Lighthouse Trails Research Project - Exposing Contemplative Spirituality

by Warren Smith

LTRP Note: This is part two of an introduction to Warren Smith's new book, A "Wonderful" Deception. In last week's installment, it was revealed that Rick Warren's and Leonard Sweet's evangelical "new reformation" appears to be moving toward the New Age/New Spirituality. In this week's section, Saddleback's chief apologist defends Leonard Sweet's working relationship with Rick Warren, even though Sweet's affinity with New Age leaders is clearly evident.

"Sweet, Spangler, and Quantum Spirituality"
by Warren Smith

If we want to possess a magical crystal for our New Age work, we need look no further than our own bodies and the cells that make them up.1--David Spangler 1991

I am grateful to David Spangler for his help in formulating this "new cell" understanding of New Light leadership.2--Leonard Sweet 1991

Leonard Sweet, in acknowledging Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, M. Scott Peck, and the others he refers to as "New Light leaders" in Quantum Spirituality, states:

I believe these are among the most creative religious leaders in America today. These are the ones carving out channels for new ideas to flow. In a way this book was written to guide myself through their channels and chart their progress. The book's best ideas come from them.3

Speaking of spiritual "channels," Sweet expresses his personal gratitude in Quantum Spirituality to channeler and veteran New Age leader, David Spangler. Spangler, in attempting to cast off the negative stereotype of a New Age channeler, would now more likely describe himself as a conscious intuitive.4 A pioneering spokesperson for the New Age, Spangler has written numerous books over the years that include Emergence: The Rebirth of the Sacred, Revelation: The Birth of a New Age, and Reimagination of the World: A Critique of the New Age, Science, and Popular Culture. His book Revelation: The Birth of a New Age is a compilation of channeled transmissions he received from his disembodied spirit-guide "John." At one point in Revelation, Spangler documents what "John" prophesied about "the energies of the Cosmic Christ" and "Oneness":

As the energies of the Cosmic Christ become increasingly manifest within the etheric life of Earth, many individuals will begin to respond with the realization that the Christ dwells within them. They will feel his presence moving within and through them and will begin to awaken to their heritage of Christhood and Oneness with God, the Beloved.5

Unbelievably, in a modern--day consultation that bears more than a casual resemblance to King Saul's consultation with the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28:7), Leonard Sweet acknowledges in Quantum Spirituality that he was privately corresponding with channeler David Spangler.6 In Quantum Spirituality, Sweet writes about what he calls his "new cell" understanding of New Light leadership, then closes his book by thanking Spangler for "his help in formulating this 'new cell' understanding of New Light Leadership." Sweet writes:

Philosopher Eric Voegelin's word "cosmion" refers to "a well ordered thing that has the character of the universe." New Lights offer up themselves as the cosmions of a mind-of-Christ consciousness. As a cosmion incarnating the cells of a new body, New Lights will function as transitional vessels through which transforming energy can renew the divine image in the world, moving postmoderns from one state of embodiment to another.7

I am grateful to David Spangler for his help in formulating this "new cell" understanding of New Light leadership.8

Spangler: Still the New Age

In David Spangler's 1991 book, The Reimagination of the World, Spangler makes it clear that any "new cell" understanding associated with him is directly related to New Age teachings. While Spangler tries to distance himself from the more narcissistic and superficial aspects of the New Age, he still holds firm to the use of the term "New Age" to describe his spiritual beliefs. In fact, in referring to the importance of a "new cell understanding" of the New Age, Spangler writes:

To me, a more appropriate symbol for the New Age is the cell. The cell is really a living crystal. It possesses a highly structured internal order, yet this geometry is organized around information rather than around position, as in a crystal lattice. Protoplasm is highly dynamic; it can give birth to endless varieties of new life, yet it can also collect and focus energy in powerful ways. If we want to possess a magical crystal for our New Age work, we need look no further than our own bodies and the cells that make them up.9

Was all of this part of the "new cell" understanding that Leonard Sweet received from David Spangler? This paragraph alone--much less Spangler's well documented "New Age work" through the years--should be enough to drive any Christian leader far away from Spangler's heretical New Age teachings. Sweet's involvement with a key New Age leader and channeler of spirit-guides is not innovative or edgy or pioneering--it is spiritually dangerous. The Bible instructs us to reprove and expose the works of darkness--not join forces with them (Ephesians 5:11-13).

