The Paradox of Spiritual Freedom, Strength, and Creativity

Love, humility, vulnerability, childlikeness, compassion, care, openness, and spontaneity are the doorways to heaven

“That which is despised as weak, slavish, and unprotected on earth is exalted in the heavens as freedom, peace, and strength. That which is greatest and freest and strongest in heaven is most often deemed lowliest, captive, and weakest on earth. That which is praised on earth as success, power, and fame is rejected at heaven’s gate for the simple reason that it replaces our foundational inheritance—everlasting Love— with the idolatry of self and personality. When we are captured by spirit we are freed into eternity from the chains of death and impermanence. When we bow in humility to the miracle of life itself and the loving Source that created us, we are awakened as children of God. Freedom, strength, and creativity without parallel are unleashed within us. We dance with the eternal cosmos.”— Zeus Yiamouyiannis

Joined in Love

“The only theology one needs is ‘God is love.’ (John 4:8) The only prayer one needs is “Thank you” (as Meister Eckhart notes). The only answer one needs is Life itself, calling, producing, existing, that which ‘I am’. There is no ‘doer’ behind the deeds. I am a miraculous soul-drop dancing in the rhythm of a universal and eternal spiritual ocean”— Zeus Yiamouyiannis

It is of no small consequence that the rules on earth seem to contradict the spiritual rules offered by the heavens. We pursue an alleged salvation in an alleged afterlife, little recognizing our life RIGHT NOW is itself eternal… not this mortal human life, but the life inherent in our spirits, the eternal “I am” that radiates as God’s essence through our spirits.

Should we but deeply accept and acknowledge our present eternal nature, we would no longer strive for the pseudo-deathlessness of celebrity, immortality, or transhumanism because our legacy would be written in how we live our lives. No longer would we be fearful of change. No longer would we become complacently disposed toward creature comforts. No longer would we fear to challenge false powers and principalities on earth.

Power itself would become the power to embody Love. Earthly “powers that be” would be outed as pale and false reflections of an eternal glory available to all of us (most especially children, who have not entirely forgotten who they are).

Throughout the history of this planet, there has persisted a tendency to equate power with militarism— the ability to force others to do what you want. Even our image of God has followed this clear idolatry. Just look at the descriptions of Yahweh on just about every page of the Old Testament. Yahweh is constantly portrayed as an angry, discontented war god, who insists on slavish obedience in humans to avert celestial punishment and wrath.

Let us instead recognize that this angry and narcissistic image of an alleged god has provided for and allowed for our own spiritual development. The grim Old Testament version of God can be viewed as gift to turn us toward unconditional Love and away from out obsession with physical conditions of existence. Perhaps we have needed the suffering created by conditional love and conditional gods to awaken us to our unconditional being and to the eternal covenant we have as children of an eternal Creator.

We “grow up” as humans as we transition from prohibition (“Thou shalt not commit adultery, murder, covet, steal, bear false witness, commit adultery…” found in the Old Testament Ten Commandments) to liberation (“Blessed are the poor in spirit, the gentle, the merciful, the pure in heart, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”…. found in the New Testament Beatitudes).

Or, perhaps I should correct myself. At least some of us are growing up spiritually. The majority of us are still apparently clinging to the old, stern god we have made in our own image in addition to relying upon worldly authorities to protect us from the vagaries and uncertainties of human life. In so doing we have cut ourselves off from life’s eternal, creative, and loving essence. We have allowed false “powers that be”, would-be kings and criminals, to exert and overweening influence on our lives, and eclipse the real and eternal power of Love itself.

If we have but soul-eyes to see and a heart to hear the unseen and the silent.

This essay is meant to aid in soul-seeing and heart-hearing. The Christian revolution is notable precisely because it flips the assumed (and illusory) arrangements and hierarchies of man on its head. Those that are “weak” and poor are the ones exalted, for they have room for God to live in them and to bring them blessings. Their souls, bodies, hearts, and minds are not cluttered by material goods and power, illusions that stand in the way of God’s habitation in the human being through the medium of the spirit and soul.

Therefore let us look at our own emerging spiritual maturation through the lens of Love, and let us understand where real freedom, strength, and power originate.

True Freedom— Bound by spirit, liberated into eternal truth and peace

“When I am bound and merged with spirit, I am unleashed into the arms of God, for what is freer than to be free from death itself. What is more eternally peaceful than to know in these bones that will become dust, that “I am” can never be destroyed or abandoned.”— Zeus Yiamouyiannis

We have heard it said that we ought to swallow even bitter pills of truth because the alternative ends up worse. We have heard it said that once you lie, you will now have to serve the lie, including making up additional stories to support the lie. The false world you’ve thus created comes crashing down around you and pins you under the rubble. We have heard it said that lies are chains, binding you to an impossible image, one that you have not earned, nor can legitimately occupy as a self-respecting spirit, even if powerful people cover for you.

