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Rediscovering our sacred world

Rediscovering our sacred world

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Red rock cliffs and mountains near Sedona, Arizona
Red rock mountains and cliffs near Sedona, Arizona.

In his New Year’s Day blog post, Matthew Fox shared his “one wish for humanity” in 2025. I think it’s marvelous and I want to share it with you.

If I could have one wish for humanity this year, … it would be that we could rediscover our relationship to the cosmos, for it is from that relationship that our generosity, our gratitude, our wonder, our sense of reverence and of the sacred are rediscovered and energized anew.

Today there is a steady stream of proposals for dealing with the climate and other environmental crises. Those that seem to have the best chance of success have little chance of being adopted. Those that can be or have been adopted are too meager to make a real difference. For those like Fox who come at these problems from a spiritual perspective, the answer can’t begin with legislation or technology but a change of heart. It’s our attitude towards the world in which we live that first has to change.

Fox relates that he was once told in a dream that “there is only one thing wrong with the human species today: You have forgotten the sense of the sacred.” It is our misunderstanding of the natural world that is causing us to abuse it, coupled with our projection of God, our sacred origin, out into some great beyond. He quotes Thomas Berry (1914-2009), Catholic priest, scholar, and self-styled “geologian”, to explain this idea.

We will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things come into being.  Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality.  We become sacred by our participation in this more sublime dimension of the world around us. (emphasis added)

Realizing the truth of the sentence I put in bold is the essence of the spiritual transformation the world needs. So long as God is “out there” somewhere, nature remains just “stuff” for us to use and abuse as we choose. But when we recognize the sacredness of all that is, and especially the world and everyone who lives in it, our attitudes and behavior have to change.

So, as ridiculous as it may sound to some, our environmental crisis is, in fact, a theological and spiritual one, and needs a theological and spiritual solution. But where is that to come from? Most religions today are absorbed with their institutional survival and defending their doctrinal version of “the God above”, who is presumably the source of their authority.

Fewer and fewer people, however, share that concern or belief. While the church was not receptive to Berry’s assertion that “the universe is the primary sacred reality”, this has become one of the central tenets of the so-called “spiritual but not religious”. And what is important to realize is that this is not an intellectual conclusion but a spiritual experience. God, then, is not known primarily through doctrine or holy books, but an awakening to the sacred presence that pervades all reality.

I’ve just come back from a short trip to Arizona, including a visit to Sedona. It’s red rock cliffs and mountains were even more spectacular than I expected. Yet I could not help being affected by their incongruous relationship to the ever-expanding town spreading up and down the valley. Above the roof tops was amazing natural beauty while at eye level was the tourist staples of t-shirt and fudge shops, stores selling soap, candles, crystals and bad art, and countless restaurants and hotels.

Of course, I only know this because I, too, joined in the tourist parade. But I left wondering how places like this lost the sacredness experienced by indigenous people of the past (and often of the present) and became such commercial enterprises today.

It does seem we are approaching a tourism tipping point. We’ve all heard the stories (and perhaps have our own to tell): Mt. Everest polluted by equipment cast off by climbers waiting in line to ascend, cities banning or reducing tourist flows, park facilities worn out by visitor use and abuse, the search in our shrinking world for evermore distant and exotic locations to visit, seemingly to be able to say, “Oh, I’ve been there.”

The early Renaissance poet Petrarch claimed to be the first person since ancient times to climb a mountain (1336) just for the view. While he boasted of this, today I think it’s hard not to see this as a step backwards. For our ancestors, mountains, rivers, lakes, valleys, and other natural phenomena were often viewed as places where the sacred was especially present. The Celts called them “thin places”, where the normal separation of the sacred and mundane could be crossed more easily and profoundly. They were visited not to take pictures or get a stamp in a passport, but to have a deeper appreciation of one’s place in the universe.

Tourism and souvenir collecting have become one of the odd ways modern people create identity and self-worth. “See where I’ve been and what I brought with me from there.” It’s said that the bullets had barely stopped flying before people raced across the Gettysburg battlefield to collect discarded hats, pistols, rifles, and swords, even off the yet unburied dead, to have some memento of the historic, grisly event.

Ken Burns’ PBS special on the National Parks tells multiple stories of early park proponents being just barely ahead of developers wanting to exploit the country’s natural beauty, and not always succeeding. The overdevelopment of Niagara Falls became the symbol of what the park system was designed to avoid. I have to wonder why the stunning valley in which Sedona lies did not get the protective park status is clearly deserved.

The world’s development and growing population are making trips to “status destinations” increasingly untenable. Like the environmental crisis in general, the need is not for technical solutions to “ration” the experience of the world’s natural marvels. Rather, the need is for a new relationship with our planet and a new understanding of what our experience with it provides us.