Leonard Sweet's Quantum Spirituality and David Spangler's The Reimagination of the World were both published in 1991. It seems obvious from their books that both men are attempting to distance themselves from the more faddish, consumer-oriented elements of the New Age--but without actually dispensing with the term New Age itself.10 To the casual reader, it might look like Spangler and Sweet are actually speaking against the New Age. In fact, quotes taken out of context might even make it appear this is true. But this is definitely not the case. Sweet and Spangler are just doing some New Age/New Spirituality public relations. They are both redefining and refining the term New Age as they try to strip the term of its Shirley MacClainesque pop aspects and put it more in the realm of seemingly authoritative science. The term New Age would no longer be associated with occult spiritual beliefs but rather with a period of time--a new era--in which their seemingly scientifically based spiritual beliefs would manifest. It would no longer be a New Age Spirituality. It would now be a universal "New Spirituality" for a new era--the coming "New Age." This New Age would be equated with a planetary era and a planetary ethic that would reflect a passionate concern for the environment and all of humanity. This new era would also reflect the new "civility" called for by Sweet's "hero," the late New Age leader M. Scott Peck. In his 1993 book A World Waiting to be Born: Civility Rediscovered, Peck writes the following about his Utopian New Age:

The distinguishing feature of the citizens of Utopia is not their location, nationality, religion, or occupation but their commitment to becoming ever more civil individuals and their membership in a planetary culture of civility. By virtue of this commitment and membership, regardless of their theology, they welcome the active presence of God into both their individual and their collective lives. . . . Although their primary allegiance is to the development of their own souls, they are all involved in teaching as well as learning civility and dedicated to inviting others into their planetary culture.11

Who is going to argue with this call for ecological responsibility, human compassion, and planetary "civility" in this coming New Era--in this idealized New Age? Only those who recognize that New Age beliefs are being smuggled in under the cover of a new planetary ethic--a New Spirituality and a New Worldview for the coming New Age. Leonard Sweet and Brian McLaren would also try to redefine the term New Age more as a period of time than as a set of occult beliefs. Attempting to marginalize the whole New Age movement by characterizing it as "vague, consumerist, undefined, and mushy," McLaren misses the fact that the New Age is a well-organized spiritual movement with a long-standing hostility to biblical Christianity. The New Age is very serious about what it believes and is anything but "mushy." But as McLaren wrongly defines the New Age as "mushy" while simultaneously equating biblical Christianity with "pushy fundamentalism," he paves the way for a newly emerging theology--a New Spirituality for a New Age. The term "New Age" that characterized an occult belief system neatly disappears as the "New Age" simply becomes the time frame in which this New Spirituality appears. In his book Finding our Way Again, McLaren describes this New Spirituality for the coming "New Age":

The word spirituality tries to capture that fusion of everyday sacredness. For many people, it represents a life-giving alternative to secularist fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism, the former offering the world weapons of mass destruction and the latter stirring emotions to put the suicidal machinery into motion.

This dissatisfaction in some cases has led to a reactionary resurgence of pushy fundamentalism--fearful, manic, violent, apocalyptic. And in other cases it has led to a search for a new kind of spirituality. The success or failure of this search will, no doubt, play a major role in the story of the twenty-first century.

In its early stages, this search for spirituality has been associated with the term new age, which for many means something vague, consumerist, undefined, and mushy. However, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, more and more of us are realizing that a warm but mushy spirituality is no match for hot and pushy fundamentalism, of whatever religious variety . . . More and more of us feel, more and more intensely, the need for a fresh, creative alternative--a fourth alternative, something beyond militarist scientific secularism, pushy religious fundamentalism, and mushy amorphous spirituality.

