"Life must be a seeking - not a desire but a search; not an ambition to become this, to become that, a president of a country or prime minister of a country, but a search to find out 'Who am I?'"
The fourth principle of the covenant of Unitarian Universalism is the affirmation and promotion of the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Osho suggests that this search not take us outward but inward.
As a psychotherapist I sometimes ask people "What makes you tick?" People often look startled, then scared, then perplexed. What to say? How to even think about such a question?
Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living and the bumper sticker says that an unlived life is not worth examining. People go to church and to therapy as well as to alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, video games looking for answers to the question of what to do with themselves and how to block out the pain of the existential anxiety that are consciously or unconsciously feeling.
Unitarian Universalists have a suggestion. UUs suggest that people engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning and then go off half cocked searching for snipe in social justice projects thinking that these activities will save the world.
Unitarian Universalism will never survive and grow unless there is a spiritual revival within its churches. Based on my experience in the churches I have visited, I am not optimistic this will occur. The UU churches I have visited are caught up in the ego concerns of the world, often times with remarkable enthusiasm at first until the energy dissipates and lethargy and depression set in and attendance drops and congregations have a hard time even financially supporting their basic operations.
From whence will a spiritual revival come? It starts as Osho suggests with the search to understand our divine origin, our inherent worth and dignity which binds us together and which we all share.
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