To encounter the sacredness inherent in nature, we do not need to go to the travel guide books’ “great places.” Nature’s spiritual marvels are all around us, if we can tune our awareness to recognize them. If we step into a local park or our own backyard and really watch a bee pollinating a flower or birds building a nest, we can have a profound experience of the mystery and wonder of life.

It’s said no one can be an atheist after seeing the Grand Canyon. Yet the play of the natural world around us, in any place and at any time, can just as easily open our mind and heart to what Berry calls the “numinous presence” that surrounds and fills us. The rhythmic waves on any shore contain as much mystery and can inspire as much awe as those on the beach of a five-star tropical resort.

Matthew Fox, Thomas Berry, and many others have said that our lives will be disordered if our relationship with nature is disordered. Knowing our true place in the world, and thereby healing that relationship, is the necessary first step to steering our culture’s course away from disaster. Indeed, we need to come to understand this is what culture is primarily about. Fox quotes Albert Einstein’s belief in this.

The most important function of art and science is to awaken the cosmic religious feeling and keep it alive.

Spiritual healing and rebirth are not solely the tasks of organized religion but life tasks and the ultimate goal of any society. We are far from that understanding, yet we also seem to be increasingly far from knowing true peace and contentment in our daily lives. Hopefully, that pain and discomfort is causing us to look in new directions for our life’s meaning and value.

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support (see the “DONATE” box), which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

Getting out of your mind

Getting out of your mind

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Man sitting on bench under treeI have heard multiple stories of Thanksgiving dinners being upended by this month’s election. Some people are so upset that they have dis-invited friends and family members from their holiday feasts because their political choices were intolerable to them. Doctors have reported a significant increase in patients reporting debilitating stress because of the election, some experiencing breakdowns. And there have even been reports of suicides with the victims saying they could not live with the political change they believe the election is ushering in.

In response, various websites and channels I follow have been providing advice and methods for coping with stress and despondency. Many people are taking matters into their own hands by simply stepping out of the fray. A few I’ve heard about are literally leaving the country. More common, and more practical, are those reducing or eliminating watching, listening to, or reading news and political commentary media. A couple TV networks have already announced significant budget and salary cuts in response to a drop in viewership. I think this latter option is the healthiest one, and actually a hopeful sign.

It’s been over 25 years since Eckhart Tolle published his mega bestseller, The Power of Now. Boosted by an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey TV show, the book has since been translated into more than fifty languages and read by tens of millions. Its seemingly simplistic assumption is summarized in this quote.

Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.

Why does that matter? Because where we seem to live is in our mind, and it focuses most of its attention on the past or future. That disconnect, Tolle believes, is the source of much of our misery.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

Most don’t realize that the past and present to do not actually exist. They are creations of our mind, just like our imagined self, our ego, which is obsessed with time. It’s occupied with reminiscing about or lamenting the past and looking forward to or fearing the future. What it can’t do is be in the present moment. That is the realm of our true self, our timeless conscious awareness.

Modern culture has mastered the art and techniques of getting into our heads. Political propaganda, commercial advertising, the entertainment industry, and media of all types tell us and show us what to believe, how we should think, how we should feel, what we should value, and how we should spend our money and our time. We are all manipulated far more than we realize or want to admit.

There is growing awareness of all this, however. Confidence in institutions of all sorts has dropped dramatically, often with good reason. Even sources of knowledge and information that used to be valued for their objectivity are now seen to be themselves manipulated or corrupted by outside political and financial interests.

In response, we cast about for new sources we can trust but usually come up empty handed. We do that because we have been mistakenly taught to distrust the one source we actually can believe in: ourselves. Our true self. Not the unending babble of conflicting voices in our head but the spirit that is our center, our conscious awareness with which we know ourselves and the world experienced through our senses.

The political world which seems to have taken hold of so many of us is a fantasy, a creation of our minds. None of us walk the “corridors of power” in Washington. Our experience of it is almost entirely through the media’s talking heads and other electronic or print sources. Such “experience” is then reinforced by conversations with others who mostly agree with our point-of-view. Our minds overflow with arguments and counter-arguments and the drama of conflict between our imagined political heroes and enemies.

When we turn off our TV and step away from our computer, we disengage from our mental turmoil and reality returns. The present moment, life here and now, beckons us to awaken to its truth and potential. As Eckhart Tolle says,

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.

Our minds are wonderful things but they have never been more vulnerable to being hijacked by cultural forces and nefarious actors of all kinds. Our mistake is in believing that our mind is who we are, causing us to identify with the thoughts, feelings, and images spinning inside it. But it’s not. Our true self is what is aware of our mind and is unaffected by it. This is the shocking truth we need to discover, that there is within us a calm center free from the mind’s turmoil. This is what Paul described as “the peace that surpasses all understanding.”

Tolle warns about the danger of misunderstanding the mind’s proper role.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly – you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.

As a result, our lives are deprived of the genuine and fulfilling experiences intended for all of us.

Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.

