What Works?

We are here to grow up. This is the essence of the Spiritual Journey. It is the work of a true human being. And we grow up against our will all along the way.

Growing up is squaring up to how things are, and what is called for in response. It is facing up to the conflicts, contradictions, dichotomies, discordances, polarities and opposition that go to the very heart of life and being. We cannot do this without bearing the pain of being alive.

There is no growing up without bearing the pain of that growth, of the realization of how things are and of the way that clashes with the way we want things to be. We bear the pain of our conflicts and contradictions—and of the trials and tribulations produced by our conflicts and contradictions.

We put ourselves in accord with how things are and what that means for us, and what we need to do about it. We step into the conflicts and contradictions and all that this implies, reconciling what can be reconciled and living consciously within the tension of polarities that defy reconciliation, and must simply be borne throughout forever. We do this in each situation as it arises all our life long.

What works in one situation may not work in any other situation. What works now may not work then. What works here may not work there. The shoe that fits today may pinch in a month. We live in each situation by walking two paths at the same time. For instance, there is what we do to pay the bills and there is what we pay the bills to do. We have to live the life that is ours to live within the life we are living. How we work this out is the essence of the Spiritual Journey. Working things out, integrating opposites, bearing the pain, in the service of balance and harmony IS the Spiritual Journey!

The spiritual journey is the search for what works. For how we should live what remains of our lives. For what is important, and how we might align ourselves with it. We are looking for ways of realizing that which is truly good in our lives—both in terms of perceiving it, and in terms of embracing and expressing it. We are looking for the Good. We are seeking to serve the Good, the Good of all sentient beings, the Good of all there is.

And someone’s good is someone else’s bad. What works to make peace in the family may not work to make peace in our soul. What works in any situation will not satisfy/please everyone in the situation. We decide what “works” means in each particular situation, and do that. “Sacrifice and acquiesce, Kid. Sacrifice and acquiesce.”

We work out what works in each situation as it arises, with no eternal, absolute principles, and no abiding policies. What works is as temporary as every here and now. What works here and now may never work anywhere else. Being right about what needs to be done, and paying the price to do it is bearing the cross Jesus told us to pick up and follow him.

It seems to be a law that when something is working on one level, something is not working on another level. Conscious awareness has to recognize and reconcile the conflict—or bear consciously the agony of a conflict that cannot be reconciled. Recognizing, reconciling, conflicts and integrating opposites and working things out is not our preferred thing to do. We deny, escape, and pretend our life away. Diversion and distraction work to free us from the burden of deciding what to do about what and how, even though they do not work for anyone’s good over time.

We are seeking to serve the good of all sentient beings, the Good of all there is, but how good is the good we call good? The prime requirement of the Spiritual Journey, and the life of a true human being, is that of living transparent to ourselves and “transparent to transcendence” (Joseph Campbell). We live to be mindfully aware of what we are doing to express, or conceal, who we are at all times.

So, what is good and how do we know? We don’t know. We live by hunches, nudges and guesses—and change our mind in view of the evidence uncovered by living in light of what we determine to be good. We can be wrong. And when we are wrong, we have to realize that and make amends, “turn the light around” (A Taoist phrase) and make another choice.

Our life is a process of changing our mind about what is important. We grow in our ability to take an increasing number of things into account in discerning and doing what is important, what is good, in the time and place of our living. If we live long enough, we see things differently over time. How many life times would it take to see—and be right about—the good in every situation and circumstance? We grow in our ability to see what we look at. We cannot assume that the way we see things is the way things are.

“How do you know what is important?” I asked a friend as we walked for a bite to eat. She stopped, leaned down, and pointed to a daffodil growing by the sidewalk. “It’s like this,” she said. “You can look at this flower and either see it or not see it.”

As it is with the daffodil, so it is with our lives. We can look at life and either see it, or not see it. We can look at what is important, and either see it or not see it. Our assumptions about life, about living, about what is important, about what is good, can keep us from seeing these things. We have to see our assumptions about the thing as well as the thing. We have to see what we don’t see—what else there is to see—if we hope to see at all.

Deena Metzger says, “The response determines everything that follows.” Well. It certainly influences some of the things that follow. If we always see the same things in the same ways, our response will always be predictable, routine. A predictable, routine life is not worth living.

We have to live as Jesus did. Jesus didn’t do anything that was expected of him. He didn’t do anything by the book—or the same way he did it last week. And, what has the church done in the aftermath of Jesus? Worshiped the book! Jesus threw the book away—we enshrined it. We covered it in leather and highlighted the words of Jesus’ in red. Everybody in the church does it the way it is supposed to be done—predictably, routinely. The church is a dysfunctional family with everyone playing the part assigned to her, to him, saying only the things that are supposed to be said.

No four letter words, please. And, if one slips out, make sure it is of the mild variety, like hell, or damn, and then be quick to say, “Pardon my French,” and twitter a bit. And, no questions allowed, certainly none questioning authority—and authority in the church is not usually the minister or the governing board. It’s often a Sunday School class, or a women’s group, or those who are thought to contribute the most money.

You can’t be honest in the church. You can’t say how you feel if it isn’t the way you are supposed to feel. You can’t say what you think if it isn’t the way you are supposed to think. You can’t say what you believe if it isn’t the way you are supposed to believe. The church may say, “All are welcome,” but it has a way of making you feel as though you don’t belong if you don’t do the things that are supposed to be done the way you are supposed to do them. You can be excommunicated overnight, by common consent, with no one making a motion or leading a discussion, or taking a vote.

There is a very narrow range of acceptable responses in church, as in any dysfunctional system. “The response determines everything that follows,” but when you can only respond in certain predetermined ways, everything stays nicely in place, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.”

That’s exactly the situation Jesus stepped into. And he stirred things up, made waves, rocked the boat, turned over apple carts (and the tables of the money changers), radically offended everyone who could be offended, lived out of accord with every Book of Order of his day, and said what was on his mind. That’s the way to do it. We have to destabilize dysfunctional systems if there is to be any hope of things changing. We have to respond in ways that are not expected. We have to do things that have never been done. We have to shock and appall. We cannot come in on cue and read the lines as they are written in the script that is handed to us and expect things to change, ever.

Ah but. You know what is going to happen if we live like this. Drop a fully-functioning person into a dysfunctional situation, and it all goes to hell. That is what happened with Jesus. Jesus said things that weren’t supposed to be said. He did things that weren’t supposed to be done. He thought things that weren’t supposed to be thought. And, the Keepers of the Traditions did everything they could think of to get him in line. When he refused to cooperate, when he would not play the game the way the game was supposed to be played, they killed him, decently and in order.

When we live out of our heart, with as much compassion as we can muster for the way life is being lived around us, things change. They change in unpredictable ways, in ways that are out of our control, but they change. “The response determines everything that follows” in the sense that things will not be what they would have been with a different, more predictable, response. But, the response does not control anything that follows. We cannot be so smart as to live in this moment in a way that controls what happens in the moments following this one. We can influence all the other moments, but we cannot manipulate them. We cannot have life unfold according to our blueprint and design. Neither can God. Influence, not control, is the watchword of heaven. It is to be our own mantra as we fashion our responses to the events and circumstances of our lives in each situation as it arises.

We would be wise to evaluate our response before we release it onto the world. This is much better than just counting to ten. What compels us toward our initial, impulsive, reaction? Is that the best we can do? How are we seeing the situation that compels us toward this reaction and not that one? How else might we see the situation? How else might we respond to it? In light of what are we living? Toward what are we living? Whose good is served by the good we call good? Can we imagine a better Good even though it might not be good for us?

What works? “Experience and reflection, Kid. Experience and reflection.” Do something you call good. It will have an impact. Something will happen in response. See what happens. Respond to it as you think it needs to be responded to. After several rounds of this, step back and consider what has been going on. Think about it. Reflect on your experience. Sit in the silence and see what arises, emerges, “of its own accord.”

Joseph Campbell said, “Reflection on experience produces new realizations.” New ideas of the good come to light when we think about our ideas of the good in light of our experience. We see things differently with time—if we keep looking, evaluating, reflecting, experiencing. It takes a lot of looking to be able to see. And nothing shuts seeing down as quickly as thinking we see.

You have heard me talk about doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises with the gifts of your original nature that you have to work with. You have not heard me talk about doing what is good there. The good is philosophical ideal that is rarely an option– a possibility–in our actual life, because the good is not an Absolute to be realized anywhere in the cosmos. The good is always good in relation to something that is bad. It is always better than something else. Not good forever in and of itself.

The good is always good for some things, and not so good for other things. A 747 is good for transporting you across the country, but it is not so good for mowing your lawn. And what is good for the lion is not so good for the antelope, and vice-versa.  In some situations, there are no good options. In those situations, we say “We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.” The choice there is to be damned and be done with it, by flipping a coin, perhaps, and dealing with the outcome.

We do not get to choose our choices, and when there are no good choices to choose from, only variations of bad choices, with unwanted, or unlivable, results, we are left with going with what we consider the best of the bad, and making the best of the fallout from that choice.

In all of this, we bear the pain of being unable to do better than bad. We may bear it forever. We bear it knowing that any other choice would have been bad as well—and we look for ways of redeeming what can be redeemed by living to make all the good choices we are capable of making from that point on.

We live toward the good in every situation even though that may not be possible in all situations. This is called “living anyway, nevertheless, even so” toward the best we are capable of being and doing throughout what remains of the time left for living–even as we bear consciously the pain of being unable to do better in numerous times and places in a world where too often what we get isn’t worth having.

Prayer

I.

Prayer is where we articulate the truth of how it is with us, sometimes with “sighs too deep for words.” We rob prayer of its vitality, and of its capacity to heal and restore our souls, bind up, make well and encourage us for the task at hand when we reduce it to a list of needs and blessings. The spiritual task is to wake up, grow up, square up to the truth of how it is with us, get up and take up the work of bringing ourselves—our gift, our genius, our daemon, our art—forth in doing what needs to be done in the present moment of our living.

