective of Jesus!
That is the project that I am undertaking next: “The Gospel according to Jesus.” More specifically the Nondual Gospel of Jesus or the Gospel of the Nondual Jesus, since I am convinced that Jesus was a teacher of what is called nonduality. In this episode i describe the rationale and the method of this project.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Money messes up everything, especially religion. That includes the type of spirituality that goes under the name of nonduality these days. As soon as a spiritual teacher starts to accept money from people for their teaching it has the potential to distort the message, the relationship, and the spirituality itself. I am not saying it is inevitable or that this always happens. But it can. Take it from one who made a living as a professional religious leader. In this episode I explore the ways that money can complicate nondual spiritual. I also look at what Jesus has to say about the topic on the Sermon on the Mount.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In the Sermon on the Mount we have the most complete biblical exposition of Christian nonduality. It is not the type of description of nonduality that one would hear today. It does not talk about consciousness. It does not present a monistic or panentheistic understanding of reality. Jesus speaks of how oneness with God and all things is expressed in behavior. Among other things he says it is expressed by loving our enemies.
Nonduality is most clearly represented in the Old Testament with the biblical word shalom. The word is normally translated “peace” but shalom is not the absence of conflict. It is present no matter the circumstances.
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In this episode I start with Alan Watts, “The Book on the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are,” and go from there exploring how we can see and know who we truly are.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I share my personal journey to pacifism and from pacifism. I explore the teaching of nonviolent resistance and how it differs from nonresistance. I look specifically at Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and how it is an expression of nondual nonresistance to evil.
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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Today’s topic comes from a listener in Alabama. He happens to be a retired United Methodist minister with a doctoral degree, so you know these questions are well thought out. He emailed me a response to my talk entitled "Living in the Mind of God." He has five basic questions. Here are the questions he asks:
-- What happens to "me" after physical death?
-- What about the resurrection of the physical body, or even a spiritual body?
-- Is there no afterlife, no spiritual "me" to re-unite with my love ones and friends, and living for eternity in heavenly bliss?
-- Within the Mind of God, do we as individual personalities just disappear? Are we no more than just a memory in the Mind of God, if even that?
-- What is the point of awakening"" or "realization" or "salvation" if this is all a dream taking place in the Mind of God? Does it change anything? Isn't the "person" still just a thought form in the Mind of God? Is it like one of my dream characters saying, "this isn't real, it's just a dream", but it doesn't matter and nothing changes? And then I wake up from my dream and that "character" is gone and all there is is just a memory in my mind, if even that.
Well that is a lot to deal with! I will do my best to answer them.
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Nonduality is transparency. The physical world is seen as transparent to the Unitive Reality that lays beneath, like looking through a clear lake’s water to the lake’s bottom. Furthermore we see ourselves as part of the world as transparent to Reality. Apparent differences are seen as expressions of an underlying Unity. Using theistic terms we could say that the creation is a reflection and expression of its Creator.
Transparency also applies to ethics. One of the most frequent downfalls of spiritual teachers – both Eastern teachers and Western preachers – is the lack of ethical transparency. Teachers and preachers often are not what they appear to be. Moral failings come to light and a leader falls from power. Often these moral failures have to do with money, sex and power. It is not surprising that Jesus deals with these topics on his Sermon on the Mount.
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I woke up early recently and lay in bed for a while resting in, knowing and enjoying this Reality that we call nondual awareness or unitive awareness. I was wishing there was some way to communicate this reality. At the time I seemed to know the exact words to express this. But when I tried to write down the words later that morning, it was impossible to do. Words seemed empty, flat and trite and could not express the richness of this reality. Yet in this episode I will try to express the impossible, for as the Bible says, nothing is impossible with God.
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The Sermon on the Mount is about how to live the nondual life. In this episode I explore Jesus' teaching found in the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Matthew about spiritual transparency - making the two one, the outer like the inner, the upper like the lower, and male and female into a single one. Jesus taught nonduality and how to live the nondual life.
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We are living in the Mind of God. We are ideas in the Divine Mind. You might say that the universe is a dream or a day dream that God is having, or a brainstorm that God is having. Indian philosophy says this world is a dream being dreamt by the god Vishnu. The Bible sees creation as more intentional. It says that the act of creation is consciously deliberate. God intentionally spoke this world into existence. But it is still all originating from the Mind of God. Its source is the Mind of God.
We are not the time-bound physical beings that we mistake for ourselves. We are Being Itself. These physical forms are temporal manifestations of the Eternal. In essence we are the Source of all time-bound manifestations. We are the Mind of God. Abiding in the Mind of God is Awakening, Liberation, Enlightenment or Salvation. That is what it means by saying we are made in the image of God. The Changeless Eternal is our immortal Nature. Our mortal selves appear within that Divine Being. As Paul said, “In Him we live and move and have our Being.”
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Listeners who come from Christian backgrounds sometimes have a difficult time with nonduality because it feels like it is an abandonment of Christianity. One man on a Zoom meeting I was having with a church labeled it as occult. Occult is from the Latin word occultus, which means hidden or secret. There is nothing hidden or secret about nondual awareness. This is not secret knowledge. This is as open and obvious as it can possibly be. It is hidden in plain sight.
Others note that I often quote other spiritual traditions, especially the Hindu Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching and the teachings of the Buddha. They think I am importing Eastern religious ideas into Christianity, and thereby compromising the purity of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints,” to quote the Letter of Jude. I am not compromising the gospel. This is the gospel of Jesus.
All spiritual traditions point to the same Ultimate Reality. When Ultimate Reality is seen, one notices that. That is why I quote other spiritual traditions. One sees references to it everywhere, not only in religious texts but in poetry and literature. Aldous Huxley refers to it as the perennial philosophy, but it is not really a philosophy. It is a direct awareness of Reality that is expressed in a variety of ways in different cultures and religious traditions.
Is nonduality non-Christian or unchristian? No! It is deeply Christian. It is the essence of the gospel of Christ that is also found in other spiritual traditions.
View Marshall's books here:
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A while back I received an email from a listener asking about the meaning of life according to nonduality. He reasoned that if we are not individual selves – if personal existence is an illusion and not real – then what is the meaning and purpose of our human lives. It all seems rather pointless, he reasoned. Those are not his exact words. In fact I cannot find the email, so I am not sure he asked the question in those exact words but that is the gist of it.
I want to address the sense of meaningless of human existence if we are in fact not really individual persons and have no future existence as persons. Some teachers embrace this meaninglessness openly. Tony Parsons for example calls human life “wondrously, gloriously meaningless.” If you have heard Tony on video you can just picture him saying that and laughing. Here is another quote by him. “All that is happening is meaningless, but it is so beguiling and fascinating that the mind is absolutely sure it has meaning.”
That is how Tony approaches this question. He celebrate meaninglessness. Others are not so happy about it. One Amazon reviewer of his book “The Open Secret” call his approach “meaningless nihilism.” I like Tony Parsons. He has a radical and simple approach that appeals to me, without all the religious and spiritual trappings. I like that. The strength of his message is that it is blunt and uncompromising, which is exactly what many people need to hear!
But I would use different words. Nonduality is expressed in and through everyone differently. People express it differently. I would not use the word meaningless. I do not think that human life is meaningless. In fact it is very meaningful. But it not meaningful because we are persons. It is meaningful because we are not persons. And we sense that meaningfulness not as persons but as nonpersons. Yet this meaning is expressed through persons … like Jesus and like us.
As a Christian I look to the teachings of Jesus. Nothing against Tony Parsons. I think he is great and I recommend his videos and books. But Tony Parsons is no Jesus Christ. I want to look at what Jesus says is the meaning of life. But first I explore where most people seek meaning in life and then compare it to what Jesus says.
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Last time I did an episode on the Beatitudes, not knowing if I would continue talking about the Sermon on the Mount or not. I am going to do at least this additional one. Jesus follows up his eight blessings by giving two metaphors that point us to our true identity. He calls us salt and light. In using these words he is employing images with a long history in various spiritual traditions, which explain our nondual nature.
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This episode is an interview that I did with Colin Chapman for his podcast called Red Church Door. The interview was recorded on May 10, 2021 and was scheduled to be broadcast about three weeks later. Colin is an Episcopal priest who is the rector of a church in Southern New Hampshire. On his website he says that his podcast “is first and foremost an open invitation to partake in a journey of spiritual discovery. It’s an exploration about how people understand, evolve, and deepen their relationship with God, how their stories relate to our own experiences, and how we can inform and nurture the spiritual growth of ourselves, our faith communities, and our society.”
He came across my podcast “The Tao of Christ” while doing a google search for Christianity and nondualism. He emailed me and asked to interview me for his podcast. In this interview we talk about my spiritual background and how my interest in the Tao Te Ching began. We also discuss the definition of nonduality and how it fits with Christianity.
Here is a link to Colin’s podcast website: https://redchurchdoor.org/
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
I was reminded by a listener recently that Thich Nhat Hanh called Jesus the Buddha of the West. Buddha famously preached his first sermon in Deer Park which included his Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. Jesus has an equally famous first teaching that is called the Sermon on the Mount. It begins with the Beatitudes, which are eight blessings, followed by what appears to be a ninth but is a really a continuation of the eighth.
Jesus had an eight-fold path. Like the Buddha’s, the Christ’s eightfold path is an expression of what is often called nonduality today. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God. Like the Buddha’s the Christ’s eightfold path is about suffering, but Jesus comes at it a bit differently. The Buddha’s approach is very logical. He sets forth a step-by-step analysis of the problem of suffering and presents a solution. Jesus just pronounces blessings - eight blessings.
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In this episode I explore the Biblical understanding of humans as composed of three parts: body, soul and spirit. I explain the function of each part and show how the three faculties of the spirit (intuition, conscience and communion) can lead to unitive awareness.
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In this episode I describe unitive awareness by using analogies from everyday experience and awareness.
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I have been asked if I preach about Christian Nonduality from the pulpit in church as part of a traditional worship service. The short answer is “yes” but it is somewhat different than I speak on my podcast and videos. I expound a scripture passage, as is typical in a sermon. This episode today is an example. It is a sermon that I recorded at the end of March 2021 in NH and was shown during live in person worship at a church in NH on April 11, 2021. In this message I relate unitive awareness to the earliest and only first person account of the resurrection of Jesus in the Bible, as told by the apostle Paul. It is entitled “The First Easter.”
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In this episode I am going to talk about unitive awareness in the sense of seeing that we are all and in all. When the separate self is seen as illusory, when the ego pops like a soap bubble and the flimsy boundary between us and the world falls away, then we see our true nature is all and in all.
There is one World Soul – or better yet World Spirit – who is the spirit in every human being. People think they are separate selves, separate beings but we aren’t. We are one Self, one Being incarnated in 8 billion separate bodies who are alive today. The reason for the anxiety, fear, angst and suffering that so many people have is because we think we are separate and different. We think that when these individual bodies die then we die. But we don’t. Only one small expression of us dies. We are Life Itself.
That is the truth behind the Scripture verses that talk about God being “all and in all.” The Letter to the Ephesians says, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” There is another passage from the Letter to the Colossians, written by the same hand at about the same time. It lists all different types of people “Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free” and then declares “but Christ is all and in all!”
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The initial awakening to the Kingdom of God – also called Unitive Awareness or Nondual Reality - can happen suddenly, but it can take years to reveal all its dimensions. It feels like layers of a veil are being gradually taken away. It is like a flower bud gradually opening up to the sun. It is like eyes are slowly adjusting to the light, after coming out of a dark room.
It is an ongoing process of waking up to the new reality and integrating it into human life. We wake up from more and more of the illusions that have occupied the mind. In recent months this change has happened in the area of politics.