Spirituality is not about having esoteric experiences. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. Spirituality is awakening to our true nature and our true self. It’s coming back to reality from the imaginary world created in our mind. In doing so, we discover that our identity is not any transitory attribute or social label but the unchanging awareness we simply call “me” or “I.”

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

The dramas of life, including political ones, are very enticing. Our ego feels so good being right and being on the right side. But these dualistic conflicts—whether political, at work, in our family, or in our community—often, and quickly, balloon out of proportion to their real importance. The “combatants” become trapped, unable to disengage because they believe that their self-worth and sense of identity is now at stake in the outcome. But they’re not.

Our value is inherent in our timeless being, our “I am-ness”, which we share with everyone else and all other beings. The more aware we become of our being, and the more we center our sense of self in it, the more secure we feel and the more compassionate we become towards all who share it with us. When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” this is what he was pointing to. Our neighbors are, in fact, extensions of our self, because they too embody the Being of all reality, just as we do.

There is certainly much to be done and much that needs to change in our world. But as is obvious today, the political tempests of battling egos accomplishes little. To be of genuine benefit to others and to our planet, we must be grounded in our true self, which acts not out of fear or competition but the peace and compassion which recognizes our oneness with everyone and everything.

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support (see the “DONATE” box), which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

 

 

 

 

A God of silence

A God of silence

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Hurricane Milton image from spaceIn the days before Hurricane Milton made landfall, I saw multiple Facebook posts appealing to God for protection from the storm. They often were not for personal protection but for some specific location or the whole state, and often in very assertive language. One such post said,

In the mighty name of Jesus, we believe that Hurricane Milton will dissipate and cause no harm to the state of Florida. In the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.

The post had a graphic with a set of praying hands amidst swirling clouds over the Gulf, next to an image of the state of Florida. Similar posts had pictures of Jesus calming a stormy sea from a boat or on shore. The post quoted above had over 800 likes and over 200 responses, the largest number being simply “Amen”, often with one or more hands-together emojis. (In the US, most assume they are “praying hands” but, having been created in Asia like most emojis, they actually represent the gesture accompanying the Hindu Namaste greeting.)

A few responders expressed skepticism about the prospects of any divine intervention. Some of them in turn got surprisingly strong, often judgmental push-back for their lack of faith. A common theme of the posts I saw, as well as many of the comments, was the notion of “claiming” supposed divine promises of protection. Many responses to the skeptics included citing biblical stories of God saving or protecting people in danger. He did it before, so he will do it now.

I recognized these assertive “claiming” prayers as common to a certain strain of evangelicalism, often of the megachurch and Pentecostal variety. They are based on the conviction that believing strongly enough some presumed biblical promise will result in God fulfilling it. The strength of your belief, and the numbers who share that belief, will determine God’s reward.

In a worship setting, such prayers are a combination of “positive thinking” and group-think, and are often used to bind worshipers together. That’s the reason these posts got so many affirmations and why the naysayers were so firmly reprimanded. The skeptics disrupted the group cohesion of the post.

When Milton initially seemed to be behaving in a less destructive way than predicted, posts appeared claiming this was in response to people’s prayers. But as the actual extent of the damage and suffering became apparent, those posts disappeared. Less storm surge was accompanied by damaging winds, flooding rains, and (surprise) fatal tornadoes.

During the heyday of his 700 Club TV show, televangelist Pat Robertson once claimed to have “prayed away” a hurricane threatening his Virginia Beach headquarters. This was quickly slapped down by critics pointing out that the hurricane’s turn simply resulted in suffering and destruction happening somewhere else.

On the flip side was the assertion by Jerry Falwell and others the Hurricane Katrina was punishment for New Orleans’ debauchery, especially its hosting of an annual gay festival. The fact that the vast majority of victims had nothing to do with their city’s supposed depravity was ignored.

The idea that God punishes the wicked and protects and rewards the righteous is found throughout the Bible and is common in the Bible-based religions. This belief is especially prevalent in the Psalms, which probably explains their continuing popularity.

What is often ignored, however, is that such a belief is regularly challenged by other biblical writers. The prophets, especially, reject the notion that God will automatically give his people protection if they ask for it. Going further, wisdom books like Job and Ecclesiastes reject the notion that righteous living and piety will result in God’s blessings.

The Bible never resolves the issue. An overarching and unanswered question of the Old Testament is why God’s chosen people suffer so much. The New Testament continues that conversation by embracing suffering and death as the path to eternal life. But even there such a notion is never fully satisfying.

To put it bluntly, the biblical tradition struggles with the question: What good is a God who doesn’t help us, and in a predictable and reliable manner? Evangelical “claiming” prayers seem more like magic than faith. Say the right words and get the desired outcome. They also seem to be trying to manipulate God. You said You would protect us, so You have to come through for us when we ask.