We do not pray to get. We pray to be. To be who we need to be, doing what needs to be done the way only we can do it, where, when and how it needs to be done, in each situation as it arises. All our life long.

Prayer puts us in sync with ourselves and our life by articulating what is important and providing us with the emptiness, stillness and silence required to pray in a manner “too deep for words,” in order to know what’s what and what needs to be done about it in each here/now of our life.

We do not pray best with words. We have ceased to pray when we translate prayer into statements. We make a mockery of the entire experience. Prayer IS experience! Is our response to experience! Is the experience of life, living, being alive to the time and place of our living!

II

We hear “pray without ceasing,” and we think, “How in the world would we do that?” We have to do our taxes, pay the bills, get the cat to the vet, water the lawn, change the diapers, do all the things that need to be done in a day! We have a life to live with all the responsibilities that come with it! We have to fit prayer in as we are able!

But. If we hear, “Live without ceasing!” We would think, “Yeah, sure. What do you think I do?” We would have no problem with that. We don’t cease living until we are dead. Except, of course, we do cease living long before we are dead. We go through the motions of life without being alive to what we are doing. We live out our lives without being alive anywhere along the way.

Prayer is life lived as it should be lived—life lived the right way—alive to what is happening and what is called for in response in each moment of every situation, all our life long–in tune with yin and yang (Pronounced “Yong”), the “right order,” doing the right thing at the right time in the right way. Life is prayer when it is lived this way, in alignment with the Tao, with ma’at, with the flow of life and being.

A life well-lived is a life lived in this way and is prayer without ceasing. Is being here, now, to integrate opposites and dance with the contradictions, balance Yin and Yang. Harmonize Mythos (Instinct/intuition/imagination/creativity) and Logos (Reason/Logic/Intellect/Analytics). And do what needs to be done all the way along The Way. To live like this is to pray without ceasing!

III.

Prayer is what we feel and how we respond to that—not what we say. Prayer is beyond words, a felt communion with experience, with life.

Prayer is integrity. Sincerity. Spontaneity.

Prayer is a way of being, a way of being in the world, a way of being at-one with the world, of recognizing and acknowledging our oneness with the world, with all that is in the world, living with “Namaste” to the world!

Prayer is recognizing and acknowledging our helplessness, vulnerability, gratitude, thanksgiving, dependence, pathos, sadness, joy, sorrow… On a feeling level, with no words involved.

Prayer is knowing what we know and responding appropriately to what is called for. Prayer is an attitude, a perspective, a way of being in the world, with the world. Prayer is a frame of mind—a good faith connection with all living things. Prayer is the spirit with which we go about being alive.

We pray with “Sighs too deep for words.” When we try to put that into words, we break the spell, and cannot get it back, with an entire dictionary/thesaurus in hand.

Prayer is what we feel, not what we think, but. Our experience has to be made conscious, for there is more to us than with the spiders and flying squirrels, squid and bison. Our place is to be lights in the darkness of being (In the words of Carl Jung and Jesus of Nazareth), to make the unconscious conscious, to think about what we feel, to live with a foot in two worlds—the unconscious and invisible world and the conscious visible world—and make the connection between worlds–by articulating what we “apprehend that cannot be comprehended” (Abraham Heschel).

We think with words. We talk about experience. We reflect on experience. We interpret experience. We create new realizations and imagine new possibilities and transform the world we experience through experiencing the world we experience.

Experiencing our experience is our gift to the world and it is the greatest gift the world has ever known. Experiencing our experience is the way of deepening, expanding, enlarging our experience to take more than our experience into account. When we think about our experience, we bring contrary experiences to mind, and see how disparate experiences are similar, related, and not so different after all—and how seemingly identical experiences are nothing at all alike.

Thinking about our experience opens up worlds upon worlds of additional experiences, and, like that, we are onto something never thought of, never realized, never known—and that leads to something else, and creation leaps forward, evolving as it goes, and the world is transformed overnight, day-by-day, all because we think about our experience. And this, too, is prayer.

Prayer is where we articulate the truth of how it is with us—the truth of how things are—and where we realize what that means, and what that calls for, and what we are being asked to do in response. As we “pray without ceasing,” we live prayerfully/truthfully, and make all things new by the way we respond to the experience of being alive.

IV.

The work prayer requires of us is to wake up, grow up, square up to the truth of how things are, get up and take up the call to bring forth our gifts, our nature and our virtues, our art, our daemon, our genius in doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises.

Prayer is at the heart of the work to be awake, aware, and alive. The work of self-realization, of  individuation, to use Carl Jung’s term, which is the work of articulation—of prayer—saying who we are and also are, how it is with us, what is important to us, and what we need in order to do what is ours to do within the context and circumstances of our lives. We pray ourselves into being. The word of creation is a prayerful word, a truthful word. Prayer is as truthful as it gets.

Prayer is a form of hermeneutics, which is concerned with seeing, and saying, the truth, even as it evolves, changes, transforms in relationship with its circumstances and our perception of them.

Hermes was the messenger of the Gods in the Greek Pantheon, the master of eloquence, interpretation, translation, explanation, right-seeing-and-saying/right-saying-and-seeing. It is from the word “Hermes” that we get “hermeneutics,” interpreting and making plain the truth. It is worth noting that the Roman name for Hermes is Mercury, which is also known as Quicksilver, something that shifts, moves, changes quickly, such as the interpretation, understanding of truth—and even, truth itself. Now it’s this, now it’s that. Look quickly if you want to see it. It is on the way to becoming something else, perhaps its opposite–because truth is not a steady state of being, but a reflection of our perception of what’s what and how things are, which is constantly shifting and impossible to pin down, or pen up!

We do not think of truth as something that is changeable. We want “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!” The implication being that truth will always, and forever, be just what it is. We think Absolute Truth, like God, is “Eternal, Unchangeable, Immutable.” However, this is not the case with either truth or God (And so Meister Eckhart could say, “The final leave taking is leaving God for God”).

Truth is not static, but dynamic, changing, shape-shifting, evolving, emerging, unfolding, becoming. We have to be as quick as truth, as God is if we would keep up, and know in this moment what is trying to be known here, now. “You don’t keep new wine in old wineskins,” said Jesus, because new wine is still fermenting, and will burst the old wineskins that have lost their elasticity and cannot expand to incorporate the new ways of understanding the world, life, ourselves.

Truth evolves. The movement of truth is everlasting and everywhere. “It’s a new world, Golda,” said Tevya. We have to be ready to receive well the world that is changing before our eyes. The way we have thought is not the way to think! Wake up! Wake up!

Things are not what we think they are. This is the nature of truth, which is like quicksilver, turning, changing, becoming more than we ever imagined, something other than we would ever guess. The nature of truth is reflected in the polarities that define existence: This is the way things are and this is the way things also are. But which way is it really? we ask. Both ways! At the same time.

V.

The second greatest commandment is “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus espouses the Golden Rule (which was not original with Jesus by a long stretch): “In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” You think that’s clear don’t you? Well, square these two texts with the parable about the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13). Sometimes we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and sometimes we say, “Who made me your caretaker?” (cf. Luke 12:14). Sometimes, we do it this way, and sometimes, we do it that way. And, how do we know when to do what? We take our chances and learn from our mistakes.

The polarities are evident throughout the Sermon on the Mount. After the Beatitudes, which themselves are polarities in opposition to the apocalyptic and messianic expectations of Jesus’ day, Jesus says, “Don’t think I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets! I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17), then he spends the rest of the Sermon on the Mount setting aside the popular thinking about the Law and the Prophets. “You have heard it said,” he says time and again, “but I say unto you!” (For instance, “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ But I say unto you, ‘Do not resist an evildoer, but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you to take your coat, give your cloak as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.’”)

All of which is to say that the truth is expanded, enlarged, deepened by what is also true, and that we who want things spelled out, and made plain, have to understand the nature of truth, and the task of hermeneutics, interpretation, explanation. We are dealing with quicksilver here, as slippery a substance as there is in the entire Periodic Chart of substances.

Truth will not be nailed down, codified, defined, locked up, walled in, roped, thrown, tied and branded. Truth is this AND that. Sometimes it’s like this, and sometimes it’s like that. “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.” Which way IS it? Both ways at the same time And we live within the polarities, between the opposites, laughing at the very idea of saying how it is really without saying how it also is really. If we strive for consistency and constancy and one-way-only-ness (the RIGHT way, of course), we only show that we don’t have a clue.

Prayer is truth. Truth is contrary. Prayer is the struggle to say what is and also is, to live on the boundary between Yin and Yang, in the tension of opposite truths: This is the way things are and the way things also are and that’s the way things are! Prayer is waking up, squaring up to the difference between how it is and how we wish it were, bearing the pain of that contradiction, and bringing forth who we are as a blessing within the context and circumstances of our lives. That’s what prayer will do for you. It doesn’t end there.

VI.

We feel better when we pray, when we understand prayer as being present with what is present with us. Prayer “works” to calm the spirit, soothe the soul by enabling us to be aware of what’s what and what can be done about it with the gifts of our original nature and the innate virtues/characteristics which come with us from the womb. Prayer renews us for the task at hand. It’s therapeutic to pray, to lay it out, to see and say what’s what, to articulate what is happening, and what we can do about it, and where we need help with it. Just saying, “Help!” helps.

Prayer does not rearrange the universe to our liking. Cemeteries are filled with people for whom prayer did not work. So are mental wards, prisons, nursing homes, and battlefields. We wouldn’t need dentists if prayer worked. Or hospitals. Or carpenters. Or Prozac. It would wreck the economy, if prayer worked. But, we wouldn’t need an economy if prayer worked. The fact that prayer does not rearrange the external world to suit our liking will not stop us from praying. We pray because being here/now is the prerogative of prayer. To not pray is to not be here/now. To not be engaged in doing what is called for here/now.

About those who say they do not pray, I say, they don’t understand prayer as the opening of the spirit, of the self, to that which is beyond us, to more than meets the eye, to that which has been called, among other things, “God.” Prayer is casting ourselves into the Presence, the Mystery, the Wonder of the Mystery, of the Sacred Source of Life and Being—that Numinous Reality which primal peoples experienced and referred to as “God.”

