An online magazine of faith based on a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The mission of Unitarian Universalism: A Way Of Life ministries is to provide information, teach skills, and clarify values to facilitate the evolutionary development of increasingly higher levels of spiritual development for human beings around the world.
As of August 1, 2018, the Washington Post reported President Trump has made 4,229 false or misleading claims in 558 days. For more information click here. Unfortunately, President Trump would not be a good candidate for covenenting with Unitarian Univeralists because of his failure to affirm and promote the fourth principle, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
Good parents and grandparents teach their children and grandchildren to tell the truth. Trust, credibility, and right relationship depend on it. Parents and grandparents cannot tell their children and grandchildren to grow up and become a President like President Trump. What do you UU parents and grandparents tell their children and grandchildren about the President's behavior?
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This principle is based on the key word "responsible."
Are most Americans irresponsible when it comes to searching for truth when 81% report that they don't believe that Americans can agree on basic facts?
Are Unitarian Univeralists different from most Americans in that they can put their egos aside and view nature honestly and authentically?
While UUs probably would agree that "truth" cannot be imposed and thus the search must be allowed to proceed freely, UUs are free thinkers after all, UUs would probably agree that there is an objective truth which can be responsibly arrived at.
Jesus Before Pilate John 18:37-39 …37“Then You are a king!” Pilate said. “You say that I am a king,” Jesus answered. “For this reason I was born and have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.” 38“Whatistruth?”Pilateasked.Andhaving saidthis,he went outagaintotheJewsandtoldthem,“Ifindnobasis for a chargeagainstHim.39But it is your custom that I release to you one prisoner at the Passover. So then, do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?”… Because Jesus testified to the Truth and not to the politically correct ideology of the day, they killed him. While on the path of the ego, the truth can get you killed, on the path of the Spirit, Truth will set you free. Which path are you walking? Walk with us at UUAWOL ministries in covenant to affirm and promote our fourth principle, and be sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help us, God, in our covenant. This is an article in a new series on UUAWOL tagged "Principles in Action."
Unitarian Universalists have so much to offer the world and yet it has sabotaged itself by getting into bed with the secularists and the atheists. The attempt by UU to co-opt the atheists has denied its own roots, its own history.
Atheism suppresses the idea of God, the Divine, the Transcendent. Atheism professes that Life is just mechanical stuff that can be explained and understood in secular terms. This idea of course is nonsense and disenchants the world in ways that are disorienting and alienating from our intuitive wisdom.
John Buehrens, a former UUA President supposedly said when people told him they were atheists, "What god is it that you don't believe in?"
Unitarian Universalism has deep roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In more recent history, it found much inspiration from the transcendentalists. In accepting atheists and secular humanists into its organization, UU has lost its credibility and its sense of self. The identity of Unitarian Universalism has been so buffered that it has lost its luminous quality, its capacity to inspire and comfort, its ability to engender enthusiasm, joy, and hope.
Unitarian Universalism has haughtily proclaimed that it doesn't evangelize, or proselytize, almost as if it is too good to share its message, its good news. UU has acted on the position that people must come to them, they don't reach out to people. In other words, Unitarian Universalism has taken the position that people must come to the church, the church doesn't go to the people.
And yet, the people are suffering because they don't know of the Divine, the ground of our being, the respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which human beings are only a part and perhaps a small part in the end if we wind up killing ourselves through nuclear war or human- caused climate change.
Unitarian Universalism's living tradition is based on a search for a Higher Power which is coded in the fourth principle as "truth and meaning". This search gives our lives meaning and purpose, and the search has been beneficial in amazing and miraculous ways. UUs are especially attuned to looking into the cracks where the light comes in, and not only recognizing and acknowledging the light in those cracks, but expressing gratitude and joy at its discovery.
Unitarian Universalism, if it is to grow into its purpose and mission, must clarify its knowledge and wisdom and share it joyously in a beleaguered world.
Suppressing or denying the knowledge of a Higher Power is psychologically and spiritually dangerous. Human beings are organic creations meant for continuous growth and development, the actualization of potential, the awareness of the whole of creation of which they are a part. The faith in this Oneness of creation is the foundation of a growing spiritual awakening which Unitarian Univeralism should facilitate. The future health of humanity and the world requires what we have to offer.
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The question for UUs is that the truth with a small t or a capital T?
