Morning Meditation - Filling up the hole in the soul

"The rabbi of Sassov once gave away the last money he had in his pocket to a man of ill repute. His disciples threw it up to him. He answered them: "Shall I be more finicky than God, who gave it to me?"

Tales of the Hasidim in Peacemaking: Day by Day, p.16

Parents shame their children with malicious attacks like "Who do you think you are?!!!!" "You should be ashamed of yourself!!!"

And, indeed, at our core most of us feel inadequate, defective, damaged in some basic way. We are ashamed of ourselves and we don't even know why.

So we pretend that we are better than we feel we are. We compete. We strive. We live in fear of failing the test, of being rejected by our friends, of being abandoned by those we feel we love. This fear becomes symptomatic and we go to the doctor who gives us drugs and sometimes we have been drugging ourselves already with alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, pain killers, food, gambling, sex, work, religion, and other mood altering activities.

We compulsively buy things which advertisers promise us will make us all right, make us feel better, makes us the envy of our friends. Our children beg us for the latest fad so they can fit in and be kewl and out of our insecurities we buy the stuff for our kids because we don't want to see them suffer any more than they do already.

And this whole vicious cylcle, built on deap seated shame, leads to materialism, greed, over indulgence, hoarding, anxiety, depression, psychosis, and death of the spirit if not the body.

And what does Unitarian Universalism have to offer to a society based in a deep seated belief in inadequacy and defectiveness?

Unitarian Universalism says that it values the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Unitarian Universalism has a respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Unitarian Universalism believes in a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

There is something deeply perverted about a society built on the transmission of inadequacy and defectiveness to its members. Parents do this to their children to control them because it was done to them. The religions join in and reinforce what the parents have done. Along come the marketeers and they constantly reinforce the basic inadequacies of people which can only be dissolved with the purchase of their products. This is the world we have built and the world we will continue to live in until there is a change in consciousness. It will take at least 25% of the population to reach the tipping point. Unitarian Universalists are a long way off from reaching that critical mass in our society. Can Unitarian Universalism help people fill the hole in their souls?