This note was written in 2003 and reflects one of my main passions over 25 years of spiritual research and work. Systems and teachers of the old world cannot save us. Only we, the muggles, the struggling students, can do this. And it may require us to disobey our spiritual rules and make connections with others outside our own sheep-folds.
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Spiritual teachers are there for spiritual students. Like religious leaders, there is little they can do to bring about harmony, because they are (after all) committed to representing a particular path, and affirming its rightness. Even when they do not combine this with a theory of other paths’ ‘wrongness’, they cannot stress the harmony of paths, or the student would lose all impetus to work with a tradition and all enthusiasm for the ‘way’.
Apparently, this leaves it up to the pupils to discover and further the harmony between different spiritual traditions. This is not to say that they are all ‘identical’, nor that they are of the same value. The question of value is, after all, personal. And that is not to say it is ‘merely subjective’.
Aside from these metaphysical searchings, we must agree that there are many valid spiritual traditions and that they have a right to co-exist. Obviously certain religions are strongly divisive and regard themselves as incompatible with other traditions. They will find nothing of interest here, and should stay away. The only criterion for involvement in this work is that you sincerely believe in the possibility of cooperation between different traditions.
This cooperation has sometimes happened on a very lofty spiritual level in the past, between figures we naturally regard as above us. Yet for most of us the priority is not, and should not be, to argue the niceties of ecumenical spiritual doctrine. Let us continue to study our respective traditions, united in vigorous opposition to injustice and separative thought.
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Spiritual teachers are there for spiritual students. Like religious leaders, there is little they can do to bring about harmony, because they are (after all) committed to representing a particular path, and affirming its rightness. Even when they do not combine this with a theory of other paths’ ‘wrongness’, they cannot stress the harmony of paths, or the student would lose all impetus to work with a tradition and all enthusiasm for the ‘way’.
Apparently, this leaves it up to the pupils to discover and further the harmony between different spiritual traditions. This is not to say that they are all ‘identical’, nor that they are of the same value. The question of value is, after all, personal. And that is not to say it is ‘merely subjective’.
Aside from these metaphysical searchings, we must agree that there are many valid spiritual traditions and that they have a right to co-exist. Obviously certain religions are strongly divisive and regard themselves as incompatible with other traditions. They will find nothing of interest here, and should stay away. The only criterion for involvement in this work is that you sincerely believe in the possibility of cooperation between different traditions.
This cooperation has sometimes happened on a very lofty spiritual level in the past, between figures we naturally regard as above us. Yet for most of us the priority is not, and should not be, to argue the niceties of ecumenical spiritual doctrine. Let us continue to study our respective traditions, united in vigorous opposition to injustice and separative thought.