CONVERGENCE SPIRITUALITY™
Excerpts from God: A Definition, the upcoming Book by Dr. Rita Sherma
WHAT IS CONVERGENCE?
The teachings of Convergence Spirituality assert that to live in harmony with divine will, and move with the flow of life’s purpose, we are required to understand how God, or our Divine Source, acts through the laws of nature, and of the cosmos, and flows through human life to bring about growth and unfolding of all potential. If we can’t see the direction of universal divine purpose and will, we certainly can’t live and act in accordance with it.
In order to even glimpse such understanding collectively, we need to bring together all the greatest streams of knowledge available to us. For the first time in the history of our species, we have before us the full expanse of the knowledge, insights, and wisdom, of all of human civilization, in sciences and arts, in morality and mysticism, experiential and experimental—both past and present. Convergence Spirituality maintains that it is a CONVERGENCE of these branches of knowledge and streams of wisdom that will provide us with the ongoing revelation of divine purpose and trajectory.
WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?
The word “spiritual,” historically, has been used in opposition to “material” and “physical.” It was used to refer to a perceived difference between the concern of the human person for its own non-physical, eternal, or “soul” dimension and its aspiration for communion with the realm of Spirit (often called the Heavenly Dimension) as opposed to the realm of the Body (the Earthly Dimension).
Today, the word “spiritual” has slightly different connotations. It still concerns the dimension of reality that transcends the material/physical world and its limitations. But now, it is often used to identify a certain orientation to the sacred that is distinct from religion. As a result, there are many who view themselves as “spiritual but not religious.”
Certainly, there are people who, within the bounds of traditional religion, are clearly spiritual.
But one does not have to be religious, or even take part in a specific religion, to be spiritual.
In Convergence teachings, I use the word “Spirituality” to mean a person who is deeply interested in life’s highest purpose; the self’s deepest layer; in the universe’s underlying direction; and most importantly, in the human capacity for self-transcendence.
In Convergence Teachings, Self-Transcendence refers to the potential for experiencing the Ultimate Truth, which we can refer to as God.
Convergence Spirituality maintains that the aspiration towards Self-Transcendence is more likely to be fulfilled when we shatter the boundaries and limits that we dangerously place on God, and mistakenly place on the human ability to evolve.
The Dangers of a Limited God:
It is dangerous to place boundaries on God for two reasons. First, it is theologically false. The God who is the Source and Sustenance of all that exists cannot be captured and limited by the historical experience of one people, in one place, at one time in history. Second, it is dangerous because it places in opposition each religious group’s vision of God against that of all others; this has (and continues to) lead to wars and conflagrations, murders and genocide, throughout history.
The Mistake of Placing Limits on Human Potential:
Every four years, Olympic athletes shatter old records and push forward the bounds of human physical potential. Researchers in science and technology continue to break new ground in terms of knowledge of the physical world and of the boundaries of technical advancement. In terms of justice, the most progressive governments continue to expand the notion of “rights” to increasingly cover every manner of oppression. All of these advances would have been considered impossible less than a century ago. We have certainly come a long way.
Yet, there are some major blind spots in our understanding of human potential that hold us back in some crucial areas. One of the areas in which we have made less progress than the advances that were made centuries ago, is the field of intuitive knowledge. Medieval Christian mystics have been celebrated through the ages for the beauty of their spiritual poetry. But what is far more fascinating about them is that they were well known healers. It is well documented, for example, that St. Catherine of Sienna walked into bubonic plague infested hostels and not only healed many patients but stayed well herself. However, in attempting to keep up with her, most of her entourage of well-heeled followers and students died when they returned home after contracting the plague. There are also many examples, both from distant and very recent history, of sages, yogis, and monks with unusual capacities. What we know from all of this is that human potential, whether physical, intellectual, or spiritual, is unbounded. To insist that human potential is limited to conventional states of achievement is to hold humanity back. Convergence Spirituality affirms the importance of pushing the limits of your potential—in body, mind, and spirit.
Excerpts from God: A Definition, the upcoming Book by Dr. Rita Sherma
The Ten Principles of Convergence Spirituality™
Copyright 2009, Convergence Center™
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Unceasing Revelation: Revelation is ongoing and universal.
There is no “one-time” revelation. God continually unveils the Divine Presence, encounter by encounter, to seekers throughout history and across cultures in a myriad ways.
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Sequential Revelatory Insights: Truth is Timeless, but New Insights, Facets of Eternal Truth, are revealed according to the evolving human capacity to comprehend them.
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God is One, a Unity; God’s nature is Two-fold, a Biunity.
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Panentheism: All things emerge and unfold and have their existence within the Being of God.
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All things that are destructive, disastrous, or diabolical exist because of the Two Eternal Variables:
- Infinity, which contains All Possibilities.