This is all true. Why, then, do people lie? I mean REALLY lie. What are they trying to create? And what is the origin of the decision, desire, and need to lie? I left seminary after I discovered that the politically-correct professor of my Christian Ethics class had plagiarized the entire class (including class activities, discussion questions, evaluations, etc. to the point of actually copyrighting under her own name material she read nearly word for word from a Unitarian website. I took it to the academic dean, the president of the university, the Board, even the accrediting agency, and the Unitarian church itself. None of them cared. They were all world-enabling people of the lie.

In a seminary? Yes, sacred places are where the deepest and most consequential lies are told. For what better way is there to enable spiritual graft and dishonesty except with a cleric’s collar. Hypocrisy is and has always been one the most potent and effective forms of lying. We see it everywhere— the covered-up sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, for instance.

What is the consequence? When we prize and support image over substance, worldly success, power, and public piety over internal truth, integrity, and personal morality we shall find ourselves enslaved to the world. We end up serving an empty image, which offers only illusions. We spend our lives cheaply on ill-gotten gains that mock and cheapen substantiality. We follow our own self-deception and deception of others right into a materialist prison from which there is no escape except turning in faith away from an artificial world and an artificial self.

If I live by utter honesty and transparency, I am bound to the fidelity of truth, including my own shortcomings and refusal to exploit others or take credit for their work. I may SEEM disadvantaged materially and socially by the missed “opportunities” to “fake it until you make it” in business, relationships, public image, but at least I am not imprisoned in my own abdication of my sovereignty and authenticity.

Yes, this has consequences, but can also be very freeing. I am not weighed down by “compromises” which have no support for who I am at my deepest level. And that really is the difference between retaining and selling your soul bit by bit to the highest bidder. You are worth far more than that. And the world deserves the best and most deeply genuine you.

My latest favorite artist, Iyah May, had her manager quit on her and her company drop her for expressing lyrics that challenged the ongoing genocide in Gaza along with all sacred (and idolatrous) other cows in Hollywood and society. Her video is worth a listen. It is liberating to the soul to hear the intellectual beauty and moral courage of her musical truth. You can see she is at peace with herself and free in a way that ill-gotten fame never could provide.

True Strength— Vulnerability, humility, and mercy dedicated to care, compassion, and gratitude

“Lest we become to proud, let us note one simple thing: We did not create ourselves, nor can we ever truly ‘make’ ourselves. Our own life, our own breath, our literal oxygen, is drawn as a free gift from the trees that also offer shade on a hot summer day. All is gift. We have only one ultimate choice to give back in gratitude and do so in ways that offer our entire selves.”— Zeus Yiamouyiannis.

Who is truly stronger— someone who can emotionally vulnerable and admit they are wrong, struggling, or unreasonable OR someone who adopts a stoic and amiable facade and seeks to wash every challenge, problem, and sin under the bridge of their unexamined existence. We ALL know the answer to that question, when presented in this way. Yet we don’t largely act on that knowledge. We allow the bullies and dictators of the world to be called “strong men,” because they are brutal, not because they are actually strong.

Spiritual tensile strength is gained by standing up for justice, not in destroying it.

In the Old Testament, the violent, militaristic view of strength was tried. In verse after verse in Deuteronomy and Joshua, God was a smiter, a ruler, commanding the actual genocide of men, women, and children of neighboring tribes. It is my theory that much of the Old Testament was an effort to fashion a vengeful God who would punish the enemies of certain Judaic tribes after the destruction of their First Temple (Solomon’s Temple) in 587 BCE. And indeed many bullies and people driven by revenge were themselves traumatized or abused in the past. But this “eye for an eye” DOES truly make everyone blind spiritually, and therefore weakened and lessened. There is no strength in destroying someone else… EVER.

There is only strength in deepening the self spiritually and offering oneself humbly into the healing and enhancement of the world. This offering of oneself, is done in compassion and care, and with gratitude. For the spiritual life that inhabits me was neither created by nor can be destroyed by the world. My life is offered for God and for God’s creation, with respect and with conviction, for I was given this life to expend back into the creation by the auspices of the grace and gifts given me!

