Oxford Museum of Natural History hosts this fascinating and controversial debate on the existence of God. Professor John Lennox explains how science points to an intelligent creator and Richard Dawkins offers a counterargument.
When Dawkins was asked if he ever considered God, he said, “”Yeah maybe I have, but if I have, so what? It doesn’t make it true. That’s what it matters.”
To this I’d like to ask him, how does he know if “it” is not true? Haven’t see any evidence? How does it matter to the very existence of God? Does God disappear just because someone thinks there’s no “evidence?” Someone is appealing to his own ignorance here if you ask me. ;)
Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism guides the reader through the stages of mystical prayer. Mystical prayer is a way to create a living relationship with the Divine within the heart. Drawing on Christian and Sufi sources such as St. Teresa of Avila, Attar, St. John of the Cross, and Rumi, as well as from his own experience, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee describes how prayer is first born of need, but then takes one deep within the heart, into the stages of Union and Ecstasy. Through mystical prayer, one is drawn beyond any words into the interior silence of real communion with God. Here, in the silence within the heart, a meeting and merging takes place that carries us beyond our self into the mystery of divine presence, into the secret nature of love’s oneness.
Prayer of the Heart in Christian and Sufi Mysticism explores the inner listening of the heart, and the secret of ‘pray without ceasing’ in which we discover how prayer becomes alive within the heart. Finally there is a chapter on the need at this time to pray for the Earth. How can we pray for the well-being of the Earth? How can we include the Earth in our prayers and our heart?
This little book is an offering of the heart that brings together the Christian and Sufi mystical traditions in the oneness of love to which they belong. It will benefit any practitioner of prayer, anyone who is drawn to discover a relationship with God within their heart.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault
Introduction
1. Prayer and Listening
2. Stages of Prayer
3. The Jesus Prayer and the Dhikr
4. The Circle of Love
5. The Heart Prays
6. Prayer for the Earth
7. Personal Prayer
“In our prayers and devotions, we need to reconnect with the sacred substance in creation. We need to place the earth within our hearts, and nourish it with our love, and offer it in remembrance of God.”
Excerpts from chapter 6 in “Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism”, a new book by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee.
We are living in a time of ecological devastation, the catastrophic effect of our materialistic culture on the ecosystem. Our rivers are toxic, the rainforests slashed and burned, vast tracts of land made a wasteland due to our insatiable desires for oil, gas, and minerals. We have raped and pillaged and polluted the earth, pushing it into the dangerous state of imbalance we call climate change. Creation itself is now calling to us, sending us signs of its imbalance, and the soul of the world, the anima mundi, which the ancients understood as the spiritual presence of the earth, is crying out. We can see these signs in all the recent floods and droughts, feel it in the poisoning of the land from pesticides and other contaminants. Those whose hearts are open may hear it too, in the cry of the world soul, of the spiritual being of our mother the earth. It is a cry of need and despair: human beings, who were supposed to be the guardians of the planet, who long ago were taught the sacred names of creation,(95)have forgotten their responsibility and instead have systematically and heedlessly desecrated and destroyed the earth on a global scale.
It offers a direct path to knowing God in your own being. Through this series of conversations between himself and God within, Nick Gancitano leads you in the process of Self-inquiry, enabling you to shed the layers of conditioning concealing from you the fact that you are One with God to bring about authentic spiritual awakening.
Chapters Include: The All-Important Introduction, I AM, Religion, Ego, Death and Desire, Money, The Body, Conspiracy Theory, Humanity, Faith and Free Will, The Illusion, Surrender,
I AM THAT I AM
An Interview with the God Within – by Nick Gancitano
“You can talk to God and listen to what She says back to you. Everyone has the innate ability to do this, even if they aren’t aware of it, and in times gone by it was a much more common practice, which is why those ancient spiritual texts in the form of dialogues between a deity and a mortal were written.You’ll find many in Be Still and Know I Am God, which Cygnus has just published.” Ann Napier
How can I be certain I’m communicating with God?
Does this feel like Love or resonate as Truth?
Yes. Yet how can I be sure?
When your mind is still, your heart opens and the indescribable fills you.
So if it doesn’t feel like Love, then it’s not God?
Not what you would call the highest expression of God; I AM appearing to you in every conceivable way; even now I AM being perceived as a mere thought.
So You really are God?
As you would have Me Be.
Why do I see so many people leaving organized religion?