In this episode I explore how we can see the drama of human history as a dream, yet it is also be involved in a relative sense. We can engage with life on the social and political level while knowing it as ultimately unreal. We do not get lost in a political ideology or a political party. Nor do we partake of the suffering that comes from that. But we live in compassion and decide by spiritual sight.
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Recently I have received emails from people asking me about hell. So I thought I would speak about it in an episode. Hell is a problem for Christians. It scares Christians, and it scares other people away from Christianity. It gives former Christians nightmares long after they have left fundamentalism behind. There is a part of them that continues to think: what if they are right? What if I go hell because I no longer belong to that church or do what they say and believe what they believe? The fear of eternal damnation can haunt people for years after they have left hellfire-preaching behind.
Hell is a problem for those of us who claim Jesus to be our spiritual teacher. When we read the gospels Jesus seems to teach hell. In fact Jesus talks about hell more than anyone else in the Bible. As a lifelong student of the Bible I have to honestly admit that the historical Jesus spoke about hell.
Some people try to exonerate Jesus and say that all the references to hell were added later by editors, and that Jesus really didn’t say that. I don’t think so. There are too many references to hell to explain them all away as something later Christians put into Jesus’ mouth. So how do I reconcile Jesus’ words about hell with Jesus as a teacher of nonduality – that all is one with the Divine? How do I reconcile hell with the reality that everyone is one with God now and forever?
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Last week I had three Zoom meetings during which I spoke about Christian nonduality. Two were with individuals and one with a church group. As I was speaking one insight kept appearing. It was that all of us on these Zoom meetings were one. It was seen clearly that the one speaking and the ones hearing are the same one. As I spoke the feeling that accompanied this insight was palpable. We were one. There is only one.
In this episode I explore this nondual reality by looking at the Hebrew name for God Elohim, which is an expression of nonduality. It is both plural and singular, one and many. I explore the Creation stories of Genesis and see how these also are expressions of nondual awareness, which is our True Nature.
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This episode is a Zoom Talk that I had with a men's group at Asbury First United Methodist Church in Rochester, NY, on March 10, 2021. It was joined by some members of the church who had been studying Cynthia Bourgeault's book The Wisdom Jesus. I was asked to speak on the topic of Christian Nonduality followed by a time of discussion. I speak quite a bit about the events in my life that led up to nondual awareness. Permission was given by the men's group leader and participants to post this online.
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A few weeks ago I was conversing with someone on Zoom, and he asked me whether I felt like I had grown spiritually. I responded that things certainly change, but I hesitated to use the term growth. I have been thinking about that question ever since. I thought it would be good to explore it in an episode. In this episode I explore spiritual growth from within nonduality. Do we grow and mature spiritually? What exactly would be growing? Are we spiritually evolving as a species?
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Today’s topic is a response to an email that I received from a listener in Indiana. He writes in part:
“So here is the reason I am writing to you… I would like you to talk about what non-dualism IS, as opposed to what it is NOT. It seems, from my dualistic roots, that non-dualism blurs into nothing-ness. In reality, I know this to be wrong. God is Light, which is the presence of all colors, as opposed to darkness, which is the absence of any color. The lie still plaguing my soul is non-dualism is absence, instead of presence. I want a vision of the fullness of non-dualism, to replace the lie that non-dualism is absence. Hopefully, I have not gone too abstract with my words… language just doesn’t fit with the Spiritual!”
I responded to him saying that what he asks is impossible. But Jesus said that if we have faith small as a mustard seed, then nothing will be impossible to us. So here goes.
There are two ways to approach Reality. They are usually called the Via Positiva and the Via Negativa. If you want to sound really educated you can call them the Cataphatic Way and the Apophatic Way. The positive way and the negative way. In this episode I explore these two ways, and in particular try to express nondual awareness in positive terms.
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The topic for today was suggested by a seminary professor who emailed me. He wrote:
“Here’s a question I wonder if you tackle in your works or are interested in addressing: what does seeing through the illusion of the self entail for the concept of free will? In his book Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism, Jay Michaelson calls free will the last gasp of unenlightened thinking. The logic seems pretty clear: if there is no agent, how can there be agency? In the end, one might join with Julian of Norwich when she says of God, “There is no doer but He.” …. So I’d be curious to hear where your experiences and reflections have taken you on this question, if you are willing to share in a podcast or blog post at some point.”
In this episode I address the topic of free will within nonduality.
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In this episode today I reflect on Lent as an expression of Nonduality. I explore how the symbol of the Cross expresses the same reality as the Yin Yang symbol.
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A listener emailed me and said that he was reading my newest book The Gospel of Nonduality, and he had a question. He wrote: “The question that keeps popping up as I read is how does one die to self (or forget self or get out of the way, etc.) How does one completely surrender?” I responded back to him saying that this is the most important question one could ask. It showed me that he was serious about this.
I get a lot of questions that miss the point. This man went directly to the main point. He wasn’t messing around. He wanted to know how. When Jesus encountered a man like this he responded, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” This is what it is all about. You have to keep your focus on the main thing and not get distracted by all the sidetracks in spirituality and religion.
I answered the man this way in part: “The answer is that there is no technique to die to self. It is something that happens rather than something we bring about. It is not a matter of which spiritual discipline works best. It is all a matter of intent, perseverance and courage.”
I would like to expound on that answer in this episode. How do we die to self? How do we wake up? How do we break through this world of seeming duality into nondual awareness? To use terms from Eastern Traditions, how are we enlightened? How are we liberated?
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This episode began as a suggestion from a listener in North Carolina. He asked me to explain the use of the term Christ. I look at various religious and theological uses of the title “Christ.” Then I distinguish between the dualistic use of the term Christ in theology and the experiential awareness of Christ, which is nondual unitive awareness.
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The political climate in America is getting crazy. A survey released this week by LifeWay Research reported that half of all pastors report having heard people in their congregations repeat conspiracy theories. I recently read an article in which a woman said that she believes that Trump won the 2020 election with the same certainty that she believes in God. I am sure she is said that to bolster the credibility of her conspiracy theory. But when people hear it, all it does is put faith in God on the same level as a conspiracy theory. No wonder so many people are skeptical of organized religion!
Conspiracy theories have been around for quite a while, but they seem to have gotten worse in the last few years. It is only in the last few years that I have started hearing phrases like fake news and alternative facts. A recent article in the evangelical magazine Christianity Today says that evangelicals disproportionately believe in conspiracy theories, especially QAnon. What does that say about evangelical Christianity?
One thing these last few years has taught me is how easily people are fooled … including us. Our brains are not a reliable as we think they are. How easy it is for the human mind to believe almost anything. When we enter into the world of religion and spirituality, there are no holds barred in this self-deception. In this episode we look at the presence of conspiracy theories in religion and spirituality, including nonduality, and what is means to awaken from all conspiracy theories.
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Life is suffering. That is the first noble truth of the Buddha and the first sentence of psychiatrist Scott Peck’s classic book The Road Less Traveled. He phrased it as “Life is difficult.” Much of the suffering and difficulty in life comes from interpersonal relationships. They disturb our peace of mind and keep us awake at night. What hurts the most is when personal relationships with people we care about - friends and family - are damaged. At such times we look to spirituality for how to understand and address our feelings and thoughts. What does nonduality have to say to this? That is what I talk about in this episode.
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In this episode I point to our true nature and the nature of Reality. This cannot be done directly so I will use a metaphor. One of the best is the traditional Zen koan about seeing our original face before we were born. I am going to do a variation on this by asking you to look at both what you were before birth and what you will be after death.
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In this episode we come to the final chapter of the Gospel of John, which I have been interpreting as a proclamation of the gospel of nonduality. In this chapter we explore how the gospel of nonduality had to struggle with dualistic gospel in the early centuries of the church. This involved a struggle for leadership in the church after the death of the apostle John. We look at the role of Mary Magdalene and women leaders in early nondual Christianity, as well as the nondual Gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi library.
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Easter is a proclamation of Christian nonduality. This is seen in two of the most famous Easter stories, which are found in the 20th chapter of the Gospel of John. One is the familiar story of Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning. The other is the equally famous story of Doubting Thomas. John’s presentation of the giving of the Holy Spirit – John’s Pentecost – is also examined as part of the Easter Sunday. It is placed on Easter to communicate the truth that the risen Christ shares his spirit, his essential nature with us. This empowerment is called Holy Spirit. It can also be called Self-Realization or Christ Consciousness.
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The symbol of the Christianity is the cross. It is also a powerful symbol of nonduality.
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The arrest and trial of Jesus in the Gospel of John is interpreted as the proclamation of the nondual identity of Jesus and his message.
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In the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John we have one of the best descriptions of nonduality in the Bible. It comes in a prayer Jesus offered on the night he was arrested.
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This episode is an interview that former evangelical pastor and current church planter Luke Bricker did with me for his podcast entitled The Spiritual Nomad. His podcast can be found at TheSpiritualNomad.org.
I share quite a bit of autobiographical information in this interview, including accounts of three times in forty years that nondual awareness enveloped me. These were primarily a loss of a sense of individual existence, but also oneness with all that is. The third time in 2012 was an abiding Presence that has not left, but has deepened and unfolded in the last eight years.
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The further we get into the Gospel of John, the closer we come to the core of the John’s gospel of nonduality. The structure of the gospel up to this point has been seven I AM sayings of Jesus, accompanied by seven teachings that Jesus gave. In the 15th chapter we have the last of these sayings. He says here, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” Then a couple of verses later he says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
In fleshing out this metaphor Jesus talks a lot about “abiding.” Some translations use the word remain or dwell, but I like the word “abide” because it means to make one’s home in, as in the word abode. It means to live in. Jesus says, “Abide in Me, and I in you.” This is my awareness of Christ. I abide I Christ and Christ in me.
There is an oft- repeated evangelical mantra: “It is not about religion. It is about relationship – a relationship with Jesus Christ.” When I hear that I respond, “It is not about religion or relationship. It is about reality.” There is more to spirituality than relationship with God understood as a divine person. There is the Reality of the universe that is nondual.
It is not about religion or relationship; it is about identity – identity with God where there is no longer two. As Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” This is a quantum leap beyond relational Christianity. I know because I have experienced both. What I am talking about here is union with God or “abiding in Christ.”
A dualistic relationship with Christ is nothing compared to being one with Jesus Christ. In Christ we are one with God and with all of creation. In this union there is no distinction between us and not us. In unitive awareness the individual self that appears to be in relationship with God ceases to exist. The self dissolves. It is seen through as a psychological fiction, which means that its relationships are fiction.
Instead there is only one, which can be called Reality but there is really no good name for this. I use the word God, but it is not the theistic concept of God. Meister Eckhart calls this the God beyond God or the Godhead. It includes the personal God, but is beyond God to the same degree that an idol made of stone is beyond the theistic God. Paul Tillich calls this Being Itself or the Ground of Being. This is what we really yearn for when we desire a closer relationship with God.
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In this episode I deal with one of the biggest issues that Christians face when it comes to other faith traditions in the world. Especially when they start to get to know people of other faiths and read their scriptures and other writings of non-Christian religions with an open mind. The question is this: Is Jesus Christ the only way to salvation? Framed another way, “Do you have to believe in Jesus to be saved?” The traditional Christian answer is “Yes.” I say, “Not so fast. Let’s look at what Jesus really says.”
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Silent Night is one of the most beloved carols of the Christmas season.
