As Natural as Breathing

AS NATURAL AS BREATHING

Many people who believe in the “spiritual but not religious” path—myself included—are often considered “anti-religion”.   This is the furthest thing from the truth. I am forever thankful for the incredible work that Christian organizations do to ease human suffering. Each day, millions of people around the world are fed, clothed and taught by Christian churches, schools, and hospitals.  For centuries, Christians have made a positive difference, from healers like Mother Theresa and Padre Pio, to the individual who anonymously donates money to a poor family in their congregation. Furthermore, I still believe in church as a sacred place and would never do or say anything to belittle it. 

That said, it is also my belief that the “faith-built” churches of today are not a continuation of the original church begun by Christ.  Instead, over the past two millennia, man has created the Church in his image, rather than in God’s.  The result is that there are some 39,000 separate and different expressions of Christianity around the earth that claim to hold the Truth.  

In a rather straightforward manner, I state in Chapter 7 of The Two Agreements, “As evidenced by the history of all religions, mankind seems to compulsively work to complicate the spiritual life of living in harmony with God, a relating that is as natural as breathing.”  Indeed, the connecting to God has become so circuitous and convoluted as to be a life’s pursuit, instead of the place from which we live our lives. I am reminded of the story of the two cats.  One is turning in circles chasing its tail. The second cat asks him why he is doing such a thing. “I was told that happiness abides in the tip of one’s tail. And I desperately want happiness.” To which the second cat replies, “I have learned that as I peacefully go on my way that happiness is with me and follows me wherever I go.” And, certainly, we need not seek something we already possess.

Indeed, upon examining church history, we find that the original church was not a formal institution, but small groups of people meeting in each other’s homes to spread Christ’s messages. The purpose of these meetings was twofold:  first, to bring salvation to those who had been born under the first covenant with God and, secondly, to spread the story of Christ’s life and resurrection.   The Church of today, however, is something altogether different. Sadly, it has become a tool to measure our “worthiness”, even one’s worthiness to hold public office and serve society.

Please note, Christ did not give a list of rules and regulations for doing church the “right way” in order to prove that we believe deeply enough or in the right way. He simply told us to accept the Holy Spirit. Ironically, the man who was persecuted for saying, “I and my Father are the same” is now believed to have been the only one so connected to Source, when in fact we all are. Now we are the blasphemers if we make this claim. Too often, instead of being encouraged to live our lives with God, we are encouraged to give our lives over to institutions that run similarly to the government and any other bureaucracy.  These institutions are largely based on the premise that we are separate, not only from God, but from each other. Ultimately, that premise leads us into feelings of fear, guilt and shame, which make manipulation possible.

As evidenced by the thousands fleeing the Church each year, that premise is no longer working. I believe these folk are being called to be mystics—to directly plug into the Source instead of going through the “middle man” that the Church has become.  

Your religious life can cause you mental health problems

I enjoy my spiritual life in every respect. To reach the place in my life of living in the liberty I enjoy, I first worked through a lot of "stuff" others taught me about the Creator. That stuff kept getting in my way of living in the natural harmony that I was born with. In fact, we are all born with a natural relationship with the Creator, a relationship of harmony.

Many of my friends enjoy a religious life. Our different paths to God do not get in the way of our friendship. However, I caution anyone seeking a spiritual life in organized religion to use wisdom. For years, I have supported folk in finding a better life as they suffered with mood disorders. Many of them are seeking a place of peace and acceptance with the power they believe gave them life. It is not their belief in a Creator God that causes them pain. It is the judgement they direct at themselves. They feel like they must be spiritual failures for God to punish them with a mental illness.

I came across the following article that brings a very interesting perspective to the situation I just described. In my book, I share my story of learning a new way of understanding God and interpreting Christianity's wisdom book. Since, I began living from the interpretation in my book, my life is one with peace and assurance and a wonderful absence of self judgement.

Peacefulness to you and yours . . .

Religious Trauma Syndrome: How Some Organized Religion Leads to Mental Health Problems

Posted on March 26, 2013

by Valerie Tarico

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia.  When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister.  “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said.  “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.

But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia.  I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion, written during her years of private practice in psychology. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.

Two years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling associationprotested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.” Onecommenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”

Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label?  I asked her.

Let’s start this interview with the basics. What exactly is religious trauma syndrome?

Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately. Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you. Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.

But in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage. The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.

But the problem isn’t just physical and sexual abuse. Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of 1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice?

Winell: I can give you many. One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety. People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as small children sometimes have memories of being terrified by images of hell and apocalypse before their brains could begin to make sense of such ideas. Some survivors, who I prefer to call “reclaimers,” have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they intellectually no longer believe the theology. One client of mine, who during the day functioned well as a professional, struggled with intense fear many nights. She said,

I was afraid I was going to hell. I was afraid I was doing something really wrong. I was completely out of control. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, thrashing my arms, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I’d walk around the house trying to think and calm myself down, in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like it was just something that – the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.

