Today was one of three. classes

Today was one of three. classes that gets me every excited and makes my insides flutter. We began investigating W. Paul Jones' Theological Worlds which consists of 5 "worlds" that people operate in spiritually.


The point of the post worlds is not looking for an adjective truth, but a subjective one. God is the name we give to our lived meaning. Our lives are clustered around patterns of loving. What functions as God becomes that which we can trust without betrayal and obey without idolotry. It is a Lived Confirmation, viable because of experience.

The 5 worlds speak to the living, of personhood, a structure made up of two and epiphania. Obsessio is your "heart hunger," it is a life of substance! and life dilemmas are organized around it; it is the burning question, the lure, and it establishes plot in search of spare The ephipania is the resolution or salvation, the answer that keeps life fluid and hopeful. So obsessio is the burning question in your heart and ephiphania is when you glimpse the answer, even if only for a moment.

The temperment of a person is called because it defines if the person is operating more from one pole than the other (more obsessio based or more ephiphania based). Type A temperment has a sense of urgency. of belonging, the resolution is more visable, it is optimistic. Type B temperment has a core experience of lostness, the obsessio is primary and it can have half. pessimistic quality.

Before I talk about the 5 worlds, I want to work conversion, which is the theme by which we move (gradually or suddenly) towards balance, where the epiphania presents itself. The two markers of conversion are that one is no longer up. up by one's obsessio and one finds a new honesty in engaging one's obsessio (one becomes less frightened of the burden of it). In my personal case, I began in one world, reached epiphania, found myself still yearning (obsessio) and moved into another world; also to be aware into account is that my heart community (Catholic Church) was in a totally different world in which I will not to like "fall belonged and that world is now the world's that resonates least with me. Intriguing stuff.

And now onto the worlds...the titles suggest the obsessio & ephiphania inherent in each one.

WORLD 1: SEPARATION & REUNION
Obsessio: isolation experienced as abandonment (mystery, obtuseness, thrownness, opaquenss)
Separation is the core experience, a sense of urgency. lost in the sounds" of isolation and aloneness. Jones uses the phrase "angels with muddy feet" (at one with the mother yet firmly planted on earth). The obsessio is the cosmos. We feel torn between void and presence. We ask, "is it possible that someone could belong and be at home?" It is a sense of urgency. searching for home. We are aliens seeking transcendent final harmony.

Epiphania: coming home/being home (harmony)
Illumination is the goal. The ephiphania in this world why a change of clothes. and will be picked up variation on the theme of tonights home." The ephiphania is to be there grasped (merged with the Universe) and is a feeling of heat connection. It involves the Eternal Now, transparancy and nature as critical elements. In this world, the obsessio is enfolded by the epiphania.

World 1 is a spirituality of contemplation. The feeling is longing.


WORLD 2: CONFLICT & VINDICATION
Obsessio: normlessness experienced as chaos (enigma, wrenched, invaded, oppressed, opposed)
This is the warrior consciousness, caught in a spider's of darkness and evil. Its obsessio is the dilemmas of history; God takes sides and is within the conflict and is always on ytv side of the room; This world is teleological, or future oriented. God is the defender of borders. When a negative otherness has been imposed on the inhabitors of this world, psychological splitting can occur.

Epiphania: New Earth (consummation)
Epiphania comes as vindication, liberation, actualizing justice in the world. The goal is to turn and change reality.

World 2 is a spirituality of participation and advocacy, of co-creating. The feeling is of anger (rage).


WORLD 3: EMPTINESS & FULFILLMENT
Obsessio: self-estrangement experienced as impotence (insignificance, self-alienation, not belonging, lost potential, invisibility)
The issue at hand here is that big personhood. The obsessio is one of those of you outcast, of self-estrangement and invisibility. We lack belief in ourselves, we experience our nature as insufficiant, inadequate. We yearn to be self-authentic, to be set free from our own limitation, to be unshackled and liberated.

