Walking the Interspiritual Path
I once heard Matthew Fox say that we are all mystics at heart. It seems that all of life is a mystery, the seeds of grace constantly being sown into all existence, some flourishing, dying for lack of attention. Wise guides have urged spiritual seekers to go deeply into one spiritual path rather than move restlessly from path to path in a search for quick and easy trans-formation. It’s good advice. If we are to deeply experience unity with All That Is, concentration is needed to break through thickets of distraction.
On the other hand, we live in a time of such planetary interconnection that our cultures are becoming interwoven. In most parts of the world there is little that we eat, grow, wear or make that has not been literally touched by people around the planet. The outcome is an amalgam—a fusion--of our material lives and also our emotional and spiritual lives.
We are moving from an Age of Exclusiveness into an Age of Integration. Integration requires depth and breadth. It demands focus and discipline, surrender and patient attendance to multiple channels simultaneously. We live in a time that requires elastic hearts and minds.
Because I was drawn to the realm of multiple pathways to God, I entered into interfaith studies. I felt that following a single path risks losing consciousness—risks failing to note the wonderfully varied ways people discover the sacred nature of life. In the words of Wayne Teasdale, “a person is not really fully educated, or indeed ‘religious’ unless they are intimately aware of more than their own faith and ways of prayer.”[1] Surely the Divine is vast enough to encompass all paths.
Ken Wilber, a Buddhist monk, remarks
. . . just as the human body grows hair and the human mind universally grows ideas, so the human spirit universally grows intuition of the Divine. And thus intuitions and insight form the core of the world’s great spiritual or wisdom traditions. And again, although the surface structures are quite different, their deep structures are quite similar, often identical. Thus it’s mostly the deep structures of the human encounter with the Divine that the perennial philosophy is interested in. Because when you can find a truth that the Hindus and Christians and Buddhists and Taoists and Sufis all agree on, then you have probably found something that is profoundly important, something that tells you about universal truths and ultimate meanings, something that touches the very core of the human condition.[2]
Once ordained by the Interfaith Temple of New York in 2008 through the New Seminary, I began a deeper pursuit of what it really means to be an ordained interfaith minister. By 2010 I felt ready to seek co-ordination in the Universal Order of Interfaith. I had come to understand that for me being ordained means publically proclaiming my commitment to serve anyone who comes to me wishing to embrace life at soul level. And, it is a commitment to engage in a spiritual practice of my own. It is a commitment to listen for wisdom, to live a life that is moved by Spirit and encourages and inspires others on their life journeys. Ordination into the Universal Order of Interfaith was a commitment to follow the disciplines of the mystic heart that are common to all spiritual paths. The principles of interspirituality laid out by Wayne Teasdale in The Mystic Heart have provided me a measure and guide. His work excites my heart and describes what is truth for me.
The Nine Elements of Interspirituality common to all paths of mystic spirituality that Teasdale identified are:
Exercising Moral and Ethical Responsibility
Living in Solidarity With All Living Beings With a Cosmic Awareness
Sacred Activism Functioning From a Place of Deep Non-violence
Approaching Life with Humility
Looking at the World Through the Eyes of Mature Self Knowledge
Adopting a Daily Spiritual Practice
Living Simply
Serving Others Selflessly with Compassion
Willingly Sharing a Prophetic Voice
The elements he describes are paths to cultivating and manifesting a mystical heart. These are born out of profound transformative experience; they evolve from a constant kindling of the heart. The paths can be viewed through a lens of three questions:
What is the character of a person with a mystic heart?
What are the roots from which the mystic draws wisdom?
What is the way of life that flows out of the mystic’s experience?
What is the character of a person with a mystic heart?
Every faith path inspires its seekers to exercise moral and ethical responsibility. What is the common experience? In a complex world of greed, inequality and scarcity, ethical choices are easily blurred. Following a spiritual path kindles and supports a capacity to be response-able. With the infilling of divine light through deep spiritual experience the seeker, it seems, reverberates with a response, an inclination to express the goodness he or she has experienced.
Comprehending the interconnections of Divine Unity opens the heart to loving life, to all living beings, inspiring us to function from a place of deep nonviolence, ever on alert to doing no harm, yes, but more than this, ever on alert to seek out and serve these interconnections actively. How is obedience to active non-violence different than simply not being violent? Here is an example. People enjoying the unacknowledged privileges our society grants to white people can avoid the violence of active racism as long as they remain in an unexamined bubble of homogeneity. Sacred activism with deep non-violence is when one walks in the shoes of others, willing to question and take action when encountering evidence of inequality. In the face of discomfort and conflict, truly deep nonviolence is a very conscious and disciplined posture that finds both its inspiration and its support from a spiritual practice and ethic of moral responsibility.
