News From Two Huge and Failing Religions

What can I do to help others develop a strong and healthy relationship to the Divine? This is the most important question every spiritual guide, leader and community needs to ask themselves constantly.

However, religious institutions have this strange tendency to want to give their followers (and presumably the rest of the world) arbitrary (and often counterproductive) moral guidelines which have nothing to do with anyone's spiritual health.

A couple of weeks ago the Catholic church released a document which rejects the idea of transgenderism. It also says movable sexual identities are "often founded on nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants".

It's possible that a priest/rabbi/pastor/guru who knows a particular person extremely well could offer his or her opinion on how their perceived or chosen gender identity affects their spiritual health. But we also need to face this fact: no one fully and truly knows another person's heart, mind, and soul. No human being knows another human being's relationship to the Divine. If someone tried to tell me how I should define myself, to myself or to the world, I'd have to say "thanks, but it's none of your business." Any organization that sends out a similar blanket dismissal concerning a large group of people displays a lack of connection to humanity or the Divine.

Then there's the most basic guideline regarding the morality of someone's behaviour: Is this person's actions causing harm to someone else -- physically, emotionally or spiritually?

The Southern Baptist convention -- the largest Protestant group in America -- was hit with this scandal, as described by Fox News: "A bombshell investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News found that over the last 20 years, about 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced credible accusations of sexual misconduct. Of those, roughly 220 were convicted of sex crimes or received plea deals, in cases involving more than 700 victims in all, the report found. Many accusers were young men and women, who allegedly experienced everything from exposure to pornography to rape and impregnation at the hands of church members."

In its reporting of the scandal, the Economist describes a watershed moment for the Southern Baptists 40 years ago: "Liberal Baptists, who had dared question the literal truth of the Genesis myth, were denied leadership positions and, in due course, driven out. “Biblical inerrancy” was the conservatives’ war-cry."

It goes on to describe the deteriorating condition of the organization today: "The convention’s membership of 15m, concentrated in the Bible belt, is its lowest in 30 years, and falling. Half of Southern Baptist children leave the faith; annual baptisms—which reached a high in the mid-1970s, when the moderates were ascendant—are at their lowest level in almost a century."

I grew up in a Southern Baptist "mission", an outpost attempting to convert heathens in the semi-tropical suburbs of Cincinnati. This was in the sixties, well before the issue of biblical inerrancy was even considered an issue, but of course back then the church was still defending slavery and segregation. I have no hard feelings, this is where I had my first contact with the Divine, but from there my journey to develop a healthy relationship with the spiritual side of life was like hacking my way through brambles or bougainvillea. 

The idea that there is one set of spiritual, moral, or historical truths that we can always depend on for guidance is meretricious. In reality, the world changes, humanity grows and learns --- how can we even declare that the Divine is exactly the same throughout eternity? We need to help each other relate to the Spirit here and now, not by way of myths, legends, or institutions, but using tried and tested methods like meditation, and by seeking spiritual truths (sometimes hidden) in all our religious traditions.

Greed, Pride, Prejudice, Fear, Hatred, Hopelessness: Spiritual Ills and How to Cure Them

Greed, pride, prejudice, fear, hatred, hopelessness.

These are all spiritual illnesses. They happen when we forget that we are spiritual beings, when we ignore the Divine, and let our egos overpower our souls.

You may have noticed these illnesses are rampant in the world today. That's because there are no political, financial, or scientific solutions to spiritual illnesses, and our religious institutions are obsolete failures. The only solution is for more people to build a strong and healthy relationship to the Divine -- not to be more "religious" but to be more spiritually healthy.

Spiritual illnesses can afflict an individual, a family, a community. When enough people have them they can sicken an entire country.

Spiritual illnesses drive us crazy, make us do insane things. Greed makes us steal, pride makes us lie, prejudice divides us from others and makes us fear them.
But a spiritually healthy person is giving and caring, because nothing in the world is worth more than a healthy soul.
A spiritually healthy person is confident enough to be humble, and humble enough to speak the truth.
A spiritually healthy person knows that we are each a manifestation of the singular Divine Spirit. We are all spiritual blobs pinched off the same big colorful ball of spiritual play-doh.