Religions are training wheels for spiritual seekers, so they are falling off because people’s intelligence has evolved beyond the need for them. They are realizing the Truth without the dependency on outside organizations that preach borrowed beliefs rather than encourage one to trust one’s own experience when Truth can never be discovered in the former way.
What is all the repression about?
When feelings of guilt and being judged become too painful they are repressed, and the fear of being exposed manifests as rage, which when further repressed becomes depression. This is how depression has recently become pandemic in the world, because most religions have persuaded people that anger is wrong. This suppression has become a disease, and the prescribing of anti-depressants is likewise ignorant and founded in greed.
How is this related to religion?
Religious morality promotes shame and therefore repression, which consequently becomes depression. Preaching morality is unconscious arrogance. This arrogance implies I cannot express directly through those who are looking for direction. So, one need not use drugs or attempt to guide others; offer your loving presence instead.
If people felt they were being guided by You, maybe they wouldn’t need to look for guidance elsewhere.
This is the ego’s standard response, yet realize that one only turns to another for advice when one refuses to surrender. For if one surrenders, where is the need for guidance once it is realized there is no other?
It is best to forget about organized religions and the scriptures of the past. What I prescribe for you now is on a private basis. True-life spirituality is living life, not congregating like cattle to listen to pontification. So release yourself: play, dance, sing, make love, experience nature, laugh, cry, or even go for naked walks in the park with your dog.
Whatsoever, be creative and enthusiastic in all aspects of life. Live passionately – without holding back. Allow for emotional eruptions and sensual expression. Then feel the contrast of a new world untainted by fear or restrictions. Stop learning about morality from your preachers and go experience life.
Do you think people try to come to You through organized religion, rather than turning directly within, because they are intimidated by You?
Yes, religions have made it so. How can someone surrender if they are frightened? And why are you afraid? Because what is being shared in religions is not love at all, but behaviour control. Many even attend temples of worship to appear righteous, believing that I do not know the difference.
Why do You require my surrender if You’re egoless?
Who are you surrendering to but your Self? I AM You and You are All That Is. I AM that inner Presence within, felt as ‘I’. By loving Me, you love All That Is, including everyone and everything. Many have even been taught by religions to fear Me, yet I AM the mirror of one’s own Image and Likeness, so what one sees in one’s self, one will also see in Me. By loving All of one’s Self, surrender happens naturally.
Should one bypass God and go directly to this ‘I’?
They are the same, so whatever suits one is best.
The Bible says You are vengeful. Is this true?
Yes, I AM, yet you should understand the meaning of the word if you are to use it. To be vengeful is to respond with equal measure; it is the law of karma. When you hit something, do you not hurt your hand? So you learn not to hit. The hard surface is teaching you: Will you listen to its message or continue to inflict suffering upon your self? It is compassionate to respond, so you learn to love and not be aggressive. Would you expect anything different? How can you learn if I do not reflect behaviour? How will you experience Your Self if I AM not a mirror for You? I have said ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Why? Because they are You. One attacks others only when one expects attack from others, even if the other is really one’s Self.
Once I felt that I was one with the entire universe, like I was enlightened, but after six months it disappeared. Why is that?
It was precisely as you imagined enlightenment would Be, correct?
That’s right.
If one is expecting enlightenment to be a phenomenal experience, then that is precisely what one will receive. This demonstrates how powerful intention is, and that one receives exactly what one imagines. This degree of knowingness without a shred of doubt, which is Faith, is what it is to Be God.
Would You explain?
Enlightenment is not an experience and there are no ‘enlightened masters’. No person can ever get enlightened because enlightenment is an Impersonal Happening that incorrectly gets labelled as a personal accomplishment when it is actually the meeting of consciousness with consciousness – God realizing it is God through the body. Love Thy Self and be free of worshiping ‘others’.
Isn’t loving my Self vanity or selfishness?
There is nothing wrong with loving Your Self. What leads to suffering is one’s self concept, yet if your sense of self extends to include all existence, then it is joyous to love one’s Self.
So what is the highest spiritual path?
All spiritual paths ultimately fail, thereby throwing one back upon oneself, so one may know the futility of seeking happiness elsewhere. The greatest obstacle to Self-realization is arrogance, which is the absence of humility. Your greatest failure humbly becomes your greatest victory, whereby You surrender to find out Who You Are and All divisions blur in the Light of Eternal Love.
So all paths are a waste of time?
