Developing Flow and Christianity

[conormat]

I'm always intrigued with Eastern traditions like Shaolin that integrate their physical and martial arts practices with their religion. It makes me a little envious since I'm not aware of a similar tradition within Christianity. If there is I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

In Medieval times people participated in bodily mortifications, but they were more intended to damage the body in order to bring it's passions under control. What I'm working on now is a way of developing a healthy body in a way that consistent with the Gospel message.

The biggest impact recently on this endevor came when I read N.T. Wright's "Surprised By Hope." Wright, a Bishop in the Church of England, challenges us to rethink the point of Christianity. He maintains that it's not, "Going to Heaven when you die," but rather that at the second coming all people will be resurrected from the dead and receive new bodies. This hope is made clear at Easter, when we celebrate Jesus' resurrection from the dead and all that it entailed. Wright described the process as all of the matter consisting of his old body was used up in creating his new body. This new body was in many ways similar but also profoundly different. The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn't recognize him until he broke the bread. Mary Magdelene thought he was the gardner until he called her name. At the same time he wasn't completely different. He still had the scars in his hands and wrists and he invited Thomas to touch them. He even ate food in the presense of his disciples.

The resurrection also provided him with some new abilities. For one he could enter into locked rooms without disturbing the door or windows. And at the end of Luke's gospel, his body "ascends" into heaven - though not in the sense of him raising up in the air. Instead Jesus, bodily, passes between this world and the world where God abides. To this day we wait until the time when those two worlds are joined like a husband and wife.

All of this leads us to believe that the point isn't to enter heaven as some disembodied ghost, but to enter it bodily - with our new bodies given at the final resurrection and exist with God as full, breathing, living human beings. When people misunderstand this they slip into a type of dualism where matter is considered bad and spirit is considered good. (I'm grossly overstating this but you get the point.)

So what does this have to do with flow, physical disciplines, and martial arts? Through baptism, Christians are said to be united to Christ in both his death and resurrection. Mystically we have died and are given our new bodies in resurrection. Therefore the whole point of the Christian life is to live, as much as possible, in this world as if we're living in the next world. We always pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Whereas once our bodies were corruptible, now they are incorruptible. Whereas before we engaged in sexual immorality, envy, murder, strife, craftiness, gossip, greed, etc. we can now live in ways that are generous, loving, and hospitable. It's not the difference between spirit and matter that makes this possible, but the difference between the old body and the new body.

So why train in CST? I find that when I'm in my flow, it's so much easier to be generous, loving, kind, and hospitable. I have so much more energy to do the good works God has set out for me to do. In short, a body that's in flow looks so much more like the resurrected body than it does to the old body, the one damaged and tramautized by sin, death, and corruption. CST, and unbinding my flow has become a way of reclaiming the body that God has always intended.

Peace,
Conor+

[Scott Sonnon]

I find that when I'm in my flow, it's so much easier to be generous, loving, kind, and hospitable.

Conor, I love this piece! I would only say that the reason we feel this ease is because it is the thing. Flow = generosity, kindness, hospitality. Flow is both the experience and the expression of love. Why kids love games, why athletes love sports, why actors love theater, why artists love craft, why partners love each other, and we we all aspire to learn from these mundane glimpses to tap into the unending Divine - the Source, Flow itself: mouth, current and stream...

[Joseph David]

I'm always intrigued with Eastern traditions like Shaolin that integrate their physical and martial arts practices with their religion. It makes me a little envious since I'm not aware of a similar tradition within Christianity. If there is I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

Disclaimer: I do not wish to get into debate on this view point. I would like to express it however. Please except this with loving intention

Christianity is a subset of Judaism. Jesus, the embodiment of the Christ was a practicing Jew. He lived among the brotherhoods of the Essene. He was their primary teacher, Rabbi, during his life. The Essene’s practice a form Jewish mysticism called Kabbalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes As the bible references Jesus of Nazareth, It would be more accurate to say he was a Nazarean Essene.

As cultures develop, they take traditions from other cultures and make them their own. For the Essene’s, meditation was central to their rituals. The rituals included numerology, divination, astrology, color therapy and such.
I believe, before Jesus returned to the Holy Land, the missing years, he studied with the great masters of the eastern religions. One of the things he taught was that the body was the temple for the living spirit. And it was our duty to honor the temple by keeping it holy. In order to keep it holy one must nourish the vessel with clean, whole foods, and think pure thoughts. It makes sense that he also had a daily physical practice like other yogi’s of that period. How else would he have the magnitude to run out the money lenders from the temple, to channel the energy for his healings, to walk on water or feed the masses?

