List of Articles Related to The Christian Community
Spiritual Psychology
by Rev. Hugh Thornton
Instead of attempting the impossible task of summarizing the lecture and workshop I recently held at the church I thought that it might be more interesting to offer some of the basic ideas of spiritual psychology, albeit in a greatly reduced form.
Spiritual psychology is a psychology of the mental picture and the life it leads within the soul. But before we can understand anything about that we have to understand how the mental picture comes into being. To do this we have to first understand the two processes of the soul: 1. desiring; loving and hating originating out of soul willing and 2. the soul process of judging. How can we see the working of the two soul processes confined by the body and the spirit?
Its fairly easy to have an initial understanding of what is here meant as soul willing, desiring; loving and hating but this other soul process, judging, is much more difficult to understand. Thinking is something that we as adults have the tendency to consider as being a faculty of our soul life that lies more or less within the jurisdiction of our autonomous selves. When we think, however, of the developing child who is taken hold of by language in the first years of life we can observe that this faculty called here ‘judging’ precedes the awakening of the autonomous self within the life of the soul. A toddler, first learning to speak, is already quite busy with the creation of mental pictures before the momentous event of the child’s use of the personal pronoun “I” transpires. With the creation of the mental picture of ‘the self’ the life of memory begins. From then on it is no longer a matter of the creation of one mental picture after another, but now the organizing thread of the self is woven into the creation of each new mental picture as ‘the experiencer.’ It’s no longer just a mental picture of the ‘chair’ but now it is the mental picture of ‘me’ as the experiencer in the mental picture of the ‘chair.’ I am introduced as a new element in the make up of each new mental picture.
But how are mental pictures created? And how does the soul perceive? Think of the small child and the openness with which she faces the world, how impressionable she is. The world comes streaming through the doors of our perception and is met with the soul’s desiring. This desiring becomes the soul’s experience of sensation at the boundary of the portals of the senses where it is impressed. Sensing the blue sky is a pure experience of blueness. Judging is added to this when the following event takes place: ‘That is blue,’ or ‘The sky is blue,’ or when simply ‘blue’ is judged by the soul. And this is the event which is so easily passed by unobserved. This judging has been active before our arriving on the scene and we forget this in our identification with it as indeed it is a faculty of the self.
Often we think that in the case of trauma feelings and emotions become repressed and that the healing from trauma is a process of ‘going back’ and releasing those repressed feelings and emotions. But this whole therapeutic idea is based on a false conception of the nature of the life of feeling. Feelings can only be felt in the present and they themselves always have an orientation towards the future. It is true that we may not always know in any given moment exactly how we feel. This is similar to the condition of not knowing exactly what one is desiring. Desiring, like feeling always orients itself towards the future; we can not want something in the past. The mystery of trauma is that it itself is a mental picture which like all mental pictures live independent lives within the soul. Mental pictures are independent beings living their lives within our soul life. They have their own agendas. They strive to propagate themselves and because all mental pictures within our souls have a connection to all others they have the possibility to convert other mental pictures to their own nature. Mental pictures are the products of the working of the two processes of the soul: desiring and judging. Mental pictures live in the past, they are the living record of our soul’s life. Imagine feeling, emotion and willing as streaming towards us from out of the future, this is not easy to do but when carried out as an exercise it reveals their true nature. The future is coming towards us but we can’t remember it, its just not possible. So the future becomes ‘reflected’ upon the surfaces of the mental pictures it automatically conjures forth. This is a certain type of automatic memory which takes place as the future collides with the past. Imagine listening to some one telling you a story and think how immediately you will remember similar experiences of your own which relate to the story you are hearing. This is an example of automatic memory, i.e., the exercise of tact, and experience that each new moment calls out of us and is very helpful. But not so in the case of trauma. Here mental pictures have been created which have an evil, selfish character.
Such mental pictures have the power to steer the direction of entire lives, or to more or less dramatically influence the course of events in isolated circumstances. Imagine you are having a conversation with someone and you suddenly become very upset. The mental picture that roams within your soul that could be generically named as ‘betrayal’ has been automatically remembered, conjured up to consciousness and now becomes the receiving vessel for this present moment. The only thing is that this present moment is different and although provides the link to this past mental picture it is in no way helped by it.
This is not an example of tact or experience. Then a reaction ensues of feeling and emotion. It is the present moment distorted by the influence of the mental picture ‘betrayal’ to which our feelings and emotions are directed. The emotion is just as present and alive as it would ever be but it has been awoken by a distorted picture of the moment. Feelings and emotions are infallible, they relate to the world in accordance with a perfect lawfulness (at first). It is into our life of mental picturing where the possibility of error has crept in and where our attempts of healing first lie.