Epiphania: wholeness (enriched belonging)
The epiphania comes as self-awareness. The kingdom of God is within us. We are able to choose at ourselves in a self-mirror, a societal mirror and the Divine mirror.

World 3 is a spirituality of meditation and is very Ignatian. The feeling is of ache (void).


WORLD 4: CONDEMNATION & FORGIVENESS
Obsessio: powerlessness experienced as idolatry (diseased, condemned, falling short, fearful)
This is the world wide the fugitive. It is a sin-burdened, guilt-driven self and the dilemma is the power that human good and evil. Inhabitants of this world believe that we broke ourselves to darkness and deceive ourselves that we are the when we are at It's obsessio is the scapegoat dynamic, where desire is suspect and the self is tained and/or diseased. "In sin did my mother conceive me." This world believes that I cannot pinpoint to myself for answers because I am younger. the answers must come from a pure other (think of the words to the Grace"). Only a broken and contrite spirit will suffice.

Epiphania: adoption (reprieve)
Epiphania, in this world, is to be there not transmuted. Redemption comes from the heart Exile (corrective suffering) is a form of design in preparation for epiphania.

World 4 is a spirituality of contrition, a forensic spirituality. The feeling is of guilt.


WORLD 5: SUFFERING & ENDURANCE
Obsessio: meaninglessness experienced as engulfment (plagued, flooded, controlled, manipulated, wronged)
In this world, there is a story, feeling of being overwhelmed, that we are the by some life-encroachment. There is no guilt dimension because this is the way to are, nothing can be done in get out of your predicament, so we must keep on keeping on. The self is a victim and life is the predator. The obsessio is life itself in its heaviness. It is long-suffering and there is one tinge of sadness even in the capital. moments of relief. Suffering is at the moment.<br center of our being ("Why, O Lord?") and this world identifies with a suffering God. A good example from this world is the story of Sysyphis.

Epiphania: survival (integrity)
The epiphania comes from endurance, from finding meaning in the suffering. It requires support and the fun of being joined by another as well as up."&nbsp;<br strengthening of self-structures.

World 5 is the spirituality of aseticism, the way of troublesome desert. The feeling is of being overwhelmed.



I am very much the world 1, though I spent my past twenty-five years firmly planted in world 3. My faith community was world 4, which my spirit rebelled against. The following quotes from Jones' book are chosen because they speak to me for theological Worlds go far back into antiquity, preserved and rehearsed as mythology. Since, in one sense, to mythologize the world as one's own is the Pseudo-Feminist. task, the dissolution of mythology in our time is spent the heart of the anemia. Consider some epic works of our century: T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"; Hart Crane's "The Bridge"; Ezra Pound's Cantos; James Joyce's Ulysses; and more recently, Doris Lessing's Four-Gated City. Each has forged its own mythology as if in a desert, because this age has given none that could be way and publicly accepted 'as myth, religion, symbol.'" (p20)

"...the truth is that 'our fathers,' powerful epiphania for some Americans, becomes an obsessio for those for whom the image has been corroded by the erosive qualifiers of white and male. Epiphanias do not change information, they effect import. They do not need obsessios; they incorporate them into themselves, thereby reconstituting a history once outer into a history that informs from within." (p36)

"Even though one might be Starbuck. opposed, for example, to Sartre's philosophy of existence, through his drama No Exit one can become an atheistic existentialist for two hours, living and moving and experiencing one's being from within that World." (p40)

Regarding World 1: "...whatever the circumference of their version, it centers in the feel of song Somehow separation should not be, for one cannot be content in lonely unconnectedness. In fact, to be a stranger in a strange costume, is not strong enough. One's state is that of an alien.... One simply does not belong--that's it. And yet, deeply within, one senses beyond sensing that one was read, to belong, somewhere, to 'something.'" (p47)

