I first fell in love with the mystics as an undergraduate when a friend gave me Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation. Merton introduced me to the essential place of mystery in any engagement with the Transcendent One.
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One of the most important questions you can ever address is, “Who am I?” You might think of identity as an adolescent issue. But, while adolescence might have been the last time you paid any serious attention to your identity, it has continued to evolve since then and where it has settled has crucial implications for both your psychological and spiritual wellbeing.
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Christians are often ambivalent about their bodies. This is odd because of the central place of the incarnation in Christian theology. Why would God take on our humanity by becoming flesh if human flesh is such a bad thing?
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I wonder if you remember the story of the first astronauts who went into space to see the stars but were most deeply impacted by seeing the earth. It was, however, what they didn’t see that was even more surprising to them. No matter how hard they looked, they were unable to see national, ethnic, racial, socio-economic, or religious boundaries.…
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It may seem strange to write about trauma and awakening in the same sentence, since one of the first things our bodies do in response to trauma is shut down. But, trauma does not just shut us down. It also offers unique opportunities for awakening…
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Christians are sometimes suspicious of meditation because they think of it as Buddhist. But, meditation has long had a well established place in Christianity where it is called contemplation. This raises the question of the relationship between meditation and contemplation.…
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Recently someone contacted me asking if I was the David Benner who was a spiritual teacher. I told her that people sometimes describe me that way but I wondered why she asked. She responded by asking what beliefs I taught. I told her that I have never taught beliefs because my calling is to help people walk the transformational path associated with the awakening of the heart and transformation of consciousness.
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I have always been drawn to the big-picture view of things. If some people climb mountains simply because they are there, I am always pulled toward summits by the promise of an ever expanding vista. There is simply nothing like a macro perspective on life to help me live it on the micro level at which it comes at me.
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