Saturday, March 14, 2009

Morning Meditation - Can You Find Your Original Face?

Laughing_buddha When you grow up in a dysfunctional family you learn all kinds of dysfunctional stuff. You learn dysfunctional stuff about who you are supposed to be. You learn dysfunctional stuff about how other people are supposed to be, and you learn dysfunctional stuff about how people are supposed to deal with each other.


Andrew Boyd, in his book Daily Afflictions, says, "Not only are you ready on a hair-trigger to detonate a flexible array of adult issues, but you've been rigorously trained to handle operational systems of adult institutions, including passive aggression in the school system, guilt bartering in organized religion, and domination-submission patterns between corporations and government." p. 29


You are also well trained to screw up your personal relationships and bring plenty of pain and anguish and suffering to yourself and others whom you claim to love.


As Osho points out in his book, Compassion, we have forgotten our original face. Our original face was the face of love and innocence that we were born with. Our mother's womb was a place of love, serenity, security, and contentment, and then we got born and we came into the world perfectly innocent and were corrupted. The challenge of a lifetime is to rediscover our original face and when successful, we have achieved enlightenment, and hopefully that enlightenment includes compassion in such away that conscious love includes the whole world like that of an innocent, trusting, loving child who delights in sight of its mother's face.

2 comments:

  1. "When you grow up in a dysfunctional family you learn all kinds of dysfunctional stuff." etc. etc.

    And then you end up going to a dysfunctional Unitarian*Universalist "Church" presided over by some pretty damned dysfunctional people. . .

    Sorry about that blunt "snark" David but you know and I know that it is solidly founded on fact. I am, still stunned by just how dysfunctional some individual U*U "churches" can be and just how dysfunctional the UUA is, especially when it comes to dealing with clergy misconduct in am manner that actually honors and upholds U*U principles rather than making a total mockery of them. Here are some words from the UUA's increasingly irrelevant official apology to victims of clergy sexual misconduct, which was delivered at the 2000 UUA GA in Nashville Tennessee the better part of a decade ago -

    "Let me say this as simply and unequivocally as I know how: the Association has largely failed the people most hurt by sexual misconduct, the victims and survivors. Other denominations have done better. These brave and bruised people have, more often than not I suspect, been left lonely, confused, afraid, angry and betrayed. Un-ministered to. What I feel about this is not so much guilt, I guess, as great sorrow and regret. I am profoundly sorry. And I pledge that this gap, this failure, will be remedied."

    Quite regrettably that pledge to remedy those failures has not been honored and upheld aka lived up to, and the UUA has done virtually nothing to provide any real and tangible restorative justice to victims of clergy sexual misconduct (to say nothing of non-sexual forms of clergy misconduct) if I am to believe well informed people "in the know" as well as my own eyes. "The Association" (why does the CIA come to mind?) continues to largely fail the victims of ALL forms of clergy misconduct, not only clergy sexual misconduct. Victims of clergy misconduct are still more often than not *I* have very reasonable grounds to suspect, left lonely and/or confused and/or afraid and/or angry and/or betrayed by their fellow U*Us. I can't help but wonder when the dysfunctional "Association" in Boston will finally get around to genuinely ministering to these un-ministered to people. It seems abundantly clear that it will not be on UUA President Bill Sinkford's watch. . .

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  2. So in short, I look forward to the day when "The Association" which has conveniently "forgotten" its "original face" actually does "choose love" and "stand on the side of love" by actually providing some real and tangible restorative justice for ALL victims of clergy misconduct.

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