Spiritual illnesses lead us to hurt ourselves and those around us. Fear is a stabbing pain in our hearts and minds that keeps us from loving, trusting, living. Hatred is that same fear turned outward, our attempt to offload our pain onto those we fear, those we are unable to trust or love.
A spiritually healthy person is not afraid of anything. Not terrorists or criminals, not illness or death. Not the Devil, and (despite religious exhortations) not God.
A spiritually healthy person cannot hate, because how can you hate someone who is a part of you? How can one hate anybody or anything when we are all connected, all one in the Spirit?

And the worst of all spiritual illnesses is hopelessness. Our past has taught us hatred and fear, our future looks like more of the same. In the here and now we feel unknown and unloved. We are so disconnected from life that death seems like the only open door, the only path to reality. The suicide rate in America has gone up over 30% since 1999, and is now the second leading cause of death for those aged 10 to 34. Think about that -- our young people, some not even teens yet, are choosing death over an ego-driven, spiritually ill existence.

A spiritually healthy person is always present, here and now, addressing life's surprises and accidents with calm and ease. They are not tortured by the past, or intimidated by the future. They follow their spiritual path fearlessly, relentlessly, even when the road ahead is not clear. They know they are connected to all creatures and all of creation through the Divine Ground of Being. And they know that by staying spiritually healthy themselves, they are leading their friends, family, community and all of creation toward a future with more hope and less spiritual illness.

In coming weeks I plan to post more about spiritual illness:
Why it happens.
Why science cannot prevent it.
How and why religions are making it worse.
How to overcome it.

Plus!: Transcendental Meditation 50 years later -- a path to God that became a multi-million dollar industry.

We Can't Go On Like This

It’s been pointed out all over the place in 2017: this is the first time in worldwide human history that obesity is a bigger problem than starvation, more people die of old age than from infectious diseases, and people who commit suicide outnumber those killed in all the wars, terrorist acts and violent crimes combined.

The LA Times ran an interview with a filmmaker last Sunday, who said something about “these profoundly dark times…” and I had to wonder, as I often do when I often hear people say things like that, “WTF is she talking about?” Maybe it’s an ignorance of history thing. It mentioned that she was 38, which means she was born the same year I started college at Stony Brook. In those days unemployment was about double what it is now, inflation was like quadruple, violent crime rates were the highest for the last 60 or 70 years. I remember mentioning AIDS to a friend in Ohio, and she said, “that’s the disease that old Jewish people get, right?” In New York City, the Dakota was black, Trinity Church was black, all the subway cars were covered inside and out with graffiti (which at least was not all black). I assumed they were supposed to be like that. I have no idea what Times Square looked like because nobody went there unless they wanted to score drugs and/or get mugged.

But the thing that struck me most about my first year back in college was the way every conversation about the future was marked by the same caveat.

“In 15 or 20 years, if we’re all still around…”

“In the future, if we haven’t blown ourselves to bits…”

“The next generation or two, provided anyone survives the nuclear holocaust…”

And this was a couple of years before Jonathan Schell’s Pulitzer winning book “The Fate of The Earth”, a reasoned scholarly analysis of the likelihood and possible aftermath of nuclear war between the US and the USSR which deteriorated repeatedly into a rant that was essentially “OMG we are going to fucking obliterate humanity!”

Those were dark times. Too dark even to be profound.

Did I mention the garbage strike in NYC? Not only dark, but stinky were those times.

So what is wrong with these times? What’s wrong with living longer and healthier than ever? Is it somehow bad that worldwide poverty has been cut in half in the last 20 years? Is their something evil and scary about the fact that crime rates everywhere have trended downward for almost 40 years?

Okay, yes, we might could go to war with North Korea, which has a few nukes and coupla ICBMs, but hasn’t yet figured out how to combine the two. In the eighties the US and USSR could wipe out all civilization with a fraction of their waiting nukes; as Winnie Churchill said “the rest would just make the rubble bounce.”

And yes, too many people still don’t have the rights they should have and aren’t treated fairly as they should be. But would they want to go back to the way things were 40 years ago, or 100 years ago?

Yes, there have been 7,500 tragic, unnecessary American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 16 years. Is that worse than roughly 60,000 deaths in the 10 years of the Vietnam war. Or 400,000 deaths in 4 years of WWII. 700,000 in the Civil War.

In short, the vast majority of everyone you’ll ever meet today is healthier, wealthier, safer and happier than they likely would have been in any other period in history. I refer you again to Steven Pinker’s book “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, the reading of which should be a universal prerequisite to getting an internet connection.