Healing
The process of healing begins where we can have the most autonomous influence over our life of our soul, namely, in our mental picturing, that is, in the life of our thinking. Our hope in bringing about the healing of our souls lies in our having a gradual positive influence over the parasitic mental images which haunt and roam independently through our souls. House cleaning is certainly a much easier task than ‘soul-cleaning’ but one of the original meanings of the word ‘psychology’ was ‘house cleaning’ and a relationship can easily be seen between the two ideas. The difficulty in soul cleaning lies in the fact that we simply can not conjure before our consciousness the sum total of all the mental pictures which we have acquired during the course of our lives. No, most of the time, (unless we practice biographical memory exercises), we have to wait until a moment arises in real life that conjures a certain response from us that makes us aware, if we are attentive, to the fact that we are indeed, under some odd convictions about the world. Afterwards it’s possible for us to say to ourselves, “I never realised that I thought that.” It is strange that we don’t know what we think but perhaps not so strange when we call to mind that a great many of our original thoughts occurred to us during our childhoods. These mental pictures live in our souls to this day and are conjured up whenever a moment arises that allows for their automatic recalling. In just such a moment, or more realistically some time afterwards, we can ask ourselves, “Why did I react in that way?” This is one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves and is the door which leads to the healing of our souls. This moment and our reaction to it provide us the link, like a gift from life, to the original moment in our lives which gave birth to the certain mental picture which now abides in our souls and is most likely inseparable in appearance from our own identity. This mental picture we can then cradle in the warmth of our attention and permeate it with our loving consideration. (This is not easy and not always comfortable and we may need to do it in the presence of another caring individual or a professional.) With repeated efforts the mental picture does change, transforms itself into something new and bares more genuinely the mark of our own name. Automatic feeling and emotional responses can no longer be solicited by this rogue faction in our soul. Thus we act more out of our true selves.
Instead of attempting the impossible task of summarizing the lecture and workshop I recently held at the church I thought that it might be more interesting to offer some of the basic ideas of spiritual psychology, albeit in a greatly reduced form.
Spiritual psychology is a psychology of the mental picture and the life it leads within the soul. But before we can understand anything about that we have to understand how the mental picture comes into being. To do this we have to first understand the two processes of the soul: 1. desiring; loving and hating originating out of soul willing and 2. the soul process of judging. How can we see the working of the two soul processes confined by the body and the spirit?
Its fairly easy to have an initial understanding of what is here meant as soul willing, desiring; loving and hating but this other soul process, judging, is much more difficult to understand. Thinking is something that we as adults have the tendency to consider as being a faculty of our soul life that lies more or less within the jurisdiction of our autonomous selves. When we think, however, of the developing child who is taken hold of by language in the first years of life we can observe that this faculty called here ‘judging’ precedes the awakening of the autonomous self within the life of the soul. A toddler, first learning to speak, is already quite busy with the creation of mental pictures before the momentous event of the child’s use of the personal pronoun “I” transpires. With the creation of the mental picture of ‘the self’ the life of memory begins. From then on it is no longer a matter of the creation of one mental picture after another, but now the organizing thread of the self is woven into the creation of each new mental picture as ‘the experiencer.’ It’s no longer just a mental picture of the ‘chair’ but now it is the mental picture of ‘me’ as the experiencer in the mental picture of the ‘chair.’ I am introduced as a new element in the make up of each new mental picture.
But how are mental pictures created? And how does the soul perceive? Think of the small child and the openness with which she faces the world, how impressionable she is. The world comes streaming through the doors of our perception and is met with the soul’s desiring. This desiring becomes the soul’s experience of sensation at the boundary of the portals of the senses where it is impressed. Sensing the blue sky is a pure experience of blueness. Judging is added to this when the following event takes place: ‘That is blue,’ or ‘The sky is blue,’ or when simply ‘blue’ is judged by the soul. And this is the event which is so easily passed by unobserved. This judging has been active before our arriving on the scene and we forget this in our identification with it as indeed it is a faculty of the self.