We might think of prayer as communion with the Mystery, the Sacred Source of Life and Being. It is not thought so much as experienced, felt. Prayer is an awareness like the experience of compassion. We don’t think, “Okay. I’m going to be compassionate now.” We don’t say, “Let us bow for a moment of compassion.” We are compassionate, spontaneously, automatically, naturally. That is how we pray.

We are built for prayer, for seeking help, companionship, connection, communion with whatever we envision as being beyond us, yet within us, and capable of helping us, by receiving us, accompanying us, connecting with us. Where do we turn when we have nowhere to turn? Before we reason things out? That would be the unmovable spot, “the still point of the turning world” (W.B. Yeats), the axis mundi, the world axis, that grounds each of us, anchors each of us in the truth of our own being. Prayer is the connection with the source of life and being–with who we are–stabilizing us, restoring our balance and harmony, and positioning us to do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises.

Prayer is also a mirror reflecting how it is with us on the spiritual level. Prayer reveals what is important to us. Prayer discloses what we want, what we fear, and the extent to which we consciously “turn to prayer,” or fervently reject it, exposes our understanding of the nature of the universe and the character of God, and indicates our tendency toward hope or despair. Prayer is a litmus test for our spiritual health, a barometer indicating the degree and quality of spirit within. It is a contradiction in terms to consider ourselves spiritual if we do not pray. It’s like a fish claiming to be a fish without swimming. We pray like a fish swims. It is what we do in response to the circumstances of our life.

And, if we don’t do it, if we are ashamed of it, if we view prayer as superstitious and childish and an obvious waste of time because we tried praying once and our parents divorced, or our spouse died, or any one of ten million other things didn’t go our way, and that just proves that prayer doesn’t work, I’m here to remind you that we don’t pray because prayer works. Prayer is not like a child before a candy counter pleading with her parent for a package of peppermint. We don’t pray to get what we want, or to avoid what we don’t want. We pray like a fish swims. It is what we do in response to the circumstances of our life.

VII.

Formulating verbal prayers, articulating what is important to us in each moment of life, saying what is true and what is also true in the here and now of existence, makes conscious what needs to be made conscious, enables us to see what needs to be done, squares us with what can, and cannot, be done, and helps us make what can be made of things within the context and circumstances of our lives.

Ah but, this is such a hard sell in the western world. We don’t do anything in the culture of the west that doesn’t pay off. We run a cost/benefit analysis before brushing our teeth. If we cannot calculate the results of a potential endeavor in a way that is obviously profitable in a quantifiable kind of way, we don’t fool with it. We don’t do anything that doesn’t “do any good.” And, it is obvious to us that prayer is one of those things.

For some time now, we have been of the opinion that we are on our own in this world. The Holocaust seems to have been the turning point for a number of us. If that is the best God can do, we reason, then we are just as well off praying to the Void, or not praying at all. We gave up on the idea of a God who can deliver a worthy future for the asking, and began to look to ourselves as the responsible agents of creation. We talked of “the courage to be,” and stepped alone into our future as those who knew that what happened there was up to us.

The posture of the Stoic Existentialist (Or the Rugged Individualist) doing what must be done with a granite face and a grim disposition, is not the posture of prayer. It is not a posture that lends itself to warmth, and good humor, and resiliency, or, even, likeability. People who do not allow themselves the privilege of praying from the heart—regardless of whether it is pointless, useless, and a waste of time—seal themselves off from one of the soul’s true joys, and increasingly become less joyful themselves.

I don’t think we can be alive, in the fullest, truest, sense of the word, without praying. And, the point of prayer is not getting anything done, it is praying! We don’t pray because it works, and is an effective way to alter the world of external, physical, apparent reality. We pray because we must, because we can’t help it, because its as natural as breathing, and because to not pray is to be hyper-vigilant and always on guard in order to keep ourselves from relapsing into the superstitious practices of our ancestors—and to become a cold, calculating, heartless, soul-less stone instead of a vibrant human being.

We pray without theology, or belief in God. Prayer is the environment in which the soul thrives, the air the soul breathes. When we consciously open ourselves to, and participate in, the experience of prayer, we nourish that which nourishes us on a level beyond rational comprehension. We pray because prayer grounds us, encourages us, sustains us, and enables us to face what must be faced and do what needs to be done about it throughout the time left for living.

How the Church Changes It’s Mind

The process by which the church forms it’s beliefs can be symbolized by a tent. Isaiah sings a new song in a foreign land: “Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes” (Isaiah 54:2). Our tent is too small.

When Abraham received the holy nudge to leave Haran, and walked away from his country, his kindred and his father’s house—setting forth for the land of Canaan, he was beginning the construction of a new way of thinking about God. He was writing a new theology. He pitched his tent in the hill country of Canaan, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there, the text says, he built an altar to the Lord, and invoked the name of the Lord. And then, he journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb, which was a tract of land in southern Judah, so that the word “Negeb,” came to mean simply “south.”

The early development of the people’s idea of God took place on the move. The process by which we came to think of God was a living, breathing, dynamic, evolving, unfolding, chaotic, and mobile process. I cannot underscore how important it is to understand that we did not learn to think about God from the place of a rigid, static, isolated, unchanging, stultifying, provincial, narrow, single point in history, or geography. We learned to think about God “on the fly,” over a long period of time, and large expanses of land. We did not think the same thing about God through all that time, over all those regions. We had a larger tent in the early years. Today, our tent is too small.

In the early years, our thinking about God was expanded by our experience. We encountered different peoples with different ways of thinking about God. Their ideas deepened our own. We were broadened by our contact with other lands, cultures and people. We spent long years in conversation with the most unimaginable kinds of concepts, stories, speculations and conclusions. The thinking of the people we encountered influenced ours. The Garden of Eden is a composite story compiled from our journeys through the eons. The Story of the Flood was a popular campfire legend that we told until we thought it was something we thought of, and took credit for.

The conception of the God we came to think about as ours was shaped and formed through the ages of our sojourn as we came into additional contact with other conceptions, other views, other ways of thinking about gods and goddesses. We would walk through a land, hear an idea, and walk on through another land and hear other ideas, and on our journey, we would reflect on what we had heard—without having to embrace any of it. The journey allowed us the freedom of rumination, reflection, contemplation and realization. It was a long, ongoing, walk-a-bout. We could turn ideas over in our mind without being forced to accept any of them, without being told there were things we had to think, and other things that we couldn’t think at all. We could form our own ideas of God, out in the desert, out in the wilderness, with none to condemn or condone, free from the burden of orthodoxy, tenets, books of doctrine, and conventional standards of belief and practice.

In the desert, beyond the jurisdiction of the priestly castes in the city-states, we could see the absurdity of child sacrifice, and decide that any God worthy of our allegiance would be just as happy with a nice fat goat. In the desert, thinking about our contact with such a wide variety of ideas and notions about God, we could connect the similarities among the different ways people thought of God, and could begin to think of ourselves as the connecting tissue, so to speak, with God using us as “a blessing to the nations,” to “draw all people to God,” and to help all the nations see that God is more than any of us can “ask, or think, say or imagine.” In the desert, our tent was expansive, inclusive. Today, our tent is too small.

Our thinking about God narrowed and became restrictive when the politicians won the day, named a king, built a temple, institutionalized religion, codified beliefs, required everyone to think the same way or else. But there were always those who had a different take on things. The Prophets kept the tent flap open, kept moving the stakes, kept loosening the ropes, kept saying: “We have to enlarge the tent! We have to remember where we came from. We have to know that God is not bound by, or limited to, our ideas of God, and that there is more to know of God than is known, or can be known!”

The Prophets were wanderers—mentally, if not physically. They imagined the God beyond the concepts, beyond the theology, beyond the doctrines of the day, any day. And, they called us to expand our thinking, to enlarge our tent, in order to make room for the unheard of, the scandalous, the heretical and profane, as God acted to shake the foundations, and transform our notions about who God is and what God will do.

God is not bound by our views of God, they told us. God is not restricted to what has been thought of God. “The spirit is like the wind that blows where it will.” And God is free to live beyond the concepts of God in order to create an Eternally New God, a God who has never been conceived. About whom Meister Eckhart said, “The final leave-taking is leaving God for God.”

As if to prove their point, “Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mark 1:9-12).

The wilderness is the birthplace of God. At the very least, it is the birthplace of new ideas about God. As we wander through the wilderness, through the emptiness of the desert, through the silence of the deserted places, things begin to stir. The process comes alive. Thought evolves, unfolds, and one’s tent expands. Jesus was a wanderer. Jesus’ thinking about God was not bound to how he was supposed to think of God. Jesus’ thinking about God was not restricted to what had been thought of God. “You have heard it said,” he said, “but I say unto you…” Jesus thought differently about God. Jesus’ tent was larger than theirs, or ours. Our tent is too small.

The Resurrection experiences ratified Jesus’ expansive approach to theology. There is more to God than meets the eye. Revelation continues. There is more to know than is known. We do not have the last word, or even the next to last word. We cannot freeze the frame and say, “This is it. This is all there is. This is all we need to know.” We cannot stop ideas from evolving, unfolding, expanding. We cannot kill ideas. Ideas will rise from the dead. God will not be entombed in the constructs of the past.

The angel told the women at the tomb, “I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He has been raised. Come see the place where he lay, then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him’” (Matthew 28:5-7). As it was with those who were disciples then, so it is with those who are disciples now. Jesus is ahead of us. If we want to see him, we are going to have to go where he is. Want to guess what that means?

It means leaving what we have become accustomed to, and wandering amid the possibilities. It means leaving our parents’ house (with all the connotations that phrase suggests) and enlarging our tent. We cannot think the resurrection is real without understanding that Jesus has gone before us into Galilee and beyond, into all the world. Jesus is “out there” (with all the connotations that phrase suggests) ahead of us, calling us to follow him. We fold our tents, and step into the world after Jesus, wandering, wondering, evolving.