Or consider this comment, which refers to a film used by Evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the “end times” for nonbelievers.

 I was taken to see the film “A Thief In The Night”. WOW.  I am in shock to learn that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn’t there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who’s house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 yrs old and was preparing for Armageddon alone.

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” (The wages of sin is death.) This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship and there is a group organized  to oppose their incursion into public schools.  I’ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.

I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.

Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding” or “trust and obey.” People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness. I’ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the “will of God.” The words here don’t convey the depth of his despair.

I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can’t, you know, wake up in the morning, “What am I going to do today? Like I don’t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I’m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.

Authoritarian religious groups are subcultures where conformity is required in order to belong. Thus if you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your entire support system as well.

I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.

Leaving a religion, after total immersion, can cause a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.

Even for a person who was not so entrenched, leaving one’s religion can be a stressful and significant transition.

Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily, without really looking back. What is different about the clientele you work with?

Winell: Religious groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily. The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert. This is because they have no frame of reference – no other “self” or way of “being in the world.” A common personality type is a person who is deeply emotional and thoughtful and who tends to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors. “True believers” who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

Aren’t these just people who would be depressed, anxious, or obsessive anyways?

Winell: Not at all. If my observation is correct, these are people who are intense and involved and caring. They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply “walk away” because they try to make it work even when they have doubts. Sometime this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion. These are people for whom ethics, integrity and compassion matter a great deal. I find that when they get better and rebuild their lives, they are wonderfully creative and energetic about new things.

In your mind, how is RTS different from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma. This is crucial to understanding the condition and any kind of self-help or treatment. (More details about this can be found on my Journey Free website and discussed in my talk at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

Another difference is the social context, which is extremely different from other traumas or forms of abuse. When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, for example, other people understand and support the need to leave and recover. They don’t question it as a matter of interpretation, and they don’t send the person back for more. But this is exactly what happens to many former believers who seek counseling. If a provider doesn’t understand the source of the symptoms, he or she may send a client for pastoral counseling, or to AA, or even to another church. One reclaimer expressed her frustration this way:

Include physically-abusive parents who quote “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as literally as you can imagine and you have one fucked-up soul: an unloved, rejected, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I’m simply a broken spirit in an empty shell. But wait…That’s not enough!? There’s also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!

Just like disorders such as autism or bulimia, giving RTS a real name has important advantages. People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone and guilty. Some have written to me to express their relief:

There’s actually a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life serving Him! I’ve since been out of my religion for several years now, but i cannot shake the haunting fear of hell and feel absolutely doomed. I’m now socially inept, unemployable, and the only way i can have sex is to pay for it.

Labeling RTS encourages professionals to study it more carefully, develop treatments, and offer training. Hopefully, we can even work on prevention.

What do you see as the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn’t?

Winell: Religion causes trauma when it is highly controlling and prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their own feelings. Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth. With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world. Religion in its worst forms causes separation.

Conversely, groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be said to be healthy. The book, Healthy Religion, describes these traits. Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals.  They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes. They encourage spiritual practices that promote health like meditation or principles for living like the golden rule. More and more, nontheists are asking how they can create similar spiritual communities without the supernaturalism. An atheist congregation in London launched this year and has received over 200 inquiries from people wanting to replicate their model.

Some people say that terms like “recovery from religion” and “religious trauma syndrome” are just atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

Winell: Mental health professionals have enough to do without going out looking for new pathology. I never set out looking for a “niche topic,” and certainly not religious trauma syndrome. I originally wrote a paper for a conference of the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it. Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.

In my opinion, we are simply, as a culture, becoming aware of religious trauma.  More and more people are leaving religion, as seen by polls showing that the “religiously unaffiliated” have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers from all religions, providing forums for people to support each other. The huge population of people “leaving the fold” includes a subset at risk for RTS, and more people are talking about it and seeking help.  For example, there are thousands of former Mormons, and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Exmormon Foundation conference.  I facilitate an international support group online called Release and Reclaim  which has monthly conference calls. An organization called Recovery from Religion, helps people start self-help meet-up groups

Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them. Before that, they were healthy? No, before that we weren’t noticing. People were suffering, thought they were alone, and blamed themselves.  Professionals had no awareness or training. This is the situation of RTS today. Authoritarian religion is already pathological, and leaving a high-control group can be traumatic. People are already suffering. They need to be recognized and helped.

—-  Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area and the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion. More information about Marlene Winell and resources for getting help with RTS may be found at Journey Free.  Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington.  She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org.  Her articles can be found atAwaypoint.Wordpress.com.