Often we think that in the case of trauma feelings and emotions become repressed and that the healing from trauma is a process of ‘going back’ and releasing those repressed feelings and emotions. But this whole therapeutic idea is based on a false conception of the nature of the life of feeling. Feelings can only be felt in the present and they themselves always have an orientation towards the future. It is true that we may not always know in any given moment exactly how we feel. This is similar to the condition of not knowing exactly what one is desiring. Desiring, like feeling always orients itself towards the future; we can not want something in the past. The mystery of trauma is that it itself is a mental picture which like all mental pictures live independent lives within the soul. Mental pictures are independent beings living their lives within our soul life. They have their own agendas. They strive to propagate themselves and because all mental pictures within our souls have a connection to all others they have the possibility to convert other mental pictures to their own nature. Mental pictures are the products of the working of the two processes of the soul: desiring and judging. Mental pictures live in the past, they are the living record of our soul’s life. Imagine feeling, emotion and willing as streaming towards us from out of the future, this is not easy to do but when carried out as an exercise it reveals their true nature. The future is coming towards us but we can’t remember it, its just not possible. So the future becomes ‘reflected’ upon the surfaces of the mental pictures it automatically conjures forth. This is a certain type of automatic memory which takes place as the future collides with the past. Imagine listening to some one telling you a story and think how immediately you will remember similar experiences of your own which relate to the story you are hearing. This is an example of automatic memory, i.e., the exercise of tact, and experience that each new moment calls out of us and is very helpful. But not so in the case of trauma. Here mental pictures have been created which have an evil, selfish character.
Such mental pictures have the power to steer the direction of entire lives, or to more or less dramatically influence the course of events in isolated circumstances. Imagine you are having a conversation with someone and you suddenly become very upset. The mental picture that roams within your soul that could be generically named as ‘betrayal’ has been automatically remembered, conjured up to consciousness and now becomes the receiving vessel for this present moment. The only thing is that this present moment is different and although provides the link to this past mental picture it is in no way helped by it.
This is not an example of tact or experience. Then a reaction ensues of feeling and emotion. It is the present moment distorted by the influence of the mental picture ‘betrayal’ to which our feelings and emotions are directed. The emotion is just as present and alive as it would ever be but it has been awoken by a distorted picture of the moment. Feelings and emotions are infallible, they relate to the world in accordance with a perfect lawfulness (at first). It is into our life of mental picturing where the possibility of error has crept in and where our attempts of healing first lie.
Healing
The process of healing begins where we can have the most autonomous influence over our life of our soul, namely, in our mental picturing, that is, in the life of our thinking. Our hope in bringing about the healing of our souls lies in our having a gradual positive influence over the parasitic mental images which haunt and roam independently through our souls. House cleaning is certainly a much easier task than ‘soul-cleaning’ but one of the original meanings of the word ‘psychology’ was ‘house cleaning’ and a relationship can easily be seen between the two ideas. The difficulty in soul cleaning lies in the fact that we simply can not conjure before our consciousness the sum total of all the mental pictures which we have acquired during the course of our lives. No, most of the time, (unless we practice biographical memory exercises), we have to wait until a moment arises in real life that conjures a certain response from us that makes us aware, if we are attentive, to the fact that we are indeed, under some odd convictions about the world. Afterwards it’s possible for us to say to ourselves, “I never realised that I thought that.” It is strange that we don’t know what we think but perhaps not so strange when we call to mind that a great many of our original thoughts occurred to us during our childhoods. These mental pictures live in our souls to this day and are conjured up whenever a moment arises that allows for their automatic recalling. In just such a moment, or more realistically some time afterwards, we can ask ourselves, “Why did I react in that way?” This is one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves and is the door which leads to the healing of our souls. This moment and our reaction to it provide us the link, like a gift from life, to the original moment in our lives which gave birth to the certain mental picture which now abides in our souls and is most likely inseparable in appearance from our own identity. This mental picture we can then cradle in the warmth of our attention and permeate it with our loving consideration. (This is not easy and not always comfortable and we may need to do it in the presence of another caring individual or a professional.) With repeated efforts the mental picture does change, transforms itself into something new and bares more genuinely the mark of our own name. Automatic feeling and emotional responses can no longer be solicited by this rogue faction in our soul. Thus we act more out of our true selves.
Becoming a Member
by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger
'HE is the head of the body, and His body is the great Community of congregations.' Colossians 1,18
Religious experience is at the same time spiritual experience. Like the relationship to another human being is cultivated and deepened through regular conversations and meetings, in the same way religious life cultivates a relationship with God and in particular in Christianity, with the God of Man. This we call prayer. Prayer, too, can be learnt. It is more a question of decision and perseverance than of ability. Even the simplest, shortest conversation establishes a connection with the one addressed.
In praying the Lord's Prayer a relationship develops to all other persons who speak this prayer. A spiritual family, a community formed from the heart develops which is much larger than any denomination or group. In this way the community of Christ arises, a community of which He is the head and where all who pray the Lord's Prayer feel united as members of His body.
Christianity always forms community, spiritual religious community open and inclusive of all who seek a relationship to Christ. The meaning and purpose of Christianity is to bring spirit reality into earthly reality with the forces that were created through Christ's deed on Golgotha, transforming the earth into a higher evolved state. Therefore the universal spiritual community of Christians will make itself visible in congregations that come together around an earthly altar, uniting to serve “the Fulfiller of the heavenly forces on earth'.
