Sunday, December 17, 2017

Do Unitarian Universalists look for truth and meaning in all the wrong places?

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. How successful they are in their search has yet to be determined. It may be that they are looking for truth and meaning in all the wrong places.

What is it that we seek from others? Love. He could love me, if only he would, and he won't because he is such a prick. She could love me, if only she would, and she won't because she is such a bitch. We accuse each other of perversity or holding out on us as if they had the power to make us happy.

Fact of the matter is that the other is not holding out on us because the other does not have the power to make himself or herself happy, let alone take responsibility for the happiness of another human being. This false belief in the power of the other to make us happy is the basis for all human misery and anguish. We have been looking for love in all the wrong places as the song tells.

The quest, to be successful, must take us within not without. We, each, are ultimately responsible for our own happiness. We can't put this responsibility on someone else. It is existentially unfair, inappropriate, misguided, and a huge mistake. Basically the belief that other people can make us happy is the chief of the ego's illusions. The ego tells us that the pearl of great price, that which we seek, is buried in another person's body. Sooner or later most of us usually with great sorrow and suffering, we come to recognize and acknowledge that this is not true. We have been on a wild goose chase, like a Boy Scout on a snipe hunt.

Clearing away these misguided illusions we come to realize that Love's presence has been within us all the time. We were too distracted to notice. We were too hell bent on getting it from somebody else rather than taking the responsibility ourselves.

The great turning of spiritual maturity is the realization that happiness, Love, is an inside job. It is at the bottom of a deep well which resides covered in slag, dirt, rocks, and vegetation. If we mine for it we will find the precious diamond that has been there forever and is our natural inheritance.


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