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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.

 

 

 

 

Voting in peace

Voting in peace

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Row of people at voting boothsThe media is full of stories about people in distress anticipating the results of today’s elections. Some can’t sleep or can’t get out of bed. Others are upping their meds. One doctor’s post I read said he had never seen so many patients with anxiety over this year’s election. Some act out in their driving or with other antisocial behavior.

Of course, our political rhetoric promotes this. Opposing candidates are demonized so that we are encouraged to imagine the worst possible outcomes if they are elected. Calamities of all sorts are feared if the candidate we support doesn’t win. And then there are fears about the electoral process itself—technical breakdowns, violence, endless recounts, lawsuits.

From anticipation and imagination come anxiety and fear. And so, the blessing and curse of the human mind appears again. One of the great advantages of our brains is that it allows us to predict the future with some degree of accuracy. This allows us to make plans to take advantage of good circumstances (rain and sun means plant crops) and prepare for difficult ones (cold and snow means grow enough crops to store for the winter).

But our ability to predict the future is actually very limited, often much more so than we realize. We can never anticipate all that the natural world will send us, including weather, disease, earthquakes, and the stray comet collision every few hundred million years. For a variety of personal reasons, including past experience, our imaginations can conjure of wildly unrealistic expectations about the future.

The primary factor in our distress about the unpredictable and uncontrollable future is, of course, our ego. This is the self we imagine our self to be. It lives somewhere inside of us, peering out through our eyes and registering neural inputs through our other senses. It talks to itself incessantly in our minds with our thoughts. A popular and simple definition of this self is our body-mind. It comes into existence at our birth, evolves and changes over time, and comes to an end at our death.

But let me just drop here a very different understanding of all this. It’s from the Anglo-American, 20th century philosopher, teacher, and entertainer (his word), Alan Watts.

You don’t really exist. That is, as an ego, a soul, a separate will. When you realize this, you’re liberated. Ego is an abstraction…. So is one’s self. There’s a happening, but that’s not you. By dying to yourself, finding you don’t exist, you’re reborn. Forgetting yourself, the universe flows on.

Watts is usually thought of as a Western interpreter of East Asian philosophy and religion. But he grew up an Anglican and was ordained in the US as an Episcopal priest. While what he says here may sound Hindu or Buddhist, in fact, it also reflects one of the most profound but usually forgotten (or ignored) teaching of Jesus. In all four gospels, Jesus tells his disciples enigmatically that they must lose their life in order to find it. He says in Luke, for instance:

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.

Watts also echoes the famous dialog between Jesus and Nicodemus in John.

Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew.

By implication, in order to be born again, whatever was born the first time must come to an end. It’s in Paul, however, where this notion is expressed most explicitly. For Paul, this is the meaning of the cross, as he says in Galatians.

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.

Paul’s experience of the risen Christ meant the death of his “I”, his ego, so that now Christ, the Spirit of God incarnate, was recognized as his true self.

But wait—didn’t we start all this talking about election anxiety? How did we get sidetracked by Bible and theology? It’s a sign of the sad state of religion today that this is seen as taking a sidetrack. For at their core, all of the great religions are concerned with this question: Who am I, really? And they all seek to expose the imposter in this quest, the ego.

There may be no other place where egos are more on display than in an election campaign. Modern campaigns promote the person of the candidate far more than their position on issues, and denigrate the person of their opponent. And this clash of egos then drags in the egos of the candidate’s supporters.

Our egos are inherently insecure because they really don’t exist! One consequence is that we easily attach ourselves to other egos we admire, seeking to somehow claim their attributes as our own. This is the force behind the celebrity culture that has exploded in modern times. And politicians are now, essentially, celebrities, along with TV and movie stars, musicians, athletes, social media personalities, influencers, the “royals”, and anyone media outlets think can be used to attract “eyeballs” to their productions.

It’s not today’s political egos that concern us, however, but our own. Our anxiety over the results of today’s elections needs to be seen for what it is: fearing the defeat of our candidate as our own personal “defeat.” Because our ego is a product of our imagination, it easily spins fantasy worlds in which to exist, 99% of which are in the past or in the future (living in a fantasy present is usually called psychosis).

Our increasing dependence on the media with its inevitably artificial view of reality, and our growing frustration with our circumstances and fears about the world in which we think we live, leave us increasingly susceptible to manipulation by leaders of all sorts. They play sometimes upon our hopes but mostly upon our fears, to draw us into a worldview in which they will protect us and deliver us from disaster.