The interconnections of life vibrate throughout all of nature thus leading one with a mystic heart to experience a sense of solidarity and identification with all living beings. Glimpsing Oneness or Unity softens the boundaries that separate or isolate people from one another and from the creation as a whole. The belief that human beings possess some sort of unique and superior capacity for feelings and relationship has caused great harm to the Earth. Indigenous spiritual paths particularly share a profound consciousness with all creatures, even with plants, with Mother Earth. Ours is a living planet in which no action is without impact on the whole.
What are the roots from which the mystic draws nourishing wisdom?
A strong root system anchors and nourishes the plant. The roots of mature self-knowledge and humility intertwine leading one with a mystic heart to Look at the world through humble and mature awareness. Listen to the Dalai Lama or Tich Naht Hahn or read their words or watch their faces and we see how they take life much too seriously to take themselves too seriously. Coming to accept one’s limitations frees a person to function unpretentiously. James Finley points out that compassion is learned from times we have failed to have compassion, having to start over again and again and again.
This process of yielding to compassionate love unfolds and deepens over of lifetime of learning that when all is said and done, love is the playing field where we most truly meet ourselves and others as we really are, precious in our collective frailty.[3]
Another root that nourishes wisdom is a daily spiritual practice, simply opening the door and then faithfully standing in the doorway with as little distraction and as much readiness as possible. There are many pathways for the spiritual journey, but a common element of spiritual practice is finding a way to allow resistance to dissipate, to empty oneself, to surrender to the power of love.
The Spanish-born Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi, (1165-1240) has said,
My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Ka’ba of the pilgrim, the tablets of the Torah and the Book of Qur’an. I practice the religion of Love. Whatever way Love’s camel takes, that is my religion and my faith.[4]
What is the way of life that flows out of the mystic’s experience?
Matthew Fox tells the story that when Meister Eckhart was asked “If a person works in a stable and experiences a spiritual breakthrough, what does he then do?” He answered “He returns to work in the stable.”
Living simply means one simply lives in the world, striving to tread lightly on the Earth., striving to live creatively and constructively for the good of all beings, with the same challenges, mistakes and tragedies that all must encounter.
Perhaps the greatest act of service you can perform is the nurturing of your own spiritual path. How we cope with our personal crises can inspire others. Grace is highly attractive. We are drawn to the love, faith and endurance that others display and we seek out people who have triumphed over tragedy because the grace in their energy fields lifts us up.[5]
Choosing a life of selfless service and compassionate action leads to a discovery that opportunities for joy abound. One is reminded of that beautiful question found in the Hebrew Scriptures book of Micah: “. . . and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”
Finally, I believe the last discipline on the list of characteristics and practices held in common among those with a mystic heart is sometime the hardest for the often inward focused spiritual seeker and perhaps truly depends upon being energized and directed by
The Spirit: Speak with a prophetic voice. Whether one experiences a moment of oneness with All That Is through following The Tao or a spiritual teacher or prophet, guru or avatar, the power of that experience will burst a private experience into something interpersonal. Such is the power of the spiritual experience--it opens the heart.
When the heart is supple, it can be “broken open” into a greater capacity to hold our own and the world’s pain: it happens every day. When we hold our suffering in a way that opens us to greater compassion, heartbreak becomes a source of healing, deepening our empathy for others who suffer and extending our ability to reach out to them. This kind of tension-holding can plant the seeds of justice and peace.[6]
All Hearts Can Be Mystic Hearts
Every spiritual path can lead to the heart being broken open. All hearts are capable of being comprehensive, elastic and cosmic in scope. This truth cannot help but change the world if only more and more people find that their spiritual restlessness is a sign that their hearts are being kindled for the good of all beings. May it be so. Amen.
The day will come when, after harnessing the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day for the second time in the history of the world, humankind will have discovered fire.
Teilhard de Chardin
[1] The Mystic Heart, Wayne Teasdale
[2] Grit and Grace, Ken Wilbur
[3] James Finley, The Contemplative Heart
[4] Philip Novak, The World’s Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World’s Religions and Richard Hooper, Hymns to the Beloved: The Poetry, Prayers and Wisdom of the World’s Great Mystics
[5] Caroline Myss, Invisible Acts of Power
[6] Parker Palmer, Healing the Heart of Democracy