Why do we appeal to God for help? Crying out when we are in distress or danger is a natural and automatic response, though not necessarily to God. John Shelby Spong quotes a woman who didn’t believe in God but in a time of great suffering cried out to the Universe for relief. The effect for her was probably the same. It expressed her distress and deep desire for her circumstances to be different.

So is God like a therapist or close friend, listening and nodding as we recite our problems, responding when appropriate, “I feel your pain”? In the progressive Christianity of mainline churches that seems to be the case. Even though prayers are said during weekly worship for the world’s problems and the needs of members, no one can explain what they believe will result from those prayers. Some will say that such prayers make us more aware of others’ needs and perhaps motivate us to act in some helpful way. That may well be true, but what has God got to do with it?

God as a Supreme Being far above us yet watching over everyone and everything is no longer credible for most people, including many religious people. Yet progressive churches have done little to help their members imagine, let alone experience, God in a different way. Countless numbers of theologians of the past two hundred years, Protestant and Catholic, have done valuable and productive work in this regard. Yet their own churches, often while saying affirmative things about them, have largely ignored their insights when it came to reshaping their beliefs and practices.

But it seems now that theology is not the way to move Christianity forward. Rather than more words, it is silence that is opening the way to a new understanding and experience of the Sacred. And some theologians themselves have recognized this.

One of the primary theologians of Vatican II, Karl Rahner, said that Christians of the future will be mystics or they will not exist at all. The great 20th century German American theologian, Paul Tillich, declared that God does not exist, but rather is the ground of existence. This was an idea he derived from the preeminent medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart. God is not a being but Being Itself. Such an understanding has support in many places in the Bible but probably the most well-known is a saying attributed to Paul in the book of Acts: “God is the one in whom we live, and move, and have our being.”

The essence of the mystical experience is not the God far off, out there, somewhere. Rather it’s knowing God right here, right now, within and all around us. In times of distress, we don’t appeal for God’s help so much as center ourselves in the sacred presence that is at the center of our being. By a life of “practicing the presence of God”, as Brother Lawrence described it in the 17th century, we come to know our essential security by our oneness with God and all things.

And this is primarily known in silence. As the Psalmist says, “Be still and know that I AM God.” This is how we experience what Paul describes as “the peace that surpasses all understanding.” It is a peace not of the mind but of the heart, not of words and ideas but of the boundless, silent Awareness that is our True Self. In the words of Meister Eckhart,

The Word lies hidden in the soul, unknown and unheard unless room is made for it in the ground of hearing, otherwise it is not heard. All voices and sounds must cease and there must be pure stillness within, a still silence.

Making room in our overfull lives and silencing the chatter in our minds is today’s spiritual challenge. Only then will we realize that we don’t need to cry out to God to come closer, but rather awaken, again quoting Eckhart, to the God “who is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.”

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support (see the “DONATE” box), which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

Our hidden happiness

Our hidden happiness

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Sunlight shining through dark cloudsJessica Grose is an insightful New York Times columnist, writing about matters of culture and daily life rather than politics or news events. Her most recent essay asks the provocative question, “Are We Happy Yet?” She begins by telling of her experience monitoring her activities three times a day with a phone app from something called TrackYourHappiness.org.

The survey … asks me a series of questions about what I was doing the moment right before I take it, whether I wanted to be doing it, how focused I was on my task, how productive I was being and how happy I felt about it all. I measure my emotional levels with a little toggle that slides from “bad” to “good.”

The survey’s creators believe that the more focused we are on our activities, the more satisfaction we receive from them. Grose, however, found that her app responses were actually revealing how many necessary activities she performed (“folding laundry”) that she really didn’t want to do. But then the app itself became an issue.

As the weeks of survey-taking went by, I had another, more paralyzing thought: that this focus on my feelings was instilling a new kind of anxiety. Rather than just walking one of my kids home from school and contentedly listening to her chatter about sedimentary rocks, I was thinking about the survey’s infernal happiness toggle and where this experience ranked relative to the other moments I had tracked.

Grose’s point is that focusing on being happy is probably one of the worst ways to actually achieve happiness. Yet, as we all learn in grade school, our country was seemingly founded on the notion, because we all have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And since Thomas Jefferson penned those words two-and-a-half centuries ago, our obsession with pursuing happiness has grown exponentially.

Apps like the one Grose used number in the thousands apparently. Countless books, courses, workshops, TED talks, diets, medications, websites, and YouTube videos all promise to lead us to happiness. And then there are the hope-filled experiences of visiting places like Disney’s Magic Kingdom, which claims to be “the happiest place on earth.”

One of the central tenets of all types of spirituality is that happiness is not found “out there” but discovered within us. As a result, many adopt mindfulness and meditation practices which are supposed to help us find that happiness, wherever it is hiding.

Yet, as Grose learned, studies have shown that such practices, along with others aimed at improving our sense of psychological wellbeing, are often ineffective. For those predisposed to mental health issues, learning such techniques sometimes leave them feeling even worse.