We are all called to be teachers of God. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all constantly teaching by how we behave not by what we say. Stephen Gaskin said that, in the last analysis, all we have to offer another human being is our own state of being. So what state of being is your being in?
The Truth with a capital T will set us free. We are so easily enamored with our truths, small T, that we often don't become aware of the Truth with a capital T. For those of us who are aware of the Truth with a capital T, it is incumbent on us to share it. As Pope John Paul II said, "Never impose, always propose."
And so it is up to us, the Truth tellers, to propose the Truth with enthusiasm, energy, and joy. The Truth of Existence is always fun, enlightening, invigorating, and generous.
It is up to Truth to change the world, not the world to change the Truth. Many small truths don't make things right. Truth is found in right mindedness and truths are found in wrong mindedness.
Often, my truth is not the same as the Truth. The Truth is to be found on the path of the spirit which means we have to leave the path of the ego. Jesus tells the rich young man that if he would enter the Kingdom he would need to sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor, and come follow Him. It was too much for the young man. He became sad and walked away. He, unfortunately, was not yet ready for the Truth.
Truth which is everything and when we are in our right mind costs us nothing. It is free for the asking and taking. However in our wrong mind, the Truth appears to be very, very costly.
The Truth does not change or disappear. It is always there waiting for us to recognize it and accept it. When will be the time for you?
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Unfortunately, they focus all too often on the truth with a small t instead of the Truth with a capital T.
Robert Barron says, "The secular establishment always prefers Christians who are vacillating, unsure, divided, and altogether eager to privatize their religion. That's the kind of Christianity the regular culture likes:utterly privatized, hidden away, harmless." p.107, To Light A Fire On The Earth.
In our contemporary culture, postmodernist philosophy teaches that truth is a social construction. Truth, small t, is a social construction, relative, situational, a figment of human beings creations on the path of the ego. However, Truth, capital T is about spiritual laws and this Truth is absolute and not of the making of human beings. One truth is found on the path of wrong-mindedness, and the Truth is found on the path of right mindedness.
In our secular world, no distinction is made between truth and Truth. This distinction requires a level of wisdom and understanding that most modern people don't understand. This lack of understanding generates much anxiety and fear. It is written in A Course In Miracles, "You have every reason to feel afraid as you perceive yourself. This is why you cannot escape from fear until you realize that you did not and could not create yourself." T-3.IV.3:8-9
The spiritual path is not about intelligence, knowledge, creeds, belief systems, etc. Spirituality is not cognitive. In order to ascend on the spiritual path one must "lose one's mind." As St. Paul writes, we have to become "fools" for Christ. True spirituality is a return to child-like innocence wondering at the Oneness of existence.
People on the path of the ego don't want to hear about the Truth. It scares them. It means they would have to detach from the things that they think will make them happy. This is too much. The young man asks Jesus how to get to the kingdom and Jesus tells him to sell all he has, give the money to the poor, and come follow me, and the young man walks away sad.
People on the path of the ego who worship all kinds of idols don't want to hear about the Truth, they just want the Truth tellers to go away, shut their mouths, and keep their understandings to themselves. Unfortunately, they has happened more and more as the secular noise overwhelms the silence of sanity.
Roman Catholicism has described truth, beauty, and goodness as the "transcendentals." Unitarian Universalism often relies on the transcendentalists as prophetic women and men who have contributed to the living tradition of UU. In the pursuit of truth and meaning, paths into the true, beautiful, and good have provided sustenance for the search and journey.
Psychotherapists focus on the three aspects of the human personality: thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In the world of values we name truth, beauty, and goodness as the pivotal touchstones of our consciousnesses. These values correspond to the aspects of the personality: our thoughts desire truth, our feelings desire beauty, and our behavior desires goodness.
When we apply this trinity to the spiritual life we can wonder: what is truth, what is beauty, and what is goodness? What are the circumstances and factors that contribute to experiencing these three qualities?
It is the pursuit of the truth, beauty, and goodness that comprises the spiritual life and the life worth living. Wherein do these three qualities lie?
In my life, my truth is found in _____________________________.
In my life, beauty is most intensely experienced in ____________________________.
In my life, goodness is found in ________________________________.
In other words, what is the most important truth for you? What is the most beautiful for you? What is the most good that you appreciate most?
