The Tao of Christ

In this episode I explore the effect that nondual awareness has on depression and other emotional and psychological problems. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Jesus tells us how to enter into Unitive Awareness, which he called the Kingdom of God. He was a teacher of Nondual Reality and taught how to enter into what other spiritual traditions call Enlightenment, Liberation or Spiritual Awakening. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Jesus is pointing us to the door. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

This episode explore how to sustain the sense of inner peace in nondual awareness, and how to express that inner peace in peacemaking in the world. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In recording these episodes I try to communicate Unitive Awareness. It is not easy. Not only does language seem inadequate to the task of communicating this indescribable reality, but even the process of communication has pitfalls. I have been noticing recently how important it is to pay attention to who is doing the speaking and who is doing the listening. Which “I” is speaking and which “you” is being addressed. As I have said, there are two selves, what Thomas Merton has called True Self and the false self. There is the little human self – the individual personality. Then there is the selfless Self, Universal Being, the One that includes all others, including the little self. Human language is the domain of the little self and is by nature dualistic, and hence the difficulty. Yet language is the only means that the Universal Self has to communicate, if this Self wants to use words. The Universal Self is in fact communicating wordlessly all the time through everything in the universe. It does not need words, but to communicate to humans through humans it has to humble itself to use words.It makes me think of that passage in Philippians where the apostle Paul says that in Jesus the Divine Christ emptied himself and humbled himself, taking the form of a servant. For communication of Unitive Awareness to take place through words, it must be the Divine Christ, the Universal Self speaking and not the individual human self. Not only that, but the Universal Self needs to speak TO the Universal Self in those who are listening. Communication involves a speaker and a listener. It has to be the right speaker and the right listener. Self speaks to Self. Spirit speaks to Spirit. Christ in me speaks to Christ in you. God in me speaks to God in you. God is speaking to God’s Self. You and I as individual egos are in the background while Deep calls to Deep, as the psalm says, encouraging Being to be aware as a human being. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I explore the relationship between Nondual God and Consciousness.View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I explore the two selves – the True Self and the false self. I talk about a strategy to draw attention away from the little self and thereby live out of the Big Self, using the idea of unfriending on Facebook.  In the background you will also hear a guest appearance by my cat Percy, as he meows for attention and plays with a squeaking toy, thereby impersonating the false self. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I explore how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity points to nondual Reality and can usher us into unitive awareness. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

The doctrine of salvation by grace through faith is well known in Christian circles. But the principle’s real power is found when it is applied, not to doctrines but to Unitive awareness or Nondual Awareness. The Protestant principle is true after all, but applied to Reality and not to ideas. You can call it salvation or eternal life. Other spiritual traditions call it enlightenment or awakening. The Christ called it the Kingdom of God. The Buddha called it nirvana. Zen calls it satori. Here I am calling it liberation, which is a term used in both the East and the West. Salvation or liberation is awakening to our essential unity with Nondual Reality. This Liberation is by grace through faith. Liberation is by grace. That means that there is nothing that we can do to be liberated. There is nothing we can do to facilitate spiritual awakening. It is by faith, which is spiritually seeing what is physically invisible. Faith is trusting spiritual sight. All of us have it. It is a free gift to all. It is just a matter of recognizing it, and using it and trusting it. Instead we tend to ignore it. That is why the ordinary human state is called ignorance as well as blindness. What all spiritual seekers hope for – spiritual liberation, awakening, enlightenment, which is a word which is about seeing the light – is right before our eyes. All we need to do is open our spiritual eyes and trust what we see. That is liberation by grace through faith.   View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

You are not who you think you are. You are not WHAT you think you are. French Christian philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin famously said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Even that does not quite communicate it. It makes it sounds like there are a lot of little spiritual beings having human experiences. There is only one Being, what Christian philosopher Paul Tillich called Being Itself or the Ground of Being. Another word for this is Spirit, and that is what we are. I would phrase it this way: We are not humans having a spiritual experience. We are Spirit having human experiences. This Spirit is that within which all experiences occur. All is One. We are One expressed in what appears to be many. We are Being appearing as human beings. Reality is One. I call that One Reality God. The problem with using the word “God” is that people mean very different things when they say that word. I am not using it as a traditional theist would use it. For that reason perhaps I should not use the word at all. But this is my religious vocabulary. If I can’t call Ultimate Reality God, then what use is the word God? The trick is trying to communicate this Reality, which seems to be nearly impossible to do. That is why the Tao Te Ching says, “He who speaks does not know, and he who knows does not speak.” And yet I speak. It is what I do. I am a preacher, and as the Scripture says, “How will they hear unless someone tells them?” So I speak. This episode is my attempt to express the inexpressible.  View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Many Christians do not investigate – or even know about - the possibility of spiritual awakening because they do not hear about it from the pulpit or see examples of it in the Christian Bible. So they settle for a second-hand faith of believing in things. But the truth is that there are biblical examples hiding in plain sight. One of them is the Old Testament character of Job. Job is an Old Testament Buddha whose account of spiritual awakening is recorded in the Book of Job. The events that lead to both the Buddha’s and Job’s awakenings are similar, and I explain how. In this episode I investigate the age-old problem of suffering or problem of pain and see how it can act like a Zen koan to push us beyond theology and traditional religion into what is called unitive awareness or nondual awareness.In connection with this episode, I am offering my 2017 book Thank God for Atheists free for a limited time. From August 29 to September 2, 2020, you can download a free copy of the kindle edition of this book from Amazon. You can do a search for the title or my name or use this link: https://www.amazon.com/Thank-God-Atheists-Christians-Atheism-ebook/dp/B07116XX9X/If you happen to be part of the Kindle Unlimited program you can borrow this and any of my books at any time. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU