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<\/a>So now we\u2019ve looked at two of the paths of Creation Spirituality as we walk them on the Christ Path. We begin with the Via Positiva \u2013 the path of awe, wonder, and conscious connection to the cosmos. And then there is the Via Negativa \u2013 the path of grief, loss, silence and letting go.<\/p>\n
And part of the Via Negativa, besides listening, besides grieving, is also an experience of shakeup, chaos, being turned upside-down to shake the nonsense out. That\u2019s part of the dark night of the soul. All kinds of people are responding to the dark night that we are experiencing now in our souls, in our culture and on this planet.<\/p>\n
For example, Pancho Ramos-Stierle \u2013 the fellow who was arrested while meditating at Occupy Oakland \u2013 said: \u201cIt is time for spiritual people to get active and activist people to get spiritual so that we can have total revolution of the human spirit. Because we have the idea that the self-indulgent people are just meditating\u2014they are going to caves and meditation centers while all this madness is happening, or you have people at these meditation centers that are asking how can you bring peace and calm and harmony to the world if you do not have that in your heart? I think that we need both now, and that we need to combine this inner revolution with the outer revolution to have the total revolution of the spirit. Then you can build the alternatives to a collapsing system built on structural violence\u201d (from \u201cArrested For Meditating? Why It\u2019s Radical To Stay Nonviolent In The Face Of State-Sponsored Brutality\u201d in The Oldspeak Journal<\/em>, March 4, 2012).<\/p>\n He says, \u201cI believe that nine out of ten actions must be creating the community that we want to live in.\u201d Nine out of our ten actions should be creating the communities we want<\/em>\u2014that\u2019s the Via Creativa, the path of co-creating with the Divine, out of the wisdom and compassion we gain in the Via Negativa. Creating communities in this context, he says, means \u201cpermaculture, independent media, restorative justice, gift economies, free currencies, and preventive medicine. By doing all that, we make ourselves stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n He adds, \u201cOne out of ten actions should be obstructive\u2014that is, boycotts and protests and marches and nonviolent civil disobedience\u2026. We must spend a couple of hours each day in receptive silence\u2014any silent spiritual practice that brings awareness and equanimity to our hearts and minds.\u201d Think of it: one out of ten actions has to be about standing up to forces and speaking truth to power. This is the inner revolution.<\/p>\n .He concludes, \u201cSometimes the most radical thing to do in a polluted violence-based system is to be still. The mud settles to the bottom and we then have a clearer vision about our next steps\u2026. We are the early adopters of a revolution of values, and we are the evidence that the totalitarianism of corporate capitalism\u2014the machine that has devastated the planet and human beings\u2014we are the demonstration that system doesn\u2019t work,\u201d and we can give birth to a new system.<\/p>\n Rabbi Heschel says: \u201cThere lies in the recesses of every human existence a prophet.\u201d There lies in the recesses of every<\/em> human existence a prophet\u2014or, if you will, a warrior. This is such important information, because I said earlier that there lies in the recesses of every one of us a mystic. Yes, we\u2019re all lovers\u2014 and we\u2019re all prophets. How do we get to those recesses where the prophet is born?<\/p>\n This is what I think the four paths of Creation Spirituality do for us. From falling in love in the Via Positiva, to the letting go of the Via Negativa, to the birthing of the Via Creativa\u2014all those things. Falling in love, experiencing joy is very, very deep in your recesses. So is grief and sorrow and anger and moral outrage that you feel in the Via Negativa. That\u2019s a recess. As is silence and emptying.\u00a0 But so too is your creativity, when you choose to give birth to anything, it comes from your depths. It comes from your depths. It is your motherhood, your fatherhood. It\u2019s a recess.<\/p>\n So what are you doing on the paths of Creation Spirituality? As you would in a dream, you\u2019re going down, you\u2019re going down into the recesses, into the depths; you\u2019re stirring things up. And out of that a warrior is born, out of that a warrior is nurtured and nourished, and your strength comes through, because you\u2019re in love. In love with people, animals, the forests and the ocean, art, music, poetry, the cosmos.<\/p>\n All four paths feed each other. Not only in love, but you\u2019ve got your imagination going. That\u2019s what creativity is about, isn\u2019t it? Moral imagination. And then you can apply that\u2014you apply Mechtild\u2019s white wine of joy and red wine of suffering, and the creative birthing to the work of healing and justice and compassion.<\/p>\n But it doesn\u2019t stop there, because the goal of justice is not justice. The goal of justice is the Via Positiva: to make life beautiful again for more and more people, to include more at the table of the banquet of life. And that\u2019s why the image we use is the spiral, the open-ended spiral, for this journey. It\u2019s not climbing a ladder to God. It is dancing that spiral \u2013 an open-ended spiral, because each path feeds the other, and the Via Transformativa then goes back to the Via Positiva, and celebration gets that much fuller; the round gets fuller and fuller.<\/p>\n ___________________________________________________________<\/p>\n To register for the \u201cCosmic Christ and Youth: The Occupy Generation,\u201d the Christ Path Seminar weekend taking place online and on-site in Burlingame, CA,\u00a0 10\/11-13, see http:\/\/www.christpathseminar.org\/ai1ec_event\/cosmic-christ-and-youth-the-occupy-generation\/?instance_id=99<\/a><\/p>\n To order the complete 12-DVD set of recordings from the first Christ Path Seminar weekend, \u201cCosmic Christ and the New Humanity\u201d\u2013 including Dr. Fox\u2019s delivery of the Saturday afternoon lecture from which this post is clipped, seehttp:\/\/www.christpathseminar.org\/participate-by-dvd\/<\/p>\n