Finding Freedom in Devotion for Cultural Creatives
Integral Christian Devotional Practices: Part 1 – Gazing
While cultural creatives often have mixed feelings about worship, many of them still long for something they can truly open up their hearts to. Many feel wonder at the vast, cosmic Mystery but perhaps have a desire (sometimes unconscious) to still connect personally to it in some way, to devote themselves to something—someone—beyond just than themselves.
The heart of devotion comes alive by gazing into visionary or symbolic eyes of God. This is the personal, 2nd person presence of the divine as expressed in the tangible other. While experiencing God as 1st person spirit is a vital part of our journey, devotion is awakened through “seeing” such personal forms of the Divine Mystery as God’s motherly-fatherly presence, the presence of the Living Jesus, the spiritual and physical beings around us, and the beautiful presence of creation itself whose cosmic eyes do indeed gaze back at us.
The Mind’s Eye
In gazing one does not need to actually see physically (or even in a visionary way) the eyes of spiritual beings around you. Rather one can see in the mind’s eye. Our “mind’s eye,” originating in the 14th century from Chaucer and used by Shakespeare in Hamlet, is not a literal eye. If you can see someone or something in your mind’s eye, you can imagine or remember what they look like.
As a blind man who persists in doubting the reality of physical vision we can be limited by our worldview. We insist there are no such thing as “spiritual beings regardless of their attested reality both in the New Testament and in the experience of millions today for those who see beyond the physical. However, we can open our inner eyes of the mind and be dazzled at the sight of accessing another realty. One can simply but profoundly see with the mind’s eye, and/or sense with the whole body, spiritual beings not only looking at you—but seeing you. I have never seen, in a vision, the eyes of the spiritual presences around me. But I look at them all the time in my mind’s eye with love and vividly sense that they are looking at me with mutual devotion.
Moving from the Modern Stage to the Cultural Creative Stage
Modern stage methods of knowing and understanding are predominantly verbal and analytical such as reading, writing, intelligence, analysis, clarity, explanation, logic, and linear thinking. But postmoderns, or cultural creatives, becoming noticeable in American culture in the 1960s, are more symbolic and visual. Therefore visual, rather than written or spoken, devotional practices can be particularly helpful with cultural creatives.
This is dramatically seen when cultural creatives push past their resistance to relating to the personal presence of the Living Jesus and understand his presence, though ontologically real, as a symbol of God’s presence. This then allows their awakened consciousness to give rise to images and sensations of the motherly fatherly presence of God, the Living Jesus, Mary, and other spiritual guides.
Devotional Gazing in other traditions
Many spiritual traditions Bhakti yoga involves devotion to a guru or a deity. It is found in Hinduism, East Asian Buddhist traditions and Sikhism. It is the cultivation of unconditional spiritual love. In some forms of Buddhism, it is the practice of compassion and devotion to your teacher. No, this is the form of Bhakti yoga
The Sanskrit word bhakti comes from the root bhaj, which means “to adore or worship God.” Bhakti yoga has been called “love for love's sake" and "union through love and devotion.” Bhakti is the yoga of a personal relationship with God.
In the oldest spiritual path in the world, Hinduism, the devotional visionary realm is referred to as Darshan. It is the beholding of a deity (especially in image form), revered person, or sacred object. The experience is considered to be reciprocal and results in the human viewer’s receiving a blessing. Many Hindus visit temples not to see God, but to let God gaze upon them—and then to join God’s seeing which is always compassionate.
Spiritual knowing from mind’s eye seeing
At Integral Christian Network we explore many deep avenues of spiritual knowing such as sensing, feeling, intuiting, grounding, and hearing. In this article and next we are looking at looking—the visual and imaginal realm of spiritual knowing. Jesus, for Christians, is the supreme image of the invisible God. One can physically view an artist’s rendition of Jesus looking at us in a painting, sculpture, icon, or see him in the mind’s eye, or, most commonly, sense his gaze intuitively. If you struggle with the form of Jesus, it’s ok to use someone else such as Mary or another personal presence of Divine Mystery. We are all imbued with God after all! Let Jesus and/or other spiritual guides gaze upon you. Return the gaze in mutual loving adoration.
