Living into Impotence

I suspect this title will not excite people about reading this post and for men may even seem a bit ominous.  But I ask you to read on.

I am middle aged.  I have lived long enough to see that not everything we try for do we get.  I have lived long enough to also learn that you can warn people about dangers and snares that you know about personally, but they have to learn from their own experience.  I have lived long enough to learn that all set backs are not permanent, but neither are all victories.  I have experienced many loses in my life, starting very young, and I have learned that there are loses that cannot be recouped, out run or redone - they simply must be accepted.   Accepted not as a defeat, but as sand inside an oyster, and some as compost for the plants that are coming.

In the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Difference and When to Let Go. by Eileen Flanagan she takes the serenity prayer and talks about how we come to terms with it.   She notes among other things that most of us are naturally pulled in one direction or the other with it.  I certainly recognized for myself that I am pulled to take courage and try to change things..even things like national policy.  But one of Eileen's points was that we do have to discern when we need to go the other direction which in my case means when to find serenity by accepting things as they are.  I don't recall if this is in her book but to believe that we can change anything is in fact a form of idolatry.  It is to believe that we have God like powers.

In a society racked with injustice, and in this country at this moment in history, this would seem an almost impossible task how to be at peace with the world as it is.  As a person who is actively working to stop climate change and who is surrounded by other climate change activists who often feel quite frantic about, as joked yesterday: "Repent the world is coming to an end" type feelings.  I have learned even with climate change to hold it in spirit.   I hold it with a spirit of curiosity, knowing that I do not know how things will turn out.  I have learned with great difficulty to practice non-attachment around the outcome.  Sometimes I cannot tell if it is simply a slick form or bargaining or denial.   But it seems like there is some peace from saying both in the face of hopeful signs and in the sign of terrible signs  "I don't know what will happen."

I was so pleased when Wen Stephenson's book: What we are Fighting for now is Each Other, came out.  I have not read the book yet.  I just love the title.   It summed up for me that I cannot be fighting for the outcome but I can always act for Love - the love of Life, the love of the planet and all those on it.  I can notice the spiritual practice of non-attachment to outcomes that Buddhism preaches.  The Truth is I don't know what will happen; none of us do.  As I write this the Lacy Dalton song is singing: "listen to the wind,  The only thing you can trust is change."  This also summarizes the form of detachment I am talking about.

As a therapist for 23 years now I have had ringside seats at many disasters.   Some that my clients were fighting as hard as they could.  Others that even as I gently tried to question or discourage they went towards like moth to the flame.   But there is nothing like being a therapist to teach you that you are not in charge of other people's lives, you are simply a witness.  Hopefully a loving and constructive or supportive witness, but a witness none the less.  This then becomes its own spiritual practice of learning to keep handing it back to God even as you pray for others.   and yes to keep breathing into your own impotence, to meet the limits of what you can do, or what you should do, to surrender again and still keep your heart open, feel the pain, release the pain, and then do it again.

Joanna Macy likes to ask the question: What have you allowed to break your heart?  To break your heart open?  This spiritual practice of living into impotence is not for the feint of heart, but it is a powerful spiritual practice.   It is is not the same, at all, as giving up or becoming hopeless or helpless. Because inside of this practice is really the turning towards the strength of God, and the wisdom of eternity.  Recently I have heard both Native people and a famous civil rights leader say: "We have been here before and we will be here again, we know who we are and we are not giving up".   There own familiarity with suffering gives them strength, endurance and resilience.  Impotence is about being without power but it is also about how you live into that.  Do you live into it as a loss, a humiliation, a defeat, or do you live into it with humility, serenity and hope?  Do you live into it alone, isolated on your own terms or do you live into it with Grace and Presence?

Where is God in Darkness?

I have written in other spaces about my concern that the incoming Trump administration represents the rise of fascism in the US.   This raises interesting spiritual questions about how we respond to destructive things happening around us, where is God in dark times and what does this mean about evil?

Has God abandoned us, or is punishing us by allowing this to happen?
If one holds to the view that God created us with free will then that means that those who are not listening to God are always free to stray from what God might intend for us and to do great destruction or evil.  That evil affects other people.  The price of freedom is a God who is omni-present, but not all powerful.

Where is God in this situation?
God is always present as a source of guidance, comfort, and strength.   It is even more important in crisis to turn to God.  God cannot however stop the suffering caused by others' application of their free will.  Buddhism does have much to say about how we manage suffering.

What does God require of us?
The Bible answers this question of what God requires of us saying:
"To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."  Micah 6:8
I think those spiritual theologies that say we are co-creators of the world we live in and the lives we walk in, also suggest that we are to embrace the highest truth we know and live it.   I think in a time where hatred rises up and causes the scapegoating and targeting of some people that means saying no to that.  I think in a time where violence rises up it means acting with non-violence.  I think in a time where the earth is pillaged, polluted and destroyed it means aligning our life style with an honoring and protecting of the earth (as currently modeled by Native people at Standing Rock).  In a time where there is an increasing assault on free speech, on free press, and on civil liberties it means standing up for those and protecting supporting those others who also speak out.   In a time where vote suppression and gerrymandering threaten our very democracy it means standing up to fight for democracy.   And all of these things mean turning to God for the courage to act for justice.  In short, in a universe where people can do destructive or evil things, we are called upon to speak truth, take action and to hold up the Light of Love.   To remain silent or passive is to passively allow the evil.

Is there no Light in this Darkness?
Neale Donald Walsh has written quite a bit about how it is only the dark that allows us to know the Light.   That the Light longs to be known by us.   Perhaps another way of saying this is that we sometime must struggle in order to learn; contrast is one of the ways by which we learn.  If one believe in reincarnation then we have come to earth in incarnations intended to maximize our learning, and the encounter with darkness or evil is not a detour or a mistake, it is an opportunity for learning, and opportunity to bring forth light.  We are not called to do this alone, it is what community, especially spiritual community is for.

Why is this happening when I don't want it to?
While we may co-create our own personal reality, it is also the case that as a collective humanity, or a society we also create certain shared realities through our shared consciousness. There are lessons we are trying to learn as a collective.  It is worth asking: How could it serve the learning of the American people to grapple with the person of Donald Trump and the type of leadership he is bringing?  It is easy to point fingers of blame at figures in history like Hitler or Trump who are the apparent center of so much darkness, but that really gets all the rest of us off the hook.   We must look at the fear that is always the fertile ground for fascism.   We must examine where we have stood in relationship to fear? We must do the spiritual work of looking at the anger, the pull for easy answers, for power, the arrogance, etc that live within us and are mirrored by Trump, rather than simply demonize him.

How do we respond to this spirituality?
Responding to an already negative situation with more anger, violence or fear only magnifies the negative energy.  Going numb or in denial also does not serve the Light.  Joanna Macy tells the story of the Tibetan Shambala prophecy.   The Tibetan's believe that there comes a time of great darkness and chaos when the world as we know it is completely threatened.   At that time many souls come to earth for one purpose: to fight for our world as Shambala warriors.   They are not intended to fight with normal weapons of violence, but rather with spiritual weapons of wisdom and compassion.   Wisdom brings great clarity and vision, but clarity alone does not bring the passion for action.   Compassion brings great love which can move people to action, but action alone is not productive without clarity or focus.   So they must use wisdom and compassion together to fight for our world.  I believe that this is a time when we all must become Shambala warriors.

Is their an opportunity is this experience?
When lived spiritually all experience contain an opportunity.  Chaos, danger, conflict, destruction.... all of these things carry in them the seeds of change and the possibilities for transformation.   If Hillary Clinton had been elected, most good liberals would have continued to focus little on the situation, even as our planet is threatened by the crisis of climate change, even as racism was literally killing Black people in the streets daily.  When evil becomes as blatant and undeniable as it now is, there is a moral imperative put before us all.  The addition of the Trump administration to the Climate crisis demands we quite literally transform the current power structure or we will die.  So it is time for each of us to reach down to the foundations of our spiritual traditions and see what God calls us to do.

Discernment...or how not to kill yourself working for social justice.

Many religions have a tradition around discernment - some do discernment of gifts, for others it is discernment of leadings (of the spirit) or callings.   This is a discernment of what God wants us to do in a given situation or with our life.  Generally, the distinction is made between an intellectual decision making process or a "worldy" one.   Both are seen as coming out of individual will or secular values.

