Recently, I introduced a scientific study on how unhappy young adults are around the world, in both wealthy and poor countries. In offering some medicine for such a malaise, we must begin with the obvious, namely that a materialistic view of the world is never enough to satisfy the human soul. It never has been.
24/7 advertising of the latest gadgets is not what the human soul thirsts for. As Dr. Larry Dorsey put it on reading my latest book on Meister Eckhart several years ago: Whether our species has a future on Earth does not depend on the development of more gee-whiz technologies, but on whether we are willing to move into the psycho-spiritual dimension proclaimed by Meister Eckhart, and elucidated by Matthew Fox in this important book.
The energy of the young, the sense of adventure of the young, the spirit of the young—all of which is absolutely necessary for our future as a species—does not come merely from the promises of the religion of consumerism.
It comes from deeper places than that, which we will explore in upcoming DMs. Places that the mystics reach.
But first we must take a hard look at the obvious (which, being obvious, can easily escape us). The modern era is over. The age of Pisces is over. Those institutions which were conceived and born in those eras, are failing miserably.
I am speaking especially of education and of religion, insofar as they have succumbed to a modern way of doing things (for example, education that leaves out values; or religion that has lost a sense of the sacred).
And I am speaking of our work and professions. Do we need more examples than today’s legal profession (a child of failing academia)? It has proven itself too timid and slow. Too beholden to billionaires who dictate to (and bribe) federal judges and supreme court justices, to agree to roadblock a trial of an ex-president who stole top-secret documents — who then left them lying randomly in various open rooms in his mansion, where anybody might see them — and hid them from government officials, once he knew they were coming to retrieve them.
The same legal profession stymied a trial of an ex-president, whom we all saw organize an insurrection on the Capitol 3.5 years ago, that resulted in the deaths of 7 people and the maiming of hundreds of police. All because he insisted on staying in office after losing an election.
See Matthew Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times.
And Fox, The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human.
And Fox, The Reinvention of Work.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: A group of SustainUS youth delegates to the COP22 UN climate talks in Marrakesh, hold up a protest banner listing their demands from then-newly-elected President Trump. Note the date: November 9, 2016, the very day he was elected. Photo by John Englart. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you find that mystics reach the deeper places in ourselves? How would you name those places? How do we best introduce the young to those places?
Recommended Reading
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time
While Matthew Fox recognizes that Meister Eckhart has influenced thinkers throughout history, he also wants to introduce Eckhart to today’s activists addressing contemporary crises. Toward that end, Fox creates dialogues between Eckhart and Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel, Black Elk, Karl Marx, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, Dorothee Soelle, David Korten, Anita Roddick, Lily Yeh, M.C. Richards, and many others.
“Matthew Fox is perhaps the greatest writer on Meister Eckhart that has ever existed. (He) has successfully bridged a gap between Eckhart as a shamanistic personality and Eckhart as a post-modern mentor to the Inter-faith movement, to reveal just how cosmic Eckhart really is, and how remarkably relevant to today’s religious crisis! ” — Steven Herrmann, Author of Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward
The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human
The A.W.E. Project reminds us that awe is the appropriate response to the unfathomable wonder that is creation… A.W.E. is also the acronym for Fox’s proposed style of learning – an approach to balance the three R’s. This approach to learning, eldering, and mentoring is intelligent enough to honor the teachings of the Ancestors, to nurture Wisdom in addition to imparting knowledge, and to Educate through Fox’s 10 C’s. The 10 C’s are the core of the A.W.E. philosophy and process of education, and include: compassion, contemplation, and creativity. The A.W.E. Project does for the vast subject of “learning” what Fox’s Reinvention of Work did for vocation and Original Blessing did for theology. Included in the book is a dvd of the 10 C’s put to 10 video raps created and performed by Professor Pitt.
“An awe-based vision of educational renewal.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time
Thomas Aquinas said, “To live well is to work well,” and in this bold call for the revitalization of daily work, Fox shares his vision of a world where our personal and professional lives are celebrated in harmony–a world where the self is not sacrificed for a job but is sanctified by authentic “soul work.”
“Fox approaches the level of poetry in describing the reciprocity that must be present between one’s inner and outer work…[A]n important road map to social change.” ~~ National Catholic Reporter
6 thoughts on “A Plan for Inspiring the Young”
The concept and practice of ‘gym’ class is a very outdated paradigm. Having a ‘holistic practice’ to become a ‘better self’ through body, mind and spirit should become the norm for our youth. — BB.
Yes, the mystics do reach the deeper spiritual places in ourselves. By their lives and teachings in all genuinely spiritual cultures, especially the Indigenous ones, they teach and inspire us to integrate our inner and outer lives to experience the inner mystic and prophet within all of us in order to live in Loving interconnectedness/Oneness daily within ourselves, with others in just compassionate communities, with Our Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth/Her creatures/Her essential living abundance, and our Loving Oneness with All of ongoing Creation/Evolution of our Cosmos and with-in our nonphysical Subtle Spiritual Realms… Our Faith is Being~Becoming this Divine Flow of LOVING Healing Creative Diverse WHOLENESS~ONENESS in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT….
I just want to thank you again Matt Fox, for your daily meditations. Your work is expansive and you share it so generously.
In a recent post, you mentioned the PBS documentary on Teilhard. I watched it with a friend and we were speechless at the end. What a pioneer in new thought.
Also I’ve just taken The Aramaic Jesus course with Dr Klotz and it too expands my understanding of Jesus, and my self and the larger self of the earth and universe.
Last thing: The Mystic Jesus, a new book by author Marianne Williamson, is one that expands the view of Jesus as a presence within all creation.
Blessings to you and to your team 🙏
Yes. Jesus brought the secret Temple Mysticism (for priests only) out to the public, and lived its egalitarian, non-dualistic Mystical teachings as Exemplar and as a human directly connected to His Source (God). He was demonstrating how to be true to the specific Revealed Mysticism that was expressed in Genesis, Moses, and other early Temple mystics.
The Gospel of John’s famous Prologue explicitly affirms this profound and distinctive Mysticism (I.e., “neo-Platonism”) which never was “just philosophy” or “dualistic Hellenism” but actually a version of the NON-dualistic Mystical Temple Theology/Path — a Mysticism that platonism may have derived from MUCH EARLIER Jewish Temple Mysticism.
I’ve written extensively, in past comments sections here on this forum, about this specific, Biblical-Mystical Revelation and its Path, both as a mystic and from my subsequent research into its subtleties and radical non-dualism as it was expressed in Christian theology, Jesus’s teachings, and Neo-Platonism. It was also the foundational Mysticism of the Kabbalah, Sufism, the Upanishads, and many branches of Hinduism.
The exciting, “mysterious Mysticism” has been there, in the Bible, all along.
Those learned in science and mysticism may have limited or no access to the whole population of children. Parents are the first teachers, I learned from the World Book. Since parents have an edge in intimacy with children, they can teach what they know, if they intend to, and engage their children in age-appropriate ways. Play is the work of children, another saying goes. I pray that playful education begins early in the home, and that faith centers, schools and mass media spread the science as congenially as possible. As the song has it, “I swear it’s not too late.” The lesson of communal unity (material and spritual, holy and natural) is mystical. If it’s conveyed with peaceful ease often as well as early, it just could become an article of inherent faith. May it be so.
❤️