My deepest joy is in being one. On my bike ride, I saw a black bird sitting on the post of a yield sign – its beak yellow, its head tousled like a pajama’d child, its throat moving, showing it to be the source of the joyful sound that rose beside the trail. Joy rose up in me then, too, and I felt a oneness with the bird and all the living things expressing themselves in that moment. I have heard people who think they should know say that birdsong is a mere proclamation of territory, but I never have believed this. It doesn’t account for the spontaneous rising of joy.
People also say that joy is chemical. I think saying joy comes from chemicals is similar to saying Michelangelo made his statues with chisels. It may be so, but chisels, even a vast array of them, can’t account for the works. Neither can a deep knowledge of anatomy, though he must have had that. The one thing that would need to guide the artist in the creation of such works as the Pieta is that moving of the spirit, alongside and within, that feels the presence of another – feels the weight, the gravity – that which is deeper than emotion – in the other. This spirit is what allows the viewers to feel the same thing – to not only be there watching the drama of the moment, but to be in the bodies that are portrayed – to feel the presence and gravity as if they were our own.
Joy is the same way. Though chemicals may create a high, joy guides the spirit into oneness. Joy always leads to an expression that affirms Life and benefits other living things. It leads to the leaps of grace that cause more joy to rise spontaneously in other living things. We recognize it across species as well as among our own kind.
I have heard people say they have heard no compelling reason to believe in God. To me, God is the only way to account for joy. It can’t be explained in material terms. It can’t be predicted by the presence or absence of any material elements. It is something we recognize as highly substantial, and, in fact, as one of the main things of deepest worth and value, yet it is not made out of matter. To me this says that if joy is real, then Spirit is real. And just like the tousle-headed bird beside the trail, I choose to believe in the reality of joy.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Here I am
Yesterday my teen-aged daughter participated in a Taekwon Do tournament, and my husband was there for part of it. When he was telling me about it afterwards, he said, “It was great – I was giving her advice, and she was actually hearing it.” He told me that the advice he was giving had nothing to do with the placement of hands and feet. Instead, it had to do with presence – feeling the purpose of each thing she was doing, feeling it deep in her belly, breathing. He told her to walk into the ring with a presence that would command the judges to look at her – one that said, even before the first move of her pattern, you’re looking at the winner. It wasn’t a matter of psyche-out or bravado. It wasn’t a matter of positioning herself as better than the other competitors. It was simply a matter of being fully there, of standing behind and within herself, of being a fair representation of everything that she is. Not one of many waiting to be judged, but one being of integrity, whole within herself.
I found this to be very good advice. I took it in, took it for myself, and considered how consonant it is with everything I’m learning about being. It doesn’t make sense that presence and poise be the exclusive purview of celebrities and a small percentage of people born to perform. If I am, in fact, the image and likeness of God, good, it doesn’t make sense that I would be missing the capacity to represent myself, to stand in myself, and to stand up with poise and confidence. These aren’t surface qualities. They’re not about polishing my image or developing a persona, however much popular culture would say they are. They aren’t contrary to humility, but are in fact an expression of it, an acknowledgment that God is the creator, that God does a good job, and that it’s not our place to say otherwise.
There’s a song I’ve sung a few times in other Christian churches. It says, Here I am, Lord – send me. It is in this willingness to be sent that I also find the presence and poise that will allow me to do the job required. It is interesting to consider that we are sent each day – that our being is the evidence of God’s being, and we don’t have any other purpose. So it is right to feel competent in every pursuit in which we find ourselves. It’s right to expect our actions to be effective.
I found this to be very good advice. I took it in, took it for myself, and considered how consonant it is with everything I’m learning about being. It doesn’t make sense that presence and poise be the exclusive purview of celebrities and a small percentage of people born to perform. If I am, in fact, the image and likeness of God, good, it doesn’t make sense that I would be missing the capacity to represent myself, to stand in myself, and to stand up with poise and confidence. These aren’t surface qualities. They’re not about polishing my image or developing a persona, however much popular culture would say they are. They aren’t contrary to humility, but are in fact an expression of it, an acknowledgment that God is the creator, that God does a good job, and that it’s not our place to say otherwise.
There’s a song I’ve sung a few times in other Christian churches. It says, Here I am, Lord – send me. It is in this willingness to be sent that I also find the presence and poise that will allow me to do the job required. It is interesting to consider that we are sent each day – that our being is the evidence of God’s being, and we don’t have any other purpose. So it is right to feel competent in every pursuit in which we find ourselves. It’s right to expect our actions to be effective.