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Are you affirming and promoting the search in the right direction, in the right places? Truth and meaning is within not without. Truth and meaning are intrinsic not extrinsic. Truth and meaning within is a light the illuminates our experience and when it illuminates our experience, it illuminates others experiences as well.
When we have seen the light, we want to share it. It is not something to kept to oneself. It is like a joke, it is meant to be shared if we are to truly enjoy it.
We live in a society though that doesn't recognize the light because it is so mesmerized by darkness. Mammon and the ego rule the world providing many idols for worship. Those idols are easily shared and envied. Advertising bombards us 24/7/365, constantly. As a society, we have become the people of the lie. We have become so adapted to the con, the scam, the sell that we think nothing of it. This marketing seems normal and even entertaining.
When gears get shifted and the path of the ego is not doing it for us any more, it dawns on us that there must be a better way to live. We give up Mammon and Mammon's idols for something more precious, the real deal, the authentic, the genuine, the Oneness with the Divine, the Source of our Source.
Remember the old gospel hymn, "This little light of mine?" I'm gonna let it shine. This is not ego talking and strutting, this is something within and beyond my ego self. The song title might be better stated as "This little light within" I'm gonna let it shine and illuminate you too."
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and then get tired of the search. They are looking in the wrong places. Truth and meaning is not external, it is internal. And strangely and unexpectedly, the primary activity of the search is forgiveness.
Forgiveness, as the term is used in spiritual discourse, is not the pardoning of an offense, or asking to be excused for a harmful act or mistake for which we have regret and may now feel ashamed. Forgiveness, in the spiritual sense, is the recognition that all the drama and nonsense on the path of the ego is not real. It is a figment of our imagination.
Jesus says as they are killing Him, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," and they didn't and we are still talking about it 2000 years later. We could say the same for most of the stuff that happens to us and that we do to others. "Father, forgive us for we know not what we do," or as my 13 year old friend, Jackson, says, "It's ridiculous, just ridiculous!" And Jackson is expressing Jesus' forgiveness. Jackson and Jesus have the same understanding and Love.
Practicing forgiveness is this shifting of gears from the path of the ego to the path of the spirit. It is a rising above and not taking the drama seriously. It is a deep and hearty laughter at the absurdity and incongruity of life.
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Where does that truth and meaning lie?
Jesus tells us in the book of Revelations, chapter 3, verse 20, "Look at me. I stand at the door. I knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I'll come right in and sit down to supper with you."
But we don't really want to see Jesus. He calls us to leave our egos behind and join Him on the path of the spirit and we don't want to. The ego offers us all kinds of pleasurable and distracting things to amuse us, and Jesus only offers us peace and love.
We are still children who like our ridiculous play things and if there is a threat to take them away from us we cling to them and run away and hide.
What Jesus offers us is there at the door. Can we overcome our fear and answer the knock?
Not yet. Things will have to get worse. We have yet to hit bottom. Then maybe when we are desperate we will look for a better way. Sometimes it takes great suffering for the dawning to occur that the way of Jesus is a better choice if we want to become truly happy.
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Where does truth and meaning lie: on the path of the ego or the path of the spirit?
Be careful what you pray for. You may be barking up the wrong tree. You may be whistling in the dark.
God is not part of the path of the ego. God is understanding and compassionate and is sad to watch God's creations struggle and suffer on the path of the ego which they have created, but respecting their free will, God does not intervene because God knows nothing of this fantasy which God's creations have built. This is the meaning of the Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve went their own way and decided to create their own world apart from the world which God created. Adam and Eve and their children can't have it both ways: either want to live in God's world or the world of their own making.
We have chosen to live apart from God's world on the path of the ego and then expect God to intervene and make things easier for us in a world not of God's making. This expectation is not only silly and stupid, it is arrogant and full of a false sense of entitlement which springs from the childish willfulness and naivete of a two year old.
An observer might want to shout, "Grow up!" Playing your childish games, and when they go awry, asking God to fix the mess you have made is based on a huge misunderstanding of what has happened and what is going on. You have been on the wrong track. Has it dawned on you that there must be a better way?
Indeed there is a better way. It is turning off the path of the ego onto the path of the spirit. This turning initiates a searching for what one has left so long ago. It is a re-membering of the Oneness from which one has separated. This process of re-joining the Oneness is called the At-one-ment, Atonement.
