How fortunate to converse over hot chocolate and coffee with a struggling mentor. Initials, used to protect the unattributed. All thoughts are mine, or paraphrased as I think I heard and understood the conversation:

'How a dualistic worldview (religious-faith view) can cause constipation dreams (nightmares)': BB thinks "...a lot of Christians are like BL...they just hang onto a narrow view of faith and christianity...they don't worry about large parts of the bible...is that correct [right]...is that how we should be?...". Then the dreams of constipation begin. What a metaphor for holding on to stuff from your past, for being stuck with ideas you were fed while growing up, for not moving on, for having an impacted system of thought and spirit. 

Here's an intelligent, faithful man who is searching for spiritual truth, and yet he struggles daily with his past teachings. He wants to, and thinks he should, cast off [deficate, if you will, to continue the metaphor] these past influences and teachings and beliefs that cause him to stumble in his ability to Love God and Love His Neighbor.  

A man with a large family. A large family of many children with many spiritual dispositions. "...they love their neighbors even better than I do..." he has admitted. But his stumbling block is that his family doesn't hold tightly to the same traditional christian teachings and beliefs that he has held for decades; that his parents, siblings, religious neighbors, his valued religious institutions hold. That his family, whom he has felt semi-estranged from for decades, whom he has felt the cause of that estrangement, the family whom he loves and respects, whom he doesn't want to condemn as once would have been his religious obligation, the family whom he knows loves and respects him, that that family is as Godly and saved as he thinks he might be... 

This good, generous, and respected family man of octogenarian years struggles in his 'apologetic' thinking. His need to be 'right', spiritually and rationally, his need to explain his rightness, his desire to explain others' [though different in thinking from his way] rightness [insert 'righteousness' here?]. We humans [at least in my tribe], for the most part, have all been instructed to be 'right', not 'wrong'. That there is no honor in wrong, and only salvation in being right – MY right, not yours. Be it giving the right answer on a scholastic test when we were growing up, or, having the right answer to your spiritual position. 

It is ingrained in us that there is a right answer, to everything, especially everything holy and spiritual (and of course scientific) - 'just look up the answer in the bible...it's all right there' says the common christian religious instructional cliché. 

And therein lies another paradox he [the family man] confronts in religious thinking. He would see this 'look in the bible' as a 'cop-out', as a technique whereby the defender of the tradition can pick and chose – usually out of context – a favored passage for defense of the tradition, always ignoring paradoxical passages. Whereas, 'letting go and let God', 'put that paradox, that question, into the mystery basket' also seems a 'cop-out', albeit an opposing one to tradition. The paradox confounds his rational mind, his emotional needs. And, alas, the traditional cop-out presumes the mystery cop-out as unfaithful, weak, liberal, lukewarm at best or 'headed for hell' at worst.  

Love God and love your neighbors. He doesn't want that to be a cop-out. He wants that to be the simple, faithful, righteous totality of Godliness, without any need for guilt, or emotional desire to be defensive. That God is love, that man is a love creation, that God loves all, that all God's children are loved before-during-after life as we know it, that all God's creatures will always be God's creation, and will always be loved as God's first born.  

My straying from a strict path of dual versus nondual conversation may require a change of this blog's title. 

PEACE