One person’s experience with looking at Jesus
Anyone familiar with the enormous, resource filled Integral Life website knows about Corey Devos. He is the Editor, Designer, Writer, and Producer of IntegralLife.com, as well as the Managing Editor of KenWilber.com. He is a brilliant, creative person whom I am fortunate to have gotten to know through my association with Ken Wilber. I quote from his writing on the Integral Life website about his experience at a conference in which I was the speaker. I wanted to omit his references to me, lest it look like self-adulation. But rather than take away from the integrity of his writing, I left them in. After all, I’m really a great guy like he says. Corey writes:
There was something about the keen intellect, gentle wisdom, and graceful humor that Paul shared throughout his presentation that allowed me to temporarily "suspend my disbelief” enough to bring my full attention to the prayer he leads at the end. “Okay, I’ll play along," I said to myself. “I'll set aside my cynicism, do the prayer, and see what happens.” Fake it ’til you make it, a very wise woman once told me. So I tried it. To tell you the truth, the results surprised me.
I imagined Jesus sitting in front of me, as Paul prompted me to do, visualizing His face until I could feel His presence before me. It felt odd at first, but after a few minutes of silence, I thought I felt something. I began my prayer.
“Please help me,” I whispered.
I’d never been able to speak those words before. It was painful to put them together in my mind. What if nothing happens? What if no one answers? What if there’s no help to be had? I’d almost rather never ask, than to find out the terrible truth: that this is a fantasy, that there is nobody there, and that I must ultimately bear this cross alone [A refence to the struggle his family was having at the time]. Tears streamed down my face.
In that instant, all I can say is that Jesus responded. I looked into the face of Christ, and felt His eyes soften. That was all it was. Just a softening of His eyes. And in that same moment, I felt something shift inside of me. It seemed to flow from a source that was at once within me and without me. There was a soft warm glow in my solar plexus, and for the very first time I felt that something was helping me hold all of this fear, all of this pain, all of this beautiful agony. For a moment, the unreasonable gravity of life didn’t feel quite so heavy. In that moment I knew I was feeling Christ’s Love. I was drenched in it. It was something I had never really felt before, at least not to this magnitude — and yet, it was everything I had ever felt before, all at once. I was overwhelmed, and I was grateful.
It’s funny, it had never really occurred to me that the reason I’d never had a relationship with Jesus Christ was because we’d simply never been formally introduced. Which seems rather important, "personal God" and all. I have the sense that this is true for a great many of us. For me, this was probably the only sort of introduction that would have worked — one that used humor to disarm my skepticism, one that opened my mind by first satisfying my intellect, one that opened my heart by coming from a man as lovely and as kind as Paul Smith.
I was missing this all-important “Spirit in 2nd-person” piece from my own spiritual toolkit, and suffered for its absence. I’ve paid plenty of lip service to it over the years, understanding its importance intellectually, but largely missing the point in my own practice. I knew the signifier very well, but held only a glimmer of the reality it actually signified. I haven’t quite felt the same since this experience
Looking at God, Jesus, and saintly guides from the heart of devotion is both an ancient spiritual tradition and contemporary practice that can be astounding liberating. Try it!
You may notice that both the beginning and ending images of Jesus looking at someone in this article are of Mary Magdalene. In the world of religious art, we seldom see Jesus looking directly and lovingly at anyone else but this Mary. Additionally, the traditional image of Mary is that she is the lowly sinner bowing before Jesus. These two contemporary images represent the new understanding of Mary Magdalene as a valued companion of Jesus and therefore taking care of him or standing facing him as a true partner in the spiritual realm.
More articles in this series on devotional practice for cultural creatives will follow. Sign up for our Mailing List to receive them right to your inbox!