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin Mother and Child
Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace
It seems to epitomize the essence of Christmas. This hymn conveys the silence, beauty and peace at the heart of Christmas. Christmas celebrates our intuitive awareness of our innate union with God, which I call unitive awareness or nondual awareness. This is represented in the Christ child. The harsh patriarchal judge that is the usual symbol for God gives way to God as an infant, so fender and mild. The Tao te Ching uses this image for the Tao, comparing the Tao to a newborn child.
God as an infant holy, infant lowly as another Christmas carol says. In the Silent Night, holy night of Christmas, we know that we are one with God in heavenly peace. For a moment we remember that this is our natural state, the Reality that we were born into and born from. This is true of every one of us, not just the Babe of Bethlehem.
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In this episode I explore the symbolic proclamation of nonduality presented in the powerful story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, found in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John.
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In this episode I share the many spiritual influences on my life – Christian and non-Christian - and why I see Jesus as my spiritual teacher. All true spiritual teachers throughout the ages in all the different spiritual traditions are in essence the same Spiritual Teacher. Jesus calls this inner Teacher “the Father.” I call this inner Teacher Christ. I explore how Jesus’s death was intentional, so as to expand his ministry and message beyond the lifespan of a first century carpenter. The meaning of the Resurrection is that the True Teacher does not die, even though his body dies. I also talk about the importance of having a human spiritual teacher to guide us to the One Inner Teacher.
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In this episode I explore death in the context of the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. This is a symbolic story that looks at how three people – Mary, Martha, and Jesus respond to death. It culminates in Jesus statement: I am the resurrection and the life. This statement points to the reality that death is conquered now in the realization that one’s true nature does not die. Resurrection is another term for spiritual awakening.
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In the Gospel of John we have a parable spoken by Jesus about Nondual Reality. He tells us how to enter into union with God, which he calls Life Abundant and Eternal Life. It is the Parable of the Sheepfold. It is undoubtedly drawn from his own experience watching shepherds in Galilee. The sheepfold represents the Kingdom of God, which union with God. He is talking about how to enter into this nondual awareness.
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In this episode I interpret Christmas as a proclamation of nonduality. There is a lot in the Christmas story that speaks of nonduality. I deal briefly with three aspects of the story: the Virgin Birth, the Visit of the Wise Men, and the doctrine of Incarnation.
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Before they were called prophets or Christ (anointed one) or buddha (awakened one) or jnani (knowing one), or arhat (worthy one) they were called seers. The Hebrew Scriptures say that was the term used in the time of the prophet Samuel. It reads, “the prophet of today was formerly called the seer.” Such people were able to see with spiritual eyes what could not be seen with physical eyes.
Jesus called this being “born again.” He said, “unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” This spiritual sight is what I am talking about today. In this episode I am looking at a story found in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John. It is the story of Jesus healing a man born blind. On the surface it is about physical sight and physical healing, but Jesus makes it clear that it is really about spiritual sight and spiritual healing. It is not about being visually impaired but being spiritually impaired.
The first thing this story addresses is psychological barriers to seeing the Kingdom of God, particularly guilt. Seeing the Kingdom of God, of course, is just another term for spiritual awakening or enlightenment or liberation or salvation. Then Jesus deals with is spiritual practices. Jesus then turns to the Pharisees and offers an indictment of traditional religion – what we might call today the institutional church or organized religion.
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In this episode I deal with the most important verse spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of John. Everything so far has led up to this verse, and everything after it is based upon it. It is the pinnacle of the gospel found in the eighth chapter. They are words that Jesus spoken in response to repeated inquiries by people as to who he was, whether he was the Messiah or the Prophet or someone else. Jesus responded, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”
To explore that saying properly I need to put it in context and mention briefly what led up to it in chapters 7 and 8. These chapters center on a discussion of the identity of Jesus, explored in the context of the Feast of Tabernacles.
We find that Jesus is not just talking about himself. He is speaking as the Son of Man, which he called himself a few verses earlier, as representative of all humans. Jesus is teaching about human nature. He is teaching about our nature. What Jesus said of himself, every person can say of themselves. That is because we are not separate individuals. We are one with Christ. Each one of us can say with Jesus, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
This saying of Jesus is equivalent to a Zen koan. A famous koan says, "Show me your original face before you were born." Or “Show me your original face before your mother and father were born." Jesus’ saying “Before Abraham was, I AM” is pointing to the same reality. These koans are meant to direct our attention to what we truly are apart from our physical human manifestations.
In this episode I make this very practical and lead the listener to experience this. What were you before you were you? What were you before you were born? Better yet, before you were conceived? Before your parents were born? What were you before the universe was born? If you know that, then you know what you are. This is what this saying is all about.
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The Lord’s Supper is a symbol of what I call unitive awareness, which Jesus called the Kingdom of God. Also called Holy Communion or the Eucharist, this Christian ritual is a symbolic proclamation of nonduality.
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In chapter five of John’s Gospel, we find a story that teaches us an important truth about nonduality. It is the story of Jesus healing a man at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. It is much more than just a miracle tale. Like all the stories about Jesus in the Gospel of John, this is intended as symbolic. It is proclaiming the ultimate healing that comes about by realizing one’s true Self and waking up to the Truth of Eternal Life.
On the surface this is a physical healing story, but it is really a parable about being made whole in a spiritual sense. I use the phrase “being made whole” in a literal sense. We are not little isolated parts of the whole, tiny psychological entities encased in human bodies of flesh. We are the whole. To wake up to the Kingdom of God is to realize that we are already whole. It is just a matter of recognizing this.
It is also a matter of intention. Jesus asks the man in this story, “Do you want to be made whole?” The intention of the man is the key. The Buddha called it “right intent.” Most people do not really want to be made whole. They have gotten used to the way things are. Most people have no true desire for liberation, freedom, salvation or enlightenment. We prefer bondage and spend our lives escaping from freedom, as Erich Fromm phrased it.
People convince themselves that there is something basically wrong with them. They see a fundamental dis-ease in their souls. Different spiritual traditions use different words and concepts to explain what is thought to be wrong. Hindus call it ignorance or bondage. Buddhists call it suffering. Christians call it sin and original sin – we are born this way, they say. Calvinists call total depravity. Christians see the whole world as fallen and we with it. We have fallen from our primordial paradise into a condition of lostness, sin and death and condemnation. It is a dark view of the human condition.
But Jesus does not accept this diagnosis or prognosis. Jesus sees the man’s innate wholeness and calls him to act upon it. Jesus tells him, “Rise, take up your bed, and walk.” And the man does exactly that. It does not say that Jesus healed him. Jesus simply tells him to get up. All it took was someone to point out to him that he was already whole and tell him to trust it!
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Every chapter of the Gospel of John proclaims nondual reality. Today I am going to deal with one of the greatest chapters in the gospel, but one that does not get the attention it deserves. Chapter 4 has the story of Jesus meeting with a Samaritan woman at the well. It is a powerfully symbolic story.
This story is filled with dualities. It is like a living illustration of the Yin Yang symbol. Here is a man and a woman, a Jew and a Samaritan, two different races and two different religions. They come together at an ancient and deep well which had been dug by Jacob, the forefather of Israel. The well is more than physical water, but what Jesus calls “living water,” which symbolizes the single Source from which all religions draw their inspiration. Their conversation is about how Truth is both deeper than and transcends religious, cultural and racial barriers.
In the story the well is the symbol of nonduality. Jesus says that those who drink from the waters of religious duality will thirst again. They will have to come back again and again through religious rituals and spiritual practices to be refreshed. Jesus offers another way. He says, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
Jesus is talking about a spirituality that comes from within versus external religion. When one has living water welling up from within oneself, one does not need the drinking vessels, which symbolize the externals of religion. True spirituality is within us. Jesus says elsewhere, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” It is not found in outside religious beliefs and practices. Those can be expressions of the inner reality, seeking to express the inexpressible. But dualities can never adequately express nonduality. The Living Water of Nondual awareness is seen by looking within.
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In this episode I look at the most famous verse in the Bible. I interpret John 3:16 as a description of unitive awareness or nondual Reality. The verse is not a call to evangelical Christian conversion but a call to spiritual awakening.
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Nonduality has more to do with spirituality than religion. Nonduality is represented in the mystical branch of every religious tradition, but it tends to be relegated to the periphery of the religion. It is sometimes branded as heresy and persecuted by the religion’s powerbrokers, especially in Western religions. That was the case in Jesus’ day. He was opposed by both the temple priests and the synagogue leaders of his own faith.
Jesus was a disrupter of what we would call today organized religion or the institutional church, especially the type that is in bed with worldly powers. Most western Christians do not see this antireligious theme in the ministry of Jesus and Gospel of John because establishment Christianity is still in bed with economic and political authorities.
In this episode I look at the story of Jesus Cleansing the Temple found in the second chapter of the Gospel of John. In that symbolic act Jesus was not just condemning the corruption of religion. He was attacking transactional religion, whether that be the temple sacrificial system or Christian sacrificial theology. Jesus was symbolically ridding his own religion of such dualistic thinking. In place of temple religion Jesus proclaimed that humans are temples of God. This nondual incarnational spirituality is the gospel of Christ. John 2:13-25
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In this episode I look at the famous story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee and interpret it as an expression of nonduality. It is symbolic of the transformation from seeing this world as duality to seeing it as nonduality. This story is a symbolic reenactment of the creation story with Jesus playing the role of the Source or Word of creation. John 2:1-11
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One day John the Baptist was with two of his disciples, and he saw Jesus walk by. He exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God!” I can imagine Jesus saying under his breath, “Give me a break, John. Will you stop saying these things?!” Anyway John’s two disciples follow Jesus down the road. Jesus turns around and says, “What do you want?” They answer, “Rabbi ,where are you staying?” Jesus responds “Come and see.”
That response “Come and see” is more than just an offhand comment. It is his approach to the spiritual quest, not only in the Gospel of John but in the other gospels as well. When it comes to the question of his identity, Jesus simply says, “Come and see.” This is direct inquiry.
Nonduality talks a lot about self-inquiry – knowing who we are. We certainly have that in the Gospel of John. John the Baptist goes into self-inquiry big time. But here it is more about Christ inquiry or God inquiry. The gospel of nonduality is not about accepting what other people say about God or Jesus. That is secondhand faith. It is about coming and seeing for oneself.
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In this episode I look at a person who is mentioned repeatedly in the first chapter of the Gospel of John: John the Baptist, not to be confused with John the apostle. I call him “the man who did not wake up.” We could call him the unChrist or the unBuddha. He was a popular preacher in his day and even considered a prophet by many including Jesus. But he never saw the Kingdom of God, which was Jesus’ term for nondual awareness.
I see him as an example of a spiritual seeker who never reached the spiritual goal that he sought, which was the Kingdom of God, Jesus’ term for nondual awareness. According to Jesus, John never made into the Kingdom. Jesus says of John “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet even the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
He also is an example of a devoutly religious person of today who approaches religions from a dualistic perspective. John is a like the devout Christian who knows there is something more but has not found it yet. As the prologue says, John understood himself as not the Light but bearing witness to the Light. That is a good description of the traditional dualistic theistic Christian path where the Christ and the Christian are separate. In the Kingdom of God, the two are One.
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In these episodes I am interpreting the Gospel of John as a gospel of nonduality. In this episode we look at John 1:9-14 :
The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own, and his own received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt in us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.
The first thing this passage John 1:9-14 says is that this Word, the Primordial and Eternal Christ, enlightens every human being. It says, “The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.” Another translation says, “The true light was that which enlightens everyone who comes into the world.” In other words it is saying everyone is enlightened! What am extraordinary thing for this apostle to say! The Word has been enlightening people long before the Word became flesh in Jesus.