Most of the happiness optimizing programs and activities assume happiness is some “thing” we need to pursue, as Jefferson said. In our scientific age, we think we can quantify and measure it, whether in a laboratory experiment, population survey, or phone app. But Grose wisely concludes all this is barking up the wrong tree. Happiness is not something acquired but experienced, often mysteriously, in daily living.

The frenzied, overstuffed marketplace of happiness optimization will never be able to fix the fundamentals of the human condition or bring a lasting kind of purpose to a new generation. There will never be easy or straightforward answers to our most profound questions of existence, and ranking emotions feels like a diminution of their awesome power. I do not want to spend those daily walks home with my daughter wondering how they stack up against a morning run or dinner with a friend or any other moment in my day that might make me feel something. The user experience of being alive cannot be graphed.

One of the unfortunate misdirection plays of recent years has been the adoption of meditation as a technique for personal improvement, on par with exercise, dieting, or hiring a life coach. Meditation will raise your GPA and lower your blood pressure, improve your mental focus and your sex life, help you stay on task and propel you up the corporate ladder. Or so it’s claimed by one self-help guru or another.

Yet none of this has anything to do with the meditation that is at the heart of millennia of spiritual practice from around the world. While there is variation among spiritual traditions, they agree that meditation is not about acquiring or accomplishing anything. Rather, it is about a lifelong experience of seeing clearly and letting go.

A growing spiritual tradition today is nonduality, from the ancient Sanskrit word advaita, meaning “not two.” While originating in Hinduism, the belief in the unity of being can be found in almost all religious traditions, especially in their mystical expressions. Today nonduality is taught and practiced in both religious and nonreligious settings.

According to a nondual understanding, we lack nothing because our fundamental being is already complete. Suffering arises from blindness to this truth and our seeking satisfaction in what is impermanent, always changing, and ultimately disappearing.

Thus, nonduality says that happiness is, in fact, who we are. We are already happy by nature but this reality is obscured by experience. A couple years ago, our book discussion group read You Are the Happiness You Seek, by the English nondual spirituality teacher, Rupert Spira. According to Spira (and many others) there is no such thing as a “spiritual path” because there is no place to go. We’re already there! Meditation is the primary practice for this “pathless path,” as it is often called, as it facilitates our awakening to our true self, to our being as an expression of the one Self.

Our book group did get somewhat hung up on Spira’s use of the word “happy,” as often happens in discussions of this topic. While Jefferson seems to have meant the word holistically, today “being happy” is often understood more superficially, as in how we feel with a puppy in our lap or being at a Taylor Swift concert.

Broader terms like contentment or satisfaction probably come closer to the overarching experience we are seeking. But the best word is likely peace, which has a long usage in many of the world’s religions and spiritual traditions. Peace is more than an experience and is understood to be a state of being, or indeed, the nature of Being itself. Peace is a spiritual quality that transcends personal experience. We are unlikely to say that we are happy when we hit our thumb with a hammer, yet we could say that at the core of our being we are still at peace.

But whether you use the word happiness, peace, or something else is not the point. Rather, this is about the discovery of who we truly are and the completeness, the fullness of being, this is our nature. Our illusory separate self never genuinely acquires the peace and happiness it seeks. There is no such thing as “peace of mind.” The objects, experiences, relationships, accomplishments, status, etc. that we think make us happy all disappear over time.

What they do accomplish, however, is to briefly reveal, like the sun shining through a gap in the clouds on a stormy day, the happiness and peace that is already our true nature. When the clouds return, we think our happiness is gone when it is actually only obscured once again by experience. Awakening comes when we discover we are not our thoughts, feelings or experiences. Rather, we are the consciousness, or awareness, in which they occur, the Self which knows them but is unaffected by them.

For Spira, then, meditation is not an activity but rather the experience of Being and knowing of our Self.

Meditation is not an activity that you undertake in order to bring about a particular experience. The ‘I’ that you are is prior to the activity of meditation and cannot, therefore, depend on whether you are meditating or not. Meditation is to be knowingly the one you always and already are but may not have noticed due to your fascination with the drama of experience. Replace the word ‘meditation’ with ‘being knowingly your self’. Ramana Maharshi suggested that the highest form of meditation was simply to be…. Don’t make a distinction between everyday life and meditation.

The metaphor Jesus uses for peace and happiness is the Kingdom of God. His parables teach that finding it is often a surprise and in unexpected places. It also involves losing our supposed separate self to discover our true Self that is one with all. Yet it is available for everyone because the kingdom is all around us and within us, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear. We don’t have to do anything to achieve happiness and peace because they are already closer to us than we are to ourselves.

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support, which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

Walking each other home

Walking each other home

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In my last blog post, I mentioned the name of Ram Dass as one who was an early proponent and practitioner of spirituality apart from religion. To many, Dass (1931-2019) was the quintessential 1960s/70s hippy, but he was also a serious thinker and writer and deeply compassionate.