The ego loves the past and future. It has great difficulty living in the present. Tomorrow and each day that follows, and whenever the election results are known, we will wake up and go about living our lives. Much of it will go “according to plan” but often it will not, as has always been the case. We may rejoice over or bewail the election results, but their consequences for our lives will also be largely unpredictable and almost certainly not what we have imagined.

These days I keep coming back to Jesus’ simple teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6.

Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? … Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

Our anxious ego spins out countless fantasies of doom and disaster in our minds, which keep us unendingly entangled. Living in these fantasies, however, blinds us to the reality of the here and now, including the beauty of the lilies and countless other attributes of the world around us.

The world isn’t all lilies, of course. But as Jesus goes on to say, by ignoring the “troubles” of our fantasies, we will be able to handle much better the problems we actually encounter in the here and now. Because then we can respond out of “the peace that surpasses all understanding” of our true self, which only exists in the present moment, rather than out of the obsessions and anxieties of our imaginary ego.

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.

The problem with stories

The problem with stories

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Flyer for event promoting Israeli and Palestinian understanding and peaceThis past Monday evening I attended a public event at the local United Church of Christ congregation, which was co-sponsored by a Reform synagogue. The worship space was filled with some 300 registrants. We had come to hear a presentation by two representatives of an organization called Roots, which promotes reconciliation among Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank. (You can find an account of the event in the Santa Fe New Mexican, from which come the quotations below.)

The speakers were Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, an American born émigré and Israeli West Bank “settler”, and Noor A’wad, a Palestinian peace activist and resident of Bethlehem. Schlesinger did most of the talking (A’wad said he couldn’t compete with a rabbi) but they both told powerful stories of their “conversions.” Each stressed how most Israelis and Palestinians have no contact with one another. In recent years, legal restrictions have made such interaction almost impossible, which makes Roots so remarkable. The organization’s main goal is to create opportunities for both groups to discover each other as human beings.

Both men also said that for most Israelis and nearly all West Bank settlers, Palestinians simply do not exist. That is, they are a “fake” people. There is no Palestinian state and never has been. They are Arabs who need to move to one of the other twenty-some Arab countries to live. And they need to leave because the land belongs to the people of Israel. For that reason, most Israelis also say there is no occupation. How can you occupy your own country? Israel is in the process of resettling its own land.

Schlesinger began by saying, ““We are here this evening to offer solutions — social, spiritual, educational and also political. We are here to light a candle in the darkness, the deep, gloomy darkness.” But the darkness of the chasm between Israelis and Palestinians described by Schlesinger and A’wad seems impenetrable.

Schlesinger was especially blunt in describing the situation. In his view today, both Israelis and Palestinians are peoples with legitimate claims to this ancient land. Until now, of course, both sides would have rejected such an interpretation, and most still do. In that understanding, one people can legitimately claim the territory as their homeland and other needs to get out.

Some time (probably not enough) was spent telling of Roots activities and programs, and its successes in creating new understanding and relationships between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. The realization Roots is seeking to create, as Schlesinger described his own experience, is to realize that “as glorious and legitimate as your story is, your people, your identity, there is another story out there, another people out there. And to mistake your story for the whole truth is very close to falsehood.” In the words of Ali Abu Awwad, who co-founded Roots with Schlesinger ten years ago, “You have to find a way to fit two truths into one heart.”

Despite the presenters’ best efforts, I left the event more pessimistic about the prospects for resolving this decades-long conflict. But perhaps that isn’t quite right. Rather, my appreciation of the intractability of this conflict was deepened by having a better understanding of what it was about. Bringing people together for mutual understanding and reconciliation is always of value. That doing so will lead to enough people learning “to fit two truths into one heart”, however, seems highly unlikely.

It was as Rabbi Schlesinger talked that I began to see the impossibility of his vision. A native of Brooklyn, Schlesinger is an unapologetic Zionist. In his view, Jews are a people of the land: a thousand years of residence followed by two thousand years of exile. And now they have returned. But—oops—someone else is already there. He has now recognized the injustice of just kicking these people out. Somehow, Israelis and Palestinians have to figure out a way to share the land and live in peace with each other.