This statement of John’s Gospel is extraordinary in its universalism and inclusivism. It is also extraordinary in saying that the goal of spiritual enlightenment, which is sought after by so many spiritual pilgrims and seekers, is already reality for every person in the world. We are already enlightened or saved or liberated or awake or whatever term you want to use. Yet this passage says that people did not recognize this.
John uses three different words for recognizing the True Light: knowing, receiving and believing. Life and Light – Enlightenment and Awakening – was present, but people did not know it. They did not receive it. They did not believe it. They were living in spiritual darkness and ignorance. It is the same today.
In this episode we explore the meaning of these concepts and discover what it really means to be born again and to receive Jesus. It is speaking of union with the Divine.
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In this episode I begin a study of the Gospel of John, interpreting it as a proclamation of the message of nonduality. Last time I gave you some background information on the gospel, and today we are going to get into the text itself.
The Gospel of John begins with the beginning. It repeats the famous words of Genesis 1 “In the beginning ….” But instead of telling a dualistic story of creation, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” it says “In the beginning was the Word….” Instead of a story it has a poem that describes how this present dualistic world came to be, and how it is in reality nondual. Let me read the first few verses for you.
In this episode we will be looking at the opening words of the Gospel in John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
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I have been thinking about going through one of the gospels in the New Testament and showing how it presents Jesus’ message of nonduality. People have been contacting me and asking me to do the same. So I am going to give it a try. I have chosen the Gospel of John because it is the most nondual book in the New Testament. In this episode I give background information on this gospel and explain how and why it came to communicate the nondual teachings of Jesus so faithfully, compared to the other writings of the New Testament.
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A Christian, a Jew, a Muslim and a Hindu wake up in the afterlife.
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I have had listeners contact me when they are at an impasse in the spiritual life, and they ask the question: What can I do? What can I do to experience unitive awareness, to know nondual awareness? What can I do to wake up, to be enlightened or liberated or experience eternal life? In the New Testament the form of this question is normally phrased as: what must I do to be saved or to inherit eternal life or enter the Kingdom of Heaven?
Many have been on the spiritual path for a long time – for years or even decades - without a definitive breakthrough, and they ask, “What can I do?” It is a difficult, if not impossible, to answer such a question, because in the final analysis it is a matter of grace.
But that does not mean there is nothing we can do. In this episode I explore what I call the threefold path if Jesus. He said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
I also share a bit more about my own conversion to Christianity, my life in Evangelicalism, my journey through the Dark Night of the Soul, and my awakening to Unitive Awareness.
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In this episode I explore the oft repeated claim that this world is illusory. That it does not really exist. How does the Indian concept of maya jibe with the Christian belief in the reality and goodness of creation? The truth behind the word maya is not that the world does not exist. It is that it is not what it appears to be.
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In this episode I explore the idea that is advanced by many nondual teachers that the brain does not produce consciousness. They say that consciousness exists separate from the brain. One person compared the brain to a radio receiver that picks up the radio waves of Cosmic Consciousness. They use out-of-body experiences, Near Death Experiences, and past life memories as evidence that consciousness exists independent of body. Many think that when the body dies there is no significant change in consciousness. We continue to exist as we always have, only without a human body.
I disagree. Consciousness is caused by the brain. That is the consensus of medical science, and I have no spiritual reason to challenge it. The human brain along with the central nervous system produces consciousness. Out-of-body experiences, Near Death Experiences, and past life memories are simply the brain at work producing experiences. They say nothing about the independence of consciousness from the body.
The real questions that should be asked is what is the nature and origin of this consciousness that is produced by the human brain - and which is produced in other living creatures as well? Consciousness seems to be a characteristic of matter. As small as you can get into the microscopic world, you would find evidence of consciousness. Probably also at the atomic and subatomic level. I do not pretend of understand quantum physics, but it seems to me that the randomness and unpredictability at that level is an expression of consciousness. Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena can change the result. That seems to imply consciousness even at that level, which may be where all consciousness originates from.
Rudimentary consciousness in the earliest one cell organisms did not appear by magic. It was somehow already present in the matter from which they emerged. To me that indicates that matter is consciousness. I would go so far as to say that the universe is conscious or that it is consciousness.
Consciousness is the essence of existence. That consciousness is what we fundamentally are. We are consciousness expressing itself through a human organism. It is the nature of Reality to be conscious, and the universe evolves forms of life to produce that consciousness. That is what our human bodies are. They are consciousness producing organisms, which evolved self-consciousness-producing organs called brains.
It is likely that consciousness is expressed in a nearly infinite number of ways in this universe beyond life on earth. Together it is one infinite consciousness. That infinite consciousness is our essential nature. As the Upanishads say, “That thou Art.” We are one with and identical to that Consciousness. This consciousness is Unitive Awareness, or nondual awareness, or Cosmic Consciousness.
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In this episode I explore the effect that nondual awareness has on depression and other emotional and psychological problems.
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Jesus tells us how to enter into Unitive Awareness, which he called the Kingdom of God. He was a teacher of Nondual Reality and taught how to enter into what other spiritual traditions call Enlightenment, Liberation or Spiritual Awakening. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Jesus is pointing us to the door.
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This episode explore how to sustain the sense of inner peace in nondual awareness, and how to express that inner peace in peacemaking in the world.
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In recording these episodes I try to communicate Unitive Awareness. It is not easy. Not only does language seem inadequate to the task of communicating this indescribable reality, but even the process of communication has pitfalls. I have been noticing recently how important it is to pay attention to who is doing the speaking and who is doing the listening. Which “I” is speaking and which “you” is being addressed.
As I have said, there are two selves, what Thomas Merton has called True Self and the false self. There is the little human self – the individual personality. Then there is the selfless Self, Universal Being, the One that includes all others, including the little self. Human language is the domain of the little self and is by nature dualistic, and hence the difficulty. Yet language is the only means that the Universal Self has to communicate, if this Self wants to use words. The Universal Self is in fact communicating wordlessly all the time through everything in the universe. It does not need words, but to communicate to humans through humans it has to humble itself to use words.
It makes me think of that passage in Philippians where the apostle Paul says that in Jesus the Divine Christ emptied himself and humbled himself, taking the form of a servant. For communication of Unitive Awareness to take place through words, it must be the Divine Christ, the Universal Self speaking and not the individual human self. Not only that, but the Universal Self needs to speak TO the Universal Self in those who are listening.
Communication involves a speaker and a listener. It has to be the right speaker and the right listener. Self speaks to Self. Spirit speaks to Spirit. Christ in me speaks to Christ in you. God in me speaks to God in you. God is speaking to God’s Self. You and I as individual egos are in the background while Deep calls to Deep, as the psalm says, encouraging Being to be aware as a human being.
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In this episode I explore the relationship between Nondual God and Consciousness.
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In this episode I explore the two selves – the True Self and the false self. I talk about a strategy to draw attention away from the little self and thereby live out of the Big Self, using the idea of unfriending on Facebook. In the background you will also hear a guest appearance by my cat Percy, as he meows for attention and plays with a squeaking toy, thereby impersonating the false self.
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In this episode I explore how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity points to nondual Reality and can usher us into unitive awareness.
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The doctrine of salvation by grace through faith is well known in Christian circles. But the principle’s real power is found when it is applied, not to doctrines but to Unitive awareness or Nondual Awareness. The Protestant principle is true after all, but applied to Reality and not to ideas.
You can call it salvation or eternal life. Other spiritual traditions call it enlightenment or awakening. The Christ called it the Kingdom of God. The Buddha called it nirvana. Zen calls it satori. Here I am calling it liberation, which is a term used in both the East and the West.
Salvation or liberation is awakening to our essential unity with Nondual Reality. This Liberation is by grace through faith. Liberation is by grace. That means that there is nothing that we can do to be liberated. There is nothing we can do to facilitate spiritual awakening. It is by faith, which is spiritually seeing what is physically invisible. Faith is trusting spiritual sight. All of us have it.
It is a free gift to all. It is just a matter of recognizing it, and using it and trusting it. Instead we tend to ignore it. That is why the ordinary human state is called ignorance as well as blindness. What all spiritual seekers hope for – spiritual liberation, awakening, enlightenment, which is a word which is about seeing the light – is right before our eyes. All we need to do is open our spiritual eyes and trust what we see. That is liberation by grace through faith.
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You are not who you think you are. You are not WHAT you think you are. French Christian philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin famously said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Even that does not quite communicate it. It makes it sounds like there are a lot of little spiritual beings having human experiences.
There is only one Being, what Christian philosopher Paul Tillich called Being Itself or the Ground of Being. Another word for this is Spirit, and that is what we are. I would phrase it this way: We are not humans having a spiritual experience. We are Spirit having human experiences. This Spirit is that within which all experiences occur. All is One. We are One expressed in what appears to be many. We are Being appearing as human beings.
Reality is One. I call that One Reality God. The problem with using the word “God” is that people mean very different things when they say that word. I am not using it as a traditional theist would use it. For that reason perhaps I should not use the word at all. But this is my religious vocabulary. If I can’t call Ultimate Reality God, then what use is the word God?
The trick is trying to communicate this Reality, which seems to be nearly impossible to do. That is why the Tao Te Ching says, “He who speaks does not know, and he who knows does not speak.” And yet I speak. It is what I do. I am a preacher, and as the Scripture says, “How will they hear unless someone tells them?” So I speak. This episode is my attempt to express the inexpressible.
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Many Christians do not investigate – or even know about - the possibility of spiritual awakening because they do not hear about it from the pulpit or see examples of it in the Christian Bible. So they settle for a second-hand faith of believing in things. But the truth is that there are biblical examples hiding in plain sight. One of them is the Old Testament character of Job.
Job is an Old Testament Buddha whose account of spiritual awakening is recorded in the Book of Job. The events that lead to both the Buddha’s and Job’s awakenings are similar, and I explain how. In this episode I investigate the age-old problem of suffering or problem of pain and see how it can act like a Zen koan to push us beyond theology and traditional religion into what is called unitive awareness or nondual awareness.
In connection with this episode, I am offering my 2017 book Thank God for Atheists free for a limited time. From August 29 to September 2, 2020, you can download a free copy of the kindle edition of this book from Amazon. You can do a search for the title or my name or use this link:
https://www.amazon.com/Thank-God-Atheists-Christians-Atheism-ebook/dp/B07116XX9X/
If you happen to be part of the Kindle Unlimited program you can borrow this and any of my books at any time.
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In this episode I interpret Lewis Carroll’s enigmatic 1876 poem “The Hunting of the Snark” as an allegory of the spiritual life. In particular I see it as portraying the spiritual practice known as self-inquiry.
If you are interested in reading the poem, here is an online version of it from the Poetry Foundation:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43909/the-hunting-of-the-snark
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This is an experiential episode where I take the listener through the process of seeing God – experiencing the true nondual of ourselves and the universe – as seen in our own backyards.
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This episode explores how aging is related to the spiritual life. In fact aging helps us in spirituality. It is an aid to what we call spiritual awakening or enlightenment, what Christians call salvation, the Kingdom of God or eternal life. We can see the value of aging in the four classical Indian stages of life known as ashramas. The aging process is about shedding the small self with all its attachments and identifying with the Divine Self. It is about dying to self, dying before we die so physical death does not catch us unprepared.
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Today I am going to talk about Revelation and its relation to Nonduality. By the word Revelation, I mean the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian bible. But it is also related to the theological concept of Revelation, meaning that God reveals God’s self to us. The Greek word for revelation, found in the first sentence of the Book of Revelation literally unveiling or uncovering, which is exactly what spiritual awakening is.