Two sayings came to be associated with him, often appearing on bumper stickers and posters. The most well-known was “Be here now.” This is the challenge to the tendency of our minds to be focused on the past or future, or on what we imagine is happening somewhere else. Being in our heads someplace other than “here, now” is the primary cause of our distress and anxiety.

The other phrase, which I think is equally powerful, was, “We are all just walking each other home.” The meaning of this may not be as immediately obvious. Dass often used it in the context of being present with the dying, but he understood dying as a lifelong spiritual journey. To me it is one of the simplest descriptions of our spiritual life and of what Jesus (and others) saw as our calling in life.

The overarching theme of Jesus’ teaching was the kingdom of God. The meaning of this phrase was not obvious. It was not an idea found in the Old Testament, which talks instead about the political kingdoms of Israel and Judah, so it left most of his hearers puzzled. Jesus never gives a clear definition of it, preferring instead to describe it with metaphors and to tell stories about it through parables.

It seems that even Jesus’ most devoted followers never really understood him. At the beginning of Acts and just before the resurrected Jesus’ ascension to heaven, the disciples ask him, “Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” One imagines Jesus shaking his head and thinking, “After all this, you still don’t get it.” Instead, what he says is that it’s not his decision to make, but hang tight for the coming of the Spirit. At Pentecost it’s made clear that God’s plan is for the whole world. But “the plan” always remains a mystery.

Jesus’ parables and other teachings make clear that the “kingdom” he is talking about is metaphorical. It is not a political or geographical entity, nor is it something to anticipate happening in the future. This is said most explicitly in Luke 17:

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among and within you.”

In the noncanonical gospel of Thomas, Jesus says,

“[The kingdom] will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is.’ Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.”

In a surprising story in Mark 12, Jesus is challenged to name the most important commandment. After responding, a scribe congratulates him on his answer and then expounds upon it in greater detail. Jesus in turn affirms the scribe’s response, saying, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” The words “not far” imply a spatial relationship, yet it is obviously not literal but metaphorical. The kingdom is somehow “present” but we may be at some distance from it.

Things lost and returning to where they belong is a frequent theme of Jesus’ parables. Of these, the most well-known is the parable of the prodigal son. The familiar story tells of a younger son who wants to leave home and see the world. So he travels to “a far country,” squandering his inheritance from his rich father in the process. Destitute, he realizes his family home actually has all he wants so he goes back and is rapturously welcomed by his father.

A second parable is ingeniously attached to the first. It tells of the elder son’s bitterness as his father’s welcoming back his useless brother. However, the story reveals that the elder son has never appreciated what he was blessed with living with this father. While physically present, he too was “lost” and far from home.

Meister Eckhart understood the message of these stories and what it means to be in God’s kingdom. He summarizes the human predicament in a quote I used last time. In this translation, however, the connection to the parable is obvious.

God is at home. We are in the far country.

Thus, according to Eckhart and to Jesus’ lost-and-found parables, the mystery is not where to find God but why have we left our true home where God has been all along. The “returning home” experience is summarized in a line from the popular hymns Amazing Grace.

I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.

Now the deeper meaning of Ram Dass’ saying becomes apparent: “We are all just walking each other home.” To be lost and wandering is the human predicament. Our life journey is finding our way back home and helping others along the way to do the same.

But what and where is “home”? As I’ve said many times before, the corruption of religious language makes it hard to take the Bible and theology seriously. Ironically, the same was true in Jesus’ day, which is why he resorted to parables to communicate his ideas.

Home is where we belong because it is where we are from. We can rephrase Jesus’ response to the scribe as, “You’re almost there; you’re almost home.” The gospel of John, written for the Christian community decades after Jesus, sees Jesus as a symbol for home, the place where we are meant to “abide.”

I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.

The turning point for the prodigal son is when he “comes to his senses.” Amazing Grace talks of being found and regaining sight. The most common description which transcends religious and spiritual traditions is “waking up,” from delusion to reality.

Where is home? It is all around us, and within us, Jesus says, if only we could see it. What is home? It is our true self, our being, experienced as pure silent awareness, but obscured by the made-up roles and identities we have accumulated over our lifetime, and the endless chatter in our heads.

To be at home is to know our oneness with the Source of all reality, the ground of being, with “God,” if that word works for you. This Oneness is beyond words, in any case. All we have are pointers and metaphors. But more important than words to describe it, is the experience of being home. Paul calls it “the peace that surpasses all understanding.” It’s the deeper truth of the saying, “Home is where the heart is.”

We are all on the journey home. It can be arduous and frustrating, filled with distractions and detours, but there are guides along the way. And it all becomes less stressful, and seems more doable, when we realize that we are all on the same journey, that “we are all just walking each other home.”