When people come out of traditions that do not put forth a discernment process it can be confusing to know how to do spiritual discernment.   Some traditions suggest that people turn to clergy or gurus for this sort of discernment.   All traditions that I am aware of suggest that people test their leadings with their faith community to make sure that they are not simply engaging in delusion, fantasy or personal ego.

I write here about the discernment process of Quakers (or Friends) as it a process easily duplicated by anyone.   Quakers form a "clearness committee" of those considered wise or experienced in the spirit when trying to make important decisions like whether to marry, to join the church, to make a significant career decision, or if lead to some sort of "witness" or leading on behalf of social justice.  The group enters into prayerful silence out of which the person with a leading or calling speaks about the leading as they understand it.  The group considers this prayerfully and asks questions.   The questions are not leading questions or oratorical questions, but are simply intended to help the person look more deeply.   They also share reflections or "light" as it is available to them. It is NOT an advice giving forum.   The group acts to confirm or deny (I am aware of at least two incidents where the clearness committee did not find the person "clear".) that what the person is feeling seems true and rightly lead to the clearness committee as well.

Thomas Kelly, a famous Quaker theologians writing in the 40's, wrote a whole chapter on discernment in his book A Testament of Devotion.  Parker Palmer a modern day Quaker theolgian wrote a short book entitled: Let your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.  More recently Quaker Nancy Bieber wrote a whole book on discernment:  Decision Making and Spiritual Discernment: the Sacred Art of Finding your Way.

Here are Kelly's much quoted words about how God particularizes a concern is us:

"I dare note urge you to your Cross.  But God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs.  By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizes His burdens in us....
     In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, man's night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It maybe or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security."   (Amazingly he was writing this during WWII because it is a timely now as it was then.)   He goes on to say:
     " Little groups of such utterly dedicated souls, knowing one another in Divine Fellowship, must take an irrevocable vow to live in this world yet not of this world, kindle again the embers of faith in the midst of a secular world.  Our churches were meant to be such groups, but now too many of them are dulled and cooled and flooded by the secular."

I first read these words when I was in my early 20's and I think reading it saved me. Like many people of faith that have strong social justice traditions I absolutely could have died on too many crosses! If I had tried to act on every issue or cause that I could see was unjust or important I would have run around in a frenzy or burned myself out in short order.  Or I would have simply given up like so many people do, deciding that I am only one person to small and insignificant to change the world and thus decided to sit at home or take up tennis and leave the worlds problems to "leaders"...(whoever those people are!  ;-)  Instead I experienced the incredible relief of realizing I had only to listen for what God had tenderized my heart to and given me the gifts to respond to.  I took great comfort in the phrase: "God draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks."  I understood this to  mean I could pay attention to just one issue (or the closely related/ intersectional ones.)  And as the world has become more complicated and more at risk it has been even more of a blessing to focus on just what is given to me.

It was such a relief to have this "permission" to not do everything!  It has meant over the years that I could simply be grateful for the work of my comrades (some known some not) who work on other issues that I care about but am not called to.  I celebrate their victories fought for all of us, and I know that they rely on me as well to do my part on the issues I work on and they do not.  Singer song writer Libby Roderick expressed this very beautifully in the song Cradle of Dawn.   "Sunset in my country, Sunrise in mine...forces facing us are terrible in deed...in the morning I will plant another seed and while you sleep it will take light. ... I feel you there in the dark...I will hold the light up while you
sleep."

Nancy Bieber in her book first identifies ways the world asks us to think about decisions and then offers faith based ways to test discernment.
The worlds way:
Is this safe? Will this build security for me and mine?
It is it likely to be sucessful?  How are we defining success?
Does it lead to independence?
Will I gain in status or prestige?
Will it bring happiness?
Alternatively she says faith based discernment questions would be:
Is this decision sacred? Is it holy?
Is this "mine" to do?
Will this decision do the least harm?
Is this decision congruent with others we have made wisely?
Is this Love's way?

For many the path to discernment will not be as "upbeat" or clear as this sounds.  In Parker Palmer's book he repeats an often repeated Quaker wisdom that some times we find direction from the doors that close behind us.  He also talks about the role of depression in discernment...as well as patient waiting and the importance of knowing ourselves deeply.

Kelly identifies 4 steps to being faithful to leading:
1) The first step of obedience is the flaming vision of the wonder of such a life, a vision which comes occasionally to us all...this vision of an absolutely holy life is, I am convinced, the invading, urging, inviting, persuading work of the Eternal One.
2) Once having the vision, the second step to holy obedience is this: Begin where you are.  Obey now....Walk on the streets and chat with your friends.  but every moment behind the scenes be in prayer, offering yourselves in continuous obedience.
3.) If you slip and stumble and forget God for a hour, and assert your old proud self, and rely upon your own clever wisdom, don't spend too much time in anguished regrets and self-accusations but begin again, just where you are.
4) The fourth consideration: "Don't grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, "I will!  I will!"  Relax.  Take hands off.  Submit yourself to God.   Learn to live in the passive voice- a hard saying for Americans - and let life be willed through you.  For "I will" spells not obedience.

Many decades ago I sat with a Catholic priest who was helping me with discernment.  He listened carefully to the outpouring of details about what I had been doing and what I was confused by and he asked me two simple questions:

1:  Does it give you joy?
2.  Is it life giving?
These two questions have steered me right over and over again for many, many years  I would add one more question:
3)   As best you know if the prompting from God or from some other source?

One last piece of advice from Richard Bach in his "handbook for Messiahs"
"And try not to take yourself too seriously."

Radical Acceptance: A book review

Book review of Radical Acceptance: Embracing your Life with the Heart of  a Buddha by Tara Brach

In Chapter 6 the Radical Acceptance of Desire Tara Brach says: "When I was first introduced to Buddhism in a high school world studies class, I dismissed it out of hand.  It seemed irrelevant to my life - grim in its concern about attachment and, apparently, anti-pleasure.  Sure, maybe we all suffer, but why dwell on it?" (p. 128)  Tara's first reaction to Buddhism very succinctly summarizes my own first reaction to Buddhism.  However,having known a number of Buddhist in my adult life and in the last decade beginning to learn about Buddhism, I like Tara, have come to understand what a superficial and incorrect first impression of Buddhism that was/is.  As she later says:  "The Buddha expressed this in the first Noble Truth: 'Existence is inherently dissatisfying'.  When I first heard this teaching in high school in its most common translation as 'life is suffering,' I of course thought it meant life is nothing more than misery and anguish.  But the Buddha's understanding of suffering was subtler and more profound.  We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing - our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in.  We can't hold on to anything - a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, ...because all things come and go." (P. 133)

I do recommend Radical Acceptance because so far of the works written about Buddhism which I have read it makes it the most accessible to a western mind.  It is helpful that the examples are all of clients and retreat participants, other clueless westerns like myself, rather than ancient, venerable Eastern monks, who while very wise are completely unlike me.  As a therapist myself I believe all people are either shame base or guilt based (dependent entirely upon your parents style of discipline as you grew up.)  Generally we do not understand the other frame of mind.  Tara's writing is very much to those who are shame based - as someone whose not, I did have to do some translation of those parts.   For those who are shame based and western, this book will speak deeply to your soul.

I appreciate how her different twist on traditional Buddhist teachings which I have encountered else where made them more accessible to me.  For example, in her third chapter - the Sacred Pause: Resting under the Bodhi Tree she talks about paying attention to the pause between the in breath and the out breath.  All other instruction I've had on breathing as part of meditation have said to focus on in- and then out-  which either board me, or got me too hyper focused as to unrelax my breathing and actually hyperventilate.  Throughout this chapter she also weaves in a wonderful narrative about living with a pause between action and inaction - the pause of reflection... which for me somehow finally brought home the point of the whole thing.

The chapter on Radical Acceptance of Desire - also stands on its head the misinterpretation of Buddhism ( or spirituality) as a rejection of desire (and/or sexuality.)  And instead talks about being mindfully aware of our desires as they arise.  Instead of judging, rejecting or feeling them - being relaxedly aware of them, conscious of when we do - or don't act on them.  Tara points out the great energy that makes up desire and says that when not fighting it or surrendering to it that desire is the source of great energy and drive within us which when joined with spirituality can move one in profound ways.