WE ARE CALLED TO BE MYSTICS

     The follow article provides a needful explanation of life as a mystic.

 

Practical Mysticism – The Way of the Future

By: William Meader  

For centuries, mysticism been a major force in our quest to experience God and the spiritual dimension of life. Our yearning to find relationship with the Divine is ancient, and has been an instinctual impulse within us since the dawning hour of humankind. Indeed, this urge is woven into the very fabric of human consciousness. It is a heartfelt desire to establish a deep and abiding union with God’s love, and from this, experience a “peace that passeth understanding.” Yet our relationship with God is an evolving thing, as is everything else in life. Though mysticism has been the emphasis of the past, it is gradually evolving into a new and more enlightened approach to God and our understanding of spiritual living. This new approach has been called many names, but its most succinct and useful title is Practical Mysticism.

Practical Mysticism is not a spiritual approach that denies the validity of mysticism (as we traditionally understand this term). Instead, it is the next stage in its evolution. Mysticism has, historically, emphasized the importance of relating to God’s love. It is based upon the conviction that God is love, and that to find a deep love within oneself is to find divinity. A practical mystic would not refute the truth of this notion. Yet in addition to this view, the practical mystic understands that God is not only a representative of love, but also of mind and intelligence.

This is the essential difference between traditional mysticism and the perspective advocated within Practical Mysticism. To the practical mystic, God is love and mind, and equally so. Both represent sacred attributes of divinity seeking expression through humanity. As our mystical understanding of life matures, we are beginning to understand that the use of the mind (higher mind) is a gate to God. It is a portal into the will and intelligence of divinity, just as the heart is the way to divine love.

As an individual’s abstract mind is developed (in conjunction with love), s/he begins to realize that God speaks to humanity through lofty and profound ideas. From this, a new understanding of life emerges. It is a recognition that humanity is truly evolving. However, it is not evolution as we typically consider it. Unlike the Darwinian notion that survival of the fittest propels evolutionary change, the practical mystic realizes that humanity evolves through its relationship to progressive ideas and their practical application.

Practical Mysticism states that service to humanity needs to be centered in compassion, while at the same time expressed with wisdom and intelligence. It demands that we learn to establish a deep connection to the soul’s love while simultaneously applying the wisdom of the mind in practical ways. Too often mystics are lovingly compelled, but lack the ability to demonstrate practical skills for living. This must change. Through widespread education in recent years, humanity’s ability to think and reason has increased tremendously. We therefore live in a time when love alone will not suffice. Instead, love must be accompanied by intelligent thought and practical skill in action. This is the mantle of the practical mystic.

When we view the historical underpinnings of religion, we see that mysticism is the ground that gives birth to theology. In its early phases, a religion is largely mystical and only later hardens itself with unnecessary creed and dogma. Yet, even with the destructive introduction of dogma the mystical tendencies of a religion are still held by some of its exponents. In many ways the orientation found in certain branches of Christianity give evidence to this. The belief in cloistered living is one such indication.

Christian mysticism has been governed by the assumption that to find God (in the deepest sense) requires separation from society, and to live a life of contemplative solitude. Though not denying that there is a measure of truth to this, Practical Mysticism doesn’t emphasize this notion. Instead, finding the divine within society is the primary theme. To the practical mystic, divinity is found within the crucible of culture and civilization. And, it is this conviction that motivates the practical mystic in his/her commitment to serve humanity.

The cloistering tendency still found in religion is actually a residual effect of life lived during the Piscean Era. During that great astrological epoch it was believed that rapport with God is deepened by removing oneself from the doings of the world. From this, monastic theology came into being and convents and monasteries provided the needed isolation. Indeed, for the last two thousand years this has been the ordained means for finding God. However, humanity is now in transition, astrologically considered. At this remarkable time in history we find ourselves moving between two great ages—Pisces and the emerging sign of Aquarius. A new order is therefore on the horizon, and with it comes the next step in the evolution of humanity’s mystical relationship to life. Indeed, the notion that God is primarily found in seclusion is gradually coming to an end.

The dawning Age of Aquarius represents the next step in the development of our understanding of God and humanity’s relationship to the divine. This zodiacal sign symbolizes the importance of intelligent and practical approaches to life. Aquarius is known as the sign of service, and is profoundly related to the development of the higher mind. In addition, it encourages us to realize that there is no place where God it not. As such, God is equally present in the hectic circumstances of urban life as in the isolation offered in remote places. A religious monastery, places of science and the arts, or even the ghetto are all gates that lead to the divine. This sign hearkens to the cultivation of lofty thought and the need to find practical methods that support the evolution of culture and the upliftment of civilization. Our future largely depends upon this. The sign of Aquarius is the force that urges us toward Practical Mysticism. Even so, it is we who must rise to the occasion.