But where does Schlesinger’s “story” come from? And why should everyone else accept what is essentially the story/belief of one religion? The story of Judaism is about as complicated a one as you will find. And it has only grown more so thanks to modern historical research. Much of the Old Testament tradition has been called into question. The two-thousand-year spread of diaspora Jews across Europe, Africa, Asia, and into the Western Hemisphere resulted in Jewish “identity” being a knot nearly impossible to untangle. To say modern Jews are “a people” only has meaning for those who claim such a designation.

But my point isn’t to criticize Jewish identity, or Palestinian, or anyone else’s. Rather, this week’s talk caused me to question again the purpose and value of the stories we tell about ourselves and the identities we claim based upon those stories.

As we all know, history is filled with accounts of wars, genocides, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, holocausts, and other kinds of destruction and slaughter inflicted by one “people” upon another. In most cases, those histories tell of divisions inflamed by power-hungry and self-serving “leaders”, often among groups which previously had been living with each other in relative tolerance and peace. Generational memories of evils committed by one group upon another can still be manipulated and stoked for political gain, as in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, India, and Rwanda, to name a few recent instances.

But where are these identities? Science can’t find them. There are no genetic markers for race, let alone ethnicity or nationality. And where are these stories? Only in our heads, implanted in our minds by our elders and by the culture in which we live.

National and ethnic identities are fast becoming a “luxury” the world can’t afford. The rise in global population means there is little if any vacant land for one group to go in order to avoid or end conflict with another. Similarly, many natural resources are becoming scarce, exasperated by the growing impact of the climate crisis.

Managing those shortages and ensuring fair distribution of resources becomes impossible when groups compete with each and rekindle past rivalries and animosities. It is acknowledged by many analysts, for example, that an underlying cause of much of the turmoil in the Middle East today is actually the shortage of water. National, ethnic, and religious rivalries distract from the actual problem and prevent its resolution.

As I’ve said, none of this is new except that such divisions are being dramatically intensified by our shrinking planetary home. Armed conflict today is too likely to spin catastrophically out of control for it to be a solution. But neither will diplomatic negotiation accomplish the compromises and cooperation needed so long as human separation is taken for granted.

One of the most startling quotations of Jesus is this portion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

Many say that, however noble, this is Jesus at his most unrealistic. But that is because this statement and others like it are viewed as moral pronouncements. Jesus was not about creating a new moral code, however, though it is one of the most common ways of interpreting him. Rather, Jesus’ objective was to spark a new wave of human transformation through spiritual rebirth.

To claim to be a child of God has become an almost meaningless cliché in Christian circles. And while its pious overtones are now an obstacle for many today, Jesus meant it quite literally, as have countless spiritual teachers of all traditions down through the ages. Our true identity is divine. We are each one with the Source of all reality, the Ground of Being. Therefore, all human divisions are artificial and unreal.

Jesus says “love your neighbor as yourself” because it is literally true. We are one with all people. For the same reason, Jesus says here to “love your enemy,” because all our enemies are neighbors, as well. This, Jesus says, is what it means to live as children of God. And to drive the point home, he adds that God ignores the human labels of good and evil but pours life’s blessings on all people equally.

To the egoic self, wrapped in titles, roles, stories, and identities, all this is outrageous nonsense. But to our true self, the silent and formless Presence at our center, our conscious and peaceful eternal Awareness, such wisdom is the meaning of life: an eternal experience of grace and our union with the whole creation.

Is this really the path to peace in the Middle East? I have no idea. I do know that religion’s path of sin and guilt, law and morality, has not gotten humanity very far. It has tamed humanity’s worst inclinations but its capacity to do so in the future is in serious doubt. We don’t need more and better rules, commissions, and negotiating teams. What we need is a human awakening.

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.

Consider the lilies

Consider the lilies

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photo of liliesThe news today, whatever its source or format, provides endless sources of distress. Local events, national politics, international conflict, natural disasters, and predictions of future catastrophes all contribute to our sense of dis-ease: feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, hatred, frustration, guilt, depression, sadness, helplessness, and hopelessness.

Of course, people have been upset by distressing events long before there were news media. In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses this in one of the most famous passages in the gospels.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear? For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

On first hearing, Jesus words sound pollyannish. “Don’t worry. God will take care of it.” Worse, you may have heard such sentiments from people thinking they were being helpful. And Jesus can also seem annoyingly simplistic when he tells people on multiple occasions that they need to have faith, or that their faith has healed them.

