An Introduction to Why I’m Spiritual but Not Anxious

On Leaving the Beach for the Deep

Photo by Ronan Furuta on Unsplash

Hey, I’m Darrell. I’m a non-dual writer, facilitator, and theologian. Serving both in the church and as the founding director of Chapter 3 — a non-profit committed to serving people and the common good—I have been exploring and, at times, protesting religion for over 30 years.

My exploration and protest has led me to homeless shelters, recovery groups, and refugee ghettos, as well as universities, churches, and prisons. The people with whom I have had the privilege to journey have taught me more about anxiety and religion than I could ever hope to share. That doesn’t mean I won’t try.

As with many people’s stories involving anxiety and religion, mine begins with Christianity.

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Relaying the formative experiences of my Christian life must begin with the tradition into which I was born and raised. Even before I could contemplate my own agency, I was being raised in the western Christian tradition — specifically, the United Methodist Church.

First and foremost, my experience, education, and training in the United Methodist tradition instilled in me an expectation for divine love, grace, and acceptance to be at the core of anything worth pursuit or investment. The UMC also provided experiences and examples of Christian community, connection, service, and mutuality that shaped how I perceive and attempt to practice relationality. The Christian tradition of the UMC also provided both my introduction to cosmology and the inspiration to explore — reasoning my experience alongside Scripture and tradition and encouraging interdependent relational awareness.

The loving, non-anxious, non-reactive encouragement to explore is perhaps my favorite aspect of the Methodist tradition in which I have been raised and trained. I have been taught to go further without fear — returning to share the truth and love I experience. That exploratory ethos guided my graduate study of the Hebraic root of Christianity, enabling wrestling with the interwoven nature of the Jewish and Christian traditions.

Although it did not come first in my developmental journey, Judaism is necessarily foundational as it is the mother of Christianity. My graduate studies allowed me to travel to Israel for an extensive study tour, to spend almost two years of continuous Torah study under the same teacher, and to give numerous years to researching ancient Hebraic liturgical practice. The culmination of this research and exposure to the Hebraic root took my Christian experience and faith from black-and-white to technicolor. It enabled me to see things I could not previously see, to understand the words and teachings of Jesus, Paul, and the gospel writers in ways I could not have previously imagined. My faith shifted from comfortably detached to grounded, from relatively recent to ancient, from politely exclusive to integral, and from tribal to universal.

In the words of the Shema (Deu. 6), the people of Israel — which translates as those who wrestle with the divine — are invited not only to listen to the stories of God but “to listen so closely that they can’t help but respond.” They are invited to do this by a God that the Shema declares is one — the source — ultimate reality. There is no division. There is no other. There is only one. This pan-tribal, universal connectedness is present in the Christian scriptures. In fact, it permeates the gospels and epistles, but I had never really seen it before. I learned to see it in my embrace and study of Judaism.

Exploring and connecting with Judaism rightfully rewired my spiritual posture and awakened in me the heart of a mystic, giving me an appreciation and longing for the deep waters that, as Thomas Merton taught, are the same regardless of the beach from which we begin to swim. The “oneness” or nonduality of the divine depths continue to call me onward.

Thus far, my exploration and practice of nonduality has been incorporative of many different “beaches” of origin, including Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, Sikhi, and Advaita Vedanta. Much as Merton indicated with his metaphor, swimming out far enough from the illusory beaches upon which we tend to separate ourselves reveals an interconnectedness that isn’t always easy to grasp. In fact, it is often difficult to embrace nonduality when someone is dedicated to treating you as though you are separate or other.

Nonduality is in the Imago Dei of Genesis 1 and the divine breath of Genesis 2. It is in the Shema of Deuteronomy 6 and Jesus’ prayer of John 17 — “that they may all be one. As you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (Joh. 17:21). Nonduality resides at the core of all the world’s great faith traditions — from the commonality of suffering found in the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and universal balance of the Tao, to the radical connectedness of the Sikhi concept of ik oankar and the direct divine relationship of Sufism. Even the Methodist movement was founded on the earnest desire of its early adherents to pursue a middle-path (Via Media) that would unite rather than divide.

I am grateful for and inseparably grafted into the United Methodist tradition within which I have been raised and trained. It has encouraged and enabled the exploration that has led me not away but in an ever-increasing spiral of transcendence and inclusion — from the exploration of the Hebraic womb of Christianity to a deeper awareness of the nondual connectedness of all things.

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