There is no time and there are no paths ultimately. You are already what you are looking for.
Author and spiritual teacher at The Self-Inquiry Center, Nick Gancitano graduated from Coral Springs High School in Florida, where he was an All-American Soccer Player and earned a football scholarship to Penn State University. He was the place-kicker for the Penn State Nittany Lions under the legendary coach Joe Paterno, where his team won the National Championship in 1983. Nick graduated in 1986 with his degree in Biomechanics, and played briefly with the Detroit Lions before a knee injury retired him to the business world as a regional vice-president for A.L. Williams. Four years later, Nick entered the public school system to teach science and coach wrestling, soccer and football. Nick has privately mentored nearly 50 place-kickers who received Division 1 collegiate scholarships, emphasizing the significance of yoga and meditation to assist athletes with finding The Zone. He then transitioned into teaching yoga and then meditation to the general public. After discovering Self-inquiry, he experienced a profound shift and sought the direction of various conscious teachers, including Ramana Maharshi, who then guided Nick to share the Self-Inquiry in the West.
In 2002, several of his students formed the South Florida-based Atma-Vichara Ashram, where he was the acting spiritual director known as I Am for five years before teaching abroad from 2007 to 2010 and writing his first Be Still and Know I AM God. In early 2010 he established The Self-Inquiry Center in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Florida. When he is not traveling to share the Self-Inquiry or Be Still and Know I AM God, Nick resides at the Center and disseminates the teaching with humor and lucid precision.
Nick Gancitano – Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview
Nick Gancitano has spent most of his adult life delving into the mysteries of the ancient spiritual teachings and has undergone a conscious transformation that has made him a specialist in the field. Nick studied under some of its most respected sages and has traveled extensively around the world to deliver this teaching. In addition, Nick himself has been recognized for his simplification of the often complicated spiritual system of advaita (wisdom through direct insight).
After returning from his journey, Nick became committed to disseminating these teachings among friends and associates who became students and soon erected The Self-Inquiry Center for Conscious Living, where Nick now provides his lighthearted works to a growing population of devoted spiritual seekers.
What is Maya
What is the meaning of Maya? Our senses gives a very unreliable and limited view of reality. Is the physical world we see is real? Our world corresponds to our nervous system. Our world is species specific, it is a perceptual experience and it is influenced by many things.What about science? Does that give us an accurate description of the world? It can not, as science is an extension of our senses, it only can give a human perception of the world. An accurate description of the world around us need to be independent of the observer. Infinite possibilities is the only reality. Maya means illusion and the measurement of infinity into finite forms.
Who or What is God ?
As soon as we define God we limit God. God is the ultimate mystery that we cannot define. God is our highest potential to know ourselves and the end goal of our seeking. It can be infinite potential, creativity, love, compassion among many other things. God is the universe in manifestation. Can we experience God personally?
What is Karma
What is Karma? There is a lot of misunderstanding around this word. Karma simply means action. Every action has consequences. Conscious choice making is the most effective way of creating future consequences of karma. Karma creates the future, but it is also an echo from the past. Karma conditions our soul through memory, desire and imagination. Most people are prisoners of Karma, because it becomes a conditioned reflex and produces predictable outcomes in their lives. The goal of enlightenment is to break the in shackles of Karma.
Art Bell interviews Graham Hancock.
The conversation centers on Hancock’s ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’ book. It’s an intriguing discussion if one has the time/patience to sit through it.
There’s a short delay when transitioning between segments.
This ‘conversation’ answers Neale’s inquiry as to how to access to that level of awareness in our daily life 24/7, and whenever our ‘alarm clock’ tells us that our mind has taken over our life, we need to relinquish it voluntarily and invite PRESENCE and shift our attention to that place of grandeur inner awareness – knowing that the world creates moments of seduction that would get ourselves trapped in the attachment to our mind.
Enjoy the conversation.
evolutionarymystic.
Biography:
Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before beginning his now famous conversation with God. His With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching millions of lives and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.
There’s a verse from Psalm 46 that summarizes the relationship between the practice of religion and the practice of spirituality: “Be still, and know that I am God.” It’s a prayer, an admonition, an encouragement. The two poles of this verse — be still, know God — together they offer a different way than the frenetic pace of my daily life. They offer the promise of rest as a result of trusting in someone greater than myself.