Spiritual awakening is an unveiling of what is and has always been. It is simply waking up, having our eyes open to the Reality that has been before our eyes all the time. As Jesus was so fond of saying, “Those who have eyes to see let them see. Those with ears to hear, let them hear.” A veil is taken off our eyes. Reality is uncovered so that we can see what has always been true.
That is what the theological doctrine called revelation, and the New Testament book of Revelation, is about. It is not bestowing some new and secret knowledge to a spiritual elite. It is about uncovering what has always been apparent and visible for all those with eyes to see since the beginning of creation.
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Recently I received two comments from listeners about my episode on Nondual Meditation. One was from a listener from Canada by email. The other was in an online interview with Corey Farr who has a podcast entitled, “A Christian Reads the Tao te Ching,” which is an excellent podcast by the way. I will post a link to it. In addition to talking about my Christian version of the Tao Te Ching, Corey wanted to talk about meditation and referred that episode about nondual Meditation.
So I went back and listened to what I said, which is something I never do after I post an episode. Listening to it reminded me how uncomfortable I was doing that episode. I looked uncomfortable on video and sounded uncomfortable. I was having a difficult time explaining my experience and practice of meditation in words. Nevertheless the episode seems to have resonated with some people.
So today I want to continue that discussion. Today I want to describe, as well as I can, nondual awareness. I am calling it Christian nondual awareness, because I am a Christian. I experience Reality as nondual and I express this in Christian language. I want to not just talk about it but point you to it.
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Many Christians are attracted to the truth of nonduality. It resonates as true at a deep spiritual level. Deep speaks to deep, as the psalmist says. But they are wary because it does not seem to fit with what the Bible says. Scripture has a powerful hold on Christians, and we hesitate to stray too far from its authority for fear of drifting away from the “faith once for all delivered to the saints” as the Letter of Jude puts it.
What most Christians do not realize is that the books that we have in our Bibles are just a fraction of the many gospels, letters, apocalypses and other Christian writings that were written in the first and second centuries, all claiming to be of apostolic origin. First and second century Christianity was very diverse and used writings that we would today call nondualistic.
The earliest of these is the Gospel of Thomas. The Gospel of Thomas is as old as any of the gospels in our New Testament. Many scholars believe it is earlier than Matthew, Luke or John, and possibly older than Mark’s gospel. It is collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, reportedly remembered and recorded by the apostle Thomas, called the Twin.
It is likely that the Gospel of Thomas includes authentic sayings of Jesus that are not found in our traditional four gospels. This episode explores many of those “lost sayings.”
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In this episode podcaster Corey Farr interviews Marshall Davis on his podcast “A Christian Reads the Tao Te Ching.” Corey interviews me about my book The Tao of Christ: A Christian Version of the Tao Te Ching. He also asks questions about nonduality and specifically my podcast episode on Nondual Meditation. So we get into nonduality quite a bit. So here it is. I hope you enjoy it. You can find the original recording at Corey’s website at CoreyFarr.com
https://www.coreyfarr.com/
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In this episode I explore an alternative to the typical self-inquiry that is standard fare in nondualism. Meditation upon Nature - the natural envoronment and our connection to it - can be a more direct path to spiritual awakening.
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When it comes to Christian nonduality, one of the issues that is often raised by both inquirers and critics is its approach to the Bible. The nondual attitude toward Scripture is different than the traditional reverence that Christians have for the Bible.
In traditional Christianity, Scripture serves as the foundation for everything that a Christian believes and does. When Christians want to know what is true and what is not, they look to the Bible. Christians use words like authoritative and inspired to describe the Bible. Evangelicals and fundamentalists prefer stronger words like inerrant and infallible.
Nonduality is not about scripture. It is not about submitting to any religious authority – be it a book or clergy or a church or a creed. It is not about doctrine or ecclesiastical structure, and that is a problem for many Christians. Nonduality is about direct awareness. Nothing is taken on faith. Truth is discovered by direct investigation. Nondual Reality is not mediated through a book or words or ideas. It is apprehended directly.
In this episode I explore the differences between the two approaches.
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It would be tempting to answer this question using concepts, but of course nonduality is not about concepts or ideas. It is about direct experience. So I will refer the question back to you my listeners and ask you to see for yourself.
One of the standard tecniques in nonduality is direct inquiry into who or what we are. We look for a separate personal self with a name and a history, and discover to our surprise that such a being does not exist. The self or ego is just an idea tacked onto experience. It does not exist outside of our imagination. We discover that we are not the personal self that we thought we were. There is no experiencer, only experiencing.
In this episode I use the same type of inquiry to look at who or what God is. We examine the traditional places that God is said to dwell. Then we look at the relationship between the personal self and the Personal God.
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In this episode I explore how we can engage in political and social activism as an expression of nonduality.
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In this episode I explore the awareness of our unity – in fact our identity – with all life and all existence. This is manifested in most people as an affinity or love for Nature. Many people feel more in touch with God in Nature than they do in church. This is because we intuitively sense our primal connection to the creation. This consciousness is attested to in the Christian Scriptures and more importantly in our direct experience. This is cosmic consciousness. We are one with the cosmos, which is one with the God of the cosmos, which the Bible says is “over all and through all and in all.” This is what we are. We cannot die. That is eternal life.
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In this episode I explore the teaching of Jesus and the psalms, also found in the Upanishads, that the spiritual essence of humans is identical to the spiritual essence of the Universe. There is one essence of everything in the universe and that is divine.
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There are examples of nondual spiritual awakening throughout the Bible. It is just that they are not usually identified as such or taught as such. One such example is the story commonly referred to as Jacob’s Ladder. Today I will look at that story in combination with another story from Jacob’s life that happens a number of years later - the story of Jacob wrestling with God. We might call that Part 2 of his awakening. Together they tell how Jacob woke up to the nondual nature of reality, who God really is and who he really was.
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In ths episode I explore the difference between traditional meditation, Christian meditation, and nondual meditation.
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In this episode I explain how the nondual message of Jesus became the institutional religion that we know today as Christianity, and how the original message of Jesus can be recovered in our lives. I also explain why I describe myself as as a nondual Christian or a Christian nondualist.
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One reason why Christians do not pursue the spiritual goal of what is called enlightenment, spiritual awakening or liberation is the lack of role models in the Bible. Buddhists pursue Enlightenment because that was the Buddha’s experience, and he is an example for others. That is the main focus of the early Buddhist scriptures. The same is true of Hindus, with the example of sannyasi, sadhus and yogis who practiced the disciplines of asceticism and meditation. The Hindu scriptures, especially the Upanishads, echo this focus of Hinduism.
But when we come to the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, commonly referred to as the Old and New Testaments, there appears to be a lack of such spiritual examples of enlightenment and spiritual awakening. But they are there, hiding in plain sight. It is just that they have been interpreted in the light of later Jewish and Christian tradition. Nondual awareness is the root of all spiritual traditions, as Aldous Huxley made clear in his book The Perennial Philosophy.
In a previous episode I talked about the awakening experience of Jesus, which happened at his baptism in the Jordan River. But there are many more examples in the Bible. It occurred to me that I should talk about a few of those. In this episode I am going to talk about the spiritual liberation of Moses. It is found in the story of Moses and the Burning Bush.
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This episode is going to be very practical. I am going to point directly to what you really are. There are three steps I am going to take you through. In reality there is only one step – just seeing. The first two are preliminary steps to the third step, which is the only one that counts. Kind of like when a long jumper runs up to the approach. Only the final takeoff counts. The first step is to look carefully at our physical nature. The second is to look at our psychological nature. The third is to look at our spiritual nature.
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Christ is within you. Christ is not sitting on a golden throne next to his Heavenly Father in some distant heaven where he rules over the world. This traditional language of Christian theology is true in a spiritual sense but not literally. Heaven is not in the sky or outer space. The ancient geography of the heavens describes the inner landscape of the soul.
Christ is within. That idea is regularly voiced in popular Christianity, especially the evangelical variety. Evangelicals talk about inviting Christ into our hearts, and it is assumed that Christ accepts the invitation. We find this idea of an inner Christ confirmed in the New Testament. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit points to the same reality. It is commonly understood by Christians that the Spirit of God dwells within us.
It is a well-established doctrine of Christianity that God – as Christ or the Holy Spirit or both – dwells within us. So I am not proposing something foreign to Christianity when I refer to the Christ Within. But my awareness of Christ within is certainly very different than what I hear in popular Christianity.
The Christ I hear commonly preached sounds like an imaginary Friend. That would fit right into the traditional theistic conception of God, who is likewise an imaginary character. Freud correctly observed that the traditional theistic deity is an illusory Father figure projected unto the backdrop of the universe. We create this God in our own image to fulfill our need for a Divine Parent, who will protect us, tell us what to do and love us.
That pop God is make-believe. Nothing more than an oversized mascot for our manmade religion. That type of Christ is nothing more than a glorified BFF whom we invite into your hearts for a sleepover. The Christ I know is not anyone’s buddy. That is a theological fabrication that has nothing to do with Reality.
These words - like Christ and the Holy Spirit and God and a thousand others - are pointers that direct us to the inner Reality of our lives that is very real, which more real than we are. The Christ Within is our Innermost Reality.
Buddhists talk about the Buddha Nature. We Christians could similarly talk about the Christ Nature, but it is easier just to talk about the Christ. They are the same thing, just using the vocabulary of different religious traditions.
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Jesus could not stomach religious people who self-righteously judged others. He called them hypocrites. The word used in the Gospels is the Greek word hypokrites, which is transliterated directly into the English language as hypocrite. The word refers to “an actor” or “a stage player” in Greek theatre. The Greek word is a compound noun made up of two smaller Greek words, which literally translate as “an interpreter from underneath.”
That is a reference to actors in ancient Greek theater who wore large masks to portray the character they were playing. They interpreted the story from underneath their masks. The Latin equivalent is persona, which means literally to “sound through” also referring to an actor speaking through a mask used on the Roman stage.
Jesus’ condemnation of hypocrisy is much more fundamental to his message then just exposing religious people for being two-faced. Hypocrisy is what we might call the original sin, which is why Jesus stressed it so much. The original sin of the human race is not being our real selves. Covering ourselves up and hiding from God, which is exactly what Adam and Eve did in the Genesis story after eating of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – the Tree of Duality.
All of us are actors. We are actors unaware that we are actors, which makes the deception doubly hard to uncover. We play a role and hide our true identity from others and ourselves. We call it the ego or a personality, which comes from that Latin word persona, meaning actor. In spiritual lingo what I am describing is usually described as the difference between our two selves – our false self, often called the ego, or in my example today “the actor,” and our True Self, which is what we really are underneath all the masks and roles we play.
The spiritual life is about recognizing that we are not the roles we play. It is to turn our attention 180 degrees and lift the mask to glimpse our True Selves. When we do we are troubled at the emptiness and yet amazed at the fullness. As Jesus says in the opening verse of the Gospel of Thomas, “Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."
It is indeed troubling to see that we are not who we thought we were. To see that what we thought we were is nothing more than a mask, a role that we have written for ourselves, or have allowed the world to write for us and which we play unwittingly. What we really are astonishes us. We see that beneath all the masks that all of us play we are nothing – literally no thing. We are the one Player playing all the roles. The World Soul. The one we call God who rules over all.
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Sin is duality. Nonduality is salvation. Forgiveness is nondual awareness. That in ten words is what I talk about in this episode. The only sin is not looking at who we really are – and who God really is - and not believing what we see. It is being too blind to see, as Jesus told the Pharisees. That is the original sin. The only solution to this sin is to open our eyes. It is so easy. Even a child can see it. In fact only when we see like a little child can we do it. Jesus said that children were of the kingdom and we have to become like children to enter the Kingdom.
