{"id":17325,"date":"2014-01-19T15:57:13","date_gmt":"2014-01-19T23:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/\/new\/\/?p=17325"},"modified":"2015-06-08T11:45:57","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T18:45:57","slug":"122-meditation-spiritual-practice-may-evolve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/122-meditation-spiritual-practice-may-evolve\/","title":{"rendered":"How your Meditation and spiritual practice evolves over time?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"#\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17327\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-17327\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Modern-day-Buddhism-evolution-monks-with-umbrella-w-53276842-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Modern day Buddhism evolution-monks-with-umbrella-w-53276842\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Are you new to meditation and need some help? Maybe, you are an advanced spiritual practitioner and need to go back to basics or have plateaued and need some extra oomph. \u00a0CJ talks to author Jay Michaelson, about his book &#8220;<em>Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment<\/em>&#8221; to discuss how spiritual practices can evolve over time.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\" src=\"https:\/\/securestatic.iheart.com\/widget\/index_talk.html?showId=25229902&amp;episodeId=25230198&amp;ref=embed&amp;autoPlay=0\" width=\"398\" height=\"224\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1>Show Summary<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Segment 1: \u00a0What do folks interested in meditation need to know about the intention of meditation?<\/li>\n<li>Segment 2: What are the inflection point that Buddhism is going through right now? \u00a0How are spiritual concepts that we create our own reality morphing as they hit the US with movies like The Secret?<\/li>\n<li>Segment 3: Listener David from Facebook shares his isolation from his Catholic upbringing as a result of being gay. \u00a0What actions can gays who seek acceptance take to be part of a community?<\/li>\n<li>YouTube Video:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XPeNsyE20C0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KC4T0Pxx-eo\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1>Blog Post by our Guest (source: Jewish Daily Forward)<\/h1>\n<h3 id=\"headline\">Have We Reached the End of Traditional Religion?<\/h3>\n<h4>Jews and Christians Alike Are Straying From Affiliation<\/h4>\n<div id=\"article-image-box\"><span style=\"font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.5em;\">By\u00a0<\/span><a style=\"font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.5em;\" href=\"http:\/\/forward.com\/authors\/jay-michaelson\/\">Jay Michaelson<\/a><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-date\">Published December 31, 2013, issue of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/forward.com\/issues\/2013-12-27\/\">December 27, 2013<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>Maybe the Christian Right is right. For almost 40 years now, they\u2019ve been warning us that we\u2019ve entered the wilderness, that traditional religion is being eroded. Did 2013 prove them right? Item One: the Rise of the Nones. This phenomenon \u2014 nearly 20% of Americans listing \u201cnone\u201d as their religious affiliation \u2014 was first documented in 2012, but only in 2013 did it emerge as a demographic and political fact, impacting how we vote, how we live and what we think about political issues. Strikingly, there are more and more Nones the younger the demographic sample gets. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 32% are Nones. Item Two, or perhaps One-A, is the Pew Research Center\u2019s survey of American Jews, which showed that 20% of American Jews (there\u2019s that number again) consider themselves \u201cJews of no religion,\u201d and that their non-religious Judaism is not a deep or sticky enough of an identity to be sustainable. Third, even among non-Nones (Somes?), religious affiliation appears to be growing more polarized: There are now more fundamentalists, more liberal-to-atheists and fewer mainliners in between. Denominationally, this means fewer Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Conservative Jews and Reform Jews \u2014 and more evangelicals, Pentecostals, ultra-Orthodox and non-denominationals. Mega-churches are spreading \u2014 it\u2019ll be interesting to see whether charismatic forms of Judaism will mimic their success \u2014 and old-line churches are dwindling. It seems that the center cannot hold. And then there\u2019s the Pope. Under Benedict XVI, who resigned amid swirling rumors of sexual and financial scandals in the Vatican, the Catholic Church seemed to be entering a second Counter-Reformation, doubling down on its most conservative teachings and, by way of enormous \u201ccharitable\u201d organizations, working to eviscerate legal protections for women and sexual minorities. Now, Pope Francis tells us he