So why has the suicide rate in the United States surged to the highest levels in 30 years? Why are the best-selling prescription drugs all antidepressants? Why are so many people scared or angry or hopeless? Are these times really that dark?

Yes. Yes they are. Because while scientists and doctors and yes even politicians have made our material life better in the last couple of centuries, our spiritual world has been swirling down the toilet. Our religions are burnt-out husks of ancient spiritual guidance systems. Our so-called spiritual leaders hopelessly cling to these failed institutions, but they have no idea how to help us connect to the Divine. The people know this, and they are abandoning traditional religions in droves.

The fastest growing “religion” in the US is “spiritual but not religious”. NOT Atheists, agnostics, secularists, humanists. The vast majority of Americans still believe in a higher power, but they have no idea what it is or where it is or how to connect to it, or even what to call it.

The ills of our time are all spiritual ills. Greed, pride, prejudice, fear, hatred, hopelessness. These things don’t happen around spiritually healthy, truly Spirit-centered souls. These things are killing us. We can’t go on like this.

So what can we do? I’ll tell you. Check back on Labor Day 2017 for Part 2.

Spirituality & Health Magazine

I recently picked up the May/June 2017 issue of Spirituality & Health. I'd glanced through a few copies in the jury room when I got called for jury duty a few months ago, and thought I should maybe check it out, but I was really delighted when I finally had a chance to read an issue carefully.

The first columnist, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, startled me by expressing some basic beliefs that are very close to mine, beliefs which I thought made me an outlier in the world of spiritual thought. For instance, someone asked "If you weren't born Jewish, would you choose to be Jewish?" He replied (in part) "I suspect that I would find Judaism too complicated, tribal, and political for my taste. I don't think I would join any religion, but rather immerse myself in the wisdom and contemplative practices of all of them, and weave my own spiritual path from them." I'm guessing this is pretty much what he has done, though he still wears a yarmulke and calls himself rabbi. My objections to the Southern Baptist faith I was raised in are different, but the path I've found sounds like it's much the same as his.

On the afterlife, he says: "...You and I are unique, temporary wavings of an infinite and undying 'ocean' we call God. When we die, we don't go anywhere; we simply return to the 'ocean' that waves us." In my writings, I've called it a big ball of spiritual energy, or I've suggested we are pieces pinched off of a big ball of spiritual play-doh. The idea is that we continue to exist after death, by being reintegrated into the One Spirit; any individuals born or reborn later will be a mixture of the spiritual energies we've all contributed to this 'ocean'.

One reader says "you seem to be so open-minded as to be almost empty-headed. What do you stand for?" Shapiro then describes himself as a Jewish practitioner of Perennial Wisdom, and goes on to list the 4 common traits of this wisdom (or philosophy,) pretty much the way I have paraphrased them in my own writings.

Finally, I loved this answer in the July/August issue (the first I've received as a subscriber):

Can you recommend a guru I can follow? "Any of the Hasbro egg-shaped Weebles will do. 'Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down' is their core teaching, and you would do well to embrace it..."

Divided We Fall

The things that make us all alike are much more numerous and important than the things that make us different.

The most recent scientific consensus is that 99.5% of the DNA of every human being on the planet is exactly alike. If a strand of your DNA was the length of a football field, the part that makes you different from everyone else in the world would stretch about a foot and a half. Easy first down. Maybe it's reasonable to spend 0.5% of your day pondering these ironclad genetic differences. That's 12 minutes -- or 8 if you sleep. A coupla commercial breaks. For the rest of the day, think about the fact that everyone else on the planet is almost totally, completely, exactly like you.

We want to think of ourselves as unique and special, and of course, you are. Go talk to yourself in the mirror; no one else in the world has that face or that voice. No one else in history has the exact same talents and fears. But what mostly makes you who you are is not the 0.5 things that make you different, it's the 95.5 things you share with every other person in the world. 

People tend to divide themselves into groups based on skin color, education, the language they speak, the country they or their ancestors came from. These divisions make our lives smaller, they make our world smaller. They cut us off from opportunities to make friends, to do business, to experience new games, food, art, music. What's more, too often it seems to me that the public personalities who emphasize these divisions, the people who encourage us to divide ourselves into these groups, are not really trying to help members of their group or any other group. They are trying to gain more power or influence for themselves, trying to herd people toward their personal cause, for their personal benefit. Divide and Conquer, as the saying goes. It's never Divide and Help, or Divide and Heal.