Then we see reality, we experience complete forgiveness. Nonduality solves the problem of sin and forgiveness. Sin is failing to see the unconditional acceptance of all that is. And when we see this, the burden of sin and guilt falls away. All is forgiven because that is who God is and who we are. We can forgive as we are forgiven – as Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer - because forgiveness is what we are.
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Nonduality is Reality. That was the insight of Jesus and the earliest Christian message of the Kingdom of God. Nonduality is the truth at the core of all great spiritual traditions of the world. But if nonduality is reality, then where did duality come from? If all is One, how did two come about. How did we find ourselves in this seemingly dualistic world?
Every religious tradition has its own origin myths to explain this. The Tao Te Ching says simply, “The Tao begot one. One begot two. Two begot three. And three begot the ten thousand things.” That fits into nondualism very well. But what about the Judeo-Christian scriptures? Is there anything in the Genesis creation stories which explains the origin of this dualistic world that we seem to find ourselves in?
Yes, indeed! When we read the biblical creation accounts we find the origin of duality explained very well, for those with eyes to see. In this episode I explore the biblical stories of creation, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life. I explain how they tell of story of the origin of duality.
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The oldest Christian message is Christ Consciousness. One of the oldest sayings in the New Testament is found in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, but Paul did not write it. It is much older. It is from an early Christian hymns which Paul was quoting in Philippians 2. It reads:
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.
But emptied Himself, and took the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God also highly exalted him, and gave him the name which is above every name.
In another of his letters Paul comes right out and says that we already have the mind of Christ. It is just a matter of recognizing it. He writes: “The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.”
We have the mind of Christ, and Christian spiritual practice is recognizing this mind and allowing it to come to the forefront. Getting out of the way and allowing the Mind of Christ reign. To do this Jesus emptied himself of himself to be full of God, which was his true self. This awareness is what Jesus called the Kingdom of God.
This is the heart of Jesus’ gospel and the earliest Christian message. It is Christ consciousness or God Consciousness. It could be called Kingdom Consciousness. It is unitive awareness or nondual awareness. It is abiding in the mind of Christ, which is the mind of God.
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The original gospel was the one that Jesus proclaimed, which was the Kingdom of God. Today it is alternatively called Christ Consciousness, Kingdom Consciousness, Unitive Awareness, or Nondual Awareness. Then there was the gospel about Jesus created by the apostle Paul and other Christians of the early decades and centuries after Christ. In this episode I explore how the Church came to abandon Jesus’ original message and the differences between the two gospels.
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In this episode I explore the historical development, mythology and meaning of Satan from a nondual perspective. For traditional Christians the devil is real – a fallen angel. He is epitome of evil, who oversees a vast hoard of demons or evil spirits who are just waiting to possess the hapless person who is careless with his soul.
When viewed from a nondual perspective the figure of Satan points to something much closer to home. He is the human ego. As Walt Kelly famously said in his Pogo comic strip: We have met the enemy and he is us. The devil is our self. So we say with Jesus, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” When the ego/self/devil is pushed to the background then what we truly are comes to the foreground.
What comes to the foreground is a vast and limitless Eternal. This Spacious Presence is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and Christ in us, as the apostle Paul said. God is not out there somewhere. The Kingdom of Heaven is not up there. It is here. As Jesus said, The Kingdom of God is within you.
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In this episode I explore the symbol of the river as a description of nondual awareness as seen from a human perspective. Jesus used this metaphor to point to what he called the Kingdom of God or Eternal Life.
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About a month ago I got an email from a listener in British Columbia, Canada. He gave me permission to quote it, so I will and then address the issue he raises. He writes in part:
I have a question about the nondual conception of God. I find this view compelling, but wonder if a nondual conception of God leaves us with this sort of ineffable God about which we can say nothing. Concepts like loving and caring are dualistic concepts, and yet it seems that even Christians in the mystical / contemplative / nondual traditions want to refer to God as loving, or as love itself. Are those compatible views, to see God as a kind of nondual Oneness, and to view God as loving? Or does a person who takes the nondual view need to jettison the idea of love being applicable to God?
In this episode I will answer this question and address the topic of love seen from a nondual perspective.
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In this episode I explore one of the most famous sayings of Jesus, and one of his clearest teachings on the self and nonduality. It is found in all four gospels, which is an extremely rare occurrence. Here it is in four slightly different forms:
Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will find it.
Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life will keep it for eternal life.
Here is the longest form of it:
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
In all of these sayings Jesus is talking about moving from identifying with one’s temporary human self and finding one’s identity in the eternal or true Self.
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The Kingdom of God, also called unitive awareness or nondual awareness, is like a treasure that is discovered. That is the way that Jesus described it in two stories, known as the parable of the Treasure in the Field and the parable of the Pearl of Great Price. Some people search for the treasure. For them life is a treasure hunt. Others simply stumble across it.
Some spiritual teachers downplay or disparage searching. It is often said that there is nothing that one can do to be awakened or enlightened. In Christian circles it is likewise said that there is nothing you can do to be saved. That it is all a matter of grace. This is true. Yet people search. We can’t help it. And it seems that many of those who find went through a period of searching.
Jesus encouraged spiritual seeking. He said, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Some people are spiritual seekers. The search consumes their lives. Either way – seeking or not – the truth is the same. In the end we see that the searching is not what did it. There is nothing we can do to become what we already are or to get what we already have. Searching is the process that many people go through to realize that searching is unnecessary.
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According to the earliest account of Jesus’ ministry, he engaged in two major activities. One was the preaching of the Kingdom of God. The other activity that dominates Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Mark is casting out evil spirits.
That also is a communication of nondual awareness, although a much more dramatic communication of it than simple teaching. It is analogous to the physical and sometimes violent techniques used by Zen masters to shock a person into waking up to Reality.
In this episode I explore what demons and evil spirits really represent in the gospel narratives. They are not little spiritual entities wandering the spiritual realm seeking for someone to possess. I show that many of the biblical stories of exorcism are actually examples of people waking up to the Kingdom of God, what I call unitive awareness, the Presence of God, or Christian nonduality.
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One of the most famous stories that Jesus told was the parable of the prodigal son. It is also the most misinterpreted. In this episode today I show how through this story Jesus was talking about what he called the kingdom of God, and which I call unitive awareness or Christian nonduality.
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Jesus was a teacher of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. I call it the Presence of God, Unitive Awareness or Christian nonduality. The primary way he communicated this reality was in stories called parables. In this episode I am look at two of his stories commonly known as the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin. They are about people who lost something, searched for it, and found it.
From most pulpits these are interpreted in a simplistic manner – that they are about us being lost and consequently saved by God. That is a misinterpretation of the story, which began very early in the history of the church. As Jesus intended them these stories are about men and women looking for the Kingdom of God, Enlightenment, or Nondual Awareness. This is what Jesus calls the secret of the Kingdom.
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The greatest obstacle to experiencing God is the idea of God. There is a difference between God and an idea about God. That ought to be obvious, but we rarely pay attention to the difference. Consequently many Christians mistake the theological idea in their heads for God. That idea in your head is not God. It is just an idea, just a word with some feelings connected to it.
In this episode I go beyond “God talk” and point the listener to a direct experience of “God beyond God.” A lot of times nonduality talks about self-inquiry. I am coming at this from the other direction, which is usually easier for those of us coming from a Christian heritage. This is God inquiry. Be aware of God and we become aware of our true self, made in the image of God.
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Did Jesus preach salvation or spiritual awakening? Was his message about how to be forgiven by a Divine Judge for one’s sins through a human sacrifice offered to a holy God? Or did he speak of awakening to the awareness of the Kingdom of God which is present here now? What is it that we need? Redemption or Enlightenment? Or both, or some combination of them? In this episode I compare these two understandings at the core of these two approaches to the spiritual life.
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Jesus of Nazareth was enlightened, in the same sense that the word is used in spiritual circles today. Jesus was awake to the truth of his own nature and the nature of the universe, and he lived out of that awareness. His awakening experience is told in all three canonical gospels in the story known as his baptism. It is much more than the story of Jesus going through a religious rite. It describes his spiritual awakening in symbolic language, analogous to Siddhartha Gautama’s (the Buddha’s) awakening under the Bodhi Tree. In this episode I explore the biblical story, draw parallels to nondual awareness and explore the implications for Christians today.
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One of the most difficult things for a Christian to overcome when experiencing and communicating the reality of nondual awareness is the vocabulary. It is a stumbling block to use the biblical term. Christians are used to the religious vocabulary of the gospels and the apostle Paul and the other biblical writers. But Nonduality is usually expressed in words and concepts drawn from Eastern religious traditions – from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and similar faiths.
When Christians first get a glimpse of the One Reality that is our True Nature, we don’t know how to talk about it using the language of Christianity. Often when we try to express it, we are greeted with puzzled expressions or criticized by fellow Christians, especially in the more conservative churches. . Our Christian sisters and brothers think we have strayed from the faith and drifted into heresy and possibly even losing our salvation.
For those reasons many Christians who have experienced this Reality of who and what we are often jettison their religious heritage. This is not necessary. Unitive Awareness is an integral part of historic Christianity. We can use traditional biblical and Christian terminology to express Unitive Awareness. It is not distorting biblical language or Christianity to do so. In this episode I look at several examples from the gospels but focus mostly on one of the teaching of the apostle Paul about the two selves.
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In this episode I explore the topics of reincarnation, resurrection and heaven from the perspective of unitive awareness. I thought about calling this “A Nondual Guide to the Afterlife.”
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There is a lot of fear in religion. There is unhealthy fear – like fear of hell and punishment. There is also healthy fear, which the proverb says, “is the beginning of wisdom.” This episode is the most personal of any I have made. I share autobiographical stories of three occasions in my life when fear gripped me. Eventually this was seen as fear of the death of the self. This revealed the reality of the no-self. This death of the self and birth of Spirit in awareness is the real meaning of Jesus’ words about being born again, born anew, born of the Spirit.
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The term Enlightenment, when used in a spiritual or religious context, normally refers to the awakening experience of the Buddha and other religious sages of India and the East. It is a common term in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Nondualism. But for most Christians, the word “enlightenment” feels foreign, having nothing to do with the Christian faith and Western religion. But actually both the word and the concept of enlightenment are found in Christianity and even in the Christian scriptures.
In this teaching the term enlightenment is explored, using a verse from Ecclesiastes as a basis: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” I look at the use of the term in the New Testament and the corresponding experience in Jesus and the earliest disciples. I also share my own experience of being aware of the eternity that is at the heart of every human being.
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In my Pandemic Devotion for today I explore the resurrection of Christ. It is not intended to be a doctrine to be believed but an awareness to be realized. The resurrection appearances of Jesus to his apostles were actually awakening experiences, waking them up to Christ’s true nature and our true nature.
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In this Pandemic Devotion I present a different perspective on the Cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus intended this death in Jerusalem to be a dramatic event designed to snap his disciples out of their illusions about who they thought he was and what his Kingdom was. It was meant to reveal his true nature and our true nature.
It is analogous to the function of the koan in Zen Buddhism. Perhaps it is easier on Christian ears to call it a parable rather than a koan, for the historical Jesus would never have heard the term koan. In doing symbolic actions Jesus was drawing upon the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures. Prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel were known to do dramatic symbolic parabolic actions.
Jesus planned for his dramatic – and traumatic - death to be a symbolic action intended to wake people up - his disciples and the people of Israel - to what he called the Kingdom of God. It was meant to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is not an earthly kingdom but the spiritual awareness of the Presence of God here and now.
