Guns N' Roses

So, first read this.  Because it says a lot that I was going to say anyway.  Try to suppress the urge to dismiss it because it talks about a higher consciousness, just trust me that Rohr is a solid citizen, a Franciscan priest, firmly rooted in the deep soil of the Christian tradition and not some new-age fruit loop.  This idea of a non-dual consciousness is really important.  It's important because I think it's our way forward as followers of Jesus Christ, and it may even be the only way that our species avoids killing each other off through either mass conflagration or slow degradation.
If that sounds too grandiose, think about it this way, right now we are Guns N' Roses circa 1991.  Guns N' Roses, for those of you who are not really into the Rock N' Roll thing, were probably the epitome of heavy metal.  They were loud, they scared your parents, they had big hair and big egos.  They were also really skilled musicians and so you had this perfect blend of attitude and actual talent.  They were huge, they could do anything they wanted, and they had the world on a string.  Axl Rose, the front man/lead singer had quite a reputation for being a full-bore jerk, but the man had vocal range, and despite being a pretty ugly guy, managed to date and marry supermodels, for teenage boys who were scared to talk to actual girls, Axl was an icon.
Then this scruffy looking kid from Seattle, who looked like absolute trash, with greasy hair, dirty, baggy clothes and reportedly a fairly good case of BO, not to mention a bit of a drug habit and a bad stomach, showed up on the record charts.  His vocal range was nowhere near what Axl could boast, in fact, if this kid could actually hit a clean note in any register it would be surprising.  His name was Kurt Cobain, and his band was called Nirvana, they were a three person (later adding a fourth because Kurt's guitar skills needed a little boost) band with a stripped down style that came to be called grunge.  Punk Rocker Henry Rollins has compared what Cobain did to Hair Metal to "bringing down a rhinoceros with a BB gun."
What it actually was, was a paradigm shift.  People stopped being quite so impressed with the virtuoso talents and began wanting something real.  If you were 16 when you first heard Nirvana, and you were feeling a little out of place and left out of the great big world, like I was, you heard this growly, angry music as though it was the voice of God, telling you that you weren't alone.  Even though I liked Guns N' Roses, I heard something in the new paradigm that seemed even better, a little more real.
We are, as a church and as a society, dealing with a paradigm shift that requires us to challenge some of our assumptions.  Rohr describes it as a shift from dualistic thinking to non-dual consciousness.  Dualistic consciousness sees everything in terms of black and white, right and wrong, insider and outsider.  You can pick a side: Democrat or Republican, Protestant or Catholic, Star Wars or Star Trek, but you must be convinced that your side is the right one, and you have to develop a certain antagonism towards the "other."  Non-dual thinking, appreciates aspects of both sides and includes some of the in-between stuff that gets left out.  I think it's also important to note that "evolution" to non-dual thinking does not involve casting judgment upon the earlier phases of consciousness, it is not interesting in saying, "Now we finally have the truth," because if it does that then it is just dualism in another guise.
I still like Guns N' Roses when they come on the radio, I still appreciate the virtuosity and raw power of their music, but I also know that Nirvana has forever altered the way I listen to music.  After Nirvana, I was not as satisfied with poppy lyrics about "eyes of the bluest skies," I wanted a little more authenticity.  At first I just jumped to another side of the dualism, which often feels like a true evolution, but is not so much.
This is the challenge, to incorporate and appreciate the consciousness you have grown out of (it's also what makes you sound like a hypocrite or a milquetoast to dualists).  It's only fairly recently, after a great deal of soul-searching and struggle, that I feel like I am approaching a non-dual consciousness with any sort of regularity.  I am much more comfortable with ambiguity, and more inclined to love people for who they are, not for who I want them to be.
Let me fall back on the music analogy: I still prefer music with substance, I still want Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits, when it comes to my personal preference, but I also enjoy watching my kids groove along to Pharrell.  Ten years ago "Happy" would have nauseated me, and I probably would have had a very negative reaction to Imagine Dragons or Lorde, but now I kind of like them, because I'm no longer requiring them to be something they're not.  I'm learning to appreciate things for what they are.  That goes for music and people.
It also goes for ideas.  I'm trying to take a non-dual approach to faith and the life of the church as well.  It doesn't mean I somehow have all the answers, but I am no longer as angry about the questions for sure.