So why didn’t the practices of the day survive to be passed on? The simplest answer is persecution. Christianity survived in secret before the state used it as a method of controlling the masses. The sign of the Pisces was the symbol for secret meeting of Christians. It so happens, that Jesus was the Avatar for the Piscean age. As we are coming to the age of the Aquarian, one has to wonder who the next great avatar will be to lead us out of darkness. Perhaps, when we spiritually evolve, we will realize that by truly unbinding or flow in both the physical, mental, and spiritual bodies, we will know that each of us have the potential to be our own avatar. The definition of GURU is, Gee You R You.

I hope that I can realize my own aspirations and embodiment of divinity, because as Jesus said: if ye truly believed that the mountain would move, then you could move mountains.

I think I’m only slightly of topic Conor

[lorenzodamarith]

hello,

conormat, joseph david, nice pieces. a lot to think about.

thanks

[Glenn Sunshine]

The Apostle Paul is abundantly clear that in 1 Cor. 15 that the Christian hope of Heaven is not a disembodied state--he emphasizes a bodily resurrection, an idea that was anathema to the Greek mind, to Gnostics, and most other religious groups in the Roman world because their hope was in a non-physical eternity, where they would be united to god (lower case "g" because it is impersonal) as pure idea. So on a religious level, Christianity and Judaism were almost unique as religions in the Roman world in their emphasis on the goodness of the physical. In fact, the Gnostics frequently associated the God of the Jews with evil, because he made the physical world which was de facto evil. (If you have any doubts on that score, I'll give you a reading list.) That much is clear from the sources. The question is, where did the asceticism come in. While there is no doubt that fasting, etc., was part of most ancient religions including Judaism, the more extreme practices you find in the Middle Ages weren't. A book entitled Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God (I don't remember the author) suggests that in particular the sexual asceticism that comes into the church somewhere around the third or fourth century was an influence of pagan notions of sexuality, where sexual activity or its absence (e.g. Vestal Virgins) was linked to spirituality in a way that wasn't the case in Judaism. That idea, combined with the strict moral code and ascetic tendencies of the early church evolved into the disfunctional stuff you see among medieval mystics, assuming the author is correct.

What all this means is that Christianity in its earliest forms was not anti-material world, excessively ascetic, or anti-body. Although the body was not seen as a vehicle for spiritual development as it was in Asia, the apostle Paul does describe it as the temple of the Holy Spirit, which implies that we should therefore take proper care of it. Much later, in the nineteenth century, physical culturalists often blended exercise with Christianity, resulting in something known as "muscular Christianity." The development of the YMCA, the Boy Scouts, and numerous other organizations were in part expressions of this, growing out of the movement begun by Wilberforce and other early English evangelicals. All of this to say that there is at least a segment of the Christian tradition that emphatically approves of physical culture and that would see the cultivation of flow as something that Christians should pursue, even if they would not give it the same spirtual significance as some people do.

As far as Jesus goes, I would be careful about identifying him with the Essenes, as there is no evidence that he was associated with them. (By the way, the article you link to questions whether the Essenes actually practiced Kabalistic mysticism.) Likewise, the argument that he spent time in Asia is founded on a book which is demonstrably false because the places where he was supposed to have studied Buddhism would not convert to Buddhism for another several hundred years. Further, he was recognized in Judea as a rabbi, and rabbis got their training in the Jewish world, not by traveling to Asia. So all in all, it seems very unlikely that he did study with the yogis in India. (I know you said you did not want to get into a debate over this, but at the same time I doubt you meant that you wanted to state your ideas without anyone else having the option to respond to them. With the ideas on the table I thought it was appropriate to comment on what amounts to a historical argument. And in a thread about Christianity, it also seems appropriate to present a case for a more traditional view of Jesus' life. Feel free to ignore what I've said if you'd like.)

[conormat]

Glenn, absolutely! My thoughts at this point is that persuit of flow is a worthwhile discipline because a body in flow is closer to the resurrected body than not. I love Scott's comment about flow=generosity, kindness, and hospitality. I've never thought of it that way before but it's defintiely worth exploring.