My Purpose – Not for my Purposes
I was sitting in the sun today taking in the cosmic rhythm – the dance of the trees and grasses, the low tones of the bamboo wind chimes, the sweet songs of birds. I could feel a breathing that went through me, though it neither started nor ended with me. Breathing in the rhythm with everything around me, it was easy to feel the oneness. In oneness everything seems possible. If everyone can feel this peace and harmony, we will able to breathe the world we want into being. Just by who we are, we will bring it about.
This perception cast a new light on an old memory – that of the moment I fell in love with my daughter. She was two or three days old, and was sleeping upstairs. I went up to check on her. I remember thinking, on the way up the stairs, about how I would be able to tell she was fine – wondering how easily I would know if she was breathing. When I got to her, it was easy to tell, from farther away than I had expected. Her whole body was breathing. Even in sleep she exuded this tremendous aliveness, the expressiveness of something thriving. Before that moment I had felt maternal care for her, and a generalized happiness to have her, but in that moment I felt a leaping out of love for her, a love which stayed.
It occurs to me now that the aliveness she expressed was the same oneness, the same sense of a breathing much larger than oneself. It called to me to participate in a larger truth, a larger purpose. And though it was exactly the thing that I most wanted in the world, I could also say that the purpose was not my own. It wasn’t something I could have dreamed up and set as a goal for myself. Yes I had intensely wanted to be a mother; I had intuited that it was one role that would use all of me. I had a miscarriage shortly before we conceived her, and it was a time of deep grief. But the lesson I took from it, and the thought that I felt made me ready for motherhood, was, “not by will, but by willingness.”
I’ve been learning that lesson ever since. Most recently, I’ve been thinking about “firing the manager,” where the manager is the one who tries to figure out the direction for my life, and, while she’s at it, the direction for the life of everyone whose life path crosses mine. I find her to be stressful, anxious, and entirely incompetent. She forgets that she is not the center of the universe, and tries to make everything orbit around her. She tends not to remember that the divine Creator is giving every life form its perfect purpose, ideas, and course.
In firing the manager, I come upon a truth which is quite clear, but sometimes gets tangled in language so as to seem paradoxical. The greatest fulfillment, my greatest purpose, is not for my purposes. My purpose, which is found in oneness with everything living, is not something I (or the manager) can tweak or harness or use to enhance my place in society or my own designed sense of who I should be. It’s not something I can even know except in the context of oneness – something much greater than what I usually think of as me.
There is Christian language for this, as when Paul says “ye are the temple of the living God,” and “ye are not your own.” But it may also be one of those mysteries where the meaning is easy to misconstrue. We get told that we must not be selfish, and this is supposed to mean that we should suppress what we most desire and serve someone else’s purposes. But that is not an authentic meaning. I believe that it’s part of the law of Life and Love that everything is designed to want to be exactly what it is. We are designed to want what we want, and to fulfill the purpose that is our heart’s desire. And we are designed to be part of the oneness – to find our unique participation with all of the universe to be our ultimate fulfillment, the ultimate embodiment of our essential individuality. So our purpose is our own, and not to be suppressed for anyone else’s purposes. But it is not our own concoction. We find it in oneness, in the law of Love. We fulfill it in service, as do all living things. And we rejoice in it with the special high of being part of something bigger than anything the manager could grasp.
This perception cast a new light on an old memory – that of the moment I fell in love with my daughter. She was two or three days old, and was sleeping upstairs. I went up to check on her. I remember thinking, on the way up the stairs, about how I would be able to tell she was fine – wondering how easily I would know if she was breathing. When I got to her, it was easy to tell, from farther away than I had expected. Her whole body was breathing. Even in sleep she exuded this tremendous aliveness, the expressiveness of something thriving. Before that moment I had felt maternal care for her, and a generalized happiness to have her, but in that moment I felt a leaping out of love for her, a love which stayed.
It occurs to me now that the aliveness she expressed was the same oneness, the same sense of a breathing much larger than oneself. It called to me to participate in a larger truth, a larger purpose. And though it was exactly the thing that I most wanted in the world, I could also say that the purpose was not my own. It wasn’t something I could have dreamed up and set as a goal for myself. Yes I had intensely wanted to be a mother; I had intuited that it was one role that would use all of me. I had a miscarriage shortly before we conceived her, and it was a time of deep grief. But the lesson I took from it, and the thought that I felt made me ready for motherhood, was, “not by will, but by willingness.”
I’ve been learning that lesson ever since. Most recently, I’ve been thinking about “firing the manager,” where the manager is the one who tries to figure out the direction for my life, and, while she’s at it, the direction for the life of everyone whose life path crosses mine. I find her to be stressful, anxious, and entirely incompetent. She forgets that she is not the center of the universe, and tries to make everything orbit around her. She tends not to remember that the divine Creator is giving every life form its perfect purpose, ideas, and course.
