The Way of the Spiritual Warrior by Matthew Fox

The Sufi Mystic Hafiz celebrates the Spiritual Warrior who sticks around during the dark periods of our lives or in our culture known as the Dark Night of the Soul (and what we may also call the “Dark Night of Our Species”). A warrior does not run away, go into denial, or commit to addictions.

In this first session, you’ll explore Hafiz’s teachings and those of Meister Eckhart, Joanna Macy and others who speak to developing the mystic warrior or prophet who, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, is not afraid to “interfere.”

You’ll discover:

• What the mystical traditions teach about the Dark Night
• The value of the Dark Night when you can face it wisely
• The archetype of the Spiritual Warrior, and your capacity to develop this inner strength and courage
• How teachings from the mystic Meister Eckhart and the Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy can support cultivation of the Spiritual Warrior

Father Sky, the Green Man, Blue Man, Hunter Gatherer and other archetypes rarely addressed in a patriarchal society are actually “spiritual springs” that can nourish a healthy and sacred masculinity. Defining masculinity in terms of the reptilian brain (being number one and dominating others) rather than in terms of cooperation, serves empires but not the planet nor deepening human relationships, which is one of the gifts of the Sacred Masculine.

You’ll discover:

• The deepening of the Sacred Masculine archetype of Father Sky
• The deepening of the Sacred Masculine archetype of the Green Man
• The deepening of the Sacred Masculine archetype of the Blue Man
• The deepening of the Sacred Masculine archetype of the Hunter Gatherer
• Practices to develop these archetypes in yourself and with others

Hafiz teaches that one becomes a sacred warrior “only if you and God become sweet lovers.” This means a warrior must be a mystic, for the mystic in us is a lover. A lover of earth, life, animals, beauty, health, children, people not yet born, poems and music and all the rest of creation. How do the mystic poets lead us to this kind of love?

Here, we call on mystics such as Mary Oliver, Thomas Merton, Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Berry and others who light the fire of mysticism within us all. This awakening of eros is at the heart of the return of the Sacred Masculine.

You’ll discover:

• How we are all mystics and how YOU can deepen your mysticism
• Teachings of contemporary mystics that can ignite your inner mystic
• Teachings of pre-modern mystics that can affirm and deepen your own mysticism
• The return of the Sacred Masculine as the prerequisite of a mystical awakening

Theologians Dorothy Soelle and Father Bede Griffiths identify mysticism with the Divine Feminine. Exploring the Divine Feminine provides a bridge to the Sacred Masculine.

In this session, Matthew will guide you to consider Meister Eckhart and Adrienne Rich; Julian of Norwich and M.C. Richards; the Wild Woman as practiced by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Hildegard of Bingen; the marriage of the Green Man and the Black Madonna; and other mystics and myths.

You’ll discover:

• Why wise people teach that the return of the Divine Feminine spells also the return of mysticism
• How women poets and philosophers such as Adrienne Rich and M.C. Richards awaken within us the meaning of a deep feminism
• Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton’s teachings of the Divine Feminine
• How to engage in the Sacred Marriage of the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Masculine

Religion in the West has oversold sin, requiring a new language for understanding and debating in greater depth the presence of evil in our lives and society. Psychologist M. Scott Peck said that our language about evil is at a mere “primitive” stage.

In Matthew Fox’s book on evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, he proposes a new language born of marrying Eastern teachings about the seven chakras with Western teachings about the seven capital sins. In the foreward to this book, Deepak Chopra calls evil, “the number one spiritual issue for the 21st century.”

Developing your powers of the Sacred Masculine along with the energy of the Divine Feminine can prepare you to face evil and do something constructive about it.

You’ll discover:

• A new language taken from East and West to discuss and debate evil
• How the 7 chakras of the East correspond to power places in your body and psyche
• How the 7 capital sins of the West correspond to the chakras when they are off-center
• How sin is different from evil but opens the door to it
• How you can stand strong against powers of evil in society and in self

Pre-modern thinkers and mystics like Thomas Aquinas, Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart instruct us that we co-create with the spirit of creation. Today’s anthropology operates on the assumption that the very definition of a human being is a “bi-ped who makes things.”

Is society putting creativity first in our educational and religious communities? Why not? What’s holding us back? How can human creativity heal and deal with the great problems facing our species today? Where does our creativity come from? How do we reconnect to it? How do we release that creativity? How do we move from disempowerment to empowerment?

You’ll discover:

• Sources of your creativity
• How your creativity (developing the Blue Man within you) is, as the mystics teach, a de facto an experience of Spirit
• How your creativity can be utilized for good or for evil
• Ways to unleash your creativity and move from disempowerment to empowerment

Hope is not optimism; it’s hard work, both inner and outer — work that confronts injustice and evil in and around us.

This work demands the recovery of the sacred in which you exist and move. It requires that you fully enliven the mystic within, nourishing your inner warrior or prophet… and it requires the Sacred Marriage of the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Masculine within a cosmology that arouses awe and wonder.

In this final session, you’ll explore modern prophets Naomi Klein, Scott Sanders, Howard Thurman, Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy and others who bring hope alive, and who have themselves developed the Spiritual Warrior in deep and useful ways.

You’ll discover:

• How to recover a sense of the sacred
• Why despair and denial don’t have the last word even in times of darkness
• How mystic-warriors and prophets of our day such as Naomi Klein and Scott Sanders, Howard Thurman and Joanna Macy and others are urging us on
• Teachings of these prophets that interfere with despair, denial and addictions
• How David Orr’s “sleeves-rolled-up” definition of hope can awaken the Sacred Masculine, connected anew to the Divine Feminine in life and practice