Joseph, while I am in Glenn's camp I can see where you're coming from. Your thoughts did remind me of another story that I'll share here. I wish I could remember the reference, but this will just have to do.
A journalist was covering Ueshiba sometime after World War II. Ueshiba did a demonstration where he brought several MPs to the roof of a building and challenged them to throw him off. When thye tried to grab him, he just slipped away and walked through the midst of them. When the journalist saw this the only thing he could think of was the story in Luke where Jesus did the same thing. Except in that case the villagers were really mad and actually trying to kill him! The journalist reflected this back to Ueshiba who replied, "To truly master Aikido one must purify himself. For one who was already pure this would have been no problem."

[hermanchauw]

I'm always intrigued with Eastern traditions like Shaolin that integrate their physical and martial arts practices with their religion. It makes me a little envious since I'm not aware of a similar tradition within Christianity. If there is I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

The Psalms speaks of physical culture in warfare.

From Psalm 18 (Scottish Metrical Psalter) which is one my favourite Psalms.

v29 By thee through troops of men I break,
and them discomfit all;
And, by my God assisting me,
I overleap a wall.

v33 He made my feet swift as the hinds,
set me on my high places.
v34 Mine hands to war he taught, mine arms
brake bows of steel in pieces.

I just did a quick search on google for "warrior psalms" and cam across this cool list of psalms with warrior themes: http://cdbaby.com/cd/riversideag2

Just an aside, when you click play on the buttons, the background music is capoeira.

[Motedgrange]

Awesome discussion gentlemen! I have been grappling with a lot of these issues myself lately as I experience the effectiveness of a personal practice and weight it against my Christian upbringing. Something I have found to be true is that a lot of what is credited as Christian today is really dogma from previous generations. The priestly class was eliminated with the tearing of the curtain to the Holy of Holy's yet we still seem to give too much credence to clergy, bishops and minister, many of whom live extremely sheltered lives. Instead I feel we are freed to experience a direct relationship with God. This, at least to me, requires experiencing life as he created it. Yes there are places we should not go in relation to spiritual realms, sinful acts, etc. but there are a lot more we are free to try. Some resonate with me, some do not. If God created the physical world and me than finding a resonance in a physical practice or activity would bring you closer to God. Not make you god but bring you more in line with reality. To me it seems neglecting the body or ignoring the physical world would be a sin in itself.

[wiggy1]

I find that when I'm in my flow, it's so much easier to be generous, loving, kind, and hospitable. I have so much more energy to do the good works God has set out for me to do.

This is exactly what I thought when Coach Sonnon came up with the marvelous tag line "Move Better. Feel Better. BE Better." for the Anti-Aging Conference.

As a Catholic who is getting ever more frustrated with the Church's refusal to discuss the role of one's health and wellness and how it affects spirituality, I am finding this discussion fascinating. Thanks to all participants.

[conormat]

It's amazing how much I've been thinking about this topic since my initial post. When we seek flow, freedom to move, it actually gives us freedom to do things - anything we set our mind on. In the past I've been scared of this mindset because I was afraid this would make me free to indulge in all sort of vices, but now that I've been in ordained ministry for about two years now, I think the bigger problem is that we feel like we can't engage in certain virtues. Here are some examples:

I can't help this homeless person because he or she might use the money for drugs or alcohol.

We can't take a pacifist stand because other countries are hostile to us.

We can't advocate for prison reform because these people broke the law and need to be punished.

We can't, can't, can't.
Consider that all of the can'ts are instances of bound flow. Everything after the "because" is fear reactivity, compensation, and all the random crap we seek to strip away. By unlocking our flow, we remove every can't and can become agents of good in the world.

Now I'm toying with the idea of applying CST principles to a larger body - the Body of Christ. I'd like to examine every can't, every place where we could still make a difference in the world, and approach it incrementally, shave off the tension, start with basic building blocks and little by little sophisticate.

Prison reform has been on my mind lately, so what would it take for genuine reform. Where would we start, how do we get specific, and how do we progress incrementally - all things I'm considering. Just like with CST, it's possible to jump in too deep too quickly and suffer from overtraining. (Check out my piece in the Flow-Fighting forum where I had to break up a fight between two homeless guys.) Even if we don't get to a place within our lives where the Kingdom of God is manifest on Earth, we can still engage in the pursuit of it. And it's the journey that makes all the difference.

Finally, I love all the scripture quotes people have been sharing. In going through my own Bible, I found one that's going to stick with me - Romans 12:1

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. NIV"

I'm going to put this in my signature - along with Scott's quote about flow = generosity, kindness, and hospitality. This has all been great stuff.

Peace,
Conor+