As someone who knows that fear is the thing which most quickly and reliably takes me out or relationship with God I also appreciated chapter 7: Opening our Hearts in the Face of Fear.  Here she takes the concept of taking refuge in the Buddha (another concept until then meaningless to me) and transforms this in a very meaningful way as a spiritual practice in the face of fear - of "taking refuge in the truth of who we are".  The very words are grounding to me - causing me to breath out - releasing the fear, returning to my truth self.   "Our fear is great, but greater still is truth of our contentedness" she quotes the Buddha as saying.

Throughout her book, and especially in Chapter 10 on forgiveness, she reminds us again and again of our contentedness to all sentient beings and our own basic goodness.  Such a message is either utterly new for some readers - or a balm to the soul for other readers.  Forgiveness is something that most people I know struggle with - whether it is of self or of other.  Tara points out how closely tied these two efforts really are.  While I have previously learned the spiritual practice of the meditation of loving kindness -she ties this in a new way to the practice of forgiveness.

I had started a new prayer practice during the time I was reading this book so I'm not sure which caused a significant deepening for me spirituality but I recommend this book as a good entry into the New Year!

Intending who We are

In the book Illusions, the main character of Richard Bach’s novel gets a Messiah’s Handbook which he reads verses of throughout the book.  These snippets indeed carry real wisdom.  Some examples: 

“Remember where you came from where you’re going, and why you crated the mess you got yourself into in the first place.” 

“Learning is finding out what you already know”.

“The simplest questions are the most profound.  Where were you born?  Where is your home?  Where are you going?  What are you doing?  Think about these once in a while, and watch your answers change.”

“You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being an that is your real self.  Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them.  You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.”

Collectively what I got out of these bits of wisdom and the book itself, at the tender age of 23, was a sense that if we let go of external symbols, rules, others expectations, and a sense of  the unweilding “facts” of our lives that we can find our true selves and work with that “clay” throughout our lives.  What goes with that for me is a sense of all of life being an exciting adventure, where learning is always possible and where mistakes really are just learning opportunities.  It means claiming growth as a birthright of all humans.  It has also meant that it is really important to look carefully at the story we tell about our own life and the power that story has to shape the way we feel about and experience our lives.  With clients I see this all the time and am very sad sometimes by the profoundly sad and limiting stories people tell about their own lives and the way they will steadfastly cling to that story even while bemoaning the unhappy and unpalatable results of such a story.  This also has tied back to my offerings of last month about how we involve the divine Spirit in this continuous process of creating the life we lead.

This has also lead to my own unique approach to New Year’s resolutions.  Every New Year’s Eve I sit with my journal and try to remember where I came from and where I’m going.  The very first time I did it I tried to list what I thought I was learning from the events of that year.  Then looking at that I wrote identities I felt I was working on developing: wife, mother, therapist, activist, physical body, spiritual being, etc.

Then for each one I wrote down who I wanted to be more of in the coming year.  In the years that followed I would look at my list of intentions and write about how I did on them and why,  and new learnings and then write down my intentions for the next year.

So for example, as a therapist I want to make time to pray (privately) for my clients, as a spiritual being I want to be more in touch with gratitude and the expression of gratitude and so forth. It is also possible to deal transformatively  in this process with any identity we don’t like.  For if you notice any negative story you tell about your self (I’m too busy, I’m disorganized, don’t have enough friends,…whatever) then it is possible to tell a different story.  To in your statements of becoming for the New Year to positively address those issues.  (“I move purposefully, and at measured pace throughout my life creating order and meaning in my life.”)

I remember once rather innocently describing this process to a man in my church and him saying:  “Wow, I always saw New Year’s resolutions as being about setting goals, but I have never thought that I can have goals for how I live, for who I am.  That feels really good”.  It does…you might want to try it.

Looking Backwards to the Present

I have been reading James Redfield's new novel: the Twelfth Insight. Without reading any reviews, I can predict that the reviewers say the novel was too much a regurgitation of his previous three novels. Perhaps a fair complaint.  I do think that for those who have been troubled by wars fought for religious reasons and with concern for the Middle East they may find interesting his ideas about the shared roots of religions as a ground for connection.  (Although this too is not the most original idea.)

While I certainly enjoyed revisiting what Redfield has to say about synchronistic events - always significant in my own faith life - what I did find interesting was Redfeld's idea that we can use intuition predicatively.  In this novel as the main characters learn/remember to tune into syncrhonicities and the common bond between all of us, they learn when contemplating a possible step to see if they can picture the two most likely possibilities and to use the feedback loop of what they can picture and what they cannot as Light from the
Universe shed upon their path.

This has been helpful to me as I have been recently contemplating one of those places where the spiritual tradition I grew up in goes bump with the beliefs I have come to learn and trust in my adult life.  So my tradition teaches me that when we consider a possible action, to listen in the silence for The Holy Author's divine guidance as to whether this is a right course of action for us.  Certainly within the Christian tradition it frames God as having power over us, although I long ago released that belief for one that is more mutual and collaborative.  There are models out there that talk about a co-creation process with God.  That does not seem quite right either because it implies we know as much as the Creator which is far from my experience.  But in my experience there is our own will and there is the Creator's intent for all life, and yes I like to believe or experience an intention for each of us as well.  Perhaps that is simply our own soul's work and what we have come to do which can place us either in alignment with Spirit or out of alignment with Spirit.

I have written much in other entries about the delicate process of "listening" to God and how the Divine often speaks in symbolic language, metaphor, or in synchronicity.  But this sort of begs the question of how we "plan" our lives.  Christianity would suggest we should not plan our lives but listen for and be "obedient" to God's intention for our lives. (Or in some strands make our own choices while being obedient to Biblical directives). Some strands of new age thinking such as The Secret would seem to suggest that we put out our intention, vision or desire out to the Universe and just manifest that which we wish.  I have deeply appreciated Neale Donald Walsch's attempt to readdress the messages from the Secret in his book: Happier than God.   In this book Walsch clarifies that we can only align with the nature of the universe as it is which he says is all interconnected and for the Good of all.  Thus he says when we attempt to manifest with either harmful intent or selfish intent we actually step out of alignment, and the messages we receive will simply bring us back into alignment for the common good.

So Walsch would say we could plan whatever we want as long as it aligned with the Universe.  Wayne Dyer who of course writes extensively about this in his book The Power of Intention, as well as in his other books, also talks a great deal about how to be in alignment, how to avoid blocks and other pitfalls.  But Dyer, while saying we can not be poor enough or sick enough to prevent other people from being poor or sick, is silent on the question of how we plan or whether our plans can be selfish or create negative effects for others.

Recently, I have been trying to discern whether to commit civil disobedience on behalf of climate change.  In my old model I would listen and not act until I received a clear message to go forward.  So far I have not received such a green light...although in both previous occasions in my life I contemplated a possible action with my mind analyzing the justice and injustice of the situation, and in both occasions just days before The Just One spoke powerfully and clearly with unmistakable direction right before the action with a power I could not have ignored.

In my new model I have been trying to hold a vision of the world re-emerging out of fossil fuel dominated world into one that uses sustainable alternative fuels.  This is very challenging to hold a vision of since both the actions and mindsets that leads to carbon consumption are deeply embedded in our society.  I know a visualizing process taught by Elise Boulding, the founder of modern Peace studies, which if engaged in with great detail can reveal strategic action, but this is different than a spiritual process. The process both Dyer and Walsch talk about would seem to suggest hold the big future vision, (not the yearning or you manifest the yearning) and then let it go in the confidence that the Universe will manifest it.  Dyer does talk about working from the end which he describes as imagining a book already written and then writing  it. This however still doesn't answer for me the question: how do we make yes/no decisions about possible actions?  Oh, the moral from the immoral is fairly easy to discern, but should I take this or action or not is a different question?