won\u2019t judge gay people, that the church is too obsessed with sexuality and that untrammeled capitalism is immoral. You know something\u2019s changing when Rush Limbaugh calls the pope a Communist. Finally, even among those who still profess religious belief, the LGBT equality movement has caused a striking moderation in views. Staying with the Catholic Church for a moment, over 60% of church-going Catholics in America support same-sex marriage (compared to over 80% of Jews), which is above the national average. Even younger Evangelicals, galvanized around the Emerging Church movement, are beginning to say \u201clive and let live\u201d when it comes to gays, although they remain as staunchly anti-abortion as ever. Taboos are falling. And at the same time, the influence of the so-called Christian Right is at a low point. Think about it: A few years ago, when we talked about conservative Republicans, we talked about the Christian Coalition and the Family Research Council. Now, we talk about the Tea Party. Yes, many Tea Partiers are just warmed-over Christian Rightists. But the rhetoric is different, the issues are different and the churchmen aren\u2019t calling the shots. Clearly, no one factor explains all of these disparate trends. We still don\u2019t know why Americans are becoming more like Europeans when it comes to matters of (un-)belief: secular culture, science, the excesses of \u201cbad religion,\u201d interfaith marriages and so on. It may just be a matter of survey respondents feeling more comfortable saying \u201cNone.\u201d Nor do we really know what the future holds, for Jews or anyone else. We can speculate that the growth in secularism and the concomitant growth in fundamentalism are related \u2014 but which is the horse and which is the cart? It does seem, though, that 2013 was a year in which traditional religious affiliation underwent significant change. Is this the dawning of a new, liberal age, in which America finally starts to look a little more like the rest of the Western world? Don\u2019t count on it. American religion is nothing if not resilient. It is malleable enough to change with the times, and if anyone ever does declare war on Christmas, they will lose. We remain a weirdly religious country. There are signs of innovation and renewal, too \u2014 forms of religion which focus on the pastoral and the personal, rather than the dogmatic. And these values are timeless. No matter how shopworn and threadbare our religious language sometimes becomes, the mystery and tragedy of human experience still remains \u2014 and so religion endures. Remember, even that famous sermon about losing one\u2019s religion begins, \u201cOh, life, it\u2019s bigger \u2014 it\u2019s bigger than you\u2026\u201d <em>Jay Michaelson is a contributing editor to the Forward.<\/em><\/p>\n<h1>About Our Guest<\/h1>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/122-meditation-spiritual-practice-may-evolve\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17326\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-17326\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/michaelson11small-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"michaelson11small\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Dr. Jay Michaelson is a writer, scholar, and activist whose work focuses on the intersections of religion, contemplative practice, sexuality, and law. <strong>Writing<\/strong>. \u00a0Jay is the author of five books,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaymichaelson.net\/evolvingdharma\">Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment<\/a>(2003), \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaymichaelson.net\/godvsgay\">God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality<\/a>\u00a0(2011), \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaymichaelson.net\/everything%20is%20god\/\">Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism<\/a>(2009),\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaymichaelson.net\/anothersky\/\">Another Word for Sky: Poems<\/a>(2007), and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaymichaelson.net\/godinyourbody\/\">God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice<\/a>\u00a0(2006)\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaymichaelson.net\/articles\">over 200 essays, articles, and works of fiction<\/a>. \u00a0His work has appeared in Newsweek\/The Daily Beast, CNN Online, Huffington Post, Salon, and other publications. \u00a0In addition, Jay was the founder of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/zeek.forward.com\/\">Zeek<\/a>, the first Jewish online magazine, and editor of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.azyashirmoshe.com\/\">Az Yashir Moshe: A Book of Songs and Blessings<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0His writing has been\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaymichaelson.net\/anthologies\/\">anthologized<\/a>\u00a0in volumes including\u00a0<em>Queer Religion<\/em>,<em>\u00a0Torah Queeries<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Signs