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The Surgeon General has said, “This is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans' lives.” President Trump said, “We’re going to go through a very rough two weeks.” This coronavirus pandemic has got Americans thinking and talking about death like never before. Coincidentally – or providentially – this is also Holy Week, the hardest and saddest week of the gospel narrative – the week that recalls the events leading up to the death of Jesus.
In my Devotion for a Pandemic today, I explore the role that meditation upon death has played in spirituality - in both Christian and other faith traditions. This is an unprecedented opportunity for us to ponder the nature of death, our human nature, and in what sense – if any – we can be said to survive death.
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In this episode of Devotions for a Pandemic, I look at the fear that is gripping our country in anticipation of a surge of cases in the coming weeks. I compare this to the apocalyptic spirit that was present in the first century during the time of Jesus. Today we are in a better place to comprehend the feelings of the earliest disciples of Jesus as they hid behind closed doors in fear for their lives.
I end the devotion with a reading of W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” which is the inspiration for the title of my devotion. Yeats wrote that poem in 1919 during the great influenza epidemic that infected 500 million people — a quarter of the world's population at the time. It has some marvelous lines that are relevant to our situation today.
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In this episode of Devotions for a Pandemic, I explore one of the most popular passages of scripture being used by preachers at this time: Psalm 91. It includes verses like:
Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler
And from the perilous pestilence.
You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not come near you.
Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
For He shall give His angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
Does this mean that if we have faith in God, we will be protected from this coronavirus pandemic? Some think so. I go through the psalm and see what it has to say to us today.
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In this episode of my series “Devotions for a Pandemic” I look at a biblical story from the Old Testament found in Numbers 16. In this story God causes a plague to sweep through the Hebrew people. Moses and Aaron come up with a plan to stop the pandemic. I believe it has some things to say to us in the midst of our coronavirus pandemic.
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In this fourth episode of my Devotions for a Pandemic series, I look at the phenomenon of Social Distancing and its paralells with the spiritual discipline called Detachment, which I call Spiritual Distancing.
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In this third episode of Devotions for a Pandemic, I expore the questions "Who or What is God?" and "How can we we aware of God?" What is that mysterious dimension of reality that people call the Divine? And - to put it in the context of this COVID-19 pandemic - how can we get in touch with that spiritual dimension of reality that people call God?
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This video is part of the "Devotions for a Pandemic" series. In this episode I explore the opinion, proclaimed by some preachers, that natural disasters like this coronavirus pandemic are the judgment of God on this world and our nation.
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The current coronavirus pandemic is a time when we are separated from the spiritual communities that enrich our lives. This is the first of some devotions to help fill that gap. This particular devotion is on the story of Elijah hearing the still small voice of God in a cave on Mount Horeb, found in First Kings 19.
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This episode explores the common misunderstanding in Christianity that individuals are saved. No person is saved. People can’t be saved. In fact the person – that is the persona, the ego, or the self – has to die in order for salvation to be realized. Salvation is recognizing that our true nature is not our individual selves but that which lays behind all personas – behind the masks we wear and the roles we play.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
A while ago a clergy friend read my book on Christian Nonduality, and then asked me, “Do you really preach this stuff?’ I replied, “Yes, I do. But I do so very carefully.” By that I mean that I preach it from scripture and in a way that people in traditional Christian churches can hear the message.
Today on this podcast I am presenting one of those sermons. This one was preached earlier this month –September 1, 2019 - at the Moultonboro United Methodist Church in Moultonboro NH. The scripture texts that I used were Matthew 4:12-17 and Matthew 13:11-17. In this message I explore what Jesus meant by his proclamation “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The Tao of Christ is a podcast which explores the mystical, intuitive, and contemplative side of Christianity. In particular it explores what has been historically called the unitive life and union with God. I call it Christian nonduality, nondualism, and unitive awareness.
Recently a listener from Vancouver asked if I would address the topic of prayer from the perspective of unitive awareness and Christian nonduality. In this episode I look at how traditional Christian prayer is not incongruous with nonduality but is included within it. I describe my understanding and practice of both contemplative prayer and traditional forms of verbal prayer, as well as the practice of congregational worship.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This episode explores our spiritual connection to the earth as described in the creation stories of Genesis. I look at the creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 and how they speak of the spiritual dimension of our existence. We are the earth conscious of itself. We are the universe conscious of itself. This is what it means to be formed of the earth and made in the image of God.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The Tao of Christ is a podcast which explores the mystical, intuitive, and contemplative side of Christianity. In particular it explores what has been historically called the unitive life and union with God. I call it Christian nonduality, nondualism, and unitive awareness. As a Christian, one issue that is continually raised in conversation is the relationship between Christian doctrine and mysticism. How does nonduality relate to Christian theology? Does traditional Christian doctrine contradict or rule out the type of spirituality that Christian nonduality speaks of? Conservative Christians consider the contemplative or mystical approach to the spiritual life to be heresy. That is because they mistake the mystics’ use of religious language to be theology. It is not theology; it is a description of one’s awareness of God. In this episode I show how traditional Christian theology can be used to express nondual awareness. As an example I discuss the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth and show how it communicates the reality of union with God.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode we look at another passage in the Christian scriptures that speaks of unitive awareness. One of the most powerful and controversial passages in the Bible is found in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John. It is John 10:34-38: Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came — and Scripture cannot be broken — do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This podcast explores the mystical, intuitive, and contemplative side of Christianity. In particular it explores unitive awareness, also called Christian nonduality or nondualism, the unitive life and union with God. In this episode I lead the listener into an experience of unitive awareness.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I explore what Jesus meant by the phrase "born again." It is not what Evangelical Christianity assumes it means. The phrase has nothing to do with religion, believing doctrines, or a conversion experience. I examine the famous scripture passage in the third chapter of the Gospel of John where Jesus has a discussion with the Jewish religious teacher, Nicodemus, about what it means to be born again, born anew, born from above or born of the Spirit. I show that Jesus was talking about a spiritual awakening that I call unitive awareness.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I continue my teaching on Christian nonduality. This time I am looking at the apocalyptic passages of scripture, in particular the “Little Apocalypse” of Jesus, also known as the Olivet Discourse, found in the gospels. What Jesus was describing in this dramatic eschatological passage is not a cataclysmic end of history or the physical dissolution of the cosmos. Jesus is describing a spiritual awakening to the true nature of the universe. Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet so much as a visionary and mystic who could see what others do not see. And he invites us to share his vision.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I explore how Christian non-dualism is rooted in the teachings of the Christian scriptures, and in particular how it is taught in the most important verse in the New Testament – Galatians 2:20. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” The “I” the old self, the false self, the illusory self, the ego or persona, is dead. It is not real. Instead Christ – the eternal, immortal Christ is our real Self. The experience of this no-self and union with the inner Christ is rooted in the Cross of Christ. It is incarnated and lived out in our lives in the qualities of faith and love.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I define and explore the meaning of nonduality or non-dualism as perceived from a Christian perspective. Referencing Christian contemplatives like Richard Rohr and Evelyn Underhill, I make the case that non-duality is the core of the Christian faith, going back to the very beginnings of Christianity. It is not theology. It is not philosophy. It is an experiential and intuitive awareness of union with God, Christ, and all there is. I then explore how it is related to Christian theology and my own Christian experience.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
In this conclusion to the story Pilgrim and Truthful travel through Beulah Land and arrive at the River of Life, which has the Tree of Life growing on either side of the river. The pilgrims decide to spend the night on the riverbank before crossing the river in the morning. During the night Pilgrim has a dream/vision/revelation.
When they awake they begin the crossing the river to the Celestial City. The crossing is difficult and the Destination is not what they thought.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
After descending the Mystic Mountains, Pilgrim and Truthful continue on the Way. They meet the Rich Young Ruler from the Bible, who has found a way to keep his riches and follow the Lord. They stop at the home of Family Woman, who with her husband and seven children is an advocate of Family Values. After being serenaded by their children with a rendition of “So Long, Farewell” from the Sound of Music, the two pilgrims continue on their Way.
Soon they meet a faun named Gida, who reminds them of Tumnus from the Chronicles of Narnia. As it turns out he was C.S. Lewis’ inspiration for Tumnus. Gida is one of the goats from Jesus’s parable of the Sheep and the Goats. The two also meet the Centurion, who was praised for his faith by Jesus. He tells them of his meeting with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Finally they meet Evangelical, a friend of Pilgrim’s from the Shadowlands.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
After escaping from the Dark Knight’s dungeon, Pilgrim and Truthful continue following the Way to the Celestial City. They come to the foothills of the Mystic Mountains where they meet some shepherds who offer them hospitality. The shepherds take them on a tour of the various parts of the Mystic Mountains.
They show them the Hill of Pride, Mount Fear, the Doors of Perception, Mount Transfiguration and the Lamasery, where they get a brief glimpse of the Dalai Lama. They see Shangri-La, made famous by novelist James Hilton. They see the highest peak of the Mystic Mountains, Mount Advaita, hidden in the clouds. From Inspiration Point they finally get a glimpse of their destination, the Pearly Gates of the Celestial City.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
After leaving the City of Megachurch, Pilgrim and Truthful spend the night in the barn of an elderly couple, who show them Christian hospitality. In the morning they continue on their way and immediately meet the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism (also known as the Brights) coming toward them in a whirlwind. They warn the pilgrims of the folly of their journey and advise them to turn around.
After leaving the horsemen the Way becomes more difficult, and they decide to take a detour where they meet Optimist. They encounter a storm and spend the night in a cabin, which is owned by the Dark Night. The Dark Night throws them into his dungeon where the pilgrims spend many days and nights in despair, doubting the goodness and existence of their Lord. Eventually they escape and continue on their journey.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
In this seventh part Pilgrim leaves the Prosperity Gospel Ministries and soon meets up with a fellow pilgrim named Truthful. Together they continue through the city of Megachurch.
They visit Glassminster Cathedral, where they meet the Reverend Doctor Self-Esteem, the Christian Entertainment Center led by Pastor Showtime, the Market Driven Church pastored by a man in a Hawaiian shirt, and the Miracle Tabernacle, where evangelist Ben Hinny was healing people. Finally they leave the city of Megachurch behind.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is an allegorical pilgrimage through the landscape of 21st century American spirituality.
In this sixth part Pilgrim and Religious meet up with Billy Graham, who is also traveling the Way. Reverend Graham warns them of the dangers of the town they are approaching, and predicts that one of them would die for their faith.
After departing from Billy Graham, Pilgrim and Religious enter the city of Megachurch and come to Prosperity Gospel Ministries. Religious is outraged at what he sees and hears there. In a moment of zeal he overturns the tables of the vendors and is immediately arrested.
Security proceeds to interrogate him, jail him, and put him on trial before Judge Media. Several witnesses are called to testify, including Capitalism, Nationalism, and Racism. Religious is found guilty and immediately executed by stoning. After his death, Pilgrim, who had denied Religious, left Prosperity Gospel Ministries, weeping bitterly.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is an allegorical pilgrimage through the landscape of 21st century American spirituality.
In this fifth chapter Pilgrim joins up with another traveler named Religious, whom he recognizes as his neighbor from the Shadowlands. Together they walk the Way toward the Celestial City. As they walk, they share their journeys with each other. Religious tells of his encounter with Sensual Pleasure, License, Legalist, Bored, and Judgmental.
Pilgrim and Religious then meet Spiritual But Not Religious, who walks with them for a while, until she decides they are not spiritual enough for her. So she takes off by herself with the parting greeting, “Namaste!”
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is an allegorical pilgrimage through the landscape of 21st century American spirituality.
