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The Translucent Revolution by Arjuna Ardagh In a moment of radical awakening, you have a head-on collision with the present moment. Even though it may still drive, the vehicle of past and future is irreparably damaged. Translucent religion is now-based; it begins in and takes its expression from what is discovered in this present moment, outside thinking. Although translucent spirituality may bear some superficial resemblances to Iago institutions, it is actually an antidote to fundamentalism. It replaces “ism” with “is-ness,” with devotion to what is real. Rather than looking to the future for salvation, we look to now, for what we might have overlooked. Rather than looking to dogma or dusty books for the truth, we learn to trust our own intuitive response to this moment and know that it is more infused with wisdom than any text. The Living Enrichment Center Mary Manin Morrissey was the senior minister of the Living Enrichment Center, outside Portland, Oregon, for twenty-two years. She talked to me about the kinds of people who attended her services: My church has services filled with people who have left traditional forms of theology without leaving God, without leaving a sense of deep connection to that which is eternal and imminent and present. They have a deep connection, a personal relationship with that. The people who come to the Living Enrichment Center have a deep respect and honoring for the many traditions that have given rise to that sense of the sacred, throughout all people, throughout all time and history. Morrissey’s teaching is Christian at its core. Those who have been guided by her seek to be “Christ-like,” taking very seriously his teaching that light indwells in everyone, that we are to do the things that he did: “There’s a scripture that says, ‘Jesus thought it not robbery to stand equal with God.’ And he says, ‘Now follow me.’ And so the work that we do seek is not so much to make Jesus the great exception as the great example and that we are then to not only follow but embody the same capacities.” She tells me that many people come to churches like hers because they carry wounds. They are hurting; they have recently divorced, lost a job, lost a loved one. Many are what she calls “recovering Catholics”: All we do is give them what Jesus said, versus all the dogma. We give them what Buddha said, we give them the core of Hinduism. It’s all about the power of God’s love, and the transformation that brings. We all yearn for it; we seek for it in so many ways. We seek for it in materiality, we seek for it in prestige or praise, we seek for it in all sorts of misguided ways and all we really want is to learn how to live in and live from the love of God. And interestingly, we find that when we tap into and touch the passion to create within us, which is our particular godliness, then we allow ourselves to be one with the creative principle that is life itself. Churches such as the Living Enrichment Center are collectively called “New Thought” churches. The term includes Unity churches, and churches of religious science. Many are independent and simply emphasize direct spiritual experience, embracing all religious traditions, without fixating exclusively on any one approach. Such churches are, on the whole, remarkably successful in replacing dogma with awakening. Says Morrissey: “As a person has had enough awakening to their real nature, they stop looking outside themselves for a reflection of who they are, or direction for what they are to be or do. There’s an identification with the divine that is ever-present and revealing itself everywhere. The access to its wisdom and guidance is found in the deep self.” I have taught at many New Thought churches. In the last years, I have been speaking about the kinds of awakening I have been researching for this book. I always ask if anyone there knows what I am referring to, from direct experience. A few years ago, half the hands would go up. Recently, at the Unity Church in Fort Worth, Texas, all but one hand, out of more than a hundred, went up. The sole exception, it turns out, spoke only Spanish. When the question was translated, she enthusiastically waved both her hands in the air. It is happening everywhere. I spoke with the Reverend Morrissey a second time, shortly before the manuscript for this book needed to be turned in. The Living Enrichment Center, which she founded, had passed through some rocky times, in part due to financial mismanagement of which she had been unaware, and they had been forced to sell their building and eventually close the church. I was deeply touched by the way she took absolute responsibility for what had occurred, even for events quite outside her control. She was committed to making sure that everyone involved in her church would be properly taken care of. The apparent collapse of the outer forms she had created did not put even a small dent in her trust in, and commitment to, what her heart knows to be true. (c) 2005 Arjuna Ardagh |