As I write this essay, all glory is given to that which allowed me to write at all! Should I face tough times, all gratitude is given to that spirit which carries me and breaks me open through trial to my deeper self. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, God. And that service to others which gives my life purpose, the healing and learning that I can exemplify, as Jesus did when washing the feet of the Apostles, are, indeed proof of my strength. My own hands and feet (and mind and heart and soul) are serving as the extension of Spirit, from which all true strength and power emanate.

True Power— Creative love as connected, authentic, and spontaneous life

“I no longer labor in uncertainty, for creativity has overtaken my being. All blessing is made available to me as an inner certainty because I realized I am an inherent and blessed fruit of an eternal spirit. My fruit, my expression and contribution, ripen into a genius freed from the world’s efforts to program, condition, or capture me. My life, while resting in the immanent reality of spirit, becomes unpredictable and spontaneous precisely because as a spiritual human being, I have become an improvisational melody amid the song of God.”— Zeus Yiamouyiannis

What is power if not joy? Joy is that spiritual happiness and gladness to be alive which allows us to “create in love as we were created in love.” What is true power if not the power to be deeply yourself and see where that takes you. Living in a mansion as a billionaire, with a million people gunning for you and a plastic-surgery spouse using you, doesn’t sound like power to me. It sounds like hellish weakness. Again, the inversion. If one looks closely at what tropes are sold as power on earth— fame, influence, money, political leverage, economic wherewithal— are indeed a confirmation of weakness. For who is more powerful, one who can go on a fast for three days and three nights, or one who crams caviar into a distended gut?

You will notice that if you bow to and worship the powers of the world you MUST lose your authenticity, because the only way you can gain those powers is to surrender creative freedom over your own life and adopt the formulas and extortions of those who would use you for their own ends. And even if you are the richest person in the world, you are compulsively driven to accrue even more money. There is no end and no light at the end, there is only a “more”, which can never be satisfied and can never create lasting joy.

You and I are works of art, not ad copy. You are vibrant artists meant to create and improvise from the spontaneous engagement of your gifts and talent. You are not, nor were ever meant to be, merchants selling yourselves in the marketplace, as packets of flesh or tools for others. You are the beloved children of a resplendent, creative, and loving God, and you shall always be.

So act like it! Take a cue from your Creator, and use this one precious life to see what you might be capable of from the depths of your own blessed authenticity.

Conclusion: Lest you protest “Surely there are some situations where…”

There exists a rather innocuous, but still pernicious and limiting, common sense notion that we still ought to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17).

The implicit claim here is that there are two different sets of rules for two different realms, the material realm (in which sin and evil reign) and the spiritual realm (in which virtue and goodness reign). Therefore we have to make strategic compromises: We will have to, at times, recognize and utilize the methods of the human world to supplement and even at times supercede the operating principles of spirit.

“Surely you can’t simply be nice and accommodating to a narcissist. You’ll be exploited, chewed up, and spit out. God wouldn’t want that!” This is an overly simplistic way to view things.

The exercise of good spiritual and practical judgment REQUIRES truthful discernment, including the decision to break off engagement or not to engage at all. (There are times when one ought to “shake the dust of one’s feet” and leave the situation when you have done all you can without success.) Love never requires ignoring faults and sins, your own or others. It may involve providing grace, including an opportunity for admitting error and restoring relationship, but if a person still insists on wayward or damaging behavior, spiritual “common sense” requires one to decouple from it explicitly and clearly in non-violent ways.

It should be obvious by now, from my discussion above, of what constitute TRUE strength, freedom, and power, that is efficacy deriving from spirit and acted out in the world. These are vigorous and demanding spirit-meets-world child-like truths to meet difficult realities, not naive and sentimentalized childish notions, habits, and behaviors ABOUT spirituality to aid one in seeking comfortable refuge.

I am claiming that these spiritual principles are to be used in accordance with ALL situations, and that love is superior to fear in all times and places. I am claiming that love is superior to fear even in imperfect and abusive human realms. For worldly fear is always based in ignorance and weakness and spiritual love is always based in knowledge and strength. There always exists within true spiritual love: union, transparency, enduring conviction, and courage in the face of falsehood and abuse. This may indeed cost one one’s life, as it did Jesus, but nonetheless it has an intact integrity and power that transcends physical death.

Jesus himself summarized it well, “Therefore, be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). This commands one to be both savvy and pure, critically aware and peacefully open. Spirituality NEVER entails gullibility or martyrdom to abusers. Quite the opposite. Spirituality gives one the critical tools and power to CHALLENGE and DEFEAT abuse and to collectively and individually confront the spiritually insecure bully who cleaves fearfully to the powers of the world.

May we be compassionate but steadfast in the presence of all our brothers and sisters in spirit, bully and lover alike.

All blessings, Zeus