But it’s hard to be still. My children embody (and create) this difficulty for me. We have a green and yellow painted table where Penny and William are supposed to eat breakfast. They sit in their little chairs for all of three minutes, and then one of them pops up. “I need to give you a hug,” Penny says. Or William, carefully carrying his cereal bowl, announces, “I would like to eat on the floor.” Or they want to open the microwave or feed Marilee a spoonful of baby food or run into the playroom “just for a minute.” They aren’t being intentionally disobedient. They get distracted. It’s hard to be still.
If I’m honest, I know the same is true for me. Whenever I try to turn my undivided attention to a writing project or reading to my children or praying for five minutes or even to a simple task like cooking dinner, my mind jumps around just like my kids at breakfast. I fault my iPhone explicitly for taking away some stillness in my life. I used to pray when I found myself with a few unstructured moments. Now, I pull out my phone. I can scan my e-mail, glance at the most popular articles from the New York Times and possibly even check a few blogs. Prayer takes more concentration, more energy and, well, more stillness.
Stillness is possible, of course, and the Psalmist implies that such stillness only arrives in the context of a relationship with God. But knowing God — acknowledging and submitting to God’s power and authority — is at least as hard, in our culture, as attempting to be still. For me, the difficulties start with doubt. I’ve been a Christian for decades, and yet questions and fears line up outside the door of my mind, and the less time I spend being still in God’s presence, the more space those questions and fears consume. But part of the point of Psalm 46 is to say that even when the world is literally falling apart all around us, even then, God is God.
The second form my trouble takes is that of pride. Not only do I forget that God is God, but I also forget that I am not God. I have trouble remembering that at the end of the day, whether or not I have responded to every e-mail that has come in, the world will keep on spinning. I have trouble remembering that I can’t (and shouldn’t) control other people. I have trouble remembering that even when I get it wrong, God is still good and faithful and can redeem my mistakes and my sins. I have trouble remembering that God will keep working around me, no matter what I do or don’t do.
We have three kids, and a few months back we moved William into a bed so that Marilee could move out of a pack ‘n’ play and into a crib. Over the course of the next few weeks William stayed up later and later and later. He got up earlier and earlier and earlier. One night, I held him on my lap. He was exhausted, but he refused to stay in his bed. I said, “William, what do you need to be able to go to sleep?” He turned his head to look at me and said, “Mom, I need a fence.” We put him back in his crib, and he returned to his previous pattern of sleeping 11 hours at night. In order to be still, he needed boundaries. He needed a fence.
When I think about the interplay between spirituality and religion, I imagine that religion is the fence, the boundaries that give us freedom to explore true spirituality. Or, in the words of the Psalm, knowing God is the fence, the protective barrier, that allows us to be still. Our son William needed a fence — the bars of his crib — in order to sleep, and those crib bars were good for him. Of course those bars only served their purpose as long as there was a mattress. Without a mattress, crib bars would be a terrible way of forcing him into an incredibly uncomfortable position in which being still was even more impossible than ever before. Religion without spirituality is as uncomfortable and purposeless as a crib with no mattress. But spirituality without religion offers freedom without security. We need to understand how to develop both spirituality and religion, how to be still and how to know God.
America is awash in spirituality. And again, spiritual practices — personal prayer, meditation, yoga and the like — can indeed nourish the soul even if divorced from their religious roots. The world is awash in religions, and religions other than Christianity can offer meaning, moral guidance, and other good things for their adherents and communities. What I have to offer is my experience as a Christian, and I believe the Christian story makes the most sense of the world and is the best news for all of us.
It anchors our spiritual longings — for goodness, peace, joy, justice, love, acceptance, community and rest — in a God who is love and who has demonstrated that love in a particular way through Christ. It’s an oft-quoted line for a reason, I suppose, by Augustine, that “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” I am spiritual and I am religious because I am a Christian. Because my restless heart has found stillness in knowing the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Bible, the Triune God of power and love.
This essay is adapted from a longer ebook, ‘Why I am Both Spiritual and Religious.’Amy Julia Becker is also the author of ‘A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny.’
God is Love. How many times have we heard the word “love” being used to define that which is ultimately indefinable? I suppose it is because that’s the only word that can even bring us close to grasping the ungraspable. When we use “love” to define that which is transcendent, absolute, and metaphysical, we’re using it to describe qualities and attributes that are non-ordinary, that represent a higher dimension of human experience, intuition, and cognition. That is why the love that is God is transpersonal, because it points us far beyond our unique individuality or the unique individuality of any other.