This alternative, we realize, needs to be creative and new to face the new challenges of a new age, a world gone "post-al"-postmodern, postcolonial, post-Enlightenment, post-Christendom, post-Holocaust, post-9/11. Yet it also needs to derive strength from the old religious traditions; it needs to face new-age challenges with age-old wisdom.12

Thus, the new semantics introduced by both New Age and Christian leaders--what had been called New Age Spirituality--would now be a panentheistic New Spirituality for a New Era and a New Age. Leonard Sweet, Brian McLaren, and other Christian leaders were slowly transitioning the church into New Age teachings, but with clever new terms like New Light leadership, quantum spirituality, New Spirituality and a New Worldview that will--for the "good of the world"--transition the church out of an "Old Age"/biblical Christianity into the emerging "New Age" of a New Spirituality.

In 1991, Leonard Sweet was setting the stage for everything happening in the church today. He was saying what McLaren is now saying. He was starting to redefine the New Age as a New Era rather than a set of occult beliefs. In Quantum Spirituality, he writes:

The church stands on the front lines of the coming reign of God. Or as biblical scholar J. Christiaan Beker entitles his chapter on Paul's ecclesial thought, "The Church [is] the Dawning of the New Age." The event of Jesus Christ spells the end of the old age and the beginning of the new age. The church then is the "beachhead of the new creation," in Beker's words, "the sign of the new age in the old world that is 'passing away.'"13

Thus while David Spangler, Brian McLaren, and Leonard Sweet all seem to be distancing themselves from the New Age--they are actually helping to bring it on. They are bringing it on because they hold to the basic New Age view that we are all "one" because God is "in" everything, as Sweet shares in Quantum Spirituality. To underline this idea, Sweet turns to contemplative mystic/panentheist Thomas Merton. Sweet states:

If the church is to dance, however, it must first get its flabby self back into shape. . . . So far the church has refused to dip its toe into postmodern culture. A quantum spirituality challenges the church to bear its past and to dare its future by sticking its big TOE into the time and place of the present.

Then, and only then, will a flattened out, "one-dimensional," and at times dimensionless world have discovered the power and vitality of a four-dimensional faith . . . Then and only then, will a New Light movement of "world-making" faith have helped to create the world that is to, and may yet, be. Then, and only then, will earthlings have uncovered the meaning of these words, some of the last words poet/activist/contemplative/bridge between East and West Thomas Merton uttered: "We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity."14

To continue (and for endnotes),click here. (go to p. 128)

For more information on Warren Smith's work, click here.

by Editors at Lighthouse Trails

LTRP Note: The following is a chapter from Castles in the Sand, our first novel, exposing the dangers of contemplative spirituality. The story is about a young Christian college girl who is introduced to mysticism through her spiritual formation professor. In the following chapter, Tessa, troubled by some of the strange symptoms she is experiencing when practicing meditation, seeks help from her school counselor. But alas, the counselor is involved in the very spirituality that is affecting her. His advice? He encourages Tessa to turn to an ancient mystic, Teresa of Avila, for wisdom and understanding. As with all our articles, please feel free to highlight this chapter and print it for easier reading.

Castles in the Sand
by Carolyn A. Greene
Chapter 19: Bad Counsel

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.--Jesus, Matthew 6:7

March 23
"And so, I'm really not sure what to think anymore about this spiritual formation training," Tessa said softly. She felt very small and insignificant sitting in front of the huge desk in the head counselor's office. The walls were covered with hardwood panels, and on the one with the credenza pushed against it hung a framed portrait of a man staring down at her with knowing eyes. The counselor wrote on a notepad with an expensive-looking gold pen. He had been at Flat Plains [Bible College] for nearly five years and most of the students respected him. Tessa had often heard him play the cello in the string quartet during chapel for Monday meditations. He was a bachelor, but not the kind the girls would flirt with. She wondered if he ironed his own shirts every day, as he always wore a crisp white one under his sports jacket. He had a few odd quirks but was generally kindhearted and caring. Tessa didn't know why she felt so uncomfortable as she sat in his office. The counselor analyzed the comments he'd been jotting down. His notes said this girl had dark circles under her eyes and seemed very nervous. She had no previous record of drug use and had never gotten into trouble at school.