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.Where does the sought for Truth lie? Where is it to be found? Like love, perhaps UU in looking in all the wrong places.
Osho says that the Truth can't be divided into fragments. Either you get the whole of it or nothing. There is no little bit or only part of it.
The whole, as Aristotle said, is greater than the sum of the parts. That's the Truth.
There are many roads to Rome, many ways to skin a cat. There are many ways to enlightenment, to remembering your Divine nature which is your natural inheritance. Various religions offer different rituals, practices, worship experiences, sacraments. No one size fits all as the existence of all the world's religions attest, but they all aim to the same result, remembering the Divine. Unitarian Univeralism has recognized this phenomenon and only asks the affirmation and promotion of the free and responsible search for Truth and meaning. This search is first for Truth, secondly for cosmic consciousness, and third for bliss. Like most religions, Unitarian Universalism dawdles and muddles with the mundane. There are few spiritual Masters to be found among their leaders. As with most religions, religious leadership is perceived, and all too often understood, as political. UUs believe in democratic governance which is fine for the religious organizational management, but spiritual leadership is not based on democratic votes. Spiritual leadership is based on experience of the Truth and Love of the Divine and this experience is intensely personal. It is written in A Course In Miracles, “Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is impossible. Revelation induces only experience.” T-1.II.2:1-3 Religions, to flourish and achieve their mission, must leave the organizational management to the administrators. Administrators can be elected, but spiritual leaders cannot. Spiritual leadership is manifested by a person who has been there, who has achieved oneness with the All, who has dropped the ego, and who has embarked on the walk with Love on the path of the spiritual. These people are rare and even more rarely recognized, but if the student is ready the Master appears and a mutual Love relationship begins and is nurtured and flourishes. It is rare to find spiritual Masters among religious people. If spiritual Masters are recognized, they often are perceived as a threat to the existing political structure of the religious organization and will be shunned, exiled, excommunicated, or even, as the case with Jesus, killed. Religious organizations, paradoxically from what one might expect, can be hostile territory for spiritual Masters to appear and abide. Spiritual Masters, if they are to survive, often move outside the organization which has not only no longer been a source of nurturance and validation, but antagonistic and hostile. If you are looking for a Spiritual Master, you will not find him/her within the walls of organized religion but rather on the periphery, if at all connected. The spiritual Master no longer identifies with a religion because the God the Master has found is too big for any one religion.
People who have come to Unitarian Universalism from other religions or no religions have come looking for something. They have been attracted by the affirmation and promotion of the free and responsible search for truth and meaning as well as other things.
Unfortunately, many seekers do not engage and are not retained in the fellowship because the fellowship appears to be a social club which engages in psychobabble and lacks an authentic and genuine spirituality. Unitarian Universalism has not cultivated Masters of spirituality and without them, the spirituality promulgated is anemic and fails to nourish at deeper levels. The search for truth and meaning becomes a misguided wandering with many detours and distractions and many lose interest.
Osho says, "The Master speaks not to give you the truth, but to help you recognize the truth that is already in you." p.145 "Ah, This!"
Osho uses the metaphor of the sun rising outside with the person inside the house with all the windows and doors shut. The sun is there and the person resides in darkness. If the person is to experience the sun the doors and windows need to be opened.
The sun is there. The person didn't do anything to bring the sun about nor can the person control the sunshine. The sunshine is a given, a free gift, there for everyone to enjoy and benefit from. However, the person can control the windows and doors. The person can remove the blocks which prevents the sunshine from being experienced.
The Master simply tells the person to "get up out of bed and open the windows, open the doors." Many people didn't want to be woken up, let alone gotten out of bed. They don't give a hoot about the sunshine, let alone be blinded by it. They prefer darkness and sleep.
Experiencing the sun is a personal choice. The Master can't force anyone to do anything. All the Master can do is alert, cajole, persuade, encourage, support. The people in the dark have to choose, once they know it is there, whether they want to experience the sunshine or not.
The Beatles were Masters. They tried to awaken us with their great song, "Here Comes The Sun."
Unitarian Universalists tend to be an intellectual group. They covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Great principle, but where does truth and meaning lie? Not where you'd expect.
Are you ready to drop your ego? The thought even scares us. Who would I be without me? You would be nothing. You would melt into the all.