But this text contains profound wisdom if we listen carefully. As he often does, Jesus tries to get his listeners to open their eyes to see the world as it really is, learn the lessons it has to teach, and re-frame our own self-understanding as a result.

Remarkably to us, perhaps, Jesus begins by noting that all life is part of an ecosystem. The seeds and bugs birds need are simply there for the taking. Lilies beautify the fields they occupy simply by being what they are. Yet while this is supposed to encourage us in trusting that we too will be taken care of, Jesus almost off offhandedly adds that the field that is so beautiful one day will, nonetheless, be cut down and tossed in the oven the next.

Jesus joins the Buddha here in teaching the most basic lesson: nothing is permanent, including you and me. An emotional reaction to distressing news is natural, whether it’s something happening right in front of us or halfway around the world. But when those emotions begin to overwhelm us and we can’t find peace again, then something else is going on. We are clinging to what can’t be held on to.

Buddhist priest Norman Fischer summarizes this Buddhist teaching.

Practitioners have always understood impermanence as the cornerstone of Buddhist teachings and practice. All that exists is impermanent; nothing lasts. Therefore nothing can be grasped or held onto. When we don’t fully appreciate this simple but profound truth we suffer…. When we do, we have real peace and understanding…. As far as classical Buddhism is concerned, impermanence is the number one inescapable, and essentially painful, fact of life. It is the singular existential problem that the whole edifice of Buddhist practice is meant to address.

Jesus is, perhaps, less systematic than the Buddha but his response to impermanence is essentially the same. “Seek first the kingdom of God,” Jesus says. That is, seek what is permanent and stop looking for security and peace in the impermanent, what is so pretty one day and tossed in the oven the next.

Now here, of course, we run into the problems of language and the corruption of language. For most today, a statement like “seek first the kingdom” drips with a cloying piety from generations of manipulative preachers and evangelists. Jesus’ concern isn’t with religion, however, but daily living.

“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

We hear this expressed in AA as living” one day at a time” and in nondual spirituality as “living in the now.” Neither past or future are real; they are only ideas in our head. And those ideas are the source of most our distress, anguishing about what did or didn’t happen in the past or what might happen in the future. Real life happens only here and now. This is the meaning of existence and is our true being. Anything else is fantasy.

The medieval theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart said that God is “the ground of being.” That phrase was embraced in the 20th century by the German American theologian Paul Tillich and has grown in usage since. Being is the Really Real. “Ground of being” echoes the famous story of Moses at the burning bush. When Moses asks for the name of this God, he is told it’s “I AM”, Being Itself, speaking to him.

Mystics of all religious traditions have said that, in some profound way,  existence itself it the ultimate revelation and experience of God. Reality’s countless forms are expressions of existence, of Being, but they are all transitory, constantly changing, impermanent, forever coming and going.

To “seek the kingdom” as Jesus says, is to find and ground ourselves in the permanent, the timeless, the Really Real, and to let go of the transitory, that which is forever changing and impermanent. To do otherwise, Jesus and the Buddha both say, is to live in confusion and suffering.

How do we respond to the world’s chaos and crises? “Today’s trouble is enough for today,” Jesus says. Do what you can and are moved to do here and now: donate, write a politician, vote, volunteer, etc. But endless thinking, ruminating, fuming, stressing about this problem or that crisis won’t accomplish anything.

When these emotions get us in their grip and won’t let got, nonduality teacher Angelo Dilullo says it’s time to practice a type of meditation called self-inquiry. In this practice, we look inwards to find the underlying emotions that have been triggered by the event or events that have so distressed us. What painful experiences or negatives ideas have been opened within us? Often the question will be, what are we clinging to that we need to let go of?

The events and situations causing so much distress to people today are not trivial but often have little direct impact upon us. And in most cases, there is usually little we can do about them. Obsessing about them in response to our powerlessness, including feeling deep anger or depression, does nothing. This is the suffering that comes from clinging to the transitoriness of life.

Tying ourselves in emotional knots over the latest news story or headline disconnects us from living here and now. It closes us to the beauty of the world around us and to the opportunities we have to bring hope and healing to situations right where we are. “Today’s trouble is enough” to challenge our abilities and to create new possibilities of love and life, if we can be centered in the Really Real, the kingdom which Jesus says is all around us and within us.

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