In firing the manager, I come upon a truth which is quite clear, but sometimes gets tangled in language so as to seem paradoxical. The greatest fulfillment, my greatest purpose, is not for my purposes. My purpose, which is found in oneness with everything living, is not something I (or the manager) can tweak or harness or use to enhance my place in society or my own designed sense of who I should be. It’s not something I can even know except in the context of oneness – something much greater than what I usually think of as me.
There is Christian language for this, as when Paul says “ye are the temple of the living God,” and “ye are not your own.” But it may also be one of those mysteries where the meaning is easy to misconstrue. We get told that we must not be selfish, and this is supposed to mean that we should suppress what we most desire and serve someone else’s purposes. But that is not an authentic meaning. I believe that it’s part of the law of Life and Love that everything is designed to want to be exactly what it is. We are designed to want what we want, and to fulfill the purpose that is our heart’s desire. And we are designed to be part of the oneness – to find our unique participation with all of the universe to be our ultimate fulfillment, the ultimate embodiment of our essential individuality. So our purpose is our own, and not to be suppressed for anyone else’s purposes. But it is not our own concoction. We find it in oneness, in the law of Love. We fulfill it in service, as do all living things. And we rejoice in it with the special high of being part of something bigger than anything the manager could grasp.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Standing for Peace
Yesterday afternoon, on Mother’s Day, I stood in a circle with about 12 other people in a park near our home, to observe a five-minute vigil with the Standing Women – standing for a better world. It wasn’t just women – we had asked the men in our lives to stand with us. Three of the people were my immediate family – we had walked the 10 blocks from our house to get there. Three were people I had never met, who had seen my posting on the Standing Women website saying where we’d be standing. The rest were members of our school community.
As I looked around at this small, beautiful group, it occurred to me that the vast majority of people in the world want this – a good life for our children and all children, our grandchildren and all grandchildren, the planet. We want to live in peace; we want to love each other. Since that is the case, I reflected, the only thing we need is to claim our individual sovereignty, our ability to manifest what we are in our lives.
I had the image the other day that I am perhaps more like coral than I had thought. Instead of my life being a collection of intentions, events, and material artifacts which I need to manage and come up with a way to make work for me to achieve my purposes, my life is something that grows naturally out of who I am. Just as the intricate and colorful structures of the coral form effortlessly from the animals’ own being, so all the visible attributes of my life can flow from mine. I don’t have to worry about whether they will fit, or do what I hoped they would do. I can leave that to the grand plan of God.
In this context, my sovereignty and my faith are one. Saying I have the ability to manifest what I want in life is saying that my Creator has designed me so that the artifacts of my life, like coral, grow to serve the needs of my life. It is natural that the life of a being who is the expression of Love should be lovely, full of love in every moment, bringing forth blessing and healing. I get to bring forth what I want by being what I am. I am designed so this happens naturally.
I was talking afterwards to a woman in the circle who’s been active in organizing for peace. I said, it must be a constant consideration how to stand up for peace without taking in any elements of war and violence – such as anger and resentment. She agreed, commenting that most peace work is internal, but that there’s also the need for outward work – that it calls for a balance. I think this is true, and is consonant with the law of Life, in which giving and receiving are always reciprocal. I want to practice this balance by letting my life grow like coral. I know that the Creator’s design is for exactly the kind of world we want the world’s children and grandchildren to have. My faith is that as I give the job of managing my life over to God, God will do a good job. God will help all of us grow lives that support life, bringing forth beautiful, sustaining structures that provide safe habitat for all.
As I looked around at this small, beautiful group, it occurred to me that the vast majority of people in the world want this – a good life for our children and all children, our grandchildren and all grandchildren, the planet. We want to live in peace; we want to love each other. Since that is the case, I reflected, the only thing we need is to claim our individual sovereignty, our ability to manifest what we are in our lives.
I had the image the other day that I am perhaps more like coral than I had thought. Instead of my life being a collection of intentions, events, and material artifacts which I need to manage and come up with a way to make work for me to achieve my purposes, my life is something that grows naturally out of who I am. Just as the intricate and colorful structures of the coral form effortlessly from the animals’ own being, so all the visible attributes of my life can flow from mine. I don’t have to worry about whether they will fit, or do what I hoped they would do. I can leave that to the grand plan of God.
In this context, my sovereignty and my faith are one. Saying I have the ability to manifest what I want in life is saying that my Creator has designed me so that the artifacts of my life, like coral, grow to serve the needs of my life. It is natural that the life of a being who is the expression of Love should be lovely, full of love in every moment, bringing forth blessing and healing. I get to bring forth what I want by being what I am. I am designed so this happens naturally.