- Indeterminacy, which for living beings, means Free Will
(a) Infinite Possibilities: Because God is limitless, our Source contains all possibilities. All possibilities include both positive ones and negative ones. To expect that existence should contain only the possibility of the “pleasant” would place limits on a limitless God.
(b)Free Will: in the inanimate world, indeterminacy ensures that responses to stimuli will vary. And in the living world, it means that diverse choices will be made. Some of these choices will be beneficial; some neutral; and some will be damaging. -
God is Eternal, not Temporal: Divinity is Universal not Tribal.
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The Seed of Perfection, a Divine Spark, Exists Within all Persons.
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Watering the Seed of Perfection can be achieved by following a natural and simple Five-Fold Path of: Surrender, Spaciousness, Saadhana, Sva-Dharma and Seva.
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Telos (Ultimate Aims):
- God’s Prime Directive: The Ceaseless Emergence of Novelty and Diversity in Creation.
- God’s Prime Purpose: The Evolution of Consciousness.
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Interrelatedness: There is no independent, unrelated, unconditioned Self.
As our knowledge expands in every field of human understanding, new insights and intuitions will continually be unveiled. Revelations about divine movement and activity in the physical world can emerge through the objective discoveries of science. Revelations about the inner nature of God and its unfolding within us can come about through the subjective experiences of self-transcendence.
God is, at once, both infinite Potential and limitless Manifestation; Transcendent (surpasses all) and Immanent (within all); Being and Becoming; Eternal Stillness and Unceasing Process; Impersonal and Personal; Source and Destination; Father and Mother.
Our Divine Source encompasses and surpasses all that is. There is nothing outside of God. The word Panentheism signifies “all within God”.
God’s presence pervades all time and all space. God is not bound by the exigencies of the history of one people, one nation, one group, or one tribe of the human species. God is the Source, Sustenance, and Dynamic of the entire universe. God is beyond all boundaries.
Each person contains the potential (the seed) for the realization of their deepest identity. We are endowed with the free will to water that seed into conscious blossoming so that we can grow to embody our divine legacy.
This Seed of Perfection is referred to in Buddhism as the inner Buddha-Nature (Tathagatagarbha) that awakens during enlightenment.
It is expressed in the Hindu insight that (Atman=Brahman). This signifies that as the veil of spiritual ignorance falls away, the foundational self, the eternal self (Atman) is experienced as non-different from the Truth, Consciousness, and Being of our Divine Source (Brahman), leading to the experience of non-dual unity.
In Sufism, the possibility of union with God, the Divine Beloved, is signified by the term Ittihad (oneness), and most Sufis make a distinction between the lower individual soul (Nafs) and the spirit (Rooh), which is part of the Divine Essence, a spark of God that awaits in the soul.
The principle is described as well in the original Christian doctrine of Theosis, also known as deification, or divinization. As Athanasius, an important Father of the early Church, boldly asserted, “Christ was made man so that we might be made God.”
When a seeker succeeds in bringing the “Seed” of divine presence to full blossoming, we call them mystics.
(a) Surrender means to offer up to God our expectations and experiences, our tears and laughter, dreams and disappointments. It means to abdicate the sense of a self that is separate and removed from our Divine Source. It means to empty ourselves of resentment, sadness, fear, and bitterness, so that we can be filled by God’s answering love. It allows us to consecrate our lives to Divine Purpose and Process.
(b) Spaciousness refers to the liberation of the mind from the prison of personal and cultural pre-conditioning. It means opening the mind to the wonders of the world, of diverse civilizations, ancient wisdom, modern discoveries, nature’s marvels, the exciting variety of creation and culture. To have a spacious mind is absolutely necessary to experience the fullness of a God Beyond Boundaries; to craft a life of adventure and joy; and help advance the world to a point where humans no longer glare at each other over the borderlines of race, religion, culture, and condition.
(c) Saadhana is an ancient Sanskrit word that perfectly describes the dynamic of creative immersion in luminous spiritual practices (Praxis). It signifies systematic, dedicated effort directed at spiritual fulfillment, and serves as the technology of self-transformation. Saadhana is the process by which we reach our goal.
(d) Sva-Dharma, is a yogic term that refers to the soul-deep longing for a vocation that both expresses our uniqueness and nourishes our need for purpose and meaning. To follow Sva-dharma is to discover your life’s mission and special calling.
(e) Seva is the Sanskrit term related to the word “service.” It is Love Enacted. Seva is compassionate, empathetic, service that is infused with Agape (divine, unconditional love). It is not “charity.” It is the recognition that we are not serving other humans or performing environmental care as self-sacrifice. When we engage in these activities in the spirit of Seva, we are acting on the knowledge that each of us is a thread in the fabric of life and we all benefit when the entire fabric is strong.
All Selves are interdependent on the entire Tapestry of Life. Harm to one strand in the fabric damages the whole; the health of each strand benefits the whole.