 

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support, which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

Going Out of Your Mind

Going Out of Your Mind

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Young man sitting watching a mountainous horizon

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  It will not be like the covenant … that they broke…. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.

This passage from Jeremiah 31 is like a peek behind the curtain. It’s slipped in by an unknown scribe to show the real point of Jeremiah’s futile saga. Jeremiah (like all the prophets) was doomed to fail from the start. Judah’s political and religious leaders were never going to listen to his call to repentance and to return to the Lord’s ways. Jerusalem’s destruction was baked into the cake.

In fact, this text, like others that pop up here and there in the Old Testament, blows down the house of cards that is the saga of God’s chosen people. The dramatic Mosaic “take off” story of the people of Israel, with the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the ten commandments and establishment of the covenant at Mt. Sinai, was always destined to end with a fatal crash landing. These texts are like a Greek chorus, helping the audience to recognize and understand the tragedy that is unfolding before them.

These few verses are the center of the book of Jeremiah and, in effect, declare the failure of the project of religion. Whether in the political form found in most of ancient and medieval history, or its politically independent form typical today, religion will never bring about its goal of creating a humanity in harmony with God, the One, our Divine Source. The “covenant”, the external form of people’s relationship with God, no matter how sincerely adopted, how cleverly written, how strictly enforced, will always fail in the end, will always be “broken”, as Jeremiah says.

So, what’s the answer? Is there an alternative? Formal relationships with God, whether chiseled on stone tablets, written on paper, or digitized on a computer drive will always fail. They make our relationship with God into an idea which, as with all ideas, eventually blow away like leaves in an autumn wind.

But neither we nor God are ideas. While its mythical stories and language sound antique to us today, nonetheless the Bible repeatedly gives priority to human experiences of God. The formulation of ideas about God always takes a secondary role. Yet the biblical religions have put their emphasis on concepts, expressed in theology and doctrines and enacted in rituals and liturgy.

When I was in seminary, I worked part-time in our library. With over a million volumes, it was the joining of three different Christian traditions and one of the largest theological libraries in the country. I later came to see it as symbolic of Christianity’s preoccupation with words: endless rows of centuries of dusty books, filled with words about God.

I went to church recently, for the first time since Easter. During the service I heard four Bible readings, multiple hymns, lengthy recitations of liturgy and formal prayers, and, of course, a sermon. My experience for that hour was words, words, and more words.

But this is exactly what this passage from Jeremiah says needs to change. Teaching people about God doesn’t cut it. Instead, the prophet says, rather than being taught about God with words people will know God by having God’s Word written on their hearts. God isn’t an idea to be taught and learned but an experienced reality within us.

What is the “heart”? Where is our deepest center? It isn’t our mind, with its endless stream of words and ideas, especially ideas about ourselves, called our ego. Our inner being has been called different things over the ages. Today it is most often identified as consciousness, our deepest awareness of our self and our being.

This is the true Self that is aware of our egoic self, aware of our thinking and feeling, but it is not them and is unaffected by them. It is, as Paul describes it, the source of the peace that surpasses all understanding. Christianity has said that it is Spirit, God’s own presence within us.

Religion is the quest to find and understand God. Spirituality, however, says God doesn’t need to be found but is already here, within and around us. God, as Paul is quoted saying in Acts, is the one in whom “we live and move and have our being.” In Galatians he says, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” In the gospel of John, Jesus’ last prayer for his followers is that they would all be one, “as you, Father, are in me and I am in you.”

The primary activity of religion is worship, directing prayers and praise to “the God out there.” In the spiritual life, the primary activity is meditation (in Christian circles often called contemplation or centering prayer), which opens us to our true Self and liberates us from the confusion and pain of our ever changing egoic self.

So, for example, in meditation we may still hear voices in our heads of self-judgement, anger, frustration, anxiety, relentless demands, etc. But over time we come to realize that those voices are not us. We, our real selves, are the ones listening to those voices, which, once recognized, gives us the freedom to choose how to respond to them, or (often the best course) to just ignore them.

I am not my mind any more than I am my heart or my lungs, which are all largely out of my control. Going out of my mind is not a path to insanity but, on the contrary, the path to my true self, the path to freedom and true peace and happiness. It is the path to God.

Today, religious language seems antique and much of it has been corrupted by centuries of abuse. About the time of Vatican II, one of the Roman Catholic church’s top theologians, Karl Rahner, said we should stop using the word “God” for fifty years since its meaning had become so distorted. The rise of the spiritual but not religious is due not only to a rejection of religious institutions but religious language, as well. For them, “religious-speak” is neither helpful nor meaningful.

But for those who remain within establishment religion, it is all the more important to see how, over the centuries, many religious texts and authorities have been well aware of religion’s limitations. It is a thread that runs throughout the Bible and the Christian tradition, especially among the mystics. For them, reality is not dualistic, requiring that we strive to span an enormous gap between us and God. Rather, the challenge is to awaken from our confusion and blindness to know our oneness with God and all that has been created.

