The Tao of Christ

The inspiration for this episode comes from an email I received from a spiritual friend in Melbourne, Australia. He sent me an interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the two foundations. Jesus used the illustration or two men who built a house on the sand and the rock. I tie this into Jesus’ response to Peter’s profession of faith that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus replied, “On this Rock I will build my church.” They both refer to Nonduality as the bedrock of reality.View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I ponder our true identity in Christ. Then I explain how this can be experienced by means of meditation on scripture. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

A while ago I read about the early life of Ramana Maharshi - how when he was a teenager he was overwhelmed by a sudden, extreme fear of death. Then he lay down on his back and imagined he was dead. I think I read this in the preface to a book of his teachings, but I couldn’t find it. So I did an internet search and found the details of the account on his official website. It happened in July of 1896, and it was actually the event that precipitated his spiritual awakening. His account is meaningful to me because it has many similarities with the experience that prompted my spiritual awakening.In this episode I read his account and compare it with my experience. Then I describe a spiritual practice of dying that may help those who are seeking to awaken to True Self. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

When people ask me about spiritual practices or disciplines, I generally do not recommend any. The reason I don’t recommend any is because people tend to view practices as a means to an end. They think that if they do certain things then they will result in a spiritual goal. Yet even when I don’t recommend practices, people will press me on it. They say that they know it is all grace and that there is nothing they can do to wake up spiritually, but they are hoping there is something that might help in some small way. Today I am going break my pattern and suggest a practice. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

We are deep within the Christmas season now, and holiday activities are in full swing. So it is a good time to contemplate the meaning of Christmas. Too often the choice seems to be between Santa Claus or the baby Jesus, secular or theistic, or perhaps opt for celebrating the winter solstice as an alternative. But it is possible to celebrate Christian holiday spiritually from a nondual perspective. The holiday of Christmas expresses the oneness that is our true nature and the nature of the one reality.View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Having been a Christian for all of my adult life and a Baptist pastor for nearly all of that, I can say from firsthand knowledge that the essential difference between Christianity and spiritual awakening is that the first is secondhand religion and the other is direct realization. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

I receive a lot of emails from people who used to consider themselves Christians and were active in the church but no longer. They can no longer accept the literal interpretation of Scripture and the dogmatic nature of the Christian religion. They have dared to think outside the traditional Christian box, they are either been rejected by the church or feel alienated from the church and from Christianity. Some people have had spiritual experiences – glimpses of nondual reality – and are no longer comfortable with the dualistic language, theology, and rituals of the church. They are especially not comfortable with the Christian attitude that only Christians know the truth. For that reason they have left the church and explored other spiritual traditions. Yet a part of their heart is still in Christianity. A part of them misses the church, misses Jesus, and misses Christian worship and fellowship. They wish there was a way to be a part of a church but express their Christianity in a way consistent with their new broader awareness of spiritual Reality. That is the type of person who listens to my channel and many email me.The good news is that Christianity and nonduality are not incompatible. I call it Christian nonduality. In fact the original message of Jesus, whom we call the Christ, is the nondual Reality that is at the heart of all spiritual traditions.  So we can be followers of Jesus and affirm nondual awareness. But can we still be part of a church? Can we still go to worship in a church? I say yes!View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

There is a theme in both the Old and New Testaments that points to the heart of nondual awareness. It is expressed most clearly in the Book of Exodus. Moses asks to see God’s glory and God responds, “You cannot see My face; for no one shall see Me and live.” The Bible repeatedly says that no one can see God and live. God is described as holy, and no mortal can be in the presence of the holy God according to the Bible. In other words the ego – the separate self – cannot survive the presence of God. The little self is consumed in the fire of the One Self of the universe, who is God. The false self burns up in the presence of the true self. In the Presence of the One True God, the One Divine Self, all false selves disappear. There is only one Reality and that is God. This is a nondual Reality. Like a fire it consumes all others. It shakes the foundations of our lives (to use another biblical metaphor) and what remains – what is unshakeable – is Real.   View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

The common understanding of our place in the universe is that we are tiny human creatures on a planet in a solar system in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies in a vast universe. Anyone who has laid on their back on a summer evening watching shooting stars has experienced this sense of wonder at how small and seemingly insignificant our place is in the universe. There is something to be said for this state of wonder. It is a type of spiritual awe.But that is only half the story. From a physical point of view we are insignificant short-lived lifeforms in a vast universe. But there is another side of the story, a spiritual side. Together those two sides make one whole, like the Yin-Yang symbol shows two sides of a whole. From a physical point of view we are in the universe, but from a spiritual perspective the universe is in us.  View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Sometimes I wonder if there is anything more to say in these episodes. Then I get emails from listeners which remind me there is still more to say because the gospel of nonduality is so easily misunderstood. Nondual awareness is so simple it is missed. It is so close that people don’t see it. It is hiding in plain sight. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and people do not see it.” Tony Parsons calls it the open secret.The common mistake I hear in questions and remarks is that people assume that what they are looking for is not here now. That it is out in the future. It is one practice or one insight or one teacher or one retreat or one teaching away. Then they will get it. They assume something is lacking now. The only problem – if you want to call it that, which it really isn’t unless you see it as a problem – is that we forget who and what we are. We have spiritual amnesia. The misapprehension of our essential identity is evident in most of the questions that people ask. Alan Watts has a famous book entitled “The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.” That title sums it up. I read it first over fifty years ago, but it was only ten years ago that I knew what he was talking about.Watts was right. People don’t know who they are. That is the problem. For that reason every question they ask comes from who they are not. In other words it is a case of mistaken identity. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU