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<\/a>As we prepare to enter the second Christ Path weekend<\/strong><\/a>, I\u2018d like to begin looking at experience of\u00a0 walking the four paths of Creation Spirituality as they relate to the Christ path. These four paths are very personal to me and to those who have understood them and taken them on, if you will. I believe these four paths are archetypal; I\u2019ve seen many instances of people gaining deep insights by applying them to their unique spiritual journeys.<\/p>\n We begin with the Via Positiva\u2026this part of the Christ path is about our falling in love, our falling in love with Being, our falling in love with creation, our falling in love with the awe that we see in everything, from the stars and the story of the universe to the white lions and kittens and puppies and dogs and babies and music and poets\u2026 There\u2019s a banquet we\u2019ve been presented as a species, to fall in love with.<\/p>\n And this Life also has its bumps along the way, it has its betrayals, it has its disappointments, it has its Losses with a capital L. Do we have the strength of heart, the stamina, the faith, the love inside us to see us through?<\/p>\n Rabbi Heschel says\u2014and this may be the most important line I utter\u2014he says, \u201cPraise precedes faith.\u201d Let me say it again: Praise precedes faith<\/em>. That\u2019s the Via Positiva, praise.<\/p>\n Can we keep the Via Positiva alive? Is your falling in love with life sustainable in the midst of all the struggle and all the obstacles and all the powerful forces that we are up against? That\u2019s the question. If you\u2019re going to be a warrior, this is the question.<\/p>\n Now, warrior<\/em>, I believe, is another word for prophet<\/em>\u2014or to put it differently, the biblical word for warrior is prophet.\u00a0 Even though the word warrior is used in the Bible, of course, the word prophet is used far more often, but it\u2019s the same thing. The warrior is he or she who struggles for justice, for healing, for compassion.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a time in your life when you see it all and it\u2019s glorious and it\u2019s ecstatic. The Cosmic Christ can be eminently intimate and personal. But never forget, it can also be very impersonal, very impersonal.<\/p>\n The universe is both personal and impersonal. We eat the sun every time we eat breakfast, lunch or dinner. That\u2019s something very personal, very intimate. That is the sun, that\u2019s the universe coming home. But we also experience a Hurricane Sandy, or we experience a sudden car accident, or loss of a loved one, and so forth. And at that time things are very impersonal. And why did you survive and not someone else? We call it chance.<\/p>\n Love does not always have a happy ending. Have you noticed? Love does not always have a happy ending. And yet the memory is there. Love is love, even if it ends badly. And we should not write that out, we should not forget to say thank you for those moments of grace. And forgiveness goes a long way.<\/p>\n The two thousand years in which we\u2019ve been expressing, attempting to express the Jesus message of the Jesus story, has been littered with failure and illusion and deception, on the one hand. But also there have been breakthroughs for sure in many ordinary and extraordinary people\u2019s existence \u2014if by extraordinary you mean people whose names we remember, such as Hildegard of Bingen or Meister Eckhart or Francis of Assisi or Dr. Martin King or Thurman or Dorothy Day and many, many others.<\/p>\n I love this passage from Mechtild of Magdeburg where she says we are given in life two wines to drink: the red wine of suffering and grief and the white wine of joy. Until you have drunk deeply of both\u2014of both\u2014you have not entered the kingdom. So that\u2019s another way of talking about the Via Positiva and the Via Negativa.<\/p>\n So you go into this darkness, you go into the chaos, you go into the suffering and the pain and the grief. But you come out at the other end clean and seeing the light. And so that is the Via Creativa. That is where the encounter with the creative spirit, our anointment as co-creators, takes place.<\/p>\n But the Via Negativa involves standing still, shutting up, letting go, learning the path of silence. Not only is beauty a road to the heart but so, too, is silence. And beauty talks to us, the Christ talks to us, all kind of beings talk to us.<\/p>\n Beaudelaire said in the nineteenth century: \u201cWe walk through forests of physical things that are also spiritual things that look on us with affectionate looks.\u201d We are being loved by the Cosmic Christ in all these beings. And that doesn\u2019t mean they want to give away their territory to us, or give away their wildness to us.<\/p>\n But there is a love thing going on here. And we humans are particularly prepared for this kind of love. We are particularly yearning for this kind of love, and we are needy for it, because frankly a lot of people today are better at receiving love from the four-legged ones than from the two-legged ones.<\/p>\n In To Educate the Human Potential<\/em>, Maria Montessori says: \u201cIf the idea of the universe be presented to the child in the right way, it will do more for him than just arouse his interest, for it will create in him admiration and wonder, a feeling loftier than any interest and more satisfying\u2026.<\/p>\n \u201c[H]is intelligence becomes whole and complete because of the vision of the whole that has been presented to him, and his interest spreads to all, for all are linked and have their place in the universe on which one\u2019s mind is centered. The stars, the earth, stones, life of all kinds, from a whole in relation with each other, and so close is this relation that we cannot understand a stone without some understanding of the great sun!\u201d<\/p>\n So, you know, these intimations of the importance of falling in love with the universe have been here for a long time. There have been people who have broken out of the anthropocentric box, such as Maria Montessori, and have realized how primal it is for us to fall in love with the Christ that is the universe, the Cosmic Christ of the macrocosm and the microcosm, as well as the personal Christ.<\/p>\n Speaking of the Via Negativa, here is Brian Swimme speaking in a recent interview in EnlightenNext<\/em> magazine. He was asked, \u201cWhat do you feel is the most pressing crisis facing humanity today?\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cI think the fastest way to wake up to what is happening on the planet is to think in terms of mass extinction. Every now and then, the earth goes through a die-off of the diversity of life. Over the last half-billion years, there have been five moments like this.\u201d And what we are discovering now is that we are going through such a moment.<\/p>\n \u201cSo now we\u2019re just discovering that we\u2019re in the middle of a mass extinction. We happen to be in that moment when the worst thing that\u2019s happened to the earth in sixty-five million years is happening now. That\u2019s number one. Number two, we are causing it. Number three, we\u2019re not aware of it. There\u2019s only a little splinter of humanity that\u2019s aware of it\u2026. At the minimum, twenty-five thousand species are going extinct every year.\u201d<\/p>\n See, that is the crucifixion of the Cosmic Christ. And you begin to realize these concepts, this language about Christ, the Cosmic Christ, and all the rest, it\u2019s so applicable to today. I\u2019m not sure there is comparable language. Buddha nature is a very parallel concept. But again, the crucifixion of Jesus\u2014Buddha died a very, what should I say, peaceful death. Jesus did not.<\/p>\n He more represents this archetype of chaos and extinction and murder that is the sign of our times. And all this piddly talk about who\u2019s going to be Pope and all the silly stuff that we call religion\u2014you know, let\u2019s put our energy where it counts, and let\u2019s bring this Christ archetype into reality again.<\/p>\n ___________________________________________________<\/p>\n To register for the\u00a0 Christ Path Seminar weekend taking place online and on-site in Pittsburgh, PA,\u00a0 this weekend, 6\/28-30, see http:\/\/www.christpathseminar.org\/ai1ec_event\/cosmic-christ-and-the-historical-jesus\/?instance_id=123<\/a><\/p>\n