{"id":33143,"date":"2023-11-16T03:37:57","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T11:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=33143"},"modified":"2023-10-02T08:09:21","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T15:09:21","slug":"33143-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/33143-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Spellbound: A Journey into the Unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Sandler, Tattoos, and the weird world of my mind. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I invite you into a journey with me. It is a journey in a very strange land. It\u2019s a quick journey \u2013 just a few sentences. I am going to share with you an experience while reading Dr. Daniel Lieberman\u2019s book Spellbound: Modern Science, Ancient Magic, and the Hidden Potential of the Unconscious Mind<\/em>.[1]<\/a> This a journey of my unconscious mind.<\/p>\n

It went like this: I was reading Spellbound<\/em>. While reading, I received a text from a friend. \u201cAnyone interested in seeing Adam Sandler? His comedy tour is coming to Portland in October.\u201d My unconscious took over and my mind wandered as I was reading.<\/p>\n

Adam Sandler. He\u2019s funny. Surprisingly, he\u2019s a good basketball player. Hey, basketball! The FIBA basketball world cup ended recently. Team USA didn\u2019t do too well. I think Devin Brooker is going to join in the Olympics. He\u2019ll help for sure. Does he have any tattoos? Ja Morant got some crazy back tattoo that required four artists working at the same time. His tattoo is weird. The art from his tattoo reminds me of playing Nintendo with Ryan in middle school. Ryan. Miss that guy. I should call him. I remember him being a picky eater. I\u2019m hungry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That all happened within 10 seconds without me realizing my mind was wandering. I snapped out of it and continued reading even though this mental processing happened while reading.<\/p>\n

My mind is a weird place. But before you make a snap judgment, I would argue that your mind is also a very strange place. If we walked through the land of your unconscious mind for a minute, we too would say, \u201cWhoa. Weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s ironic is that this was real-time engagement with what Lieberman wrote about in his book. For this blog post, I will summarize Lieberman\u2019s Spellbound<\/em> and write about the implications of his content for spiritual formation into the likeness of Jesus.<\/p>\n

Spellbound Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n

We live in a culture that values science and reason above all. The empirical and rational is true. We don\u2019t pay much attention to magic and fairy tales. But Lieberman, who is deeply influenced by C.G. Jung and pulls from his work throughout Spellbound<\/em>, argues we are missing out.<\/p>\n

Lieberman points out that our ego (conscious \u201cself\u201d) is just a part of us and, in comparison to our unconscious, it does far less thinking. The ego processes 10-60 bits of information per second. Our unconscious processes 11 million per second.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

The unconscious is mysterious and unnational. We, as post-Enlightenment Westerners, have great difficulty accepting and gleaning wisdom from the unconscious.[3]<\/a> Lieberman argues that the ancients were far more equipped to deal with the unconscious. They did not minimize the spiritual realm. And they utilized magic and myth to make sense of the mystery of the unconscious.<\/p>\n

As humans, we need story. We desire transcendence. But these are longings that science cannot provide. To become whole, we need to not ignore our unconscious mind, even though our unconscious is mysterious and irrational, but recognize our unconscious, listen, name our unconscious thoughts and experiences, and integrate our unconscious into our \u201cself\u201d. This is the path to transcendence[4]<\/a>:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 1 – Lieberman’s diagram of the journey to transcendence.<\/p>\n

Invitation for Spiritual Formation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lieberman gives meditation as a key action step for moving along the journey to transcendence. In Christian vernacular, transcendence is understood as \u201cunion\u201d with God. In writing about knowing God with our \u201cheart,\u201d Dr. Bruce Demarest, a voice in Christian Spiritual Formation, writes, \u201cHeart knowledge means loving God with all our faculties of thinking, intuiting, willing, feeling, and relating. It\u2019s a knowledge formed by personal connection and lived experience, not by intellectualizing alone.\u201d[5]<\/a> Particularly in the Evangelical tradition, we have settled for intellectual \u201cknowing\u201d through Biblical knowledge, but have not engaged in the inner work God invites us into. It would be wise for Christians to critically yet openly heed Lieberman\u2019s invitation to mindfulness, but do so in partnership with the Spirit of God. In so doing, we can become aware of our unconscious, name it (particularly our sin struggles, trauma and insecurity), and become renewed from the inside out. Meditation, union with God, is key to increasing awareness of our unconscious, thus becoming more whole.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Daniel Z. Lieberman, Spellbound: Modern Science, Ancient Magic, and the Hidden Potential of the Unconscious Mind<\/em> (Dallas, TX: BenBella Dooks, Inc, 2022).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid. 14-15.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid. 22.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid. 215.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Bruce A. Demarest, Satisfy Your Soul: Restoring the Heart of Christian Spirituality<\/em> (Colorado Springs, Colo: Navpress, 1999), 96.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Sandler, Tattoos, and the weird world of my mind. I invite you into a journey with me. It is a journey in a very strange land. It\u2019s a quick journey \u2013 just a few sentences. I am going to share with you an experience while reading Dr. Daniel Lieberman\u2019s book Spellbound: Modern Science, Ancient […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2845],"class_list":["post-33143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lieberman-dlgp01","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33143"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33150,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33143\/revisions\/33150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}