The process by which the church forms its beliefs, and changes its mind, is symbolized by a tent. Tents are appropriate because thinking about God is a living, breathing, dynamic, unfolding, evolving, chaotic and mobile process. In living out of a tent, we avoid the tendency to lock ourselves into an unchanging concept of God, and open ourselves to new ideas, and new ways of thinking, after Isaiah’s summons to “Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.”

To say that Jesus is raised from the dead is to say that thinking about God cannot be confined to the concepts of the past—cannot be codified—cannot be frozen in place, unchanging, and unchangeable, forever. The world that stretches out before us is nothing like the world our ancestors knew. We cannot hope to do it the way they did it, and find our way. If we are going to take seriously the possibility of a spiritual journey, we are going to have to wing it into Galilee, and into all the world, in the spirit of the disciples, not knowing what we will find there, or what will be asked of us, or how we will respond, but trusting ourselves to the spirit that is like the wind blowing where it will, and to the path that opens before us as we step into the Mystery and all that lies Beyond.

Community and Chaos

We cannot do it alone. However, together we can create an environment that enables us to do just about anything we can imagine. As members of communities of innocence, we come together to spark within one another the creative response to life. We come together to nurture that spark into a flame, and to sustain the flame in the gale force winds howling up from the Void. Our place in a community of innocence enables us to bring forth the best within us in the engagement with chaos and evil.

Joseph Campbell said, “It took the Cyclops to bring out the hero in Ulysses.” Just so, it takes the chaotic disruption of our lives to awaken the creative genius within each of us, a genius that stirs to life in the company of those who know how to provide a space for the miracle of creation.

Life can be overwhelming. Living can take the life right out of us. Yet, in the presence of the right kind of community, we have what we need to find our way to the way that is The Way for us within any context or circumstance of life. One of the 10,000 spiritual laws states, “Anything can look good to those who aren’t clear about what is important. And everything can look hopeless to those who have given up hope—who see no reason to live in the service of hope.”

The right kind of community can remind us of the 10,000 spiritual laws and help us figure out what is important—and help us remember to live in the service of hope “anyway, nevertheless, even so.” A community of the right kind of people is good for emotional and spiritual support, for comfort and encouragement, for caring presence, for listening us through confusion to clarity, balance, sanity, and peace.

Our overall guiding strategy has to be putting ourselves in the position of making the best possible decision about what to do in each situation as it arises. A community of innocence can help us stay grounded in, centered and focused on, that goal.

We have to live to make the best decision possible regarding what to do in each situation as it arises. We do that best when we live in accord with our life, no matter what that might mean for us. Our task is to align ourselves with our life in the time and place of our living, and see where it goes. When we are fighting our life, resisting our life, opposing our life, we are not listening to our life, we are not seeking the gift to be found here and now, in the time and place of our living.

And, here we have to be clear about the two lives we are living. There is the life we live to pay the bills, and there is the life we pay the bills to live. One life is contrary to the other life, and we have to live in accord with both lives! We do this by walking two paths at the same time. And we do that by keeping an eye on the other path while we are walking on this path. What we do to pay the bills often takes the life right out of us. And what we do in the service of life often cannot begin to pay the bills. And so, the contradiction. The cross! In bearing this cross, we die and are raised from the dead again and again. And for this to happen, we have to be conscious of the two lives and bear the pain of their contradictions.

Things have their own rhythm and flow. We are to read the situation, and assist it toward its natural and preferred outcome. In order to do that, we have to stand aside, step back—get out of the way with our preferences, desires, fears, wants, dreads, will and opinion—and see what needs to be done, and what we can do about it. When we do it that way, we open the way to seeing, hearing and understanding—and to living appropriately in response to the moment unfolding before us.

We have to put our agenda away, and simply receive the moment, step naked, so to speak, into the situation as it arises, look around, see what is there, what is happening, what needs to happen, and what is being asked of us—what needs us to do it with our “skill set,” with the gift, talent, art, genius that identifies us as unique and individual, and makes us preeminently prepared to grace this particular situation with exactly what it needs in order to move toward “its natural and preferred outcome.”

When we get out of the way, by having no expectations, no agenda, no plan and no opinions, seeing, hearing and understanding happen automatically, and result in knowing. Knowing spontaneously, naturally, spontaneously becomes doing. Which transforms us and enhances our being. Our situations do this for us when we step into them innocent of all intentions and purposes, receive well what is there, and offer to it what we have to give. All of this works smoothly if we stay out of the way, and don’t try to exploit the situation to our perceived advantage and benefit—but trust the situation to be exactly what we need it to be, in spite of all appearances to the contrary.

Joseph Campbell said, “The hero always gets the adventure he/she is ready for.” And, “Where you stumble and fall, there is the treasure.” The adventure we get is never the one we have in mind. We don’t want the treasure where we stumble and fall, but the treasure up the way, over there, in far and distant lands, with all of the incumbent fortune and glory that we have in mind. In other words, we insert ourselves into the situation, and interfere with the natural unfolding of life there, looking for the way to the particular ending we have in mind. We have no business looking for endings. Our place is to look for what needs us to do it, and do it. We have an idea of how we want our life to be, and the more we operate out of what we think would be good for US, the farther we are from the adventure that is ours.

When we go looking for help with our life, seeking advice from friends, and therapists and self-help books, we are looking for a way to the end we have in mind for ourselves: How to get what we want. Or, we seek ways to avoid what we don’t want. Either way, the help we seek for ourselves is not help with the life that needs us to live it, but help escaping, avoiding, that life and the adventure that is to be had there. We don’t want help living that life. We don’t want that adventure.

And so, Joseph Campbell said, “That which you seek lies far back in the darkest corner of the cave you most do not want to enter.” What does wanting know?

Let’s say our parents divorce when we are 15. We don’t want our parents to divorce. We want our life to be rosy, smooth and easy. The life we would prefer is not always the one that has our name on it. Will we live the adventure that is ours to live? Willingly? Cooperatively? Will we put ourselves in accord with our life, and see what we can do with it? Will we seek the treasure where we stumble and fall?

What does the phrase, “Thy will, not mine, be done,” mean to you? With the “Thy” being the life that is yours to live?

Let’s say a war comes along and sweeps us up into the army, or sweeps all our belongings and possessions away. Or sweeps us into a POW camp, or some variation of a Gulag Archipelago. How do we respond? Do we say Yes! or No! to the adventure at hand?

The adventure we get is always the one we are ready for, and always the one we don’t want anything to do with. We grow up against our will, remember. What will we do? Will we show ourselves to be worthy of adventure? Or, will we pass on it, and wait for one more in keeping with our idea of how such things ought to be? One that does not require us to grow up at all? Will we seek the treasure where we stumble and fall? Where our life goes off the tracks? Where there is nothing but nothing as far as we can see?

When we put ourselves in accord with our life, and seek the treasure where we never thought there would be a treasure, things shift in an imperceptible, yet undeniable, way.

We find doors opening where we didn’t know there would be doors at all. Help that, before, we wouldn’t have recognized as being helpful, comes to our aid. Bill Moyers asked Joseph Campbell (In The Power of Myth), “Don’t you feel sorry for people who have no invisible means of support?” “Invisible support” comes to those who trust themselves to their adventure. But. There is a catch.

The catch is that we cannot exploit the support that comes to us on our adventure, and use it in the service of our personal advantage. There is a divide, a chasm, between our adventure and our advantage. Our adventure is not for our benefit, not for our gain, not for our advantage. We do not benefit in any personal way from the adventure at hand. The Hero serves the community. The individual serves the whole. The boon is for all humankind. And Jesus actually dies on the cross.

The Buddha did not live for the aggrandizement of the Buddha. Jesus did not live for the prestige and renown of being Jesus. Stat sheets and personal records of achievement are meaningless on the journey, on the adventure, that is ours to undertake. Help is available, but not for our personal advancement—only for the work that is ours to do, for the completion of our journey, our adventure, for the sake of a good that is greater than our personal good.

We may find that the help may come to us from outside of us, and it may come from inside of us in the form of dreams and realizations, nudges, hunches. We have to be quiet and perceptive in order to evaluate whether something is helpful or not. It may look good, but is it? Sit with it for a while. The rush to judgment is always a slippery slope. “Time will tell” whether something is helpful or not, so take your time evaluating the value of the help that comes your way. The Shel Silverstein verse is beautifully said and to the point: “Some kind of help is the kind of help that help is all about, and some kind of help is the kind of help we all could do without.”

An AA slogan is exactly  what we need at this point: “Take what you need, and leave the rest behind.”

When we put ourselves in accord with our life, we have an attitude of openness that receives and perceives each situation as it arises, sees what is happening there, what needs to happen, what is being asked of us and decides what to do in response. In order to know what is being asked of us in a situation, we have to be able to view that situation without prejudice, that is, without fear or desire. We have to be free of self-interest on any level in order to evaluate the situation, and determine the appropriate course to take.

This is where the help we need is to be found–in emptying ourselves of everything, even the desire to be empty. The right kind of emptiness, stillness and silence is the source of “a very present help in times of trouble.” The right kind of emptiness, etc., is found in the space between breaths. There is nothing there. No thoughts, no emotions, nothing. Practice being there in stillness and silence, waiting and watching for what occurs to you “out of nowhere,” and see where it leads.

When life goes to hell around us, it is to be at the center point of the normal distribution curve to ask, “What the hell?” and go to hell with it. To ask, “Why try, if this is all the good it does?” and quit. We quit trying. We quit working at our life. We opt for whatever is convenient, “smooth and easy,” and contribute to the madness, by not caring, not noticing, not waiting, not watching–and losing ourselves in a wasteland of addiction/distraction and denial.

It is precisely when life goes to hell around us that we need to stand up, step forward to meet Hell coming at us–and make our best decisions–the first being for emptiness, stillness and silence. We have to exercise our best judgment, and choose our best choices, when life goes to hell around us. That is when it matters most what we do.