This is where Redfield's concept of trying to picture a certain action and the other course (even if that is inaction) and see if we can picture it, provides, I think, an interesting intersection between these two paradigms. It suggests to me for the first time how to listen for the Divine Author's message regarding that which dwells in the future. When I tried to picture myself getting arrested I did not see it, but oddly it was because I did not really see the whole group getting arrested either!  Perhaps this means Obama will not approve the XL pipeline.  Or perhaps as happened in the past two occasions, that as events unfold a new Truth will plant itself in my heart with a correspondingly strong picture of that very arrest.  My hope is in either, both? paradigms will be to listen in faithfulness and obedience to the Greatest Truth as it reveals itself.

God Who? and the Garden of Eden

As I have previously written about (See: God Who 1/12 post) I can frequently go into a “God Who?” state. This is not a state where I doubt the existence of God but rather where I forget The Holy One.  Simply drop into the World and forget that I’m divinely connected to a Higher Power.  What I have also learned after decades of struggling with this is that fear is the surest path into this God who? state.

I was in a relationship that God lead me into and yet when the going got hard I got so scared that I went into the “God who? state” which eventually lead to its end.  I am pleased that at least in the beginning I did a better job of staying connected with the divine.  In one conflict, meeting my partner’s self-righteous anger, I felt defensive and also angry.  However, when the next day we went to sit in silent meditation I remembered in that silence that the position my partner had argued for was one I had been lead to many years ago and in fact reflected the Truth as I knew it.  It was a series of life events, accommodations to life struggles, that had taken me in another direction.  I realized that while my partner’s anger was agitating me that he was in fact calling me back to the Truth as I had found it, and with that clarity I was able to easily change my behavior.  In this incident I did not feel the fear of loosing our relationship and so I was not derailed from listening to and hearing the Holy One’s voice.

In the previous post I talked about how the Story of the Garden of Eden has also something to say about the state of forgetting God.  I’m not a bible fan, but certain stories are powerful allegories, and the story of Adam and Eve is such a story.  It is story of being in a seemingly perfect place, much like love is when we first fall in love.  As anyone who has ever been in love will tell you, as well as quite a bit of research, we sadly cannot stay in that rosy colored classes, oxytocin induced state forever.  Eventually, we come in contact with knowledge that makes us see the world/ our partner as they really are, to come in touch with the difficult places.  However, there is more than one possibility at that point.  There is the exile from Eden or there is the learning of how to navigate love inside of reality, the learning of the lessons The Teacher would have us learn at that point.  But that does require remembering that there is a Teacher and being attuned to that Teacher.  Adam and Eve forgot God, and so they did not receive his guidance but the false guidance of the serpent instead and thus were exiled from Eden.

For myself fear is a sure way to forget God and once the fear of the relationship breaking up hits I go into that frozen fear state.  As I did when I was a scared child I try to think my way out of the problem, I take actions or desperately demand actions out of others.  Both of these are out of the head and not out of the Spirit.  In Adam and Eve terms they are listening to the Serpent rather than the Creator of the Garden.  Unfortunately, when I’m in that scared frozen place nothing seems to help, not being at the Ocean – normally a sure path to the Holy, not sitting in prayer asking for answers…only sometimes can the message be delivered to me through others.  And of course it does not help if both me and my partner are in a state of fear for no Light can come thru either of us in this state.

So what next?  Now comes the learning we do after we have left the Garden of  Eden about how to walk with The Gardener in the World where we now live.

Living with our own Darkness

Recently my daughter did something and she was embarrassed by and she feared the judgment of others. So she kept it secret.  Not really unusual behavior.  All of us have done this at some point in time.  My reaction was mainly that I was sad that she had struggled with it alone and that she has felt so self-judgmental.  It was not the best choice she has ever made, but it was not the worst either.  She was primarily the victim of some bad luck in an arena in which our society is harshly judgmental.

When we talked about it later I told her I did not want her to ever live her life with the feeling that she had to keep secrets or be ashamed of anything because then she would become separated from a part of herself.  "What do you mean she asked?  This was hard to articulate.  I think of her father, my ex-husband, who literally committed a horrible crime.  This was something that he rightfully felt horrible about and carries much guilt about.  Some who read this will say that is a feeling of self-loathing that should never be laid down.  Do we contribute to the Good of the All by keeping ourselves small and in shame?

However, if we believe that all humans are children of a Divine Parent and an Unending Source of Love, then it follows that God has the capacity to forgive us all our diversions from the path of the Holy One. It follows that more good will be done by overcoming our own personal patch of darkness.  I believe that in the journey of the soul that everything we do holds the capacity for learning and growth in the Spirit. When I met her father he was in an Alternatives to Violence Project workshop, a program he participated in for eight years.  I also met Dan in AVP, a friend to this day, who two years ago was released from prison after serving everyday of a 30 year term for committing multiple rapes.

What these two men did represents extremes that most of us do not go to. However, the basic problem is the same; after we do something bad, something regrettable, or something embarrassing there is no taking it back.  Sometimes there are big consequences.  How do we integrate our own darkness into the tapestry of our own life?  How do we make peace with that which we regret and cannot undo?  Trite as the saying is: "How do we make lemonade out of lemons?"

I thought when I met both of them and all the men who came through the AVP workshops that they were doing the only thing we can do with darkness....redeem it. I have quoted the late Rev. Jon Nelson saying: (see 7/11/11 post) "Lean into the pain, that is where the redemptive possibilities lie." If one has come to this life to learn about violence in its most decisive way then to engage in violence and learn first-hand its horrible cost, and to renounce it, and to live without it, is as complete a learning as I imagine one life could achieve. (I believe my own walk as pacifist reflects the learning of many lifetimes, of being both the victim and the perpetrator of violence.)  

The two of them exemplified the two paths people can take in attempting to reconcile with ones own darkness.  My ex-husband could never internally reconcile what he did, so he hid it, and in so doing separated from himself. He could not be at peace in this separated state.  Over time this went beyond not putting down an accurate job history, to actually making up a whole fictional life which he told to others, thus severing himself forever from the Truth.  

Dan on the other hand, chose to tell the truth in prison about why he was there, earning him the lowest place on the prison totem pole and yet allowing him to live with the Truth of who he was.  Thus when he got out he also told the truth on every resume and job application.  He was rejected over and over but was loved by his wife and friends and eventually hired by an acquaintance who appreciated his integrity and his skill set.  He said he had expected to feel out of place when he got out of prison after such a long absence as he had before he went to prison; instead because he walks in his own skin and knows his own intentions towards others he feels deeply at home in the world.  

It has occurred to me that this indeed is the difference between leaning into the pain and not doing so.  When we are so afraid of pain, or of our own darkness that we avoid it, we never learn what it has to teach us.  We live separated from the Spirit whom we are afraid to approach and we live in constant fear of others and their judgment of us if they were to truly know us.  When we have the courage to go through the pain we come out the other side, not unlike a mother giving birth to a child.  The only way out is through, and we are "baptized" by our own struggle and its integrity—or lack of.

I'm not suggesting we just throw ourselves into darkness, or surrender to whatever evil impulse we may feel tugging at us, or lie in depression.  I'm saying that we recognize that darkness exists also on the spiritual path just as surely as night and day co-exist.  And that in whatever darkness we find ourselves we never stop looking for the Presence of the Light.  That we use as a lantern in the darkness the question, "What is my soul trying to learn from this experience?"  Redemption, if there is such a thing, must be in learning the lessons we came here to learn.

Note to reader:  My New Year's resolution was one post a month and I was doing very well until the end of May.  Then came the end of school and two church conferences in July and ...no June or July post.  Please read this as my July post!

Live the Questions

Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions. Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.

Rainer Maria Rilke

This has always been one of my favorite Rilke quotes.  Well actually one of my favorite quotes.  I found it when I was young and wanting to know right that minute what my profession should be, and who I should marry, and where I should live.   And someone gave me this quote and it calmed something in me.  It made me realize that answers are not born into us full grown, that life is a process of finding our answers.  It allowed me to patient with myself, to relax a bit which was a very useful thing.  I often see with my clients this same urgency to find the answers to know RIGHT NOW, to be off the uncomfortable spot of not knowing and uncertainty.  That desire to leave the uncomfortable spot of unknowing is yet another way we avoid our questions and the spiritual process.  And yet is even clearer when viewed from the outside that sometimes we need more experience in order to find the right answer.  What would we learn if we stayed with the discomfort?  Can we open to that learning?