"Miss Dawson, we realize it's an emotionally and spiritually demanding course. You have probably been working very hard. I see you stayed at school over the Christmas holidays as well as spring break last week to catch up on some course assignments. With the semester nearly over, the pressure will soon be off. Have you talked to your spiritual formation professor?"

"Well, she was the one who recommended that I be mentored by Ms. Jasmine. Naturally, I was excited about that, at first. Now, I'm not sure anymore. So I talked to the other counselor this morning, and she told me that you and Ms. Jasmine are the only people I need to talk to about my concerns."

"Did she now? Instead of speaking to me, have you talked to Dr. Winters first about your concerns?" He secretly wished Dr. Jasmine Winters hadn't been so casual with the students, allowing them to address her by her first name. It was simply disrespectful.

"Well, that's the problem. I'm not comfortable with that."

The counselor leaned forward on his oak desktop and looked at her over his black-rimmed glasses. "Well, apparently Dr. Winters is comfortable enough to have you all call her Ms. Jasmine. Now, could you tell me exactly why you are 'uncomfortable'?"

"It's like this. I . . . when I am in a session . . . I mean, when I did the sessions with Ms. Jazz, I mean Dr. Winters, strange things happen, I mean, happened." Tessa started to cry. "I'm sorry, I haven't been sleeping well."

Tessa felt her throat tightening. This wasn't easy for her. At first, in the beginning of the school year, everything was good. Really good, actually, and Tessa had soon become a keen and open-minded student. But later, she'd begun having reservations, even before Katy read her "the list." She couldn't say why, exactly, only that she'd started to feel vaguely suspicious and oddly unsettled about the whole thing. That was probably why she could never muster the courage to take it to the next level. And lately, her resistance seemed increasingly ineffective. She used to have control, but she didn't seem to have it anymore. Had the words of warning, the words she had so carelessly rejected, been right after all?

"What sort of strange things?" the counselor asked, interrupting her thoughts.

"Yes. Well, this may sound very, very weird, but I get a tingling, prickling sensation in my head and my hands, and sometimes all the way down to my feet."

"Has Dr. Winters been letting you drink her Yerba Mate? It sometimes has an . . . effect on certain people."

Tessa shuddered at the thought of the South American tea Ms. Jasmine sometimes drank through a metal straw. She thought the Yerba leaves looked and smelled like a wet horse stall.

"No. You don't believe me, do you?" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded, wrinkled paper. It was the list Katy had tried reading to her the other night. Later, when Katy wasn't there, Tessa picked it up, folded it neatly, and put it in one of her books. "I would like to read this to you. These are some symptoms that--"

"That you have?"

"Well, I might have some, but so does my friend Elise and at least half the class. But Dr. Winters has most of these. Can I just read this?"

"Have you been to see the school nurse?" he asked.

"I don't need a nurse!" she said too loudly, and remorsefully looked down at the floor. "Please . . ." she said quietly.

"Go ahead." The counselor leaned back in his chair.

"These are some of the symptoms I am talking about. It's only some of them."