At precisely the moment we are most tempted to give up is the moment when we are most needed to get to work in our behalf—in behalf of all that is right and good—and in behalf of all living things. We have to be strong in our own cause—strong in our own behalf—and strong in behalf of life itself, at the moment our cause looks most hopeless, and it seems to all concerned that nothing matters.

Nothing matters more than living like everything is riding on what we do, when it seems as though nothing we do matters.

We have to believe in ourselves and our life—and in life itself—and live as though we do, in each situation, and every circumstance, that arises. Always. No matter what. We step into the situation, and go meet what is coming to meet us. We make our best possible response to it. And do it again in the next in the next situation that comes along, and in all those after that.

We are going to be challenged again and again to forget our life, to give up, to not care, to not try, to quit. This is the Cyclops’ way. And it takes the Cyclops to bring out the hero in each one of us.

The right kind of community reminds us of this, and calls us to square up to the truth of how things are—to reconcile ourselves with the discrepancy between how things are, and how we wish they were. This is the work that grows us up, and brings us forth—the labor pains of our own becoming are brought on by encounters with evil. Evil is the cradle of good. Evil is the servant of good. Good is turning the light around, flipping evil and bringing good to bear upon here/now. It is the struggle to square ourselves with things that ought not be that marks our turn toward the good—the good that we are capable of creating by the way we live in the world. This is soul work, assisted by communities of innocence at all the different stages and places in our lives.

Together, we are good for the things each one of us needs in order to live the life that is ours to live in the world of chaotic encounters. We gather to help one another decide what’s important. We gather to help one another develop our individual sense of who we are and what we are about. We gather to help one another become aware of what is deepest, best, and truest about us as individuals. We gather to remind each other of the importance of living toward the best we can imagine in each situation as it arises, and doing what we love with the gifts that are ours to give. We gather to help one another laugh and cry in the presence of the truth that awakens and sustains us all.

There are two things that are true about truth: Laughter and tears. In the presence of truth, we will laugh or cry. We can gauge the quality and depth of truth by the degree to which we do one or the other. There are things that are true that never bring us to tears or laughter. For instance, the sun is 96 million miles away. Or, the speed of light is 186,000 miles a second. Which is moving, but it doesn’t move us.

The kind of truth that moves us connects us with the Source of Life and Being, and sustains us in the swirling center of chaos. If we can bear the pain of the encounter with chaos, and look into the face of evil, we will see that it is the mechanism by which life is laid bare. Evil reveals what is truly important. Evil is good in that way.

When Adam eats the forbidden fruit, his eyes are opened, and that is not a bad thing. It is the essential thing. Everything hinges on that, flows from it. Spirit, character, heart, and soul depend upon our eyes being opened so that we know what is important. Evil is the slap that wakes us up, brings us to life, and enlists us in the service of what matters—if, and this is where we all come in, if we are surrounded by a community of the right kind of people.

The primary social unit has never been the individual acting alone. We have been tribal from the start, and that has as much to do with our emotional and spiritual needs, as our physical needs. We cannot manage alone. We need one another to have a chance. But it is not just any other who will do. It takes a community of those who know what they are doing to provide what we need to deal with the malevolent intrusions of life. It takes a community well-practiced in the art of survival to save us. In a culture like this one, our best chance at finding that kind of community is to create one.

It starts with three, or five, or seven of us coming together with the purpose of creating a respectful, safe space without answers, willing and able to listen one another to the truth of how things are, and also are—to the truth of what is important, of what is happening, and what needs to be done about it. The community can become too large “like that,” and the “I” becomes lost in the “We,” and the community develops a sense of its own identity and importance, and begins to think about renting, or buying, a place to meet, and putting in parking lots, and a sound system.

Keep it small, with the focus on the individuals and the central theme of finding our own life and living it. In this way, we mold ourselves into the kind of community that saves our souls—not from the eternal fires of hell when we die, but from the turbulent waters of chaos right now. We work to become the kind of place that provides all of us with what we need to take chaos on, and bring order and meaning into the here and now of our life together.

We can create a Community of Innocence by inviting a few like-minded friends to talk about their experience in seeking out the life that is seeking them, and see where it goes. If you happen to be a part of a local Jung Society, you already have the connections in place, and only need to ask two or three friends from that group to join you in talking, not about Jung, but about yourselves and your own experience with living the life that needs you to live it.

The world will be transformed.

Perfection

There is a practical test for every form of spirituality that has nothing to do with professed statements of faith. Does it work? Does it enable us to live well? Does it provide us with what we need to live our lives? Does it sustain us for the long haul? Does it bring us to life, connect us with the deep values, and the true goodness of being alive? Does it make us better people than we would be without it? Does it allow us to live with joy and passion? Does it enable us to say “Yes!” to life just as it is right off the shelf?

Don’t give me a spirituality that takes the life out of me; that burdens me with guilt and shame and makes me wonder if I’m doomed from the start—that keeps me afraid of God’s wrath, and going to hell, and therefore, afraid to be alive. That’s just death dressed up in a white suit trying to slip one over on us. Life doesn’t threaten us with death, doesn’t talk about death, doesn’t terrify us and keep us from going anywhere but to church where they talk to us about death and hell. Don’t give me that kind of spirituality. I’m going to be dead long enough. I’m for living while I can.

Give me a spirituality that talks about life, and living, and being alive. Give me a spirituality that is about loving life, dancing, singing, and being really good company. Give me a spirituality that knows how to laugh. That doesn’t care who’s looking, or what its chances are. That knows how to play. That can have a good time. Throw me in with the people who are a good place to be—who are home for my soul.

The primary rule guiding the development of spirituality as it ought to be is: The soul knows. The soul knows what is good for us and what is not, what nurtures life, and what kills it. Jesus came that we might “have life and have it abundantly.” The soul perks up upon hearing that and pays attention.

It’s amazing, don’t you think, that the church of our experience used the occasion of Jesus’ words about abundant life to talk about death? Jesus didn’t say, “I have come to give you life, and if you don’t do it exactly as I tell you to do it, I will give you death—No! I’ll give you worse than death!” But, the church of our experience said that. The church of our experience told us we would die and go to hell if we didn’t come listen to the preacher tell us we were going to die and go to hell if we didn’t come back and listen to the preacher tell us we were going to die and go to hell… Jesus talked about life, the church of our experience talked about death, and our souls suffered. Dried up. Began to shrivel and waste away.

Jesus took on the religious authorities by saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me.” The Pharisees and Sadducees had their way of getting to the Father—the way of being descended from Moses and the way of keeping the law. Jesus looked them in the eye and said, “I have my own way, thank-you.” Imagine that.

“The law is the way!” said the authorities. “Moses is the way!” said the authorities. Jesus said, “I am the way!” Where did that come from, his boldness in taking on the authorities, in standing his ground, in being true to his vision, his understanding of, his belief in, how things ought to be? Where did that come from, his being his own authority? So that the people said of him, “He teaches, not like our scribes, but as one who has authority”? What audacity! What faith in one’s own ability to discern what is true, and valid, and real! “I am the way!” We could use some of that confidence in our ability to know what’s what.

Jesus said, “If you want to get to the Father, you have to do it the way I’m doing it, because the Father and I are one,” and radically offended the authorities, who thought Jesus was claiming to be God, which was the highest obscenity, blasphemy, heresy—the greatest desecration of the holy—that could be said. Yet, Jesus was only saying what the Book of Moses said was to be true of everyone. “You must be holy as I am holy,” said the Book of Moses; “You must be perfect as I am perfect,” said the Book of Moses. “You must be,” said the book, “as God is,” or words to that effect. But, when Jesus said, “I am as God is,” or, “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” those in power took offense, and had him killed, because he was a threat to their way of seeing and controlling what was seen.

The church of our experience continues the mistake of the religious authorities of Jesus’ day, making Jesus divine in a way that no one else has ever been or will be. In the eyes of the church of our experience, Jesus gets to be perfect because he was God from the beginning, born of a virgin, you know, half God, half Man. No. Fully God, fully man. Make sense of that, if you can. Any way you slice it, Jesus gets to be perfect because he cheated. He was God. He couldn’t help but be perfect.

And his “no one can come to the Father but by me” line was not understood to mean “You have to do it the way I’m doing it, by carrying your own cross, suffering the pain of your own life experience, and living out of your own authority,” but to mean instead, “You have to let me do it for you. You have to believe that I am God, and that I died to save you from your sins, and if you don’t, you are going to hell.”

One of the things we can’t help noticing as we consider the interplay between Jesus and the authorities and the church of our experience is the way the word “perfect” is understood. Jesus is perfect as God is perfect. “The Father and I are one.” The authorities, and the church of our experience, understand that to mean moral perfection. They say Jesus is “without sin.” Morality is the big thing for the authorities and the church of our experience. We have to keep ourselves unstained by the world and be morally pure or we will go to hell. That’s what we have been told by those who missed the point. Morality misses the point.

One of the 10,000 spiritual laws states, “Morality is the best-dressed form of sin.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. Morality lends itself to the posture of the Pharisee in the temple, which is one of the stories that put morality in its place. Another is the story of the rich young man. Morality isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

But, don’t think I’m hawking immorality here. Not at all. Live the best life you can live, that’s my recommendation, but don’t sacrifice the good for the sake of the moral. Jesus was considered to be highly immoral by the code-keepers of his day. He associated with women—Samaritan women, at that. He socialized with prostitutes and tax-collectors. He was friendly with “the people of the land” (also called “sinners”) who were too poor to pay the Temple Tax, and therefore couldn’t worship in the temple, and therefore were considered to be disgusting and unworthy by the upper strata of Jewish society because they were obviously being punished by God with poverty, so they must be sinners. And, he regularly broke the laws depicting how things were to be done in that day. He was called “a glutton and a wine-bibber,” which is another way of saying he was beyond parental control. He was called a blasphemer and a son of Satan. He was not a shinning example of moral rectitude. But, he was perfect.

