My instinct is -- we are heading towards something very simple -- maybe a single simple visualization, that guides or contains everything we really need to know in one very basic form. Maybe something as simple as a straight line.

This approach or practice, I am thinking -- is fully true across all levels of philosophy, religion, and spirit. It might be just as true for atheists, agnostics and humanists -- if these world views include a sense of "the whole" or "the one", and the position of the individual and the group within that wholeness -- and the inherent ethic that guards that wholeness.

More or less -- and supposing that I am honoring the classical teachings on these subjects -- including the ideas presented by writers here in this Alliance -- the idea is that our spiritual practice is "walking the path". It's "what we do" to move from where we are into a "fully realized" or "enlightened" state of awareness. It's "how we get there" and "where we're going".

In general, that practice involves any number of specific things -- "karma yoga" -- meditation, any sort of personal discipline, and consecrated action -- that makes some "uphill" or "anti-entropic" effort ("does some work") that is dedicated or consecrated or devoted to the divine whole and the grace it carries.

Seen this way -- "Oneness" is a side-effect or consequence of spiritual practice -- of the practice of alignment. What we actually do -- is align our energies -- to the common universal center of all being.

You align your energies to this center -- I align my energies to this center -- and since we are essentially aligning to the same center -- your energies become "congruent" with my energies.

This creates the experience we describe as "Namaste". The divine (whole/integral) energy in you becomes congruent with the divine energy in me. "One energy in two bodies".

This becomes powerful in an interfaith/interspiritual context -- because it really doesn't matter what you "believe", or what your particular theology is about. What matters is that you are aligning your energy to center -- making the consistent "uphill" effort to do that -- and receiving the grace/relaxation that releases from that uphill action.

Any religious practice or tradition can involve this kind of alignment.

One reason this is powerful is -- it is so basic, so fundamental, so universal. The act of aligning towards universal center tends to create a single integral axis of resonant energy -- and this axis or "calibration tone" (like OM) sets a standard for the world.

This approach does not depend on language. It does not depend on belief system -- at least not in specific terms. It does involve a basic belief in some fundamental laws of spiritual/psychological energy -- and the correspondence of that energy with something inherent in the world, something about how reality actually operates.

All of this can be describe in the classical terms of various theologies -- such as Christian or Hindu or Buddhist. The universal wholeness might be understood in Christian terms as Christ -- or God, or Holy Spirit, depending on how we choose to define these terms. The interconnection or energy-congruence of people can be understood as Holy Spirit resonance -- the effect that creates "One Body".

In this context -- which does retain the full "diversity" of the human community -- the millions of different ways we understand reality -- all held together in a single framework based simply on the concepts of alignment and "center" -- entire civilizations could conceivably come into resonance.

This is the simple guiding principle that can lead into "the coming interspiritual age". Retain your religion, retain your culture, hold on to the specifics of your beliefs -- but enter into this simple basic universal resonant communion guided by alignment.

In the context of that communion -- there we will work out our differences. What should we do about specific questions? Anything that arises in the context of that communion can be addressed through the inherent genius of that energy. Every point of view is inherent within it. Everything known is inherent within it.

* * *

I'm starting to gather some of these thoughts through the Axis Mundi page.

http://interspirit.net/alliance/axismundi.cfm

It's just a start, still just sketches -- but there is a lot there. I wonder if everything Ram or Starr* have brought to us as regards "practice" and "oneness" could be defined in these terms, without compromise to their vision. My guess is -- yes.

If we could work together to build a simple core doctrine or definition along these lines, we could then build 1,000 bridges in every direction from that core energy -- that core "trunk of the tree of religions", all of which can be understood to "sprout" from this one very basic very primal very simple general form of energy.