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Browse published articles attributed to Dr. Steve McSwain,, with full-archive search.
When I speak of "Christ-consciousness" I am referring to the degree of your awareness along three lines. One is your awareness of yourself. I sometimes ask people, "Who are you when no one is looking?" It's an important question but, unfortunately, most people live as I lived for much of my adult life-completely out-of-touch or uncertain as to who they really are.
Similarly, there is a naiveté about how the universe works that’s quite popular today. Just as the ego in some Christians enjoys the illusion of having God on a leash, there are some religious and pseudo-religious people today who believe they can harness the Divine laws of the universe for their own wishes and self-aggrandizement. These persons are practitioners of what has become widely known as the Law of Attraction. This is a spiritual and universal law to be sure. But, it’s hardly “the secret” that a recent book by that title would suggest and it’s hardly a new law.
“The hour I have long wished for has now come.”rn-- Saint Teresa of Avila (1515 – 1582) I had reclined on the living room couch, picked up the remote, and began surfing the plethora of television programs, most of which are repetitive and useless. I paused from channel-surfing just long enough to listen to the opening remarks of a popular psychologist on a PBS special. His name? Wayne W. Dyer. Though I knew of him only vaguely, I remembered he was the author of several bestselling books and one in particular that had propelled him to a level of notoriety few authors ever attain.
For centuries, Christians have not only believed but vigorously defended the view that Jesus is the one and only way to God. As a Christian myself, I was one of these who not only believed this but was ready to argue and debate with anyone who questioned what I thought was an unquestionable claim made by none other than Jesus himself. That claim is recorded in John 14:6. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me." To me, for someone to question this bold assertion was tantamount to heresy.
There is in everyone the longing to know intimacy with the Divine. The only difference between people is that a few are aware of this longing, while most are not. For those who are not, life is a constant challenge, even a frustration, as they search for God everywhere but the one and only place where God could ever be found - which is, inside of you.
Interesting you would ask me this, as others have asked me this question, too, and I suppose it is because I no longer pretend to believe that Christianity is the only way to know God. Yet, as far as my own faith journey is concerned, I regard myself as more Christian today than I've ever been. Admittedly, there are some dramatic differences.
The church today appears to be more lost than the world it's trying to save. One reason is that the church has so wedded itself to western culture that Christians today look and live more like the culture around them than the Christ before them. The irony is, while the church almost continually rants against the culture, it has in fact embraced it, as well as its values.
I was introduced to many other religions, not intentionally, but more by accident. My father was a minister, but my mother was a travel agent and tour leader. When I was just a child, she began leading tours and taking groups to Europe and the Middle East, the Scandinavian countries, even to the Far East, including Russia and China. My two brothers and I were the lucky beneficiaries of being raised by parents who took us on vacations to exotic, sometimes strange, but always faraway places.
What does it mean to be what easterners describe as awakened, enlightened, transformed, or as the Evangelical Christians say, "born again, saved, and converted?" Who knows? This much I do know. Virtually every religious tradition has coined words and concepts to tell the story of their experience of transcendence. But, no one word or concept could ever fully capture whatever it is that happens in the human experience, the consequence of which leaves one radically and forever different.
I published this article first with the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mcswain/christianity-is-dying-spirituality-is-thriving_b_1950804.htmlrnr
Recently, my wife and I saw the movie 2012. It reminded me of the doomsday nonsense that fundamentalist Christians (and I was once one of them) have been saying about the RAPTURE – the return of Jesus to catch-up all his followers into the clouds and whisk them away to a kind of benign judgment while those LEFT BEHIND reel in the madness of a world that spirals out of control – necessitating the appearance of an Antichrist who rules the world. What do they have in common?
It seems rather odd to refer to any of what follows as secrets. For one thing, the word “secret” implies that something is hidden and the wisdom below is anything but secret. In some form or fashion, you could find these in virtually any spiritual tradition. Second, “secret” implies that the spiritual wisdom that would lead one to the life he/she really wants is really only accessible by a few. And, the unfortunate tendency is not to regard your self as one of the select few. But, of course, you are.
In life, we experience two kinds of fear: Real fear, and psychological fear. Or, as I prefer to think of the latter, ego-fear. In the words of Immanuel Kant, the ego is “our precious little self.” Or as Eckhart Tolle calls it, “the voice in the head.” It isn’t who you really are, but the you that you think you are. Each day, what you see in the mirror is the reflection of your physical being, and within, you may get glimpses of your unique personality in that reflection too, in between your laugh lines or furrowed brow. Still, it's not really you.
So said the Buddha. In the months that followed his death and burial, I felt confused, afraid, and lost. I tried to help my mother manage her grief even as I struggled to handle my own. To say that my life unraveled would be an understatement. Within twenty-four months of his death, I left the ministry, began a new career altogether, and went through a divorce.
The Myth of Your “Calling” in Lifer Our culture has confused people, and continues to do so, in this regard. For example, what young person does not grow up expecting that there is something special they are here to do and that their greatest life challenge, or test, is to figure out what that "something" is and pursue it?
She says it’s her favorite book ever. And, lately, all my wife talks about is seeing the movie version of Eat, Pray, Love, starring Julia Roberts. So, I finally decided to check it out for myself. I wasn’t expecting much. I got to the first scene, however--the one where the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, cries out to God in prayer--and I was hooked. In a marriage that isn’t working, Gilbert is an emotional train wreck waiting to happen. Since her life makes no sense to her whatsoever, she does what many of us have done when we can’t think of what else to do--she prays.r
Robert Louis Stephenson once wrote: "I have a little shadow who goes in and out with me; and what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; and I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed." Clever poem, but what is he talking about? The ego, of course. It is the chief culprit in all human unhappiness. Yet, most people live and die with this little inner character running their lives. They neither know him nor recognize his presence. If they did, they would take the necessary steps to bring an end to it. What is ego?
It made little sense to me why my wife would hide Eat, Pray, Love in the nightstand beside our bed. So, when I decided to see what all the fuss was about, I reasoned, “No need to buy a copy since there’s a perfectly good one in the nightstand beside our bed.” You’d have thought I just made off with the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. I promised to protect it, to handle it with as much care as a paleographer would an ancient text—no bending of the edges, no underlining, circling, or writing in the margins—things I typically do with my own books.r
"God is dead," said Nietzsche. Well, maybe somewhere, but not here, as the PBS special, God in America makes abundantly clear.
Mohandas Gandhi said, "I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, and Confucian."
Fact: I am a Christian. Fact: I am straight. Fact: For much too long, I have stood, just as much of the church has, on the wrong side of the gay/lesbian issue.
Stephen B. McSwain has written a thoughtful book in The Giving Myths: Giving Then Getting the Life You’re Always Wanted (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2007) that comes out of his personal interests and professional work as a vice president of Cargill Associates Inc., a philanthropy and fundraising ...