Perfection is not a function of morality! You don’t get to be perfect by being moral. Perfection is about integrity, about alignment of being. It is about destiny. Perfection and destiny are about waking up, growing up, squaring ourselves up with our life as it is and as it must be. This is the deep work that is ours to do. The work is difficult—it is so difficult it is called the Hero’s Journey—because we don’t want to do it. We do not want our life as it is or as it must be. We want a different, better, life. We have ideas, aspirations, dreams, goals, ambitions, and neither life as it is nor life as it must be comes close to what we have in mind. The word of freedom and responsibility—the freedom to be responsible—is: Wake UP! Grow UP! Square Yourself Up With Your Life As It Is And As It Must Be—And Get Up And Do What Needs To Be Done!

This is where most people turn around, deciding the Spiritual Journey is not for them. The Wasteland looks better, has more appeal. And this is where we are.

Our life as it is consists of the context and circumstances within which we live. We live where we live. We do not live next door, or down the street, or across town, or in another part of the country or world. Our life where it is, is different than it would be if we lived somewhere else. We have different choices. Different options. Different opportunities. We were born when and where we were born. Our parents were our parents. All the facts that have governed our life constitute our life as it is. They are our facts to square ourselves up with. They are different from anyone else’s facts, but we all have the same work to do: Squaring ourselves up with the facts that we have had to work with, deal with, all our lives long. We never complete that work. It is always to be done.

To not do it is to spend our life in the Wasteland of denial, diversion, distraction, escape into addiction and entertaining pastimes. These facts of our lives, the time and place of our living, our choices and opportunities, etc. are our fate. They are the things we were born into. The things we cannot help, or change, like the color of our hair or the size of our footprint, or how fast we can run the hundred meter dash. We have to square ourselves up with them because they are what they are and together they form the context and circumstances of our lives. To choose the Wasteland is to choose to live out our life in the land of our fate. And to say, “No thanks,” to our destiny.

Within the context circumstances of our life—within the fate that is ours—we are called to live out our life as it can be, ought to be, must be. This is our destiny. Our destiny is who we are called to become. Our destiny is what we are capable of doing with our fate, with the facts that determine so much of our life. They don’t determine all of our life, unless we let them, unless we cave into the facts and give into our fate and surrender hopelessly to the context and circumstances of our living in a Wasteland of “Who cares? Why try? What difference does it make?” kind of way.

I am here to remind you that the Source of Life and Being—that which has always been thought of as God—is with us within the context and circumstances of our lives, within the fate that defines our living, the facts that limit our lives, to enable and assist us in embracing and serving our destiny, and becoming who we are capable of being within the limits and boundaries of the time and place of our living. Our destiny is recognizing and bringing forth into our lives, the gift, the genius, the daemon (Sounds like “diamon”) that is ours—that is peculiar to us, that makes us different from any other human being to ever live.

To use Carl Jung’s term, individuation is what sets Jesus apart. This is what his “no one can come to the Father but by me” means. When we are who we are the way Jesus was who he was, “The Father and I are one.” Our call is to become who we are asked to be within the context and circumstances of our life. This is our work. And we are not alone in that work. That which has always been called God is with us in that work to help us do it.

The Spiritual Journey brings us into the presence of The Source of Life and Being, which is with us to do the work of fulfilling our destiny—which is the work of self-realization, of bringing forth our gift, our genius, our daemon—as boon and blessing to all who inhibit this place with us. The Source is not with us so that we might have it made, live any way we choose, and have all our dreams come true—so that we can fritter away our time in trivial pursuits and entertaining pastimes, and hang out at the mall, or take trips and cruises, until we die. The Source is with us for the specific purpose of doing the work that is ours to do, becoming who we are to be as a blessing to all—to give our life in the service of life.

This is the Hero’s Journey, the hero’s task. Abraham leaves home in search of home. He leaves his physical home in search of the home of his spirit, his soul. He goes in search of where he belongs, in search of what he belongs to. Where we belong—what we belong to—is the Promised Land, which is also called the Kingdom of God, and The New Jerusalem, The Farther Shore, Nirvana, which is also the work that is our destiny where we and God are as one. This does not exist in some far off distant future, or some far off distant place, but is right here and right now when we take up the search for the gift we have been given, for our original nature and the innate virtues that are ours from birth, for the life we are called to live, for the work that is ours to do, for where we belong, for what we belong to. To take up this search is to, in Jesus’ words, “have life and have it abundantly.” It is to live the life we are called to live, being ourselves—the self we are created to be—and going forth into the world of normal, apparent reality, where no one can “come to the Father” except by being this kind of “me.”

We take up the Journey by being true to ourselves within the context and circumstances of our life. Perfection is integrity, integration, synchronization, oneness of heart and being—living in ways that are integral with what is deepest, truest and best about us, where word and action are one thing, where external and internal are one thing. “I Am Who I Am,” says God to Moses. Jesus is one with the Father, not because Jesus is God, but because Jesus is one with himself—because Jesus is Jesus, and Jesus is “of God” the way you and I are “of God.”

The heart of spirituality is to be who we are in loving relationship with those about us. If you think that is easy, give it a spin. But, when you get it down, you will have achieved perfection. The trouble is that we are divided within. I want to be the best father in the world, and I don’t want to be a father at all. Try integrating that division if you have the heart for it. That’s only one of the warring opposites I have within. The work of integration, of perfection, is a life-long undertaking—and it is the spiritual task, the heart of what we are about.

We are divided at the level of the heart. We want mutually exclusive things. We are Adam and Eve in Eden and Jesus in Gethsemane. Here is another place of the cross in our lives. When Jesus says, “If you want to be my disciple, pick up your cross every day and follow me,” he’s saying, “Don’t think this spirituality stuff is easy. It’s hard work being whole.” Our everyday cross is the work of realizing and integrating the conflicts and contradictions at the center of ourselves—of facing and reconciling who we are and who we also are. We cannot become the unique individuals we are alone. It takes the right kind of community to bring us forth into the life that is ours to live.

The right kind of community, what I call a community of innocence, is a theme that I will return to over the course of this book. It is central to the work of being human—of being true human beings, fulfilling our destiny, realizing our gift, our genius, and offering what we have to give to each situation as it arises. For now, I will remind you that the work of spirituality is the work of coming to terms with who we are and who we also are—with how it is with us and with what we are about. It is the way of finding our way back to Eden—to ourselves via the way of integration, integrity and wholeness of being. It is the way of knowing what is important, what has true value, and living in light of it for the rest of our days.

This is the work of individuation, self-realization, which Carl Jung recognized as the real work of being human. It is the work of awareness—the work of attention, which is the work of articulation and sincerity-—the work of conversation, the work of talking together about the things that matter. In order to do this work, we need a community of innocence-—innocent in that they have nothing to gain by being present with us for our good and have no interest in exploiting us for their advantage-—to listen us to the truth of who we are and also are and help us decide what that means for us in the here and now of our living.

A community of innocence is glad to listen to us, help us bring ourselves into focus, and help us live toward ourselves within the context and circumstances of our lives, with grace, mercy, peace, hope and compassion. A community of innocence brings us to life, encourages us to live, enables us to be alive by providing us with a good place to be while we do the work of becoming a self in loving relationship with other selves. As we do this work, we take our place in the community by bringing forth the gift we have to offer and sharing who we are with everyone, within the community and beyond it.

The Two Things

The first thing is this: I am capable of living in ways which are good for me and that I am capable of living in ways that are not good for me. I can give myself to that which is “me,” and I can give myself to that which is “not me.” I can surround myself with toxic personalities, and I can search out the people who are good for my soul—who reconnect me to that which is deepest, truest and best about me—who provide me with an environment which enables me to be true to myself within the context and circumstances of my life.

The second thing is this: I am capable of living in ways which are good for those about me and I am capable of living in ways that are not good for those about me. I am capable of influencing the lives of others for good and for ill. I can live with them as a toxin, or as a purifying, cleansing, agent of grace and compassion.

These are the two things. I can live in ways that are good for me and I can live in ways that are good for you. And I can live in ways that are bad for me and I can live in ways that are bad for you. How much for me and how much for you?

Where do I stop and you start? When my good becomes your bad, what do I do? When your good becomes my bad, what do I do? How do I live with good and bad on the line? What guides my living when I have to choose between you and me? How do I decide what to do? How do I know what to do? Who is to say?

All the religious edifices in all the cultures that ever have been or will be exist in part to answer the question about my good and your good. Morality is about the difference between my good and your good. All the real conflicts are values conflicts—conflicts over whose good will be served and whose bad.

We have to learn about sharing, about empathy, about compassion, about compromise, about giving up this to get that, about delayed gratification, about sacrifice, and self-denial, and self-surrender. We also have to learn about self-assertion, and self-reliance, and self-direction, and self-protection. We have to lean how to take care of ourselves at the expense of others, and how to take care of others at the expense of ourselves. How much for me, how much for you? Where do we draw the line?

Fraser Snowden said, “The only true philosophical question is ‘Where do you draw the line?’” Who is to say? We are. There is no one here but us. We decide. We choose. We say—with everything on the line. How do we know? We don’t know. But. It is our call to make. We bear the weight of our decision throughout our lives, perhaps eternity. How much for me? How much for you? How much for us? How much for them?

This question about your good and mine is the proper place of the cross in human living. We stand squarely between self and those who share the world with us and experience the tension of “my good” vs. “the good of the others” and we bear the pain. We carry we weight of the anguish of choosing between self and others. Our place is to bear the pain—to bear the cross—of the tension. Our place is to remain in place, to refuse to take refuge in some sheet of “rules to live by”—some “policy statement”— and make a decision, and bear the pain of deciding and living with the consequences of our decision.

Nothing is more important on the Spiritual Journey than bearing the pain of the conflicts that come our way along the way. Conflict is the nature of the path. The Spiritual Journey is really nothing more difficult (or different than) growing up. And there is nothing more difficult than growing up. And we all grow up against our will.