It is also true that we can find answers from a head place (e.g. I should eat this because it healthy. I will earn more if I have this profession.  I like this location better).  But finding answers from a spiritual place is a different process.  A spiritual process requires submitting our questions to prayer (as addressed in earlier posts) and learning how to "hear" the answers which by its very nature sort of means living into the answers.  God's timing is often different than our timing and yet perfect.  Sometimes we are held in waiting that seems unbearable and unfair only to realize later that what would have ensued had we moved more quickly would have been disastrous.  Sometimes we are pushed into something that feels too quick, too fast, that we feel unready for...only to see later that very important or precious things could not otherwise have happened except quickly.  Part of the spiritual process therefore is letting go of our own preconceived ideas to hear God's promptings and to act within that timing.  It maybe some comfort to realize that when we feel stuck that we may not yet be ready and to wait with patience and faith.  This is true within a spiritual process, but is not true within a "head" process.

There are many questions that arise in spiritual life: who is God? How do I pray? What happens after death? Why do we suffer? These are also questions that people can feel sometimes very urgent to know the answers too or very concerned about finding the "right" answer.  I think that again the anxious holding of these questions makes it harder to find the answer.  The fear of wrong answers can hold us back from exploring possible answers.  Can we brave enough to try on all possible answers and listen for whether they resignate as Truth?  Then we may live into our answers.

Choosing Our Parents

In my twenties I first read Illusions by Richard Bach.  In it he says: "Every problem has its gift" and other pieces of wisdom that suggest we are in charge of our own life experience, not passive victims to it.  I recall taking the worst event of my life and saying:  "Ok what is the gift of that?"  And strangely I could see it, and I could feel it shifting something that had lived in me as a sort of “victim oh poor me” story.  Something in this same exploration suggested to me that we in fact choose our parents.  About 7 years ago I finally read the Celestine Prophesy.   In this spiritual novel he also suggests that we choose our parents; and in fact he suggests we come to earth with a spiritual purpose and that the parents we choose provide certain lessons, for good or for bad, which help shape us for that spiritual purpose.  He calls this our “evolutionary question” and says we each have one.  He somewhat lays out a method for figuring it out (which I have further developed and have done with numerous friends.)  In the last few years in reading various books by Neale Donald Walsch and then most recently Inspiration by Wayne Dyer this idea has again been repeated that we choose our parents.  (This belief does fit best if you believe in reincarnation and karma.) 

In a previous post: God the Father/God the Mother, I talk about the idea that our concepts of God are often powerfully shaped by how we experience our "all powerful" parents during our childhoods.  These two ideas seem to go hand in glove: that we choose parents that provide a certain spiritual (or not) experience that then shapes our spirituality and the tools and concepts with which we pursue our spiritual task on earth.  This has powerful implications for both how we relate to our parents and our experiences with them, but also for those of us who are parents, how we parent.  Do you see your child as a soul that you have a sacred trust with?  Do you nurture not just their body, mind and emotions, but also their spiritual nature or their soul? 

What are the healing potentials with your parents (alive or dead) if you consider that you actually chose them?  For someone who was treated abusively or hatefully by a parent this may seem a fairly repugnant and nonsensical statement...at first glance.  But keep looking.  I think for example of a friend of mine who was beaten by his father during his childhood.   He says it taught him to question authority and to be strong and to be centered in his own internal sense of truth.  He has been an activist throughout his life and this has served him well.  I think of another person whose parents were not religious at all, but has a deep love of beauty, and how that prepared her to create art which has been a path to mysticism.

For myself, despite believing that we choose our parents, I have been mystified for decades trying to understand why I would choose a mother, a good mother, who would die during my childhood?  It has finally come to me in doing Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects, that I have learned how to be present to grief and loss unflinchingly and unwaveringly....and that in this time of so much loss on this planet, that those of us who fight for peace and for justice must be able to be present to the pain of the world.  As Joanna says:  "Be willing to have your heart be broken open to the pain of the world; it is what your heart was created for...to connect you to life." So I commend to you the question:  Why did I choose my parents?  How have they, for better or for worse, prepared me for my spiritual purpose in life?

I know what God Looks Like

My daughter when she was about 7 told me casually one day:  "I know what God looks like".   "Oh," I said like one who has had a butterfly land on them and does not want to scare it away by to quickly moving, "what does God look like?"  She calmly described for me something that had happened when she was about three, a time when we were camping right down at the ocean's edge.  The water coming up to about two feet below us during the night, and then in the morning it was low tide and it was also foggy.  As we walked along in the fog we could find marvelous things: starfish and barnacles now exposed on big rocks,  little fish caught in tide pools, objects washed up in the night by waves.  There was a mysterious, magical and yes mystical nature to that moment.  And this moment was the one my daughter now described and then pronounced:  "That is what God looks like"  

There are parents somewhere who would have felt the need to explain that that was just "low tide", or to say that there was nothing to see, or to tell them instead about Jesus Christ, or Allah, or to otherwise deny or argue with their child's spiritual experience.  Who is to say that children do not see God more clearly, easily and with less distortion than adults?  For me it was important to simply validate her spiritual experience.  I simply said: "Yes that is what God looks like?"  She has grown up into a young woman who is confident of her relationship with The Holy Mystery and able to tune in to the Inner Voice.

I remember a client of mine who sees auras, telling me that when she was young she tried to describe this to her parents, and they made her feel so crazy for this that first she stopped telling them, and then she stopped noticing herself, till as an adult she had to work hard to reconnect to her ability to perceive spiritual energies.

How were your spiritual experiences or instincts responded to by adults around you?
How do you nurture the spirituality of children around you?
Do you believe that people of all ages can experience the Divine?
What if the Divine does not look the way we think that God should look?

Feng Shui: really?

Feng Shui...whatever. Next Fad.  So then two friends stand in my home and whisper about bad Feng Shui and a colleague with whom I share an office completely rearranges the office (without my permission) stating she did it for "better Feng Shui".  I am furious and say I'm going to change it back.   "Just one week" she begs, explaining that she had did it to emphasize better abundance.  "Just give it one week and see if the phone is not ringing off the hook with more clients".  I find this completely unlikely but agree to leave it for a week in order to end the conflict.  But bizarrely at the end of the week I have been swamped with calls of new clients....now what to think?

I let one of my two friends above lend me her book on Feng Shui which of course is based upon "ancient Chinese wisdom".  I look at the Bagua chart, a sort of tic tac toe grid that one superimposes over ones house or a room:



abundance/finance           reputation/fame            romance/love


health/family                   center/spirituality          creativity/children


self-knowledge/skills       career/work               influential people/travel


I consider the idea that all ancient wisdom must have some value to it or it would die in public awareness.  I consider the 9 areas list and conclude that these are important areas of life.  In fact if one were to list 9 things people care most about or consider most essential to a good life, I must admit this list would be it.

The book lists types of objects to emphasize or expand good fortune in each section, and things which are generally bad feng shui anywhere (dirt, chaos, disorder, dead things...well that makes sense).  Most of this seems nonsense to me.  However, as mentioned in my last post, at that moment in time I was trying to find a partner.  So I review that chapter of the book.  It talks about putting paired objects in that section of the house.  I think of that will be easy I will just move my paired objects to there.  However, after a quick search of my house I discover to my shock that I have only some salt and pepper shakers, candlestick holders and one box my sister gave me with two birds printed on it.  There are however in my home many objects that celebrate the beauty and power of the individual.  Even the painting by my grandmother that hang throughout my house, none have two of anything in them....ahh this is even a multi-generational message in my life.  I have been taught self-sufficiency and independence, even isolation, but not cooperation, partnership or duel  engagement!