I was talking afterwards to a woman in the circle who’s been active in organizing for peace. I said, it must be a constant consideration how to stand up for peace without taking in any elements of war and violence – such as anger and resentment. She agreed, commenting that most peace work is internal, but that there’s also the need for outward work – that it calls for a balance. I think this is true, and is consonant with the law of Life, in which giving and receiving are always reciprocal. I want to practice this balance by letting my life grow like coral. I know that the Creator’s design is for exactly the kind of world we want the world’s children and grandchildren to have. My faith is that as I give the job of managing my life over to God, God will do a good job. God will help all of us grow lives that support life, bringing forth beautiful, sustaining structures that provide safe habitat for all.
Friday, May 11, 2007
No more silence
At a retreat I recently attended, we decided to spend a period of the afternoon in silence. While I was fine with the silence as I walked the beach and communed with the sunlight, I found it uncomfortable when I met another of our group and interacted with just a smile and a wave.
The nature of the discomfort was that it felt like I was shoving myself back into a box that I had been in for too long – it was a very familiar place that I had recently been finding my way out of, and I didn’t want to be stuck back in there again.
It’s not that I’ve been habitually silent. In fact, I’ve caused people discomfort too many times by dousing them with a torrent of thoughts with too little attention to the natural give and take of conversation. But these floods were perhaps induced by the paved over areas in my internal landscape, areas of enforced silence, the prohibitions to speaking in certain ways and situations.
Some of these silences were words that I wouldn’t say; some were things I wouldn’t talk about; some were situations in which I didn’t give myself permission to speak; some were people I didn’t give myself permission to speak to. These enforced silences didn’t keep me from thinking things – all kinds of things, which would get so thick that they would sometimes become another source of silence, as I knew or usually thought there was no way to fit them through the gates of communication.
What I want to say about this is that, although I didn’t even know before that it was a problem, I feel profoundly liberated to be out of that box. And I want to talk a bit about how I got out of it and why I think it’s a good thing.
The first step in liberation was starting to glimpse that I don’t need someone’s permission to be their friend. When I first glimpsed this, it was profound for me, and gave me a lot of courage to overcome shyness. But it has taken me many more years to fully realize this truth. I recounted my most recent revelations about this in the entry “Christ says yes II” in this blog. (Also in this blog, the entry “On being a Christian” touches on important parts of this realization.)
It’s been more recently that I’ve experienced a release from charged words and topics. It used to be that, in my internal landscape, there were certain words and topics where, if my mind would run over them, my voice would go silent. In some cases this was some sense of propriety, some sense of what kind of a person I am, which forbid me those words and topics. In some cases it was also that I had such a long habit of not speaking about these things that the words would come difficult. Then, if someone else began talking along those lines, while I might not actually have a problem with it, it would be impossible to convey that fact. My silence would shout judgment, whether I felt that way or not.
The release came about as I was working on finding my voice, and in conjunction with compassionate treatment of me by others. As it was coming about, I found some Biblical support for the direction I was going.
I was thinking about the third commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” And thinking about the name of the Lord, I thought of the passage in John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. These thoughts came together as – have only one God; have only one Word. Don’t have words be gods.
There were a few ways this was meaningful to me. First, because I realized it wasn’t right for any words to make me uncomfortable or make me judge someone else for using them. Second, I realized that also, in the area of persuasion and marketing, it’s not legitimate for words to make me or anyone want to do what is against our Godlike nature to do. It’s not legitimate for people to be brainwashed. The Word has the power to make itself heard. Finally, this corroborated what I wrote in this blog in “Love me; I love you, and the Hungarian Phrase Book” – that it doesn’t matter what words people are saying – only the Word can be communicated. Only love, and the deep value of each life form.
So I remain committed to staying outside of the box of silence. I remain committed to digging up the pavement in my internal landscape and exposing the soft earth to the penetration of rare seeds. I remain committed to keeping things light and moist so that new infrastructures of root and leaf may grow. Then my permeable surface will be able to take things in better, and give things out more appropriately, and the words I do speak will be of greater service.
The nature of the discomfort was that it felt like I was shoving myself back into a box that I had been in for too long – it was a very familiar place that I had recently been finding my way out of, and I didn’t want to be stuck back in there again.
It’s not that I’ve been habitually silent. In fact, I’ve caused people discomfort too many times by dousing them with a torrent of thoughts with too little attention to the natural give and take of conversation. But these floods were perhaps induced by the paved over areas in my internal landscape, areas of enforced silence, the prohibitions to speaking in certain ways and situations.
Some of these silences were words that I wouldn’t say; some were things I wouldn’t talk about; some were situations in which I didn’t give myself permission to speak; some were people I didn’t give myself permission to speak to. These enforced silences didn’t keep me from thinking things – all kinds of things, which would get so thick that they would sometimes become another source of silence, as I knew or usually thought there was no way to fit them through the gates of communication.
What I want to say about this is that, although I didn’t even know before that it was a problem, I feel profoundly liberated to be out of that box. And I want to talk a bit about how I got out of it and why I think it’s a good thing.