of the Apocalypse: Rapture<\/em>,\u00a0<em>The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice<\/em>. <strong>Academic Background and Work<\/strong>. \u00a0\u00a0Jay\u00a0holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.A. in Religious Studies from Hebrew University, an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence, and a BA Magna Cum Laude from Columbia. \u00a0The areas of focus for his scholarly work are sexuality, religion, law, and contemplative practice. \u00a0Jay has been a visiting professor at Boston University Law School (2007-08), and has held teaching positions\u00a0at Yale University and City College of New York. \u00a0His academic articles have been published in Theology and Sexuality, Michigan Journal of Gender &amp; Law,\u00a0 Duke Law Journal, Stanford Environmental Law Journal, the Journal of Law in Society, and the Yale Law Journal, and he has presented papers at the American Academy of Religion, Association for Jewish Studies, CUNY Graduate Center, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and other conferences. <strong>Contemplative Practice. \u00a0<\/strong>A well known \u201cBuJu\u201d or Buddhist Jew, Jay\u2019s contemplative path includes Theravadan\u00a0Buddhism, post-denominational Judaism, and earth-based spirituality. \u00a0In 2008-09, he spent five months on silent meditation retreat in the Theravadan Buddhist tradition, and has sat long retreats in that tradition for ten years. \u00a0Jay has also learned and taught Kabbalah for twenty years, completed the Elat Chayyim Jewish Meditation Advanced Training program, and spent two years at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. \u00a0He is also a proud member of the Radical Faerie community. <strong>Teaching\/Speaking.\u00a0<\/strong>Outside the academy, Jay is a frequent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaymichaelson.net\/booking\">scholar in residence<\/a>\u00a0and teacher at institutions ranging from Yale University to the New York Open Center, the Human Rights Campaign to Burning Man, and dozens of universities, synagogues, and community centers. \u00a0In this work, Jay brings together scholarly rigor with a personal commitment to spiritual practice and personal growth. <strong>LGBT Advocacy.\u00a0<\/strong>Jay was the founder of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nehirim.org\/\">Nehirim<\/a>,\u00a0an LGBT Jewish organization, and vice president of the Arcus Foundation, a leading LGBT funder. \u00a0His particular focus is the intersection of religion and sexuality, including the new \u201creligious exemptions\u201d movement. \u00a0Jay\u2019s\u00a0work in this area has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, and NPR. <strong>Awards. \u00a0<\/strong>2012 Lambda Literary Award finalist;\u00a02010 award for best opinion writing by the New York Society of Professional Journalists; 2009 Forward 50 list of influential American Jews. <strong>Other Work<\/strong>.\u00a0 \u00a0During his legal career,\u00a0Jay was a clerk to Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a Golieb Fellow in legal history at NYU Law School, a recipient of several prizes and awards for his legal writing and scholarship, and for eight years was founder and general counsel of Wasabi Systems, a venture-funded software company. \u00a0Jay also co-founded of the Tibet Oral History Project, which records the testimonies of Tibetan victims of the Chinese Occupation. \u00a0 He also writes widely on issues of environmental protection (particularly climate change), Israel and Jewish identity, emerging forms of spirituality, and others. \u00a0He lives in upstate New York. Read more:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/forward.com\/articles\/189560\/have-we-reached-the-end-of-traditional-religion\/?p=all#ixzz2qtKzJ5jH\">http:\/\/forward.com\/articles\/189560\/have-we-reached-the-end-of-traditional-religion\/?p=all#ixzz2qtKzJ5jH<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you new to meditation and need some help? Maybe, you are an advanced spiritual practitioner and need to go back to basics or have plateaued and need some extra oomph. \u00a0CJ talks to author Jay Michaelson, about his book &#8220;Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment&#8221; to discuss how spiritual practices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,64,56],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[5399,5392,5400,5394,5393,5390,5403,5397,5395,5404,5405,2637,5402,5401,5391,2551,5396,4955,4958,5398],"class_list":["post-17325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditation","category-self-awareness","category-show-archives"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/bigstock-Buddhist-monks-with-umbrella-w-53276842-compressed.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17325"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21578,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17325\/revisions\/21578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17325"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}