This was my first real lesson in Feng Shui.  It is not really about objects, it is about seeing your own consciousness.  In fact I was most persuaded by a place in the book that said: "Do not be ruled by this, have fun with it."  Having had some success in the romance department I decided I need more income in my life, so I turned to the "abundance" section.  First lesson: notice it says abundance not money or income?  As is always the case with Feng Shui one is invited to symbolize the desired outcome.  What does more income actually look like?  What do I want money for?  Good questions.  I also find myself strangely freed.  I was raised in a religion that emphasizes simplicity.  The pursuit of material wealth is bad and not of God.  But this word abundance turns that on its head for me.  Abundance I recognize is of the Divine Provider.  The Source is where all abundance originates from.  So I am freed to consider how to represent this in my home and in fact how to actually accomplish the increase in income I needed to provide for my family.  In fact Feng Shui warns about houses with missing sectors and how to "correct" for this.  As I thought back on homes I had lived in I was amazed to recognize that throughout my mostly poor adult years I had lived in countless homes that were without this sector!

In the influence people section I enjoyed creating a collage of the people who have actually influenced me and their quotes.  Also posting pictures of places I want to travel to.  I have enjoyed thinking about how I think about my self-knowledge, that which I have and that wish I would have.  Same for my "fame" section.  It was also fun to put up pictures of several generations of my family in the family section and equally fun to create a work space for creative endeavors in the creativity section.  I have become many times more creative and recaptured a creative part of my heritage in so doing.  For many of  my clients the real work of feng shui is about clearing away the junk: the messes of an undigested life.  It is an outer work that matches the inner work.

What questions will feng shui open about your life?

God the Father; God the Mother

When I was in my 20's I was looking at how I prayed and I realized I started prayers with "Dear Lord"...well this I realized was really messed up!  After all the Lord, was the oppressive master in a feudal system of economic oppression....hardly how I wanted to think of the Holy One!  So I started trying to decide how I wanted to call God:  Father...no that implied God was male.  Mother....no that implied God was female.  Goddess...same issue.  Creator? Nice but seemed to overlook the time with God after creation.  Aba...same issue as Father above.  After I read Yahweh was Hebrew for “the One who cannot be Named” I liked that for weeks...but it simply did not ring for me.  Eventually one day in worship I heard the melody of a popular song that says in one line  "Oh by beloved I'm crying".  I had always thought of that verse as being about a human lover, but it occurred to me that God had to be the Most Beloved.  But even that seemed to ignore other aspect of God - God the Creator, or the Divine Parent, etc.  Then suddenly to the same melody I heard all of the names playing in succession and then I realized they were all the right name!  The problem was trying to reduce God to only one name.  I then saw that what I really wanted to do was be in the present moment naming the Most Miraculous One as I experienced God in that very moment.  From then on this is indeed how I have called The Great Soul and have saved the word God for a coin of the realm when I want to be sure another knows what I mean or when I am simply intellectually talking about God and not relating to my Creator.

In the many years I have spent talking to people about their experience of the Spirit I see however that our concept of God is highly shaped by our own personal experience of our parents.  After all our parents were the first all powerful beings we experienced, and if things went well they were also the first beings we felt loved by.  Unfortunately they were also the first people who punished us, and the first people who hurt us.  So I find if someone had a distant aloof parent they tend to see God that way.  If they had a loving supportive parent they tend to see God that way.  If their parent was very punishing they believe in a God of the Old Testament.  And so it goes.  In fact once I gave a workshop entitled "Healing our Spiritual Wounds" and almost all the wounds people brought were a difficulty in feeling connected to God.   When I asked about their relationship to their parents they would describe a very similar difficulty in that relationship.   So I invite you to consider for a moment in what ways do you see God as like your parents?

So are you just in trouble forever if you had a terrible relationship to your parents?  No, not at all, but it does mean that you need to connect to where in your life have you felt unconditional love or at least most strongly loved.  It helps to then consciously strengthen the connection in your mind between that behavior and set feelings and your concept of God.  That person has modeled to you a small portion of the Divine Lover.  I think this is very important because I think a large portion of people who give up on religion or even on God do so because the images in the Bible often describe an angry, or vengeful or punitive God and that way too easily connects to painful parental images.  Apparently, Aba is Hebrew for essentially Daddy - Jesus calls God Aba in this very familiar and tender way.  I think we need to be able to call God in ways that are familiar and tender because they allow us much more easily to connect to a Loving God!

I think one of the disillusioning and difficult moments of life is when we first realize our parents are not perfect or all powerful!  This I think is its’ own fall from Eden.  In facing the difficulties and travails of life I think there are times when we all need to be able to turn to someone or something larger than ourselves. If we are lucky, sometimes we can lean on a partner, but even they are not big enough for some of the trauma’s and loses of life.  Some of my agnostic friends say  “Oh this is why people make up the concept of God – to have a crutch to rely on.”  I’m not concerned about this.  I’m not concerned because I have been able to rely on The Rock and that has been real.  But I’m also not concerned about it because the pragmatist in me says:  So if we make something up and it helps and we even live a better life for it… then what is the problem?  Studies show that people who identify as religious have better mental health over all and tend to rate themselves as happier on happiness scales.   So is this such a bad idea?

A friend of mine shared with me that her spiritual life was always a struggle - then one day she went to a workshop where she was invited to call God Mother- in that moment she says something revolutionarily changed in her spiritual life.  Suddenly she could see God in her own image.  She could notice the gentle, nurturing, life giving qualities of God.  This is not everyone's experience.  For some of us to give God any gender again traps and makes smaller The Infinite One. 

But I do invite you to examine: is God male or female or genderless in your experience of the Only One?  Is God the Creator of everything , or the co-creators with all of Life?  Is God all powerful, or simply the field of Unity upon which the Universe rests?  Is God the creator of our conscience or is God neutral and unconcerned with the choices of mankind or of a (wo)man? What qualities and traits do you experience in God? How big is the God you know? What names call out to that which you have known in your own soul?  But most importantly, how do we get really personal with the Inward Dwelling One?

Why is There Evil?

"Why is there evil?"  this is a question a client asked me recently, but is also I think one of the most common spiritual or theological questions throughout the ages.  (Right along side of why do we die?)  Various religions answer this differently - because of original sin, because of free choice, because of the devil, as a karmic punishment, because the nature of life is suffering, etc.  Some find one of those answers to be a satisfying answer; most of us I think do not.  For those of patchwork faith (those who construct their own theology as they seek truth where ever they find it) this question does engage a  lot of other questions - like what is the nature of God?  How powerful is God? Is there sin?  Do we have free choice or live predestined lives?  Is there Karma?  Do we reincarnate?

Part of the purpose of this blog is to ask you to engage deeply with all of those questions.  And I will try humbly to answer here the question as I understand it.

I do believe in free will.  If there was not free will we would live lives of fate and predestined outcomes.  So we are free to choose what we do, whether it is good or bad.  Most of us unless very psychologically damaged have consciences, so one psychological answer is: damage results in more damage.  Violence and oppression become passed on. Statistics are pretty clear that those who were sexually abused often become perpetrators; those who experienced domestic violence growing up are at higher risk to act out violently.  

But freewill certainly does not explain things like Enron or Hitler.  The example of Nazi Germany certainly gives us the example of ordinary people in mass numbers doing terrible things.  We see the impact of a whole culture of propaganda, education, youth groups, and societal pressure and punishments creating a cultural normal that did evil things.  A less intense but still powerful example of societal norms supporting evil is slavery in the US or I would argue environmental destruction in our current age.

But even these psychological or sociologic explanations do not account for why between two victims in a family where sexual abuse happens, one goes out and becomes abusive, and the other does not.  Nor does it account for how people in torture centers come up with the things they do.  It also does not address the disturbing answer to the other side of the coin - why do some people become the victims?  It cannot be as easily answered as "in the wrong place at the wrong time"  Yes sometimes, but why are children born with AIDS or drug addiction.   Then we might ask how does a just Creator allow such suffering?

I do not believe God can both grant free will and be all powerful.  So in granting us freewill this means God grants us the power to intentionally or unintentionally cause harm to other human beings, and the power to deny what God might want for us.  Some people are simply there at the wrong moment.  But I also do believe in reincarnation, so I believe we all choose the lives and circumstances we are born into to maximize the growth intentions of this life time.  Which is to say when we live many lifetimes, we do not and cannot learn all there is to learn in just one lifetime.  Just like the learning within one life, some of our early choices effect  or limit the choices available or logical to follow later. 