The first step in liberation was starting to glimpse that I don’t need someone’s permission to be their friend. When I first glimpsed this, it was profound for me, and gave me a lot of courage to overcome shyness. But it has taken me many more years to fully realize this truth. I recounted my most recent revelations about this in the entry “Christ says yes II” in this blog. (Also in this blog, the entry “On being a Christian” touches on important parts of this realization.)
It’s been more recently that I’ve experienced a release from charged words and topics. It used to be that, in my internal landscape, there were certain words and topics where, if my mind would run over them, my voice would go silent. In some cases this was some sense of propriety, some sense of what kind of a person I am, which forbid me those words and topics. In some cases it was also that I had such a long habit of not speaking about these things that the words would come difficult. Then, if someone else began talking along those lines, while I might not actually have a problem with it, it would be impossible to convey that fact. My silence would shout judgment, whether I felt that way or not.
The release came about as I was working on finding my voice, and in conjunction with compassionate treatment of me by others. As it was coming about, I found some Biblical support for the direction I was going.
I was thinking about the third commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” And thinking about the name of the Lord, I thought of the passage in John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. These thoughts came together as – have only one God; have only one Word. Don’t have words be gods.
There were a few ways this was meaningful to me. First, because I realized it wasn’t right for any words to make me uncomfortable or make me judge someone else for using them. Second, I realized that also, in the area of persuasion and marketing, it’s not legitimate for words to make me or anyone want to do what is against our Godlike nature to do. It’s not legitimate for people to be brainwashed. The Word has the power to make itself heard. Finally, this corroborated what I wrote in this blog in “Love me; I love you, and the Hungarian Phrase Book” – that it doesn’t matter what words people are saying – only the Word can be communicated. Only love, and the deep value of each life form.
So I remain committed to staying outside of the box of silence. I remain committed to digging up the pavement in my internal landscape and exposing the soft earth to the penetration of rare seeds. I remain committed to keeping things light and moist so that new infrastructures of root and leaf may grow. Then my permeable surface will be able to take things in better, and give things out more appropriately, and the words I do speak will be of greater service.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Believe, and ye shall be saved?
“Don’t talk like that,” I said to him. “Don’t you know that saying you can’t do it makes it harder for you to get it?”
“People learn things differently,” he said darkly. In other words, mind your own business.
Thinking about it many months later, I realized the foolishness of my words. What I had voiced, in the name of some kind of faith, was only the degenerate set of it, the way that popular culture, without understanding the depth of faith, talks of the power of positive thinking. This kind of talk is considered acceptable, and people agree that it might have some vague result. But it’s similar to other things people toss around as “good for you,” like a diet or an exercise program. There are some adherents, but their example doesn’t offer overwhelming proof. In honesty, I can’t base my faith on such a platform. If I have faith in the power of Truth to establish harmonious conditions, it must be something much deeper than this.
A friend was talking last night about how evangelists are trained to make a two minute pitch and then close the deal like a sales person, asking for the decision: Are you ready to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior? - As if someone could choose that like deciding to buy a car. Jesus does say “believe, and ye shall be saved,” but that doesn’t answer the question of how we come to believe.
When I was in ninth grade, I had a few direct experiences of God, and I was hooked. A couple of instances of feeling my hand led in a math test to guide me to understanding when my mind was blank, a few instances of going directly to objects I had lost, and God was unshakably real to me. It wasn’t just the help but the exhilarating feeling of being held. I remember going down the halls to lunch after those math tests, and I felt like I was flying. Other signs of God’s presence followed – the understanding that gave me the courage to take resolute steps out of painful shyness; the healing of rifts in communication within my family, a sudden healing of tonsillitis, guidance in my choices about school and relationships.
There were other times, painful times, where I didn’t find the healing I was seeking. I came to dread getting sick, and having to try to pray for myself, and feeling some unnamed obstacle between my words and what I actually was thinking. I wanted to say, with the man whose son Jesus healed, “Lord, I believe – help thou mine unbelief!”
Some internal voices would ask me from time to time why I didn’t just give up. But my answer was always, where else would I go? Once having felt the divine presence, and having experienced it as something more real and satisfying than anything else, I simply couldn’t give it up. So I persevered at the practice of continuing to seek, growing to almost like the feeling of having the rug (of all my presuppositions) pulled out from under me, leaving me in an ignominious sprawl to rediscover my center in the resulting stillness. Through many, many of these experiences, I'm coming to have a clearer, more powerful faith.