Growing up is talking how things are in one hand, and how we want things to be, wish things were, in the other hand, and, that term again, bearing the pain of the full, conscious, realization of the conflict, discord, opposition, dichotomy, enmity and antagonism between the hands–and getting the two hands together. This is integrating Yin and Yang, balancing the opposites, harmonizing the polarities that constitutes the ongoing, unending, work of being alive.

Things are conflicted to the core. Even with God, or so it is said, with God’s justice not knowing quite what to do with God’s love. Thus, the work of growing up, and the gist of the Spiritual Journey, is reconciliation, integration, harmonization through compassion coming to life in us, and through us, as we step into the conflicts on every side and do the things that make for peace.

Carl Jung said that there are no solutions to the real problems of human existence. Those problems, he said, are not to be solved but out-grown. We grow up through the agonies that have no solution. There is no balm in Gilead, or anywhere else, to protect us from the pain of seeing, hearing, understanding, knowing how things are, and doing what needs to be done about it, in each situation as it arises. This is the Spiritual Journey!

“No one can be my disciple,” said Jesus, “without picking up their cross every day, and living as they have seen me live, facing what must be faced, and doing what needs to be done about it (Or words to that effect).” And, what that means will be something different in each situation as it arises!

Sometimes we will sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others, and sometimes we will sacrifice others for the sake of ourselves. On the basis of what? Maybe, on the basis of nothing more substantial than our mood of the moment. Maybe, it just hasn’t been our turn for a while. Maybe, it’s nothing more reliable than that.

We have to adjust ourselves to the fact of the wholly arbitrary. Our lives are judgment calls all the way. The laws upon which society are based keep us from having to worry with whether to stop on red and go on green, but when it comes to the important matters, we are on our own. We make it up as we go every day. How do we know what to do? We decide without knowing. We may decide differently next time, in the next moment, and we might live tomorrow trying to redeem how we failed today.

At times, we act with the good of ourselves in mind, and at times, we act with the good of others in mind. We cannot always sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others, or others for the sake of ourselves. Sometimes, we do it this way and sometimes, we do it that way. We have to live knowing sometimes us and sometimes the others. We live between our good and the good of those about us, and we choose with everything riding on the choices we make—bearing the pain of having to choose, and the pain of having chosen.

Such is the nature of life on the Spiritual Journey.

We Are the Ones Who Say So

Religion, in whatever form, is about a particular idea of Ultimate Reality. Religious people gather in sacred places all around the world to worship their understanding of Absolute Truth. It does not matter to any of them that the Absolute is depicted in contradictory and competing ways by other groups that are similarly gathered. It is said that just as light is reflected in a thousand different facets of a single diamond, so the Absolute is reflected in the eyes, and ways, of those who worship the Absolute. We hear: “There are many paths, but one journey.” And: “There are many trails up the mountain, but it is one mountain that they all traverse.” The one thing that all religions agree on is the idea of One Absolute Unchanging Eternal Truth. Ultimate Reality is ONE. We are all finding our way to The One, and we all will be incorporated into The Great Oneness, out of which we come and to which we return.

Well. It’s an interesting theory. But, how do we know? Who says so? What makes us think there is “one mountain”? Why do we say (again and again), “Many paths, one journey”? For all we know, there are many paths, many journeys. We say things we would like to be so, but we have no way of knowing if the things we say are, in fact, so. In the end, we just have to “take it on faith,” don’t we? And, whenever we are asked, or told, to “Take something on faith,” it means that we are being asked, or told, to take someone else’s word for it. Or, to take our own word for it. We are being asked to believe something that someone thinks is so, to believe what we are told to believe–or what we decide/choose to believe–whether it’s so or not. We “take it on faith,” because there is no way of knowing if it is so and we have to decide for ourselves what we are going to declare to be so because it is left up to us to do so. It is our to do and we do it. And that’s that. If, in the future, we decide to un-do it, we will un-do it and do something else instead. Until then THIS (Whatever it is) is what we are going to go with and be true to it all our life long, or until we change our mind. Because we are the ones who say so.

Of course, there is the claim of Enlightenment or Revelation wherein certain special individuals are said to have seen into the heart of Ultimate Reality, embraced the Oneness of which they speak and have remained with us to tell us how it is. Never mind that their versions of the Absolute are all different. It’s back to the diamond metaphor and the fact that Ultimate Reality is too much to be contained in one—or even two—descriptions, or explanations. In the end, we have to “take it on faith” that the claims of the Enlightened Ones are accurate depictions of Ultimate Truth—and believe what we are told to believe.

Deciding who we are going to believe isn’t much different from deciding what we are going to believe. But what does it matter? If “all roads lead to Rome,” and “all paths lead to the top of THE mountain,” then why bother with which road or path to choose? One is as good as another—the only thing that is important is that we are on some way, some journey, working some practice, some program. If we are faithful to the path we profess, we’ll all “get there,” so, what’s the problem with knowing who, or what, to believe? One person’s guess is as good as another’s, so you go your way, and I’ll go mine, and if you get there before me, save me a place, because we’ll all arrive eventually.

And so it is that Absolute Truth is a very relative thing.

We are free to make up our own minds about God—or we are bound to, required to, forced to by the nature and circumstances of our lives. We have to tell ourselves something about Ultimate Reality. We have no choice in the matter. As compensation for being in this position, we have a number of options from which to choose. We can tell ourselves anything we can talk ourselves into believing and say that we are “taking it on faith.”

Trip back with me through time, observing all the religions, and the spin-offs of religions, and the private, personal formulations about God that have been produced, cultivated, and developed by our ancestors. What makes them think that what they think is so? How do they know? Who says so?

Sometimes it is a life experience that convinces the people to think what they think. We have to understand, as well as we are able, why things happen as they do, and what we can do to take advantage of the power at work controlling our lives. We tell ourselves stories about our experience in order to structure our experience, as a way of ordering our experience, and making sense of it—and exploiting it in the service of our own ends.

We cannot survive in a nonsensical universe. A high priority of life is to find the order, to impose it if we have to, because we cannot live without it. We have to find the patterns, and make things meaningful, and say what’s what. Life depends upon it. When something happens, we tell ourselves something about what happens to give it shape, form, and purpose. We recover miraculously from an illness—we find an oasis just as we were on the point of death—we escape from Egypt and are delivered from the company of soldiers that Pharaoh sent to track us down and bring us back. We talk about everything happening for a reason, see God’s purpose being worked out in our lives, and imagine the wonderful things God must have in mind for us, because, why else would God save us in this way—and wonder what we can do to guarantee God’s continued help in all of our undertakings.

Perhaps the transforming experience is a dream of particular clarity and deep emotional impact, or a vision—and where, exactly, does “vision” end and “hallucination” begin? Or, perhaps the transforming experience is the personal testimony of a very powerful and charismatic individual. Perhaps we have an epileptic seizure, and hear voices, and become, thereby, the voice of God for all those who witness the event without the knowledge required to understand what is happening.

At any rate, something happens, and we tell ourselves something about what happens to explain it, to place it in a context that will produce a response from us that will be to our advantage over time. All religion is self-serving. No matter what we give up in the name of religion—and we have given up our first-born sons, and our virgin daughters—it is always an investment that we expect will pay huge dividends in this life, and result in the accumulation of glory beyond conception in the life to come.

All theology is a collection of stories and explanations that we have told ourselves about our experience. Something happens, and we drape it with meaning and purpose by imagining why, and how, and for what. We may adjust the explanation over time to take into account the questions and contradictions it encounters, but at some point, it may achieve the status of Gospel Truth, become sacrosanct, and exist beyond all scrutiny and doubt. The ground of all religious belief is our experience and what we have told ourselves about our experience to make sense of it and to position ourselves to take advantage of it. The advantage may come to a larger group and not to any individual within the group, but we don’t believe anything that isn’t self-serving on some level. We don’t believe anything that doesn’t have the potential of making us (or those like us) better off for believing it. There is always a payoff involved—usually heaven when we die—in what we believe. There is no religion in which advantage does not accrue to believers for believing.

The self-serving nature of all religion the first thing to keep in mind about religion, the second is that we are the ultimate authority determining what we believe. Take any statement of faith, for example, the statement that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Ask about it, “Who says so?” and you’re likely get the answer, “The Bible says so!” Ask of that answer, “Who says that what the Bible says is so?” and you’re likely to get the answer, “God! The Lord God Almighty says that what the Bible says is so! The Bible is the Holy Word of the Living God!” Ask of that answer, “Who says that the Bible is the Holy Word of the Living God?” and, as we have already said, you may get the circuitous response, “The Bible says so!” whereupon you’ll just have to walk away because the person you are talking to cannot see the illogic of saying the Bible is so because the Bible says so.

But, if you are talking to someone who says something on the order of “All of Christendom says so! All believers of every age say that the Bible is the Holy Word of the Living God!” you are onto something, and can ask, “Who says that all of Christendom knows what it is talking about?” If you follow out this line of questioning the answers, you will finally get to the place where the other person has to say, “It is so because I say so!” And, there you are. We believe whatever we believe because we believe what we believe is worth believing. We believe because we say so.

Look at it another way: Position yourself midway between me and, say, John Calvin (I picked John Calvin because he and I are in the same religious tradition—the Reformed Faith—and are in 100% disagreement regarding the tenets of that tradition). You stand your ground and let us start talking about any topic you choose. I’m going to say one thing and John Calvin is going to say something quite different. Who are you going to believe? How will you decide whom to side with? How will you know which of us is right, or that neither of us is? You are going to “take it on faith” that you know what you are doing when you say “Yes,” to one of us and “No,” to the other—or “No” to both of us. You are going to do what makes sense to you in light of your own experience and thoughts on the matter. You are you own authority regarding how to know what to believe, as we all are, and your judgement in the matter is sacrosanct, firm and final.

If we are willing to keep walking around what makes sense to us, looking it over, reflecting on it, examining it, poking it, prodding it, digging around in it, holding it up to the light, and thinking about what we think after we have thought about it, we will become increasingly aware of inconsistencies, incongruities, and incompatibilities. One thing will contradict another. The practice of “taking things on faith” came into vogue to relieve us of the trouble of squaring up to mutually exclusive beliefs, e.g., “God is Love, and will send you straight to hell if you don’t believe it is so!”

