Musings on Divinity

Ground of Being

  Some news is so big, so very important, that it's hard to even put into words.  There are concepts that are so huge, so much bigger than what our conscious minds can get around and grasp, that finding a way to talk about them can be very difficult.  I'd like to begin a discussion on what I believe is the greatest concept of all.   Our minds can't wrap around this concept well enough to describe it, and the best we can do is make guesses or assign names and attributes.  Yet it is possible for each of us to come to a deeper understanding of it; one that goes beyond words.
   So, even though our words may fall short and our intellects are too small, there is a part of us that is infinite, that is created in the image and likeness of the Creator of all that is.  When we reach a deeper level of understanding of our connection with all that is and bring more of it into our conscious awareness, then our lives change. 
   Let's start at the beginning.  What most of humanity now calls God is an infinite presence whose nature is love, operating through law.  Two of the great world scriptures, the Hebrew Scriptures and the Upanishads, came to us at about the same time.  In the Upanishads God is described as having the attributes of Presence, Power, and Light.  This is what science now calls "ground of being".  The ground of being out of which all form emanates.  Then in Genesis, God said, "let there be," and creation was formed.  In the beginning of the gospel of John this is explained.  "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God."  John is speaking of the power of the word:  in the beginning there was a source, a power, a ground of being.  That source created all that was made, and in him was life, and that life was the light of all men.  And the light shined in the darkness and the darkness conquered it not.
  Please don't be misled;.  Don't be fooled by the masculine character of this language.  It's a social convention, not a statement of the maleness of the creator.  But it's a social convention that was necessary because it's talking about a very personal relationship with this supreme power, this ground of being.  A personal pronoun has to be used somehow, to communicate across countless generations that the relationship is personal.  You see, this Presence and this Power that we talk about is alive, and we are in relationship with it. This is a presence and power that is infinite in potential and scope and ability, yet still fully present to us, in our experience.  In this presence there is life, and that life is the light of all of us.  All people.  You and me.  This is the true light that gives light to everyone who comes into the world.

What Do You See?

Seeing

   There are many ancient teaching stories from different traditions.  The heritage of the Sufi’s contain many wonderful stories, and often the chief character is a fellow named Nazrudin.  One day Nazrudin heard about a holy man, a very wise man who sat on a mountain pass not far away.  Being a seeker himself all his life, Nazrudin decided to travel to visit this wise man, and sit at his feet to see what he could learn.  He had been sitting there all day when a traveler came up the mountain toward the pass and asked about the village in the distance. What are the people like? The wise man asked why he left his former town.  The traveler said he was leaving because it was full of unfriendly, dishonest, unkind people.  “Such as the world has become,” said the wise man.  “You will find the same people in the next town.”
   Then a second traveler stopped and asked the wise man the same question.  When asked what the town he was leaving was like, he said it was a village full of loving, wonderful people.  They even paid for his move to this new town so he could find work.  Nazrudin replied, “such as the world has become.  You will find the same kind of people in the new village.  After the second traveler passed, Nazrudin looked at the holy man in confusion, and asked “Wise one, do you speak the truth?  “Yes, of course I speak the truth,” was the answer.  “Then how can you speak the truth and give a different truth to each man?”
   And that is the question.  How can it be that we can each go to the same place and find very different experiences?  You can see it powerfully in churches in transition.  Part of the congregation thinks the minister is the source of all the problems.  Part of them blame the board.  The larger part thinks everything is just fine and can’t figure out what the others are making a fuss over.  One church, filled with people who know each other; people having a different experience of the same community.
  What each of us, as people committed to making the world a better place, has to realize is that we don’t see the world as it is.  We see the world as we are.  If I am hasty to judge the actions of others in spite of not having complete information, then I have stepped into the energy of keeping the world the tense place that it is.  Each of us is accountable for our response to any situation and quick judgment blocks us from gathering complete information.
   Having said that, we know some people are not good at boundaries.  That’s why we lock our cars and our houses.  We must learn to set appropriate boundaries, while maintaining compassion for those whose path we can only see partially, and therefore have no way of  truly understanding.  What we do, what we say, how we respond to people face to face is very important but there is something even bigger.  The energy we carry in our body is broadcast moment by moment, and if that energy field is negative, we do damage even if we never interact with anyone.  There is an old saw that's been around for years, but it's still around because it's true.  "What we focus on increases."  Let's focus on what's good.

Response-Ability Our Dreams

What and How?

   Chris and I are traveling from Arizona to British Columbia in a few weeks.  We are going by car and taking our time along the western coast.  Chris has created an itinerary that includes daily driving time, overnight stops and special sights.  We have a desire to see all of this country and we have the ability to respond to that desire.

   Many of us have had dreams that we never really reached for because we just couldn’t see how they could come true.  We are such a task oriented society that we want to be able to see the whole road, from the first idea that struck us all the way to its final outcome; manifesting our dream.  We want road maps and time lines and motels along the way.  Launching our dream can be sort of like driving across country without a map or GPS.  If we can’t see the entire path we have a difficult time taking the first step.  Yet we do have the ability to respond to the urge contained in that dream.

