17
Beyond Mere Theology: Two Practices
Telling is not training.
—Advice offered by executive coachesYou have kindly allowed me to walk you through this Christ journey, and I
thank you for your trust. I do believe it has been an act of humble trust on your
part. But you might still be wondering, What difference does this make? Is this
just more theory and theology? Another set of ideas to put on the shelf?
Another well-disguised religious trip?
These critical questions make an important point: Unless the awareness of the
Christ Mystery rewires you on the physical, neurological, and cellular levels—
unless you can actually see and experience it in a new way—this will remain
another theory or ideology. Another book you have read and considered, and
then forgotten about as the weeks go on. It took me most of my seventy-five
years to begin to see and enjoy my Christian faith at this experiential level of
awareness. My hope is that I can save you a few of those years, and help you to
start enjoying an actual Christ Consciousness much earlier. And as the epigraph
to this chapter says, just telling people things is largely ineffective if there is not
actual training in how to practically rewire our responses. In this chapter I want
to offer you two embodied practices we teach at the Center for Action and
Contemplation. First, let me say a bit about practice itself.
Practice is standing in the flow, whereas theory and analysis observe the flow
from a position of separation. Practice is looking out from yourself; analysis is
looking back at yourself as if you were an object. You may learn something
intellectually through analysis, but in doing so, you might actually create a
disconnect from your deeper inner experience. Until you know what your own
flow feels like, you do not even know that there is such a thing. And you must