God is love. When the most revered mystics from the world’s great religious traditions speak to us about the love that is God, they almost uniformly declare that the nature of that higher non-ordinary, transpersonal love is peace. They say that the love of God is experienced as a peace that is indescribable, a “peace that passeth all understanding.” A peace that is so rapturous and all-encompassing that in its embrace, all fear and self-concern vanish from consciousness. It is a peace, they say, that will set us free.
God is love. The reason the love that is God can set us free is because that unquantifiable peace was the very nature of existence before the universe was born. Before the universe was born, before time and space existed, there was only peace. When we dive into the deepest depths of our own consciousness, deeper than our thoughts and memories, deeper than even our awareness of the world around us, we discover this very same peace — a mysterious and infinitely compelling emptiness where there is no time, where nothing ever happened, where we are always utterly free.
God is love. The love that is God is the experiential discovery of that deepest dimension of our own selves and of reality itself that the Buddha called the “Unborn,” the “Uncreated,” and the “Deathless.” Spiritual masters refer to it as the Ground of Being. In order to discover it for ourselves, we need to follow in the footsteps of the great ones. That means to close our eyes, turn within, and let the world disappear. It means to pray and meditate with such utter sincerity that all that is left is Being — timeless, formless, infinite Being.
God is love. But the love that is God is not only peace! The love that is God is also the evolutionary impulse — the powerful desire to exist in and as the universe, the surging energy and intelligence that gave rise to the creative process. From nothing came something! God is the driving force at the heart of the entire cosmic unfolding.
God is love. The love that is God is Eros, the sexual impulse, the biological imperative to procreate. Eros is the felt experience of unbearable ecstasy and urgency simultaneously. It is the felt experience of the universe endeavoring to give rise to itself within our own bodies. Eros is the felt experience of the restlessness of God once he or she chose to create the universe unendingly.
God is love. The love that is God is the uniquely human urge to consciously create. Human beings are the only species that are driven by a compulsion to innovate — to give rise to that which is new. Indeed, the architects of human culture and civilization throughout history have been those great individuals, those rare geniuses, who have taken bold leaps forward in their own fields. Their evolution-inspired passion has created and continues to create our shared world anew.
God is love. Finally, the love that is God is the spiritual impulse, the mysterious compulsion to become more conscious. Why is it that some individuals are driven by a deep desire to penetrate the profound mystery and infinite complexity of existence, while others are not? It is because they are awake to the love that is God, as the spiritual impulse, that drive that compels them to pray and meditate and endeavor to develop without end. In fact, they will not stop until they make that perennial breakthrough that makes it possible to know the unknowable and grasp the ungraspable.
God is love. I believe the love that is God is both Being and Becoming. The love that is God is both the experience of that transcendent peace that passeth all understanding and the dynamic, ecstatic urgency of the evolutionary impulse–the energy and intelligence that created and is creating the universe.
God is love. The love that is God is One and not two. The love that is God is both the liberating bliss of transcending the world and it is also, simultaneously, the awakened inspiration and passion for its ongoing development and perpetual evolution.
The love of God is everything.
Spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen is the best-selling author of Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening.
In my upcoming book, Aging as a Spiritual Practice (Gotham Books, January 2012), I tell the following story:
Once, when I was on a live radio show being interviewed by a Christian talk show host, her first question to me was, “Do you Buddhists believe in God?”
I had only a few seconds to think of an answer.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good!” the host said. “And how do you pray?”
I said that we prayed in silence to reach our divine nature.
“I like that!” the host said.
When I have told this story in talks, some of my Buddhist listeners say, “Oh, that’s nice. It’s good to be polite.” But I wasn’t just being polite. I was raised in a Christian church and went to Christian Sunday school. My favorite song as a child was “God is Love.” After graduating from college, for a year I attended Christian seminary, with the idea of becoming a minister. I didn’t become a dedicated Buddhist until some time after that. I am comfortable with the word God.
It’s true that by saying “Yes” I was also making an effort to establish some common ground. It was live radio, our time slot was 20 minutes and I was there to discuss a just-released book. I didn’t want to spend the whole time trying to explain what Buddhists believe. Also, I felt that a more nuanced answer, however I couched it, would have come across as some version of “No.” I sensed the need to give a definitive answer. The answer I gave came closest to what was so for me — understanding that I was not trying to speak for the world’s 320 million Buddhists, but only for myself.