Before coming there that day, she had highlighted certain symptoms on the list with a yellow marker, ones she had either experienced herself or saw or heard about in others, including Ms. Jasmine--especially Ms. Jasmine. She held the wrinkled paper in her clammy hands and began reading the symptoms she had marked:

Hearing sounds like a flute, waterfall, bees buzzing, ringing in the ears, inner voices, mental confusion, difficulty concentrating, emotional outbursts, uncontrollable laughing and crying, rapid mood shifts, fear, rage, heightened awareness, trances, sensations of heat or prickling in the hands and head, feelings of peace and tranquility, ecstasy, dreams or visions of spirit guides, out-of-body experiences, awareness of auras, chakras, healing powers, sensitivity--

"All right, all right. That's enough, I've got the point," the counselor interrupted. He pulled off his glasses, puffed a few breaths of hot air onto the lenses, and unfolded a clean white handkerchief to polish them.

"But I'm not finished. I--"

"Miss Dawson, look, I believe you. A few other students have reported minor things. But everything has an explanation. This is a very old school. Before we rule out the insulation or the lead paint, here's what I think. First of all, you have completed the required reading, am I correct?"

Tessa nodded.

"Then you must know that the ancient Christians who tapped into methods of prayer that the modern church has forgotten also describe many of the same experiences. What if these things, which you say make you fearful, are simply God's graces and favors being bestowed upon you? Rather than having a fear-based faith, we must open ourselves to God's voice. We must not shut the door to new forms of God's communication with us, Tessa. The Bible says, 'Shout to the Lord a new song!' We cannot put God in a box."

He reached behind him and pulled a book from his shelf. The title on the cover said The Interior Castle, but Tessa thought this one looked older and thicker than her copy, which was called Selections from the Interior Castle. He pushed up his thick-framed glasses and opened it to a page with a folded corner.

"As St. Teresa of Avila wrote, 'Our Lord is just as pleased today as He has ever been to reveal favors to his people, and I'm convinced that anyone who will not believe this closes the door to receiving them herself.' So you see, only those who believe and open the door will be the recipients of His revelations and favors!"

Tessa knew about that. She had written a paper on the Teresian prayer model. "Yes, I understand that concept. But something is not right, I'm telling you. One evening not long ago I arrived early at our mentoring session, and Ms. Jazz was . . . she was . . ."

"Tessa, Dr. Winters is a very spiritually disciplined person, and a fine role model. She does the fixed hours of prayer several times a day, and some people, when they find out, just don't understand. It's a classic case of fearing the unknown. I trust she has been training you to do your prayer exercises as well. May I ask how far you have gone in your quiet prayer time in regard to the inner rooms of the Teresian prayer model?"

"Well, I . . . I could never get past the fourth room," she said, sniffing. "The castle. It haunts me in my dreams. What I thought was beautiful is turning into a bad dream. It's just not lining up with . . ." She stopped in mid-sentence and thought about Katy and Gramps, and how they would often say that something was not "lining up with Scripture." "I guess I just don't know anymore if the voices I am hearing are from God or . . . I'm just . . . I'm very scared."

"Dear Tessa, I think I have just answered your own question." The counselor looked pleased with himself and assured her with a compassionate smile. "Now take a deep breath and listen to me carefully. Close your eyes . . . There, that's right. Now, do you remember how St. Teresa compared the doubts we have to reptiles? Let me read a little more from the fifth chapter." The way the counselor read reminded Tessa of the way Ms. Jasmine read--slowly, methodically, pronounced:

In the prayer of quiet in the previous mansion, the soul needs to be very experienced before it can be sure what really happened to it. Did it imagine the whole thing? Was it asleep and dreaming? Did the experience come from God, or from the devil disguised as an angel of light? The mind feels a thousand doubts. And so it ought, for as I said, we can be deceived in these mansions, even by our own nature. It is true that there is little chance of those poisonous creatures entering the Fourth Mansion, but slippery little lizards are small enough to slip in unnoticed. They do no harm, especially if we ignore them, but these little thoughts and fancies thrown out by the imagination can be annoying.

However active those lizards may be, they cannot enter into the Fifth Mansion. Here, neither the imagination, the understanding, or the memory has any power to prevent God's grace flowing into the soul.