One of those mystic authorities was the medieval German theologian, Meister Eckhart. His understanding of our oneness with God was clear and profound and still speaks to us today of the peace and joy of that experience.

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

 

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support, which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this.

The light shines in the darkness

The light shines in the darkness

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The last “Reflections” post that I wrote for my congregation in Florida was about the death of our dog, Emma, a week before Christmas. I’ve re-posted it and you can find it on my website. There was one aspect of that experience I didn’t write about but want to explore a bit, and that’s the meaning of her death.

Just after arriving in New Mexico early last November, we were stunned to be told that Emma had a malignant tumor. In the following weeks she handled and responded well to chemotherapy. But then one morning she became sick and deteriorated rapidly. It didn’t seem related to the cancer, and we will never know exactly what happened.

That afternoon, we went back to the clinic where she was being treated, thinking we would then take her to an animal hospital in Albuquerque where she would spend the night. Instead, we discovered that she was in much worse condition than we realized. Her vitals were not good, she couldn’t walk, and most upsetting, she didn’t recognize either of us.

With her life expectancy due to the cancer only a matter of months, we knew that Emma’s life was coming to an end. We had the veterinarian euthanize her there in the office. The first shot put her to sleep, the second stopped her heart, and she was gone.

“Gone.” Gone? Gone where? It’s a strange turn of phrase. As a pastor, I’ve been present at people’s deaths on many occasions. I’ve watched other pets die. Recently, I’ve found some new ways to think about this experience, which comes to all of us and to everything.

“He’s in heaven now.” “She’s gone over the rainbow bridge.” Those images are helpful in our struggles with loss and grief. But we don’t press them too hard or too far. It’s just so difficult for us to accept that someone or something we loved and cherished no longer exists.

What happens when we die? We know the physiological event but what is the experience? The prime human experience that ends with death is consciousness, or awareness. There are, of course, ways of losing consciousness that don’t involve dying, but such experiences are often described as “death-like.” Sleep has been called a “little death” by sources as diverse as Homer, the Buddha, the Quran, Edgar Allan Poe, and George R. R. Martin.

Yet dying always means the loss of awareness of the world around us. And the living experience this, as well. When I realized that Emma did not recognize us, I felt that she was already “gone.” And when her eyes closed and heart stopped, it was her aware interaction with reality that had come to an end. From the world’s perspective, and ours, the story of Emma was over.

“Who am I?” is the most important question to ask according to many philosophical and spiritual traditions. In the religions of south and east Asia, the pursuit of that question, a practice called self-inquiry, is often seen as the path to spiritual enlightenment. Such an inquiry is not an academic pursuit, but a deeply personal discovery and experience of our true self. According to the modern Hindu teacher, Ramana Maharshi, self-inquiry is “the most sacred of sacred.”

The deceptively simple answer to that question, according to these traditions, is that our ultimate self is awareness. Awareness knows and precedes all our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and experiences. It is our sense of being, our ultimate knowledge of our self, our fundamental “I am-ness.” And when that ends, so do we.

But it doesn’t end, and that is where we can find intersection with the biblical religions of the west. Asian tradition says that our awareness is really a manifestation, an incarnation, of the one Self, which the Bible calls Spirit. It is the presence of God within us and all creation. It is the Spirit that moved over the waters in Genesis 1 and the Spirit that was breathed into the first human in Genesis 2. It is why, when Jesus dies on the cross in John’s gospel, it says he “gave up his Spirit.”

Spirit, our conscious awareness, is what unites us with all people and even all creatures. It is why we are all, ultimately, One. But as individual manifestations in the world, we are also separate. And, according to English spiritual teacher, Rupert Spira, overcoming that separation is our deepest desire and experiencing that overcoming is the meaning of love. My awareness meeting another’s is what we mean by love. It is most profound in our deepest friendships, yet it happens in other relationships, as well, even with a dog.

I described Emma’s death above as the ending of her story, and to me that seems a better metaphor than thinking of her “going” somewhere. I don’t expect to see Emma again anymore than I expect to find a good book, which made me sad when it ended, continued somewhere else. Yet the Awareness, Spirit, Love, I experienced in Emma is still all around me: in my husband, my family, my friends, strangers I may encounter, and in any number of conscious creatures, including our dog, Lana.

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Death’s “sting” is its incessant reminder of our seeming separateness. But separation in formal existence is transcended in awareness, in perceiving our real self to be the Light shining within us and in all those around us. It is the Light, John says, which “darkness cannot overcome.”

We may experience the Light go out in those we love. It will eventually go out in each one of us. But that Light is nonetheless eternal. It has been shining since the first moment of creation. We know it in every loving moment. It is the joy of existence itself, knowing that it shines within us and through us, in everyone around us, and in every atom of creation.