This is perhaps another way of talking about Karma.  I believe young souls learn elemental lessons about violence, love, trust, truth...which is why as a society we have a lot of struggles in those areas.  But from those lessons we choose more complicated situations, or sometimes opposite situations in order to learn the lessons we need to learn.  Thus two souls in similar circumstances may make quite different choices. So having perpetrated violence in one lifetime we may choose a life where we will be a victim of violence as a way of learning about all sides of violence.  Some people call that Karma.

So back to why would a child be born with AIDS or drug addiction?  I do not believe Karma is a punishment but simply a learning opportunity.  So if one needed to learn about dependency, about meaning based not on accomplishments, about addiction itself, about the overcoming of addiction, etc  all of these are reasons one could choose such a life.

It is still hard to understand why one might be born into famine and starvation: what learning could come of this, or to die in a death camp?  Several writers I have read suggest that in order for us to see Light that we must have the contrast of dark.  They suggest that God allows for our bad choices as contrast that leads to learning for good choices.  These same writers suggest that some souls choose lives of suffering or victimhood as a sacrifice and a contribution to the collective human consciousness and learning.  These writers suggest that the Holocaust and the several genocides since then in Africa and Bosnia are occasions that have laid bare to the world the horror of scapegoating a whole ethnic group, of doing enemy think on such a massive level, of the reign of terror of one group of people turned on another.  Given that the word Hitler is almost a synonym for evil in our culture, it does serve as a powerful symbol in our collective consciousness.  Yes much better that we would have learned the lesson on a permanent level, but there were still souls who did not learn that lesson by the conclusion of WWII or people whose lives were so wholly focused on other lessons during that time (or souls not on earth then) that there were still souls needing to learn that lesson in Darfur, etc. 

Does humanity make any progress or do we just go round in circles?  There is far less child abuse on the planet that 200 years ago, in many cultures it now so widely condemned that it must be hidden.   Studies show that there is less wars being fought right now than ever before in history proportionate to the population.  Slavery while not abolished is also far less prevalent and universally condemned as a "bad" thing.  So it does seem as Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "the arc of history is long and bends towards justice."  Our souls are linked not just in this lifetime to a web of Friends and family, but also through many lifetimes to a collective shared experience and a slow but steady learning curve.

This also suggests to me that how we respond to the suffering or evil that falls over our own life is incredibly important, both for ourselves and for the collective consciousness.   I once watched on tv the sentencing for the Green River Killer, a serial murderer in the State of WA.  Family members were all getting a chance to make a statement to him before his sentencing.  Some were full of anger, condemnation and hatred.  A very few offered him forgiveness.  Most tragic to me was a woman who blamed him for every wrong that had befallen her since the murder of a family member, including her husband getting Alzheimer’s!  What a convenient scapegoat he was for her, and yet she was full of bitterness and misery.  By contrast the man who testified to his faith and that God had given him the power to forgive as Jesus forgives us, had clearly much more peace and also happiness while still clearly loving and missing his deceased daughter.  If we are here to learn, than how we respond to evil either means we learn from the lesson handed us, or tragically we fail to learn, and may dance with that particular evil many more times while trying to learn its lessons.

Have you lived before?

Most people find the question of reincarnation quite fascinating.  There are whole religions like Buddhism and Hinduism that believe in reincarnation as part of their theology.  Christianity does not believing that the afterlife is in Heaven.  Judaism believes that this life is the whole ball game.  The ancient Egyptians of course had very elaborate beliefs and rituals surrounding the belief in reincarnation.  Even though this is a Christian nation which would suggest that the general public does not believe in reincarnation, a 2009 Pew polls showed 24% of Americans do believe in reincarnation.

Why do some people believe in this?  I think reasons range from remembering past lives, the hope to be with loved ones again in another time, to some logic of seeing how nature recycles all atoms in some sort of way and feeling this is the way nature works.   Like most beliefs I encourage people who "don't know" to try this on for an hour or two or a day and see - what does it make sense of if it is true?  How does it sit with you if it is true.

Here is a summery of some things I see that it sheds light on if true:
If we live more than one life clearly there is a learning cycle that is longer than a life time.  This seems to imply that the soul which takes more than one body over time, does retain some memory - if not of a life at least of its lessons.  This to me also helps explain the evolution of humanity over time - a shared memory, not just passed down generationally, but in our shared soul.

It has important implications for morality.  If we are to live repeatedly than the mistakes, or "sins" or evils we do have implications for our future live(s).  I have heard this explained in at least two different ways:1) that as a punishment for actions in a past life we are born into circumstances that will punish us (a Hindu belief taken out to justify a caste system.)  This then theoretically also explains why people suffer - although in a way that to western eyes looks like a blame the victim position. 

The 2nd explanation is that we "choose" our next life as part of a past life review done "on the other side".  Included in this idea is the sense that we arrive at some place of deeper wisdom, compassion and insight while united with the Light/God and that from that place of wisdom we choose the circumstances that will help us learn what we still need to learn or accomplish what we still need to do.  (Some versions say we can see everything about the life we will live, other versions say we will see only the circumstances of our birth- parents, relatives, soci-economic status, country, environment, etc. and thus sort of take our "best shot" at getting the right set up for our spiritual goals.)  As a therapist I know it can be quite "activating" for people to look at the idea that they chose their parents ("those SOBs!  No Way I'm not a masochist!")  But I find even in very abusive situations people are able to see lessons they learned, ways they were shaped that now serve them, or strange silver linings in the hand they feel they were dealt. (or chose?)  In some cases it is actually amazingly freeing and healing to let go of a victim posture and embrace one's whole life, all of it as deliberate and meaningful.  This second position also goes a way towards explaining suffering, but differently - as part of the classroom where we learn.  And here I want to be clear that I do not assume that learning always occurs by positive instruction.  If we burn our hand in a fire we also learn something.

So pick one that makes sense to you - so you got here in this life via that means....then what.  If you are living many lives than the question of karma becomes newly meaningful.  If you treat a sibling or spouse meanly or wrongly how does that show up in another life.   I would imagine one unkind act has no real impact....but a lifetime - yep you got karma.  One set of beliefs says we will pay in another life time but maybe not with that person but just with a similar situation.  Another set of beliefs says we will be in lifetime after life time with that person (sometimes switching roles) till we "get it right"".   It would seem to me that in either case to treat a spouse abusively either risks a life time in which one will be treated abusively by a spouse or like the movie ground hog day has us in "take" after "take" in a marriage with the chance to be abusive or not....  Either way in my mind the efficient course is to act with compassion, and justice now rather than putting it off to another life time. 

It is strange to me that Christianity promotes right moral behavior by suggesting sins will be punished in the afterlife.  I do not see this as powerfully motivating most Christians to act morally.  Yet there is something about the idea that doing evil to another ruins your own karma that does seem to give people pause in their actions.  Christianity also suggests that suicide is a sin and thus attempts to prevent the commission of this act.  Perhaps this has stopped people from killing themselves.  But reincarnation makes the claim that if you kill yourself you will simply return to a life with a similar circumstance or suffering and face the choice again until you learn how not to escape the problem at hand.  This I have known to stop seriously suicidal people from killing themselves.  Rather than being a path out of suffering it then reframes it as a path to vastly more suffering.

So those who are scientifically minded are always looking for proof for spiritual beliefs. I actually think reincarnation has more proof to it than many other spiritual beliefs.  If one is not convinced that the Dali Lama is the same soul reincarnated for successive life times as that generations Dali Lama.  (the proof being that a small child who is the next Dali Lama can pick out possessions of the former Dali Lama out of a pile of objects and answer questions about his life.)  Then one might find interesting the following video clip of an American boy who kept telling his parents about dying in a plane over the ocean in a war, until he provided enough information that they were able to find the WWII records of his life, service and death, and reunite him with a still living sister.  http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Parents+Think+Boy+Is+Reincarnated+Pilot&search_type=&aq=f

The most convincing for me however is a story of an American woman who from a small child on drew pictures and talked of a family she had had in Ireland.  She remembered dying in childbirth very frightened for her the children she was leaving behind.  As an adult her mother helped her find the village and return there were she discovered one of the children still living there and was able to tell him things that he said only his dead mother would have known!

So what would it mean for your spiritual life if you knew you had lived other lives?