The counselor closed the book and placed it on a stack of Travel Mongolia magazines. His chair creaked as he leaned back and took off his glasses again. "Tessa," he said, "perhaps you need to enter into the fifth room of the castle and allow God's grace to flow into your soul. You seem too focused on poisonous, negative thoughts, which you simply must choose to ignore. I suggest you contemplate Scripture more often through your lectio divina exercises."

Tessa nodded her head, folded the paper, and stood up. Her ears began to ring again. The book he had read from sounded different from the one she had. Why were they always quoting to her out of books? Gramps usually quoted the Bible, and he seemed to know a lot of it by heart. She wasn't sure if Ms. Jasmine even owned a Bible. If she did, Tessa had never seen it.

She was more confused than ever. Everyone here kept telling her to shut out the noises and go within herself. "There you will find your true self," they'd say. However, her true self was the part of her that was so confused. Gramps always said that God is not the author of confusion. For some reason, Tessa remembered that cold fall day at the retreat when they were instructed to go and find their true selves, and she found the [mysterious] woodsman instead. What was that verse he read? "Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom."

She had no idea why she remembered that verse today, but how desperately she longed to know truth and have wisdom right now.
"May I go now?" she asked, rubbing her temples. "I . . . I have a really bad headache."

The counselor nodded and watched her walk to the door....

"Oh and Miss Dawson, one more thing," he said as she paused with her hand on the knob. "St. Teresa, your namesake, also said that a venomous reptile cannot live in the presence of divine light. If we are to be Christ followers, we must choose not to join the ranks of the spiritually uncivilized who refuse to be enlightened. Please keep this in mind."

Tessa gave a weak, "OK," then opened the door and stepped into the hall. The door swung shut behind her with a precise click. She watched as students walked past her to their classes, chatting and laughing happily as though everything was normal and there wasn't a care in the world. As for herself, she wondered if she was going mad. Nothing made sense anymore.

Back in the office, the counselor glanced at his watch. Thank goodness she's gone, he thought. It was nearly noon. Time for the Daily Office, the fixed hours of prayer Ms. Jasmine had taught them at their second staff retreat. He found that even five minutes spent centering down helped him get through a stressful day. Lately, more students like Tessa had begun to ask him too many difficult questions. Not to mention that paranoid old Mr. Brown who had been phoning and giving him a hard time.

He was beginning to feel more than a little annoyed.

He locked his office door, put a Taize worship CD into his Sony player and sat down in his chair again. Glancing up at the chart on his wall, he took a deep breath. He nearly had it memorized but wanted to be sure of the steps, so he read them again:

-Be attentive and open
-Sit still
-Sit straight
-Breathe slowly, deeply
-Close your eyes or lower them to the ground

Then he closed his eyes and slowly repeated the verse of the day from the Sacred Meditation website--

Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know . . .
that I am God . . .
that I am God . . .
that I am God.
That I am God,
I am God,
I am God,
I am God,
I am,
I am,
I am,
I am . . .

The noise in the hallway soon disappeared as Dr. Frank Johnson ... shut out the sounds around him and slipped into a peaceful inner silence.

(This is an excerpt from chapter 19 of Castles in the Sand, the 1st novel ever written that exposes the dangers of contemplative spirituality.
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Featured Resources

Contemplative Spirituality: A belief system that uses ancient mystical practices to induce altered states of consciousness (the silence) and is rooted in mysticism and the occult but often wrapped in Christian terminology. The premise of contemplative spirituality is pantheistic (God is all) and panentheistic (God is in all). Common terms used for this movement are "spiritual formation," "the silence," "the stillness," "ancient-wisdom," "spiritual disciplines," and many others.

Spiritual Formation: A movement that has provided a platform and a channel through which contemplative prayer is entering the church. Find spiritual formation being used, and in nearly every case you will find contemplative spirituality. In fact, contemplative spirituality is the heartbeat of the spiritual formation movement.