At some point, we will have to ask, “How can ‘this,’ which makes sense to us square with ‘that,’ which also makes sense to us?” Something will have to go in order for things to fit better together. Original Sin, for instance, has to go to make room for what we know about the evolution of the species. There was never a time of innocence and purity. Snakes never talked. There was nothing like Paradise. There was no Fall. There was no Before and After. What we think in one place doesn’t mesh with what we think in another place. We have to throw out some things we think in order to make room for others. What goes? What Stays? Who decides? We do! On the basis of what? Our. Own. Personal. Authority.

Here we are at the place of breakthrough, transformation, insight, enlightenment and growth. We are at the place of what Thomas Kunn, and ten million others after him, called a “paradigm shift.” Things change when we become aware of our inconsistencies, incongruities and incompatibilities—and take the personal responsibility of deciding for ourselves how we will sort things out and put things together.

This is the first step of the Spiritual Journey, recognizing our place in our own life, and knowing that it is up to us to find our way through the maize of options, alternatives, opportunities and possibilities that open—and close—for us throughout our life. How well we do that tells the tale that is to be told—and it will help to have A Handbook for the Journey!

The Foundation of Faith

The foundation of my approach to faith, to spiritual truth, to “that which is beyond,” is to say there is no foundation. There is no foundation to faith, spiritual truth, or to “that which is beyond.” There is no basis of “belief.” No authoritative “ground” upon which the edifice is built. The edifice is built right out of the air, on the air! Which is true of every religious/spiritual edifice that was ever built, but this is one of the few places where it is declared to be so.

Where does the line lie between opinion and faith? Or, for that matter, between opinion and fact? It is only a matter of time before facts are seen to be the opinions that they are, no? Taking medicine as an example, how many facts are there today in the field of medicine that were facts a century ago? A thousand years ago? Facts are nothing more than opinions awaiting realization. Awaiting enlightenment.

And the time lapse is much shorter in the field of religion than in the field of medicine.

Theology is nothing more than a bucket of opinions about hearsay. And faith is nothing more than a collection of opinions that take themselves seriously. Exposing the “foundation” of faith to be nothing more substantial than the way we see things today. Here, now.

There is no reliable system of beliefs—no dependable set of doctrines—no authoritative formulation regarding the unknowable who, what, when, where, why, and how. There is no objectively verifiable way of determining what the deal really is, or if there is a deal at all. We don’t know what it’s all about. We make it up, right out of our imagination. We decide what makes sense to us, and we live on the basis of it, even as we revise it in light of evolving, emerging, experience, information, reflection and realization. We live toward that which makes sense, that which works, even as we reframe it, reformulate it, rework it.

It all goes back to the psychological mechanism of projection and our propensity as a species for making up explanations for our experience based on our previous experience to the point where our perceived reality is little more than what we have talked ourselves intro believing up to this point, elaborated, expanded and explained to take new information/experience into account. So that, to repeat the old formulation, “There is no way of proving that creation did not happen twenty minutes ago complete with artifacts and memories.” We could have just made the whole thing up! And we have just made the whole thing up, in a manner of speaking, by the simple process of expanding, elaborating, evolving our capacity to explain our experience to ourselves and one another to make sense of our joint experiences over time.

It comes down to, and flows from, this: We are the absolute authority determining what is actual, valid, real and true. Whatever we say/conclude/determine is so becomes so the moment we decide/say/realize it is so. And so, indoctrination, propaganda, and all varieties of hokum including theology, doctrine, dogma, ideology, creeds, etc. are grounded upon, based upon, the collective agreement that it is actual, valid, real and true. Which is also called “self-hypnosis.” Repeat anything long enough, loudly enough, consistently/persistently enough over time and it becomes true because “everybody knows” it is true.

This makes each of us responsible for knowingly determining for ourselves what the grounding, orienting, guiding, directing truth for ourselves and our life will be. Here is what I have discovered/declared to be so for me:

The primary value of emptiness, stillness, silence in gaining clarity and attaining realization regarding what’s what and what is called for here, now, so that I/we know the right thing to do and when, where, and how to do it in responding to what is happening in each situation as it arises all our life long. So that we drop into the emptiness, stillness, silence and wait for clarity regarding what is called for and what to do about it, in response to it, rise up and enter the field of action to do what needs to be done, and then drop back into emptiness, stillness, silence and wait… Throughout the time left for living.

Which leaves us with living/doing out of the emptiness/stillness/silence in light of what is called for and what needs to be done about it here, now over the full course of our life.

With the question being: WHAT MEETS US IN THE SILENCE??? And the answer being: Our intuitive realization. In light of D.T. Suzuki’s statement that “The equivalent of enlightenment is habitual intuition.” We are living out of our own internal sense of direction, propriety, appropriateness, and good form in each situation as it arises all our life long. The Buddha and Jesus couldn’t do better than that.

When we live in a community in which the best interest of the individual is served, we all have a better chance of having our best interest served than when we live in a community in which individuals disappear in a collective that does not care about them, or in one where individuals are pitted against individuals in an eternal fight for the “biggest piece of the pie,” and more for me means less for you (and vice versa).

In a community that lives to answer the question, “What is in our best interest as individuals, and as a community?” the size of our piece of the pie is irrelevant. We are not out to have more than the next person. Our value does not depend upon the amount of stuff we have, or upon the size of our income, or upon any of the ways that society currently ranks its members.

In the right kind of community, our worth does not flow from our net worth. In the right kind of community, we live to help one another in light of what is helpful to the community as a whole, and we live to serve what is helpful to the community as a whole in light of what is helpful to each individual within the community. Our work is that of imagining, and becoming, the right kind of community—the right kind of place for everyone to be.

The path is living together in ways that are good for—in ways that are helpful to—the individual and the community. There will likely be aspects of that path that sound like something the Quakers are doing, or like something Gandhi did. Jesus walked a path that was labeled blasphemous, heretical, and satanic by his detractors. Some paths are like that. We cannot worry about the labels. Our focus is how to live together in ways that are good, in ways that serve the interest of the individual and the community.

What is good for the individual may, or may not, be good for the community, and what is good for the community may, or may not, be good for the individual. Our focus is how to live together in ways that make sense to us, and work in terms of serving the good of each person, and of the whole, and exhibiting the best that can be imagined. Our focus is on how to be helpful, on how to live with one another in ways that are good for one another and for the whole–in becoming who we are and doing what we are built to do.

What is good is good in the eyes of the people over time. The good, like truth, will shine through, will stand out, will become obvious in time. The good, like wisdom, is vindicated, justified, by her children, and sometimes by her grandchildren. In the moment of our living, we live toward the best we can imagine, toward the good we perceive to be good, and see where it goes. Perhaps we are wrong. If it becomes evident that we are, the task is still the same task, to live toward what we perceive to be good in that moment, and see where it goes.

We have to be true to ourselves, to our vision of what counts, matters, makes a difference—to our idea of what is truly important—an idea that is continually being revisited and revised in light of experience. The foundation is our vision, our sense of what is worth our life, and our willingness to reexamine it in light of our experience over time. The most important thing is the formulation—and reformulation—of our vision, our sense, of what is important.

Who is to say what is important? We are! We say what is important! No matter who tells us what is important, we accept what they say, or reject it, or say something else instead. We determine for ourselves what is important. It only remains for us to recognize our role and consciously embrace it—and examine it regularly to see if it remains valid over time.

Jesus’ questions to his disciples and to the Pharisees are not emphasized as focusing us on the central matter of what we say when it comes to determining what we will believe and do: “Who do you say that I am?” and “Why don’t you decide for yourselves what is right?” Which are reminiscent of the Buddha’s statement, “Do not listen to me! Listen to YOU!”

We are the ones who declare what is worthy to us, of us, and live in light of it. We make it up, right out of out imagination, and revise our estimation in light of our experience. We live toward the best we can imagine, and re-envision the vision in light of what happens. This makes us the foundation of our own lives. We decide what is, and is not, valuable, what is, and is not, worthy of us. We decide where to draw the line.

In order to do what is ours to do, we must talk frankly with one another about what makes sense to us, about what we think is important, about what we think is worth believing, about what we think is good, about what we think is helpful, and how that is all working out in our life. Our perspective is enlarged, expanded, deepened by the ongoing conversation, by the shared perspectives of others over time. In this way, we help one another live in ways that serve the good of all.

A Handbook for the Spiritual Journey

The list of titles in the menu at the top of this page contains a drop-down sub-menu of posts available under the title. Send your little cursor on a search for something worth reading, and may you find it without much trouble!

This is a blog post of my revised Kindle book available at Amazon.com for $2.99–and you can read it here for free. I use WordPress to revise the book, and am posting it here for people who don’t have a Kindle and don’t want to bother with a Kindle App for their PC or Mac or Tablet, or who just like things that come with no strings attached.

This is a companion volume to An Old Preacher’s Manifesto, which is listed in the menu line above. All of the items in the menu line have a drop-down list of chapters, or sections, available by clicking on the respective titles. You can also keep up with additions as I post them by clicking on the “follow” button below.

The entire collection revolves around the theme “Finding Your Life And Living It.” My central thesis is we pop out of the womb without knowing who we are to become or what we are to be about, and we don’t get much help along the way. We aren’t even encouraged to ask the questions, much less to answer them.

But, goes the thesis, we all come packed with a daemon, a spirit, a soul, a psyche who knows. Our Unconscious is an ocean of knowledge waiting for us to take up sailing and diving, exploring, experimenting, seeking, searching, playing with invisible friends, picking up clues, putting things together and finding the way.

All of my writing is about the theme and the thesis. But. You have to be interested in the journey (That would be the Spiritual Journey, the Hero’s Journey, the Journey to the Center of Yourself) for any of this to be meaningful. So, if you start reading and can’t find a reason to go on, don’t. It isn’t for you. Don’t waste your time.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

  • Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
  • Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about?
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.