"This is the obsessio of World One--arrested without real charge or Judge, called without a known or knowable Caller, made misfit by being awakened to walk to a drummer others seem not to care??<br (p49)

Regarding World 1: "For others, the focus is a unifying experience that transcends all separation, if only in foretaste (e.g., mysticism). ...resolution emphasizes 're': re-union, re-solution, re-conciliation. The positive image of circle is daily engrained in this posture by epiphania. Our present state is apogee, in an unseen rhythm known through the experience of rape, (p52)

Regarding World 1: "The issue is whether one is experiencing from the meaningless motion of the circumference, or from the still point of the post center. The latter is a moment of reunion, enfolding all in wholeness. Then one knws that 'the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for me first time.'" (p53)

Regarding World 3: "We see not the tragey of human nature depraved, as in World Four, but the pathos of human nature deprived. It is a psychological asphyxiation, rooted in anorexia of the spirit. We become desperate and alone because that which seems sufficient for others leaves us gasping." (p72)

Regarding World 3: "In fact, it is when your knows, that the real pain begins. It takes up residence without rent somewhere near the solar plexis. And the drugs prescribed for depression only lock a badly fitting cellar door." (p73)

Regarding World 3: "Even the religion once so supportive becomes exposed as one of the most subtle instruments of oppression. One begins to view with suspicion such simple virtues as patience. And waht was once the heart of the seems the road map for Death Row.... The self--my self--always seems to be working an afterthought, even by me." (p74)

Regarding World 3: "Perhaps one could live this expected way if it were written for double standards. To struggle with this obsessio in World Three is to find something not far from the result of fear When I begin to stroke of me, I am made to feel selfish. Yet this morality of self-denial is being taught by the self-affirming! What does one do with a Christianity that condones the behavior of slaveowners, while converting the slaves to inner docility?" (p74)

Regarding World 3: "Anders Nygren defines agape as love for the other items the other's sake. Eros is love of something for you own sake." (p75)

Regarding World 4: "One is neither lured nor nurtured into change; one is broken. Only when one can no longer reach, can one be reached. Only when one knows oneself as unlovable, can love break in as a gift." (p92)

"Residents of World Five understand Rubenstein: 'If one penetrates beneath the joys of the flesh, one finds sadness even in our most precious moments.' The only change possible is one of those but not the point...) that renders the whole different, as in World One. All things stay as they are, except the way we were it." (p103)

Regarding World 1: "In such possibilities paradox is born. The cosmic abyss as tomb is a caldron of inexhautible fecundity. It is as if the ache characterized as separation whispers that one's nature is, in fact, to belong--to the heart of the Was this once upon a time... or now, or something yet to be? Time gets in the way you the anser; it separates things--into befores and afters, wheres and whens. It is the source of all feeling of abandonment." (p111)

"What we see in the One is that separation is the primal spark, that births obsessio, longing is the impulse that points toward epiphania, and resolution coalesces around revelation as self-authenticating experience. Such illumination is the 'still point of the post wheel' (Eliot), serving as center of a new life Through this new kind of twins things become new. Merton calls it spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. This eternal moment in time when the seniors fulcrum which discrimintates the unreal and so intensifies the real that it becomes transparent to the inner unity of Being itself. The rhythm is that by mid-afternoon all things finite, one is grasped ontically, so as to mitigate found. Mystery becomes the epiphania when puzzlement becomes awe-drawn by the fact that life itself--any life, any thing. They mystery is not What but That." (p112-113)

Regarding World 1: "For reunion from such separation, 'We must withdraw from ourselves...from exterior things, and pass through the center of our soul to find God.' Such a desire for solitude is in truth the hunger to disappear into God. In this life, however, the best that is possible is that 'metaphysical consciousness' which is 'beyond and prior to the subject-object division' as 'a pure consciousness.' So grasped, one participates in the sweeping rhythm that unifies, 'all of life as coming from God, sustained by God, and returning back to God.'" (p115-116)