There are only a few things I know to tell people about the process of coming to believe. One is illustrated in the fact that the Ten Commandments address the reader as “thou”, which is second person singular intimate. Singular – this is not addressing a group. It’s not offering rules for people to hold over each other’s heads to judge them. Intimate - it’s addressing the very inward thought of each individual, with intimate individual care for each unique case. So it is that the fundamental, foundational teachings about behavior, in relation to God and man, command a very individual search. They are not for others, even the others who reside, judging, in the rooms of consciousness. We find God not by being told what to believe and what to do, but by locating God within our very blueprint – finding God’s hand in the nature of what we are.
Another is that belief can’t be forced – that you can’t believe something by willing yourself to do so. Belief is not what you adopt because you like it and it sounds plausible (such as whether you believe there is life on other planets, or whether you believe in parallel universes.) Belief is what you walk on. You walk over the bridge because you believe it’s strong enough; you leave your children with their Grandma because you believe she will take good care of them. You believe in God as you feel God’s gentle presence in your life. If you haven’t felt it yet, you can consider what’s good in your life, and you can consider your marvelous fortitude in difficult times, and you may find some proof there. Being quiet within helps a lot. But God doesn’t need to be conjured up. God is able to make God’s self known.
And one more: coming to believe isn’t a process of choosing a God off the shelf based on a comparison of ingredients. Though some religious movements may try to sell you an off-the-shelf concept of God, this doesn’t have anything to do with what God is to you. Though you may not have heard anyone present a plausible concept of God, this doesn’t mean you can’t know God. Clearing your mind of preconceptions helps. But God doesn’t need to be pre-defined. God is able to make God’s self known.
“People learn things differently,” he said darkly. In other words, mind your own business.
Thinking about it many months later, I realized the foolishness of my words. What I had voiced, in the name of some kind of faith, was only the degenerate set of it, the way that popular culture, without understanding the depth of faith, talks of the power of positive thinking. This kind of talk is considered acceptable, and people agree that it might have some vague result. But it’s similar to other things people toss around as “good for you,” like a diet or an exercise program. There are some adherents, but their example doesn’t offer overwhelming proof. In honesty, I can’t base my faith on such a platform. If I have faith in the power of Truth to establish harmonious conditions, it must be something much deeper than this.
A friend was talking last night about how evangelists are trained to make a two minute pitch and then close the deal like a sales person, asking for the decision: Are you ready to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior? - As if someone could choose that like deciding to buy a car. Jesus does say “believe, and ye shall be saved,” but that doesn’t answer the question of how we come to believe.
When I was in ninth grade, I had a few direct experiences of God, and I was hooked. A couple of instances of feeling my hand led in a math test to guide me to understanding when my mind was blank, a few instances of going directly to objects I had lost, and God was unshakably real to me. It wasn’t just the help but the exhilarating feeling of being held. I remember going down the halls to lunch after those math tests, and I felt like I was flying. Other signs of God’s presence followed – the understanding that gave me the courage to take resolute steps out of painful shyness; the healing of rifts in communication within my family, a sudden healing of tonsillitis, guidance in my choices about school and relationships.
There were other times, painful times, where I didn’t find the healing I was seeking. I came to dread getting sick, and having to try to pray for myself, and feeling some unnamed obstacle between my words and what I actually was thinking. I wanted to say, with the man whose son Jesus healed, “Lord, I believe – help thou mine unbelief!”
Some internal voices would ask me from time to time why I didn’t just give up. But my answer was always, where else would I go? Once having felt the divine presence, and having experienced it as something more real and satisfying than anything else, I simply couldn’t give it up. So I persevered at the practice of continuing to seek, growing to almost like the feeling of having the rug (of all my presuppositions) pulled out from under me, leaving me in an ignominious sprawl to rediscover my center in the resulting stillness. Through many, many of these experiences, I'm coming to have a clearer, more powerful faith.
There are only a few things I know to tell people about the process of coming to believe. One is illustrated in the fact that the Ten Commandments address the reader as “thou”, which is second person singular intimate. Singular – this is not addressing a group. It’s not offering rules for people to hold over each other’s heads to judge them. Intimate - it’s addressing the very inward thought of each individual, with intimate individual care for each unique case. So it is that the fundamental, foundational teachings about behavior, in relation to God and man, command a very individual search. They are not for others, even the others who reside, judging, in the rooms of consciousness. We find God not by being told what to believe and what to do, but by locating God within our very blueprint – finding God’s hand in the nature of what we are.
Another is that belief can’t be forced – that you can’t believe something by willing yourself to do so. Belief is not what you adopt because you like it and it sounds plausible (such as whether you believe there is life on other planets, or whether you believe in parallel universes.) Belief is what you walk on. You walk over the bridge because you believe it’s strong enough; you leave your children with their Grandma because you believe she will take good care of them. You believe in God as you feel God’s gentle presence in your life. If you haven’t felt it yet, you can consider what’s good in your life, and you can consider your marvelous fortitude in difficult times, and you may find some proof there. Being quiet within helps a lot. But God doesn’t need to be conjured up. God is able to make God’s self known.