One of the perceptual differences between the mystic and the practical mystic has to do with belief about the nature of creation and its relationship to the Creator. Historically, Western theologies have held the view that there is a gulf between God and creation. This is the root assumption in the mind of the Western mystic, and has led to a sense of isolation from God. Indeed, this is why some scholars have referred to Western theologies as religions of exile. Yet, practical mysticism sees this in a different manner. It is not God and creation, but God as creation that the practical mystic holds true. This is the deeper reason why the practical mystic sees God within every facet of civilization. Every societal institution is understood as an aspect of divinity struggling to evolve toward a perfected expression. Spiritual service, therefore, has relevance in all places.

A key distinction between the mystic of old versus the practical mystic has to do with the question of good and evil, right and wrong. Over the centuries, Western theologies have strongly delineated these two things. The view has been that there is good and evil and a choice must be made. The notion of hell and the devil emerge as tools used to define evil and to prompt people (usually through fear) to make a choice in favor of goodness. However, the practical mystic does not see it this way. Instead, there is an understanding that everything in the world is an expression of both darkness and light, of good and evil.

Every human being, life event and social institution hold measures of truth and distortion. Indeed, this is one way (of many) to understand evil. Simply stated, evil is the distortion of truth. We can easily see this when we consider the fact that a vice is often a virtue that has been distorted or misapplied. All things are imperfect and, therefore, have measures of distortion and impurity (evil) in their expression. This is true for the criminal and the saint alike. The simplistic notion that darkness is due to origin sin, as Western theology suggests, is being superseded by a more enlightened understanding of evil. Evil is a dynamic characteristic found in the physics of creation itself, and is naturally a part of the evolution of all things. To the practical mystic, the question is not what is good and what is evil. Rather, it is to see all things as manifestations of both, and to facilitate the transformation of the lesser (evil) on behalf of the greater (goodness).

Mysticism has been governed by the belief that love is the only road that leads to God. Yet, we are entering a new and dynamic phase in the evolution of mystical yearning—the era of Practical Mysticism. Gradually we are realizing that God is not just love, but is also mind. Practical mystics understand that the heart and the mind are equally divine, and both must be utilized in service to humanity’s betterment. Such people advocate the importance of bringing spiritual wisdom into practical expression. They seek to build a new civilization where humanity’s oneness is recognized and outer societal structures evidence this recognition. This is done by inwardly aligning with the soul while simultaneously keeping one’s feet planted on the ground. Such is the formula for bringing heaven to earth, and is the mandate of the practical mystic.

© 2007 William Meader

Technorati Tags: mystic,mysticism,emergent conversation,good news,the two agreements,human consciousness,new civilization

Latest Book Review on The Two Agreements

The Christian that Came in From the Cold: Steve Brannon’s The Two Agreements offers a New Path to God

Dana Micheli, Writers in the Sky

Historically, in times of crisis people have turned to their religion. But what happens when people have problems and questions that their church is either unable, or unwilling, to address? This impasse is the cause of the growing rift we are seeing in fundamentalist Christianity.  Millions of people, particularly the young, are leaving the church in droves. They hunger for a closer relationship with God and are tired of being told “they don’t believe strongly enough” if they have questions about the traditional interpretation of the Bible. Some of these questions are nearly as old as humanity itself, and although many remain unanswerable to us on this plane, their exploration is something that must be attempted if we can hope to understand our Divine purpose. 

In this incredible new book, The Two Agreements, Dr. Steve Brannon reinterprets the New Testament and sheds light on the true nature of Christ’s life and work on earth. Brannon explores Jesus’ journey as he walked between two worlds—the relative existence of human life, and the absolute world of love, unity, acceptance and perfection created by The Source.  But perhaps even more important, the book also chronicles the origins of “the Lie”, introduced in the story of Adam and Eve, which has been used for centuries to illustrate man’s inherent “sinful” nature and his separation from God.   

But The Two Agreements is more than just a book; it is also a companion of sorts to Brannon’s work as a spiritual counselor/coach. Licensed as a minister at the age of 19, Steve planted a fundamentalist Christian church soon after.  But over time, he began to feel a need to know Christ in a way that Christian dogma did not seem to allow. After much soul-searching, he began a slow, painful extrication from organized religion that led to his transformation as a true follower of Jesus.

Today, Steve’s interfaith ministry specializes in helping those with mental health challenges to develop their spiritual lives. He hosts two weekly groups: one is for patients at a mental health facility; the other is open to the public, for individuals suffering with mood disorders, as well as their close friends and families. Both groups are comprised of a plurality of faiths. 

The Two Agreements is an invitation to a new level of spiritual awareness.  It opens a door to a new consciousness and most importantly, a deeper relationship with God and with each other.