Recoknowing..or spiritual nigglings

Recently in a conversation with another person she came up with the word "recoknowing". What is this?  It is a brilliant way to describe the spiritual experience of knowing something on a deep or inner level and being mindful enough to recognize it as truth - truth from the Source.  Not long before in a conversation with a client we addressed the topic of "communication with God".  My client felt very frustrated that there was not/is not enough communication with God.  This of course brought up the question of how do we know when God is speaking?  How do we hear God?  (I have loved the UCC banner from a few years ago that says:  “God is not done speaking.”)

It became clear to me during the course of talking with my client that if we have a very precise, narrow or anthropomorphic idea of what God's communication is like, then a great deal of communication can occur that will go right by us.  It reminded me of the old joke about the person in a huge flood who goes up on the roof of their house and prays for God to deliver them.  First a person comes by floating on a big log and offers space on the log.  The person says no feeling the log is too small and too risky.  Then someone comes by in a row boat and offers help - no the roof dweller says, feeling confident that God will save them.  Finally a helicopter come by and lowers a rope, but the roof dweller again refuses feeling the rope and the ascent to the ‘copter is way to scary.  Eventually the person drowns, and when they go to Heaven they rather reproachfully say to God:  "I prayed for your help.  Why did you not save me?"  God replies:  "I sent you a log, a boat and a helicopter - what more did you want?"

I wonder if we do not often missed God's communication in much the same way, not seeing it in the "ordinary" or human language it may come in.  It has been both a joy and a frustration in my life to try to understand the synchronistic or metaphorical way God may sometimes speak to us.  But if you ask people to tell examples of synchronistic events that have happened in their life - often at very critical turning points, some of the stories will actually send shivers up your spine. 

I have always been both fascinated and horrified at the same time by the stories after 9/11 of people who were suppose to be in the Towers that day, or on those flights who weren't:  the person who didn't go to work that day because he was taking his son to his first day of kindergarten, the woman who broke the heel on her high heels and stopped to have them fixed, the person who went out on an errand, the person who was fired the week before  - or the person who "missed their plane" or more tragically the man who was on the plane because he rescheduled to spend the night before at home with his wife for her birthday.   Are these all simply coincidences or did Spirit speak to each of those people calling them to certain choices they made that day or week?

A friend of mine's young dog chewed on her glasses scratching them.  The only way she could get a new pair was to have another examination done, the first in four year - only to discover that she had severe sight threatening Glaucoma.  Coincidence, or Spirit speaking?  Another friend happened by a series of unusual turn of events to be at a meeting with a man who sold supplemental health insurance.  She heard his pitch for a special cancer rider which could be added to your policy which paid all uncovered co-pays and lost wages if you had treatment for cancer.  Something in her just nudged her to do it.  6 months later she was diagnosed with colon cancer; the policy made the different for her as a single person going through 9 months of chemotherapy.  Serendipity, or the Holy One whispering within?

Some denominations tell stories of the faithful following God's direction so literally that they would come to an intersection in their horse and buggy and wait until they sensed which direction to go next.  John Woolman,  a famous Quaker, journaled of feeling called to go to Barbados to preach against slavery, buying the ticket on a ship and traveling all the way to the port and then at the port getting a "message" that he had completed what God had required of him and turning around going home!  Madness or faithfulness to a message received?

Have you ever felt sort of driven to tell another person something?  Not because you were trying to persuade them of a given point or tell them what to do, but just felt it was important to communicate some information, inspiration or encouragement to another?  This is an almost daily experience for me.  Sometimes the words are sort of shrugged off with a sort of "oh right, whatever", but more often they are received with great gratitude and even sometimes with a "thank you I have been really thinking about this, looking for this communication."  This I think is an example of how God taps us on the shoulder and asks us to minister to each other, therefore using our mouths as the vessels that deliver the messages.

Courage or Serenity

Recently I finished reading the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference by Eileen Flanigan, a Quaker woman.  It is a book about the Serenity prayer: 
     "God grant me the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept
      the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference."  

One of the things that is very clear to me is that we are all "bent" one way or the other by our childhood experience.  Some of us always strive to change things, other anticipate accepting the situation as it is and "letting go" that which distresses them.  But for the most part on either side of this fence I think we do it as a secular activity.  By this I mean I think we do what we do as a pattern, barely considered, and certainly with no thought for the Divine Actor.

What if instead we were checking in with the Creator?  What if we learned to routinely hold the events of our life and are responses to them up to the guidance of the Holy One?  What if we really asked The Holy One to show us when we needed to take action and give us the needed courage to do so,  or to show us that we needed to be still and find peace and contentment with what is?  What if the Wisdom to know the difference is not something that our little brains figure out but something that the All Mighty shows us?

God Who?

As my friends will tell you, for years I have suffered from what I call "God Who?"   This is a state of forgetting God when the chips are down.   It is not, as is the case for some people, that I doubt the existence of God or have any sort of faith crisis.  No in fact if someone would ask me while I'm in a state of fear or anger if I believe in God I would say "absolutely".  But in such states I forget all about God; I'm knocked off center and living in a soup of miserable emotions.  My brain is busy trying to figure out what to do and why things are this way, and "blah, blah, blah."  When something reminds me of God again, whether it is someone else's statement of faith, a sneeze (which brings to mind "God blesses you") or my next faith experience - I'm very quickly "righted" like a partially capsized boat, and brought back to center.  Then I can relate to God and draw upon my faith in dealing with the situation at hand.

Some years ago I came to understand why I have this affliction.  The greatest crisis of my life occurred when I was 11 and my mother died.  I had not been raised with faith and had no particular conception of God.  I think this is true for most children and their childhood crises even when they are raised in a church.   So I had no where to turn - just lost in my pain and fear.   So even now as I feel pain and fear I return to this state where I do not know God.  I thought realizing that would help me not go into "God Who?" mode but it did not help.

I have spend a lot of time sort of beating myself up about this, wondering why I cannot stay in a state of remembering God and trying to figure out how I could not fall out of knowing.   A few years ago I had the helpful realization that throughout time humanity has struggled with this.  This I think is part of the meaning of the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall - we fall out of that wonderful place that we dwell with God (in that case through pride or shame - I imagine different emotions can take different people out of a state of unity with God.)  I realized that this is the human spiritual condition and the reason for the practices of so many religions -to bring us back to a state of awareness and connection to God.   So I decided then that when I noticed with dismay that I was out of connect that instead of judging or berating myself I would simply notice that it was the first step of my returning to God.  That has helped it to be less painful- I don't think it has decreased its frequency.

For a while I was trying a practice of spiritual journaling as a way to try to not "forget" God.  But what I found was that when in a state of anger or fear I did not want to write in the journal because I tended to just write about what was making me feel that way and the feelings.  So I have now decided to try a new path - it is the path of regular contact with spiritual inspiration.  I have resolved to do some spiritual reading each day as a way to connect with God regardless of my emotional state.

What is your experience with God Who?

When did you stop Singing?

Yesterday I was at a workshop lead by facilitators trained by Joanna Macy.  Joanna is a Buddhist, a psychologist, and a whole systems thinker.  Since the 80's responding to the Nuclear Crisis, Joanna has been looking at how the role of suppressed grief and denial play in our inability as a society to respond to the threats to life on earth. Originally she focused on the nuclear weapons threat, more recently she has looked at environmental threats, and the threat from climate change.  (see http://www.joannamacy.net/)

During the workshop the leader shared the following queries:
1)  When did you stop singing?
2)  When did you stop deeply listening and hearing with empathy what another says?
3) When did you stop telling stories?
4)  When did you stop coming to silence?
and to the above I would add:
5) When did you stop dancing?
6)  When did you stop laughing?

These queries to me speak to the deep zestful engagement with life.  It seems to me that in any one of these areas, where we stopped, it is time to understand and engage in healing.  I would love to have people post comments about what they realize about these queries.  For myself I see that after I left HS singing became very much more scarce, and that I need to figure out how to remember the words of songs so that I can sing them.  I realized as well that just two weeks ago this somehow came up with my husband whether we ever sang.  I think that when this sort of synchronicity of a subject coming before you in close proximity happens, this is one of the ways The Singer taps us on the shoulder to get our attention.  Ironically one of my favorite songs says  "how can I keep from singing?"  Time to start singing.