Summary: I give you some notes from Sam Keen. He documents suspicions that our current spirituality moves, generated,,as they are,by Occidental, high income, high tech, high consumption cultures are essentially empty and self-absorbed. He concludes, as you will see, that we will enjoy the life of the spirit to the extent that we compassionately embrace the needs and concerns and future of those outside of our present "in group" [Notes about what to do in the Keen entry to follow :o] ]

• The Quest for Justice: Part I
  [also published under the Title:The Place for Justice in our lives as Christians]
  
  

  Sam Keen has lectured and studied and consulted on issues having to do with spirituality. The article summarized here traces his movement toward a spirituality rooted in three forms of justice: political, economic and ecological. This entry summarizes his reasons for being concerned about spirit's relationship with justice in the first place. The next entry will list and discuss his recommendations.

  He holds two M.A.s in theology from Harvard and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton. His books include Learning to Fly, Fire in the Belly and Hymns to an Unknown God (all Bantam Doubleday Dell). He works his tiny ranch in Sonoma, California, where he exercises on the flying trapeze installed by the creek next to his study

  • A Puzzling Void

    [I made the] simple observation that amid all the offerings on holistic living, healing, meditation, awareness, opening the heart, oneness, knowing God, sacred bodywork, etc., there was not one reference to justice. [Yet] if we step back into the Greek tradition from which we got many of our ethical and political ideals, we find that the quest for justice was considered the controlling virtue for both the individual and the state. [In Aristotle's way of thinking ] "all virtue is summed up in dealing justly." [In the Judeo-Christian tradition[sigma]] the best summary of what God requires of us is "to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God."

  • Spirit and Justice Revisited

    My hunch [---]is that something is askew in the current spirituality movement. To be concerned with spirituality but ignore the quest for justice is as much a contradiction as "compassionate egotism" . Spirituality centered on cultivating a sense of personal well-being is an example of what the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called "bad faith". All major religious traditions distinguish between the sacred and the profane, between the sacrocentric and egocentric visions of self and world. "Ego" and "spirit" are flags signifying radically different principles of identity and loyalty.[sigma]To be egocentric is to be motivated by fear and desire and therefore prey to illusion. [ to be 'sacrocentric' or to have a] spiritual orientation involves process and practice, of transcending the isolation and illusion of being a separate entity.

  • Beyond The Ego

    To explore the spiritual dimension is to move from [---][sigma] self-absorption to identifying with others through the imagination which leads [by progressive steps] to compassion. [By these means we discover that] we are all in this transient, suffering world together! Likewise [we can understand] the Golden Rule not as a commandment to love others but as a description of what happens when we discover that I and thou are inseparable.

    As we become social selves, we develop an ego that internalizes the world view, values and loyalties of our tribe, nation, and culture. The normal, egocentric citizen is ruled by a conscience based on the duty to care for members of the in-group. We are taught to love our kin and kindred, and learn [sigma] "before we are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people our relatives hate.".

    By contrast, the spiritual quest carries us beyond normality, ego, and tribal identity into a universal commonwealth. While [egocentric] citizens dwell [within a tightly bounded community of several layers], spirited men and women are moved by [sigma] a "transmoral conscience" [Paul Tillich] to expand the circle of communion to include outsiders, strangers, and enemies.

    Spirituality [if 'real' as opposed to what we now recognize as dressed up narcissism] should make us more radical, not more conformist, critics of our society rather than blind patriots. Spirited men and women are cosmopolitans, citizens of both the polis and the cosmos. The spiritual life leads equally to sympathy and to a disposition to act to lessen the suffering of others.

    Faith without works is dead. Compassion without a concern for justice remains a vague sentiment without consequence for the neighbor. The quest for radical [full, deep?] justice goes beyond the civic virtue we owe our neighbors. It is not satisfied by mere fairness or the obligation to share a minimum of wealth and power [just enough sharing to minimize the likelihood that the 'other' will not take the trouble to strike us or try to take what we hold to be ours]. [True spirituality] demands that we work toward the possibility of fulfillment and a harmonious life for neighbors and distant strangers.

  • Compassion in Action

    For compassion to [actually have effect] it must [be exercised powerfully, not just expressed as a private sentiment]. Spirited action requires an alliance of love, power, and justice. As Paul Tillich said, in both interpersonal and political relationships, love, power and justice are inseparable. Without love, power becomes tyrannical and justice is only a name for the rule of [the] strong. Without power, love is reduced to sentimentality and justice to an impotent ideal. Without justice, love is a perverse dance of domination and submission. [---]Compassion-seeking justice is compelled to battle the sources of injustice = the psychological predisposition to greed, indifference, lust for power, the myopic economic ideology that ignores everything but the bottom line, and the corruption of government by the few for the few.[---and therefore] I believe the central vocation that will define authentic spirituality in the 21st century will be a new quest for justice.