Understanding Flesh as Ego Guided Meditation
This particular lens shift is perhaps the single most influential one for me. When I first read about it in Richard Rohr’s book Immortal Diamond, it was a huge light bulb moment. I still deeply value the Bible, and I no longer need it to be the “perfect, unchanging Word of God” in order for it to have value. It’s very tricky when you’ve been taught to see the Bible in that way–because what are you supposed to do with verses that never resonated with you? You have to try and accept it, swallowing your doubts or chalking them up to your lack of understanding, and maybe that does work for a while or it works for your whole life. Or maybe, you’re like me, and you don’t want to follow a religious system that forces you to live in conflict with your own lived reality. My lived reality is that my body is good–and I think the whole of Scripture affirms that.