In coming to know the sacramental life of a community and living with it for a period of time, enough to experience The Act of Consecration of Man as a spiritual and religious home, one has grown through participation and experiencing into membership. This kind of membership relates to a striving within the community to be open and inclusive towards all who chose to come and be there to pray together. The name ‘The Christian Community’ expresses this high goal, recognizing that everyone who actively seeks a relationship with Christ is connected with all other true Christians, known and unknown, in a universal spiritual community.
When one awakens to the fact that by sharing in the life of a specific community one is no longer an onlooker or a guest, especially when participating in holy communion, or receiving another sacrament like having a child baptized or confirmed, or getting married, then the membership which has lived in the will, can be lifted into a higher state of consciousness. Through participation in the sacraments one has already become a carrier for the substance of the Christ-community. Yet to know this and to consciously want and nurture this as a step of free commitment to which one decides to bind oneself, brings another quality towards the sacraments and the community. This free decision, when expressed and shared in conversations with a priest, is the taking on of a spiritual and physical responsibility. The priest will acknowledged this step for the community and stand as a witness to it before God at the altar.
'HE is the head of the body, and His body is the great Community of congregations.' Colossians 1,18
Religious experience is at the same time spiritual experience. Like the relationship to another human being is cultivated and deepened through regular conversations and meetings, in the same way religious life cultivates a relationship with God and in particular in Christianity, with the God of Man. This we call prayer. Prayer, too, can be learnt. It is more a question of decision and perseverance than of ability. Even the simplest, shortest conversation establishes a connection with the one addressed.
In praying the Lord's Prayer a relationship develops to all other persons who speak this prayer. A spiritual family, a community formed from the heart develops which is much larger than any denomination or group. In this way the community of Christ arises, a community of which He is the head and where all who pray the Lord's Prayer feel united as members of His body.
Christianity always forms community, spiritual religious community open and inclusive of all who seek a relationship to Christ. The meaning and purpose of Christianity is to bring spirit reality into earthly reality with the forces that were created through Christ's deed on Golgotha, transforming the earth into a higher evolved state. Therefore the universal spiritual community of Christians will make itself visible in congregations that come together around an earthly altar, uniting to serve “the Fulfiller of the heavenly forces on earth'.
In coming to know the sacramental life of a community and living with it for a period of time, enough to experience The Act of Consecration of Man as a spiritual and religious home, one has grown through participation and experiencing into membership. This kind of membership relates to a striving within the community to be open and inclusive towards all who chose to come and be there to pray together. The name ‘The Christian Community’ expresses this high goal, recognizing that everyone who actively seeks a relationship with Christ is connected with all other true Christians, known and unknown, in a universal spiritual community.
When one awakens to the fact that by sharing in the life of a specific community one is no longer an onlooker or a guest, especially when participating in holy communion, or receiving another sacrament like having a child baptized or confirmed, or getting married, then the membership which has lived in the will, can be lifted into a higher state of consciousness. Through participation in the sacraments one has already become a carrier for the substance of the Christ-community. Yet to know this and to consciously want and nurture this as a step of free commitment to which one decides to bind oneself, brings another quality towards the sacraments and the community. This free decision, when expressed and shared in conversations with a priest, is the taking on of a spiritual and physical responsibility. The priest will acknowledged this step for the community and stand as a witness to it before God at the altar.
When one who has come to know and to recognize The Christian Community and its services as one’s spiritual and religious home one can take the step of preparing for membership. This is done by arranging a series of talks with the priest who will then receive the new member into the Community. By sharing in the life of the Community through taking part in the Act of Consecration of Man, getting married or having children baptized in it, one is no longer a mere guest or friend. For ‘now I take part in what we do; I am no longer an onlooker.’ In conversation with the priest a clear understanding can be reached of one’s relationship to the Community. In peace and clarity the step is made of becoming a member, in the knowledge that out of this free decision the relationship can grow and deepen. If felt appropriate the words of the Sacramental Consultation may be heard on becoming a member. A copy of the Creed is received for personal use. The Creed and the Lord’s Prayer give the inner foundation and strength needed to become a carrier and a fulfiller of the sacraments together with others. Recognition of the healing effect of these sacraments in one’s life and relationships is the social aspect of membership. Being a member implies an inner connection to the life of the Community; the aim of membership is to participate in creating communities in and through which Christ can work. Christ used the image ‘the salt of the earth’ for his followers. This makes clear that membership is not primarily about the satisfaction of my own religious needs. On the contrary, members will want to support the Community in all its aspects: spiritual, social and economic. Rev. Louise Madsen, UK