The Healing of Teddy Bears
The Healing of Teddy Bears—Creating an Imaginative Faith
The author of this book of metaphysical essays believes many devotees of Islam, Christianity and Judaism are undergoing a powerful shift of spiritual consciousness. This shift, supported by meditation and mystical practices, is characterized by consciously turning within, to the heart, and by accepting the awesome and joyful responsibility for imaginatively creating one’s own faith, rather than having it defined by external authority.
The author, whose own religious background is Christian fundamentalist, uses examples from his own changing faith to illustrate how various authoritative systems often create judgment, alienation and sometimes outright hostility toward those who do not share their authoritative beliefs.
The content of Teddy Bears exhibits a considerable sympathy toward those practitioners of authority-based faith who find themselves, in their hearts, at odds with what they are expected to believe and practice. Those who have done advance reading of Teddy Bears have said it articulates what they have felt about their own difficult journey: when they completed the book they felt less lonely.
The author is fully aware of how painful it may be to “awaken” to the God within, and to become aware such awakening may require letting go of some very ancient beliefs that have lent significant emotional security. He defines faith as an intuitive commitment, founded in human longing for a god and for meaning, and lived out at the intersection of the ego and the depths of one’s heart. In a chapter, “Spiritual agnosticism,” he asserts that faith, if is to be open and dynamic, requires the muscularity of curiosity, questioning and doubt.
In speaking of the enormous healing possibilities of an imaginative faith, the author could well point to the God-consciousness of Jesus or the Apostle Paul. Or Symeon (949-1022), abbot of the monastery of St. Marcus in Constantinople, who, in a momentary absence of ego-consciousness, acknowledged that he was God.
With God-consciousness in mind, the author warns, “Take care in the god you create, for the god you create will become the god who creates you. Perhaps the task of imaginative faith is to create as honorable a god, as compassionate a god, as we possibly can, drawing upon the best that we know as human beings, and then listening in our hearts for the intentions of such a Being.”
About The Book