Check out the sea of humanity roiling through your local mall or ball game or concert. People come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors, children and elderly, excited teenagers, weary parents. And every one of them wants to be safe, to be healthy and free from hunger and fear. They all want a new cell phone and Netflix. They want to enjoy life. They want to be loved. They want all of those things for their children. And they are each connected to and part of the one Divine, just like you are.

Advice on Making Decisions

Of course the Divine has a plan. But it doesn't have to tell you what it is.

One of the hardest things about the spirit-centered life is learning to connect with the Divine without expecting any results. You hear catchphrases applied to various tasks like "it's the journey, not the destination", or "the joy is in the process, not the product"; our meditation and mindfulness needs to be done with that kind of attitude. To experience the Spirit and be aware of its presence at all times is not so much a goal as a path; not the endpoint, but the guiding light.

OTOH, while on this planet in this body we have to make plans. We have to decide on careers, partners, hobbies -- some of us multiple times for each. On a daily basis we have to decide how to dress, what to eat. If the Divine doesn't hit you with some gold tablets or vandalize your bedroom wall with graffiti that points the way forward, you still have decisions to make. Here are some ideas: look at the choices in front of you, write them down if that helps. Then ask a couple of questions:

1. Which option is the best use of my talents and abilities?
2. Which option will be of most benefit to my community (or spiritual eco-system in SpiritMode speak)? 

If the answer to number 1 is clear right away, do that. If not, go on to question 2.

DO NOT, under any circumstances, try to "follow your passion". This is one of the big fallacies of late 20th century. I actually had a therapist tell me " don't think about what you 'should' do, concentrate on what you want to do". It took me a couple of confused and rudderless years to realize that being guided by your own desires is a trap.

Just think of Buddha's most famous directive, the 4 Noble Truths:
Life is full of suffering.
Suffering is caused by DESIRE.(emphasis is mine of course, Buddha didn't use italics)
We can end suffering by eliminating desire.
We can eliminate desire by following the 8-fold path.

Or chapter one of the Tao Te Ching:
"Without desire, we see life's true essence.
With desire, we see only it's physical manifestations."

Who are you going to trust, the founders major religions, with 3000 years of history and billions of followers,  or the writer of some self-help book? (You might also ask yourself which "self" that writer was trying to help).

One more thing to remember: If a decision is really, really hard, then it doesn't matter. A lot of people have a hard time accepting this. But if you come down to 2 or 3 options, and the benefits and pitfalls of your options are so close that you can't make up your mind, clearly they all have equal chances of success or failure. So draw straws, throw darts, toss a coin. Then get to work. The time and energy you waste agonizing over a decision is costing you, too.

Mysteries of the Spiritual and the Physical

The Divine is very confusing, if you make the mistake of thinking about it. It is a doing as much as a being, a guide as well as a path. It is everywhere we are, and everything we are, but if we could go somewhere that was nowhere and nothing, it would be there too.

I've been reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, which is mostly about all the wacky people who made great scientific discoveries, or scary things that might happen to us, like massive asteroids hitting the earth or Yellowstone Park blowing a huge hole in it. It's very entertaining.

One of the parts I found most interesting is the discussion of sub-atomic particles. Quarks, bosons, etc. And how, when physicists were able to learn more about the atom, they realized that none of its parts behaved the way we expect things to behave. They are still trying to find new particles that fit their calculations, or new calculations to fit the particles they know of. Also, the Large Hadron Collider is about to be switched back on after a massive 2 year upgrade. Having found the Higg's boson, they are now going to look for Susy -- supersymmetrical particles that will either confirm physicist's Standard Model of how the universe works, or send them back to the drawing board to come up with a new theory.

Reading the details of these quests to figure out how gravity works, what dark matter is made of, why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, etc, makes it much less scary to think about how it can be that the Spirit creates us all, connects us all, nurtures and guides all of creation. Life has mysteries on many levels. Except of course on TV, where even the mysteries are predictable.

UPDATE:

As of 2017-08-05 (Unix style time), the LHC has been running at nearly full energy, and no Susy's or wimps have shown up.