Jim Marion - Putting on the Mind of Christ: The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality

This edition first published in 2011 by

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Charlottesville, VA 22906

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Copyright 2000, 2002, 2011 Jim Marion.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. Reviewers may quote in writing from Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. Reviewers may quote brief passages. Originally published by Hampton Roads in 2000, ISBN: 978-1-57174-173-8, and 978-1-57174-357-2.

ISBN: 978-1-57174-357-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover art Harley Molesworth

Printed in Canada

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

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This book is dedicated to the memory of Michael John Marion (19461998)

First, I want to thank my parents, James P. Marion and Joan Durkin Marion, for the example of their lifelong dedication to God and the things of God, to their family, and to each other. I want to thank my sisters, Jeanne Marion, Ann Marie Scalea, and Kathleen Gagne, for their constant support. Jeanne was especially helpful in spending many hours carefully reading and editing the manuscript. I want to thank David DuBois for his advice on the process of publishing. I want to thank my editors, Frank DeMarco, Richard Leviton, Rebecca Williamson, and all the others at Hampton Roads who had faith in this work and immensely improved the presentation. I want to thank Ken Wilber for his beautiful foreword and for taking the time out of his tremendously busy schedule to study and endorse a book by someone he has never even met. I want to thank Barbara Marx Hubbard, Gerald Jampolsky, M. D., Bo Lozoff, and T. George Harris for their wonderful endorsements. I want to thank the hundreds of friends and worthy opponents who have been instrumental in bringing me deeper and deeper into God-awareness. Finally, I want to thank and express my undying gratitude and affection for two mentors whom I now call friends, and without whom my path to God-realization might never have been successful, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross.

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send you in my name, will teach you all things, and remind you of everything I have said to you.

John 14:26

By Ken Wilber

Putting on the Mind of Christ, The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality is a remarkable, often astonishing document. Its author, Jim Marion, claims that it is the first book to clearly describe the entire Christian spiritual path. This initially sounds rather grandiose, and yet, after carefully studying this book, I am inclined to agree with its author. This probably is the first book to describe the overall path of consciousness development from a Christian perspective. As such, it is a stunning achievement.

In a sense, however, this claim is much less grandiose than it sounds. For by the entire path, Jim Marion means one that includes the basic stages of spiritual development described so beautifully by the great saints and sages, plus the psychological stages of development only recently discovered by modern developmental psychologists (such as Jean Piaget, Jane Loevinger, Robert Kegan, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan). Thus, a truly complete path would, as it were, combine the discoveries of both the ancient sages and the modern psychologists, and by definition, that more comprehensive or complete map of development has only been possible in the last few decades.

Jim Marion is one of the pioneers in applying this more integral understanding to the Christian spiritual path. In doing so, Jim draws on my own work in a very fruitful fashion. In several books, I have attempted to develop a master template of overall consciousness development, based on sources ancient and modern, eastern and western, using each of the numerous systems to fill in the gaps left by others. (For my latest presentation of this master template, the reader might consult Integral Psychology, Shambhala, 2000.) But I have generally presented only the barest skeleton of this master template, and invited researchers to fill in all the rich details using their own traditions. Marion has done this brilliantly for the Christian tradition, adding his own original, creative, and profound insights along the way.

Jim Marion is not saying that past Christian saints did not possess a complete spiritual path. The point, rather, is that only recently have some of the stages of this overall path been clearly investigated and identified. By explicitly drawing on this modern research, the overall path of consciousness development can be more clearly mapped, and thus the spiritual path itself can be better understood in all its many dimensions, an understanding that will help even more souls grasp the timeless truths of the Christian revelation. The Holy Spirit continues to speak to us, even in this moment, and thus it increasingly makes the path itself more clearly revealed and understood, easing us along it all the more lovingly.

Putting on the Mind of Christ, The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality, is just such a further help for all those seeking to understand the full dimensions of the Christian path to the Kingdom. As such, it is a pioneering book, a truly inspired revelation, and a gentle guide to the deepest terrain of our own souls, where there awaits, as there has through all eternity, Christ as Source and Suchness of this and every world.

Putting on the Mind of Christ, The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality, is the first book to clearly describe the entire Christian spiritual path. Step by step, from the consciousness of infants, children, and adolescents, Putting on the Mind of Christ leads the reader to the consciousness that Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaventhe highest level of human spiritual development. Citing the New Testament, Christian spiritual classics like St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul, and my own inner experience, the book seeks to demonstrate that Jesus' teaching and his death and resurrection were meant to show us the way to this inner kingdom.

For the Christian, the follower of Jesus, the Way to the Kingdom of Heaven (higher consciousness) is Jesus Christ himself (John 14:6). More specifically, it is to allow God to transform us inwardly by the complete renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2), so that, with St. Paul, we can honestly say, We have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). This putting on of the mind which was in Christ Jesus (Philip. 2:5), that is, the Christ Consciousness, is the goal of the Christian spiritual path. This book seeks to describe that path. It seeks to serve as a map to the Kingdom of Heaven.

This book, therefore, is concerned with the development of human consciousness. It is only in recent years that the general public has begun to realize that the development of consciousness on this planet did not come to a halt with the arrival of the human being. It has now become clear that consciousness, at least within human beings, continues to develop. Though consciousness itself is non-linear, in our world of spacetime consciousness (or awareness) it can be said to grow in a step-by-step manner, beginning at birth and continuing throughout a person's lifetime. The end of this inner growth is full spiritual maturity. This book describes that growth in the context of the Christian spiritual tradition.