And one more: coming to believe isn’t a process of choosing a God off the shelf based on a comparison of ingredients. Though some religious movements may try to sell you an off-the-shelf concept of God, this doesn’t have anything to do with what God is to you. Though you may not have heard anyone present a plausible concept of God, this doesn’t mean you can’t know God. Clearing your mind of preconceptions helps. But God doesn’t need to be pre-defined. God is able to make God’s self known.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Christ says yes II: loving one another
Last night my husband said, the message Jesus brought says love – love each other is the main thing he taught – yet the churches seem to say: but only within prescribed limits. Only within your marriage.
To elaborate on that, it is supposed that there is one kind of strong love that should occur only within the confines of the marriage bed, another kind of strong love for family and some close friends, and then a sort of a weak, diffused love for everyone else.
He and I are working out a different paradigm. We have identified two planes in which the thought of love plays out. One of them is the plane of pure energy exchange. The other is the plane of temporal negotiation. Both planes are valid in their own right. The shift from one plane to another can happen quickly and without being noticed. Confusion about what plane one is operating on causes all kinds of problems.
The plane of pure energy exchange is the one in which one life form recognizes another, sees the deep and shining soul within, and rejoices. This is the plane of the brilliant smile of a stranger on the street, and it is the plane of “namaste” – the divine in me salutes the divine in you. When such an exchange occurs freely, both participants go away enriched. They are affirmed in two ways: one, by sending out a shining signal, and two, by being recognized as shining. This kind of exchange can be a deep blessing, sending out ripples of joy through succeeding interactions. And I believe it’s fair to call such an exchange an act of love – of loving and being loved.
The plane of temporal negotiation is the one in which people ask, what am I to you? Will you be there for me? It is the one in which they seek to define what the relationship is in time, in the course of lives as they play out. This kind of understanding is important. It takes many loops of feedback to come to clear communication, to find the common language and an agreement of expectations. It can only happen successfully when both people are committed to making it happen.
Here are some examples of how these planes get confused: Someone shoots a smile at a person, and she wonders, is he coming on to me? Would I be leading him on to smile back, would I be sending the wrong signal? Because she’s confusing the pure energy exchange with a temporal negotiation, she feels the need to mask her natural response of joy towards another life form. Thus the exchange doesn’t happen, and the world gets a little colder. Another example: Someone shoots a smile at a person, and she thinks, he has no right to smile at me. He can’t follow through with a relationship, and I wouldn’t want him to do so. Men are so arrogant, thinking they have the right to have any relationship they want to. So she gives him a dirty look back, to make sure he knows that she will not be entering into relationship with him. Again, the energy exchange doesn’t happen, and life is not as delightful as it could have been. I use these examples because, as a woman, I have experienced both these states. I expect the examples told from a male perspective would sound a little different, but I’m not so intimately in tune with them to pull them up.
The planes can also get confused in the other direction, where someone thinks that, because there has been an energy exchange between the two of them, something is owed, obligation is incurred, an agreement for temporal relationship has been made. Or it can be confused when someone thinks they can do things that have consequences in the temporal plane without entering into relationship.
It has consequences in the temporal plane to say you’ll be there for someone. It has consequences in the temporal plane to make a baby with someone. It can have consequences in the temporal plane to get to a certain level of intimacy with someone, and that level may vary from person to person. This is why very deliberate communication is important in the negotiation of temporal relationships. An energy exchange does not signal a temporal relationship. It also doesn’t preclude one. Temporal relationships are built on the communication that explores these issues.
Meanwhile, I think it’s of crucial importance in the world that we not confine our love to temporal relationships. We must love in every way – in the way that treasures and holds up each life form, in the way that offers quick aid without obligation, in the way that allows us to be graceful and loving in our dealings with others.
It has been supposed that such exchanges should only be from the neck up – share a nice smile, but don’t get too involved. Feel it down to your heart maybe, but don’t feel it in your gut, don’t feel it to the core of your being. Don’t feel turned inside out, turned on, transformed. Save those deep feelings for your temporal relationships. But I believe that is not so. If it were, the love that Jesus tells us to do would be a dull duty, a tiresome obligation.
What distinguishes an energy exchange from a temporal relationship is not its depth, but simply its continuity through the plane of time. An energy exchange can be rockingly deep. It just incurs no obligations. It can be reciprocal, but the love is given unilaterally, with no expectation of a temporal relationship. It is given from the nature of who we are, because it’s what we are made of.
An energy exchange can also be practical and kind. It can help and bless someone (and when it does, it blesses both, by the law of balance.) It can be the stranger who changes your flat tire, the man who walks a mile with you to show you the way.