   There is a quote from Laurence J Peter, which goes something like this:  “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.”  That speaks to the most important part of making dreams come true.  You have to know what it is.  You have to be able to pin down your final destination.  For instance, I want to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey about one of my books.  Do you suppose I have any idea how to make that happen?  Not so much, but its clear the first step is writing the book and getting it published.  The next step is calling attention to it.  That could be steps three through umpty-hundred.

   The point is, each step you take reveals the next step.  You see, we are not responsible for the “how,” we are only responsible for the “what.”  When you nail down your “what” and begin taking steps in that direction you might get a great surprise.  The “what” just might morph and change into something else; something so great you never would have dared to dream it in the beginning.  As you are guided in the steps to take, you may also be guided to a higher path and that higher path is guaranteed to give you greater joy.  That always happens when you choose your “what” and trust to Spirit to guide your steps.  You’ve got the ability to respond to your dreams.  Let’s get walking!

Peace, Passion, Purpose

Changes

   If you had been raised as a Hindu boy at the same time Gandhi was, you would have been taught that there are natural stages to life that were relative to your age and learning.  The first twenty years were for your education and developing your skills for work in the world.  The second twenty years were to be spent supporting and raising your family.  The third twenty years were for the purpose of prayer and spiritual growth.  These classifications make perfectly logical sense.  Men learned first how to earn a living, then used that ability to continue the human race by raising children, then completed their lives by focusing on spiritual practice and perhaps even benefit the world in some way by the wisdom they discovered and taught.  That certainly was the pattern that Gandhi’s life followed.

   There were two basic assumptions in that culture; in fact in most cultures at the turn of the 20^th century.  One was that there was no point in educating women, because their purpose was to bear children and serve their husbands.  The second was that living to be as old as 60 was a much longer life than many people experienced, so guidelines didn’t exist for the next 20 years, or the next.  Today with advances in medicine and nutrition, experts are now talking about an average life expectancy of 110.

   So let’s extend those guidelines a bit.  The first 30 years are for getting educated, the second 30 for raising a family, the next 30 for spiritual pursuits.  That leaves 20 years at the end to figure out what’s next, or just play around.  However there is a third basic assumption in categorizing life in this way, which is clearly inaccurate; the assumption that life as it is will always continue in pretty much the same way.  That assumption is the seed of hopelessness and the antithesis of faith.  An old, simple affirmation is a guide out of the rut of hopelessness.  It goes like this.  “Life is an upward, progressive movement of Spirit.” We are on a journey and we have a purpose.   Yet we humans often step into the rut of hopelessness and get stuck there, unable to find our faith.  The way we do that is called resisting change. 

This earth was born in a blast of flaming gasses, and if it weren’t for change, consistent, progressive change, you and I would not be living here today.  What if you and I had never learned to tie our shoes or feed ourselves or crawl?  What if we had so resisted change that we still needed someone else to change our diapers?  The changes in the earth and the changes in us have been an upward, progressive movement of Spirit that has led to more and more possibilities, more and more life.  Change is the very activity of being, doing and becoming.

   One truth that comes through loud and clear from the Hindu teaching is that there are life stages and our life will change from youth to adulthood to old age. 

Paths of the Gods

Changing our actions

   You know, every time we come to the beginning of a new century, we humans expect great or terrible things to happen.  All sorts of prophets arise with all sorts of predictions.  The world is going to end, there will be cataclysms, the rapture is coming when some will be lifted to heaven with Jesus and the rest of us will suffer eternal damnation, a new wave of consciousness will transform us all, and on and on and on.  And those expectations come true, although not always as we imagined.  Just looking at the last few hundred years, we find a new wave of spirituality sweeping the world at the beginning of the last century, not the least of which was introduction of the Hindu tradition of meditation to the western world.  The one before it was the industrial revolution and the beginning of modern science.  The one before that was political revolution, carrying a wave of democracy.  The one before that was a wave of exploration and settling the earth.

   Now here we are approaching December 21, 2012 and those expectations are wilder than ever.  And I like what I’m hearing.  Some of it is incredibly exciting, and it is you and I, ordinary people living ordinary lives, that are going to bring it about.  We are going to do it by changing our minds about our beliefs, and once our minds are changed, our actions and our lives will change.

   The following is from futurist John L Peterson.  It is from a presentation made to the Unity Worldwide Ministries board of trustees in 2009.  “I believe we are entering one of those punctuation points in the evolution of our species that will rapidly propel us into an unimaginable new era.  This new world won’t work at all like what we currently find familiar.  Because this shift is so fundamental and acute, the most positive option will not make sense at all from this vantage so early in the transition.  In the face of almost certain uncertainty, our job is to rise to the occasion, to evolve – in our thinking, our perspectives and in our commitment to make this transition as positive as possible.  We will probably become some new kind of human at the end of it all – it is that big and important.”

   This was followed by a list of possible breakdowns and breakthroughs over the next 20 years, and the breakthroughs are so astounding and positive it almost makes the breakdowns seem piddly.  Of course, each of us has a hand in this.  It does depend on us.  The critical question we have to ask ourselves is have we each attained enough ethical and spiritual evolution to handle these startling new changes in a way that is moral and just?  They are going to effect our lives.  Can we deal with it?