Today, we conclude our lesson on “The Clutch of Death” with these remarks on how the beliefs, sensibilities, and expectations of our families-of-origin can act as the greatest block to our soul’s freedom.

In Luke 14, several paragraphs after Jesus introduced the idea of the death clutch, he talked about how the love of “our people,” often wraps us in a set of belief and behaviors that condemn us to keep chasing the attachments and agendas that suffocate true life.

Few things inform our unconscious instincts as deeply as the primal relationships from which we come. “The Way Things Are,” usually comes to us in the voice of father, mother, or some other person of visceral importance in our lives.

To be truly free, we must come to a place where we see these beliefs for the beliefs they are. We may continue to hold them, or we may decide to set them aside. However, we can do neither, until we see our beliefs as beliefs. What we believe, we can decide to un-believe. But as long as we can’t see them, they remain powerfully deterministic programs running in the background of our lives.

Have a listen.
Doug

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One of the ancient spiritual paths goes by an old name…
“mortification.”

It means to put to death.  Once we see that our false narratives, our faulty Life-Stories are strangling the life out of us, we want to turn the tables and put that clutching instinct to death itself. Historically, spiritual people have done that by killing off the passions they associate with those attachments.

The traditional use of the practice is always voluntary.  But what about those times when we are involuntarily forced into being without this thing, that person, or the other circumstance that we have come to believe we cannot be happy without?  Can we apply this ancient practice to an involuntary season of “Lent?”

Have a listen,
I’ll talk about a friend of mine who has involuntarily been forced into a “vow of poverty” by an extended season of unemployment.  Can he benefit from involuntary mortification, just as the ancients tell us we can from a voluntary one?

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As we continue our lesson on the Clutch of Death, we come to where we’ve been heading from the beginning…  one of Jesus’ lessons from Luke 12.  It’s a section in which Jesus teaches how easily our interior narratives derail us into chasing after things which in the end don’t satisfy, don’t fulfill us.

We said last week that we are made of star-dust and God-dust.  The star-dust part lends itself to empirical study.  The God-dust part is just another way of talking about being made in the Divine image. Other ways of saying the same thing are “the indwelling Holy Spirit” and so forth. In essence, we’re saying that the Fruit of the Divine Spirit… fulfillment, satisfaction, peace, joy, and happiness are already in us for God’s Spirit is in us. The very essence of our humanity is Divine in origin and so it is helpful when we frame the spiritual journey as a process by which we dismantle the illusory narratives that keep us from experiencing this truest self; our truest humanity.

In this lesson, I’ll encourage you to keep asking questions of the Divine Inner Voice, asking how it is that your Life-Narrative derails you, how your Story has become untrue, how your Story is keeping you from the deepest longings of your truest self.

Have a listen.
Doug

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Today we continue our lesson “The Clutch of Death.”  We’ve seen how we tend to clutch at people, things, and circumstances at the expense of our freedom and connecting to our truest, Divine selves.

We do this because our “Life-Stories,” the narratives that drive our instincts, actions and reactions are faulty.  They drive us, compel us, but don’t purchase us freedom.

At the core of the “ultimacy” stories, is what we believe about God.  Even if we don’t believe there is a God, God (or the absence of God) figures heavily in our framing narratives about “The Way Things Are.”

If our view of God was rooted in a childhood world of magic, or parents…  if our view of God is tainted by an absent father, a demanding coach, or some other faulty projection, we pollute our Stories, and our freedom, our peace, our well-being is stolen away.

So…
In this lesson, I ask you to spend some time thinking about what you think about God. What do you believe about God? What instincts kick in when you try and access God?

Have a listen.
Doug

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How does one begin the journey from a Life-Story that breeds stress, anxiety, pressure, and “the clutch of death,” to a Life-Story that breeds peace, freedom, Life and Light?

The ancients designed a practice just for that.  It’s called “detachment.”  It’s the practice of willingly laying down some attachment, some pleasure, some desire that has taken up an inordinate ranking in our values.  We lay it down for the purpose of having our spiritual sight reconditioned to be able to see what we would otherwise miss…  to find the Truth that affords us freedom.

Lent is traditionally a time when people practice detachment.

Have a listen.
Doug

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[Download 64kbps mp3]
[Download 128kbps (high quality) mp3]
 

The deep quest of the human heart is for freedom and Divine Life. The problem is that we get so easily distracted from this quest by impulses and instincts that bubble up from inside us. We all carry around Life-Stories, or framing narratives that dictate our actions, reactions, instincts, and values. When those framing stories are faulty, we live lives driven by illusions. This is the antithesis of freedom and Divine Life.

Getting our Life-Stories truer and truer… this is the spiritual journey. In this introductory week, we frame the discussion for the lesson.

Have a listen.Doug