In this fourth chapter Seeker descends the Hill of Difficulty. At the bottom of the hill he meets and does battle with the monster, Apollyon. From there he continues on to the Valley of the Shadow of Death where he walks Occam’s Razor, learns the truth about hell, and has to deal with his own fear of death. From there he enters the Valley of Dry Bones where he meets Calvin and Arminius.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is an allegorical pilgrimage through the landscape of 21st century American spirituality.
In this third chapter Seeker comes to the Cross, where he meets three Shining Ones and takes a new name – Pilgrim. He meets two Sleepers, two Trespassers, as well as two fellow pilgrims who have been on the Way for two thousand years: Sacrament and Tradition.
He climbs the Hill of Difficulty and arrives First Baptist Church. There he is befriended by a fundamentalist family, who show him the Museum of Famous Baptists and the Armory of God. There he is outfitted with the 21st century equivalent of the full armor of God and continues on his way.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is an allegorical pilgrimage through the landscape of 21st century American spirituality.
In Part 2 Seeker comes to the Gate where he meets Sincerity and avoids the sniper Post-Modern. He continues to the Theologians House where he views a portrait of a Pastor and enters the Shrine of the Book. There he is given a tour of the various chapels surrounding the central rotunda. In these chapels are various interpreters of scripture including Inerrant & Infallible, King James Only, Creationist, Feminist, Paraphrase, and many more.
From there he moves on to the Gallery of Christs. Following in the footsteps of J.K. Rowling, who had come before him (and got many ideas for her Harry Potter books), Seeker views an assortment of portraits of Jesus, including Sallman’s Head of Christ, an African Christ, a Revolutionary Christ, a Transgender Christ, and even Ricky Bobby’s Talladega Jesus.
He finishes his tour of the Theologian House by stopping for a moment at the Mathematician Cubicle where he explores the Trinity, and then he proceeds out the door into the garden. There he sees three Apologists and two children named Faith and Works, playing on a teeter-tooter. From the edge of the Garden he glimpses a Cross on a hill in the distance and Seeker quickly takes his leave of Theologian to continue on his way.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Patterned after John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress,” The New Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegorical pilgrimage through the landscape of 21st century American Christianity.
This is not your grandfather’s Pilgrim’s Progress! In this retelling of the beloved allegory, Seeker (who later changes his name to Pilgrim) meets Campus Crusader on his university campus. The evangelist instructs him to begin his journey by entering through a gate illuminated by lamppost, which strangely resembles the one at the boundary of Narnia.
Instead of the Slough of Despond this modern Pilgrim falls into the Bog of Existential Angst, and then stays in the Town of Therapy for a while. Where Vanity Fair used to be, now there is Prosperity Gospel Ministries. Pilgrim visits the City of Megachurch where he meets people who suspiciously resemble Robert Schuller, Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, and Benny Hinn.
Pilgrim visits Theologian’s house and First Baptist Church. He meets famous preachers like Calvin, Arminius and Billy Graham, as well as familiar characters like Apollyon, Judgmental, Bored, and Spiritual but Not Religious.
These are just a few of the adventures that Pilgrim and his companions have on their journey from their home in the Shadowlands (shades of C. S. Lewis) to their Destination beyond the river. This is a romp through contemporary American Christianity that I hope will get you thinking deeply and laughing out loud.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
The New Pilgrim’s Progress is a modern retelling of John Bunyan’s 17th century classic “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is an allegorical pilgrimage through the landscape of 21st century American spirituality.
In this first chapter Seeker decides to leave his home in the Shadowlands. He meets Campus Crusader on his university campus. The evangelist instructs him to begin his journey by entering through a gate illuminated by lamppost, which strangely resembles the one at the boundary of Narnia.
Along the way he meets Tolerant and Intolerant and falls into the Bog of Existential Angst from which he is rescued by Prozac. He meets Psychologist who directs him to the Town of Therapy where he stays for a while before continuing his journey.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
This is the final episode of “Experiencing God Directly: The Way of Christian Nonduality.” It is the epilogue to my 2013 book by the same title. In “The Story of Me,” I give a brief personal account of how a Baptist preacher came to the nondual awareness of God and how I interpret it within the Christian tradition.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
"The wayless way is where the sons of God lose themselves and at the same time find themselves." Meister Eckhart
So far these episodes about Experiencing God Directly have been an attempt to describe the nondual Christian experience of God. In this episode entitled “The Wayless Way,” I go beyond description and point the reader directly to God. I make this as personal as I can and describe my own practice of abiding in God. Section headings are:
God as Wholly Other
God as Eternal One
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
"Emptiness, emptiness, all is emptiness." Book of Eccleciastes
In this episode I explore the teaching of nonduality in the Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament, particularly in the Book of Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom psalms. It is represented in the concept of “emptiness.” It is also present in the New Testament teaching about Christ, especially how God emptied himself in the Incarnation and the Cross of Christ. I explore the nondual concept of afterlife and consciousness after death in the Western tradition.
Chapter sections are “The Emptiness of Christ,” “Eat, Drink, Chop Wood, Carry Water,” and “Don’t Take Your Self Seriously.”
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
"I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you!" - Job
Thank God for atheists! Atheists have taught me more about God than any preacher or seminary professor. They have shown me what God is not, and thereby pointed me toward who God is. I credit the books of the so-called “New Atheists” with helping me identify and reject false gods and thereby redirect me to True God. Especially former Christian preachers who became atheists have deepened my Christian faith by pointing out the weaknesses of traditional understandings of God.
My inquiry into God – like my inquiry into the nature of the self – has led me beyond the human conceptions of God to what Christian philosopher Paul Tillich calls “God beyond God.” The God of religion is nothing more than an idea in the mind. It is a construction of the human mind, a mental image. To worship a mental image of God is just as idolatrous as worshiping a graven image, and it is just as much a violation of the first and second commandments.
The God of most theists is an idol. But God is real. The One God that Christian doctrines, icons, scriptures, and words point to is Ultimately Real. But ideas about God are not. We must not mistake the words used to describe God for God to whom they point. There is an old saying: Do not mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself. We must not mistake doctrine that points to Truth for Truth Itself. Road signs along the spiritual path are not the destination to which they point.
In this chapter I explore those Christian doctrines that point us beyond ideas and bring us into the presence of God. I call them paradoxical pointers – doctrines like the trinity, incarnation, and theodicy – also known as the problem of suffering and evil. When allowed to fulfill their purpose these doctrines bring us into an experience of God. I also explore the ideas of whether True God is personal or impersonal.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
"It is not I who live but Christ who lives in me." - Apostle Paul
In this episode I continue reading from my 2013 book “Experiencing God Directly: The Way of Christian Nonduality.” Chapter 3 Self-Inquiry
Before one can seek God, one must know who it is who seeks God. When one knows oneself, everything else becomes clearer. Discovery of our true nature opens our eyes to the true nature of God and the world.
In this episode of the book “Experiencing God Directly” I explore the differences between the traditional dualistic concept of human nature (derived from Greek philosophy and imported into Christianity) and the holistic concept found in the Christian scriptures and experienced in nondualistic Christianity. Section headings include: “The Cross of Christ as the Door to the Real” and “The Role of Faith.”
Popular highlights:
“The spiritual quest is to realize through direct experience who we really are and who God really is.”
“Humans have mistaken their psyches for their real self, and consequently remade God in their own image. Man’s self pictures God as a supreme Personal Self. Man’s mind imagines God as Divine Intellect. God is seen as Super Man. As Rousseau said, "God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor." God made man as spirit in his own image as Spirit. But man has mistaken himself to be psyche and reimagined God as a Super Psyche. That religious image of God as a Big Self is no more real than the human psyche it was patterned after. It is nothing more than an idol. Consequently most theistic worship is little more than idolatry, the worship of man’s own persona projected upon the fabric of the universe.”
“The way of salvation is the death of the self and the release of the spirit.”
“Spiritual inquiry is the search to discover our real self and the Real God.”
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
"I and the Father are One." - Jesus of Nazareth
In this episode I continue reading from my 2013 book “Experiencing God Directly: The Way of Christian Nonduality.”
Chapter 1 - Jesus as a Proclaimer of Nonduality
Chapter 2 - Unborn Again
We can know God directly. We can have immediate awareness of oneness with God in the present moment. It is not mediated through a church, a religion, a creed or a spiritual path. This is not theological knowledge about God. It is not a religious experience facilitated by a worship service. It is not a spiritual experience elicited by religious disciplines or practices. It is not a revelation of God mediated through Scripture or communicated by spiritual teachers. This is direct unmediated awareness of God.
Jesus called this the Kingdom of God. He experienced it at his baptism, and it was his earliest message. Jesus described it to Nicodemus as being “born of the Spirit.” The apostle Paul referred to it as being “in Christ.” It was Moses’ experience of God as “I AM” at the Burning Bush. It was the experience of Job when he met God in the whirlwind. It produces what the New Testament calls the “fruit of the Spirit” in our lives - qualities like Love, Joy, and Peace. It is “the peace that surpasses all human understanding.”
It is sometimes called nondual awareness. This is just another term for union with God. It is the experience of mystics in the Christian tradition, and it is echoed in other spiritual traditions. It is the Way, the Truth, and the Life that is Jesus Christ. This is the heart of Christianity. And it is available now. All we have to do is wake up to this always present awareness of God.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
In this episode I begin reading from my 2013 book “Experiencing God Directly: The Way of Christian Nonduality.”
We can know God directly. We can have immediate awareness of oneness with God in the present moment. It is not mediated through a church, a religion, a creed or a spiritual path. This is not theological knowledge about God. It is not a religious experience facilitated by a worship service. It is not a spiritual experience elicited by religious disciplines or practices. It is not a revelation of God mediated through Scripture or communicated by spiritual teachers. This is direct unmediated awareness of God.
Jesus called this the Kingdom of God. He experienced it at his baptism, and it was his earliest message. Jesus described it to Nicodemus as being “born of the Spirit.” The apostle Paul referred to it as being “in Christ.” It was Moses’ experience of God as “I AM” at the Burning Bush. It was the experience of Job when he met God in the whirlwind. It produces what the New Testament calls the “fruit of the Spirit” in our lives - qualities like Love, Joy, and Peace. It is “the peace that surpasses all human understanding.”
It is sometimes called nondual awareness. This is just another term for union with God. It is the experience of mystics in the Christian tradition, and it is echoed in other spiritual traditions. It is the Way, the Truth, and the Life that is Jesus Christ. This is the heart of Christianity. And it is available now. All we have to do is wake up to this always present awareness of God.
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
Chapters 47-81 of the Tao Te Ching
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Chapters 22-46 of the Tao Te Ching
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This is the Tao of Christ, and I am Marshall Davis. This is a place for Christians who suspect that spiritual truth is bigger than the forms of Christianity that dominate the American religious landscape. This is also a place for non-Christians to hear a different take on Christianity.
God has been speaking since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, long before there were human beings, written scriptures and religious traditions. In this podcast I will be exploring that wider revelation. I will be interpreting books like the Chinese classic the Tao te Ching from a Christian perspective.
I will explore the mystical roots of Christianity, which Jesus called the Kingdom of God, which church historian Evelyn Underhill called the Unitive Life and which I refer to as nonduality or union with God. Along the way we will also listen to the critique of religion by atheists and humanists. In their own way these champions of reason and science are spiritual teachers also.
The Chinese word Tao means the Way, which is how Jesus referred to himself, saying, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” It is what the Gospel of John calls the Logos, or the Word, when he writes: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” According to the Book of Acts the earliest Christians called their spiritual path simply “the Way.” This podcast is about this ancient and primordial Way. This is the Tao of Christ.
This episode includes an introduction to the podcast and chapters 1-21 of my book "The Tao of Christ: A Christian Version of the Tao of Christ."
View Marshall's books here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU
En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.