The host knew I was a Buddhist; I was on her show to discuss my book, Healing Lazarus: A Buddhist’s Journey from Near Death to New Life. I sensed from the way she posed her question that all she really wanted to know was whether I was a person of religious conviction and belief — a person of faith. And I am. I’m an ordained Buddhist priest — a religious professional. My daily religious practice is the center of my life. I lead meditation groups, I am training and ordaining other priests. In that context, “Yes” is the best answer.
However, even though most of the world’s Buddhists recite the name of Buddha or pray to Buddha, Buddha is not a deity or supreme being in the same way that the Christian God is. A lay minister of the Jodo Shinshu sect of Japanese Buddhism once told me that he tries to explain to his Christian friends that Amida Buddha is a principle, like universal love, rather than a god. Another point worth noting is that there is no word for “Buddhism” in Buddhism — that “-ism” was an invention of 19th century European translators. Gautama the Buddha called his teaching marga, or the Path.
In that sense, the host’s second question — about how I prayed — was the more interesting to me. For Buddhists, what and how you practice is more fundamental than what you believe. My teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, used to say that people could practice Zen meditation and also believe in God; that was OK with him. My good friend, Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, practiced meditation with us in the early days of Tassajara Zen monastery. Like many other Catholic priests and monks who have taken up, and even taught, Zen, Brother David did not feel a contradiction between his Catholic contemplative practice and Zen meditation. In fact, he felt that there was an affinity between the two. A Tibetan Buddhist teacher once said, when asked about God, “God and Buddha may appear to be different, but when we speak of the nature of God and the nature of Buddha there may be more closeness.” I learned in Christian seminary that St. Anselm’s definition of God was “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Shunryu Suzuki often spoke of the inconceivability of Buddha in similar language. In Zen meditation we seek to express and embody this inconceivability.
So when I said to the radio host, “We pray in silence to reach our divine nature,” I was not just making that up. I knew that there is a long history in Christianity of the “prayer of silence.” In the Eastern Orthodox tradition this is known as hesychasm, which is based on Christ’s injunction in the Book of Matthew to “go into your closet to pray.” A more modern version of this practice is the so-called “centering prayer,” whose ancient origins can be traced to the writings of St. John of the Cross and other early contemplatives.
My colleagues in Zen may object that it is a stretch to call Zen meditation “prayer,” or to describe its purpose as a method “to reach our divine nature.” I understand; I’m sure this post will receive many critical comments both from the Buddhist and Christian sides. My purpose here is not to defend what I said, as much as describe it, along with the thinking behind it. I think what is most important is that the host and I had a real dialogue. After the show was over, she told me that someone close to her had experienced a traumatic brain injury, as I had done, and she wanted to know more. That was a touching moment, a human connection that was more important, I think, than anything I said or she said on the show.
Interfaith dialogue can sometimes be superficial, but it can also go deep. Dialogue is the universal antidote to misunderstanding and prejudice, especially the religious kind, and I am all for it — even when it falls short, or seems unfruitful. This week’s headlines about Osama bin Laden reminds us all of the terrible cost of misunderstanding, prejudice and hatred. The hatred and the killing will not end — in fact, given our human propensity for demonizing those who do not believe as we do, such things may always be with us. But we must never stop trying to counter prejudice with efforts to find common ground. That was what I was trying to do on the radio show, and what I am trying to do here by writing about it.
Richard Dawkins & Rowan Williams The Archbishop of Canterbury discuss Human Beings & Ultimate Origin, 23rd February, Oxford, moderated by Anthony Kenny.
Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism guides the reader through the stages of mystical prayer. Mystical prayer is a way to create a living relationship with the Divine within the heart. Drawing on Christian and Sufi sources such as St. Teresa of Avila, Attar, St. John of the Cross, and Rumi, as well as from his own experience, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee describes how prayer is first born of need, but then takes one deep within the heart, into the stages of Union and Ecstasy. Through mystical prayer, one is drawn beyond any words into the interior silence of real communion with God. Here, in the silence within the heart, a meeting and merging takes place that carries us beyond our self into the mystery of divine presence, into the secret nature of love’s oneness.
It offers a direct path to knowing God in your own being. Through this series of conversations between himself and God within, Nick Gancitano leads you in the process of Self-inquiry, enabling you to shed the layers of conditioning concealing from you the fact that you are One with God to bring about authentic spiritual awakening.