Does that sound familiar? Love one another, say yes to the core of each other, be rocked, transformed by each other. That’s how you’ll know that you’re his disciples, he says. I don’t think there are two kinds of love. There’s one kind of love, and if you do it, you’re going to feel it, and it’s going to feel fine. No temporal obligations, but deep aliveness and satisfaction. I don’t think it’s sacrilegious. Christ says yes.
To elaborate on that, it is supposed that there is one kind of strong love that should occur only within the confines of the marriage bed, another kind of strong love for family and some close friends, and then a sort of a weak, diffused love for everyone else.
He and I are working out a different paradigm. We have identified two planes in which the thought of love plays out. One of them is the plane of pure energy exchange. The other is the plane of temporal negotiation. Both planes are valid in their own right. The shift from one plane to another can happen quickly and without being noticed. Confusion about what plane one is operating on causes all kinds of problems.
The plane of pure energy exchange is the one in which one life form recognizes another, sees the deep and shining soul within, and rejoices. This is the plane of the brilliant smile of a stranger on the street, and it is the plane of “namaste” – the divine in me salutes the divine in you. When such an exchange occurs freely, both participants go away enriched. They are affirmed in two ways: one, by sending out a shining signal, and two, by being recognized as shining. This kind of exchange can be a deep blessing, sending out ripples of joy through succeeding interactions. And I believe it’s fair to call such an exchange an act of love – of loving and being loved.
The plane of temporal negotiation is the one in which people ask, what am I to you? Will you be there for me? It is the one in which they seek to define what the relationship is in time, in the course of lives as they play out. This kind of understanding is important. It takes many loops of feedback to come to clear communication, to find the common language and an agreement of expectations. It can only happen successfully when both people are committed to making it happen.
Here are some examples of how these planes get confused: Someone shoots a smile at a person, and she wonders, is he coming on to me? Would I be leading him on to smile back, would I be sending the wrong signal? Because she’s confusing the pure energy exchange with a temporal negotiation, she feels the need to mask her natural response of joy towards another life form. Thus the exchange doesn’t happen, and the world gets a little colder. Another example: Someone shoots a smile at a person, and she thinks, he has no right to smile at me. He can’t follow through with a relationship, and I wouldn’t want him to do so. Men are so arrogant, thinking they have the right to have any relationship they want to. So she gives him a dirty look back, to make sure he knows that she will not be entering into relationship with him. Again, the energy exchange doesn’t happen, and life is not as delightful as it could have been. I use these examples because, as a woman, I have experienced both these states. I expect the examples told from a male perspective would sound a little different, but I’m not so intimately in tune with them to pull them up.
The planes can also get confused in the other direction, where someone thinks that, because there has been an energy exchange between the two of them, something is owed, obligation is incurred, an agreement for temporal relationship has been made. Or it can be confused when someone thinks they can do things that have consequences in the temporal plane without entering into relationship.
It has consequences in the temporal plane to say you’ll be there for someone. It has consequences in the temporal plane to make a baby with someone. It can have consequences in the temporal plane to get to a certain level of intimacy with someone, and that level may vary from person to person. This is why very deliberate communication is important in the negotiation of temporal relationships. An energy exchange does not signal a temporal relationship. It also doesn’t preclude one. Temporal relationships are built on the communication that explores these issues.
Meanwhile, I think it’s of crucial importance in the world that we not confine our love to temporal relationships. We must love in every way – in the way that treasures and holds up each life form, in the way that offers quick aid without obligation, in the way that allows us to be graceful and loving in our dealings with others.
It has been supposed that such exchanges should only be from the neck up – share a nice smile, but don’t get too involved. Feel it down to your heart maybe, but don’t feel it in your gut, don’t feel it to the core of your being. Don’t feel turned inside out, turned on, transformed. Save those deep feelings for your temporal relationships. But I believe that is not so. If it were, the love that Jesus tells us to do would be a dull duty, a tiresome obligation.
What distinguishes an energy exchange from a temporal relationship is not its depth, but simply its continuity through the plane of time. An energy exchange can be rockingly deep. It just incurs no obligations. It can be reciprocal, but the love is given unilaterally, with no expectation of a temporal relationship. It is given from the nature of who we are, because it’s what we are made of.
An energy exchange can also be practical and kind. It can help and bless someone (and when it does, it blesses both, by the law of balance.) It can be the stranger who changes your flat tire, the man who walks a mile with you to show you the way.
Does that sound familiar? Love one another, say yes to the core of each other, be rocked, transformed by each other. That’s how you’ll know that you’re his disciples, he says. I don’t think there are two kinds of love. There’s one kind of love, and if you do it, you’re going to feel it, and it’s going to feel fine. No temporal obligations, but deep aliveness and satisfaction. I don’t think it’s sacrilegious. Christ says yes.
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