Allowing your ego to melt can be a sign of psychosis or it can be a sign of transformation. Psychosis is just more ego albeit disorganized. Transformation occurs with intention and takes discipline and great courage.
A new bumper sticker might read, "Transformation is not for sissies."
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Many people think this is an intellectual pursuit. It isn't. Truth and meaning does not reside in the mind. The mind, often, can lead us astray and blocks our awareness of truth and meaning.
It is easy to become an educated idiot. Some people overthink things. UUs, more than most, have this tendency because they have been injured and wounded by their previous religious involvements. It is easy to identify what they don't believe any more, and much more difficult to articulate what they do believe in now. But belief is not where truth and meaning lie. The truth and meaning they are seeking is an experience of the Divine. That experience does not reside in one's head. It is more in the heart, and not there alone either. The experience of the Divine is in the witness, that part of us which is mindful and meditative.
Do you use your mind or does your mind use you? As the bumper sticker reads, "Don't believe everything you think."
Osho says, "So I am not saying that you are not to use your mind, but don't be used by the mind. Right now the mind is the master and you are only a slave." p.38, "Ah, This!"
Be mindful. Use your witness to observe your mind. The witness is the part of existence which facilitates our walk with Love on the path of the spirit.
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This does not mean that we should be filling our minds with more crap. There is already enough in them. We need to be emptying our minds and communing with our heart with the universe.
This search for truth and meaning takes us inward and not outward.
Famous and popular Zen story - Empty your cup
A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor's cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. "It's full! No more will go in!" the professor blurted. "This is you," the master replied, "How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup."
Simon and Garfunkle sang their great song, Kodachrome, with the lyric, "When I think of all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can still think at all."
Our minds have been filled with all kinds of crap. We are conditioned through schooling to memorize and learn crap. Our religions have filled our minds with crap. The media, now days called "fake news", has filled our minds with crap. Gossip runs rampant in our families, our social circles, our work groups and this gossip fills our mind with crap.
The septic tank is full. It comes to a point where it won't take any more. We have to call the septic tank guy and get it pumped out.
Osho says to his sannyasins, "...because what I am doing every day is destroying your knowledge, destroying and destroying all your clingings and strategies of the mind. Any day when your mind collapses, when you cannot hold it together any more, there is bound to be sudden enlightenment. It is not attainment, hence it can happen in a single moment, instantly. Society has forced you to forget it; my work here is to help you remember it." p.27 "Ah, This!"
When we turn from the path of the ego and embark on the path of the spirit we must forgive ourselves and others for our ridiculousness. We have been wallowing in crap. We have forgotten who we are and in the turning, we begin to search for that which our conditioning has buried in crap.
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This means to most people the freedom from creeds and orthodoxies which is a first step on the path of the spirit. Having achieved this freedom, then what? Where does the search take the seeker?
I love Osho. He says the most startling things that make perfect sense to me and so when I am startled by what he says, I pause a second, and then usually wind up saying to myself, "Why, or course. That makes perfect sense."
In the book "Ah, This!" Osho says on page 27, "Enlightenment is always sudden because it is not an achievement; it is already the case. It is only a remembering, it is only a reminding, it is only a recognition. You are already enlightened; you are just not aware of it. It is awareness of that which is already the case."
A similar idea is expressed in A Course In Miracles in the introduction where it is written, "The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance."
The way to enlightenment is to drop the ego. Give it up. Get rid of it. Purify your consciousness. Eliminate the blocks to your awareness of the Divine.
This is an experience not a thought. This experience of the Divine does not come from more knowledge but from looking within and becoming aware of the All.
Unitarian Universalists have seven principles which they covenant together to affirm and promote. The first principle is the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This first principles involves the recognition and acknowledgement of piece of the Divine within every human being.
The third principle is the acceptance and encouragement to spiritual growth of one another.
The fourth principle is the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
It seems apparent that the engagement with the third principle requires some success with the fourth. A person can't give what the person doesn't have. Encouragement presumes that the person doing the encouraging has some experience with what they are encouraging.
In the Unitarian Universalist church there are plenty of caterpillars. Are there any butterflies? If there are butterflies among us are they encouraging us caterpillars to be patient and continue to eat and digest our leaves because butterflydoom is going to come if we are patient and persistent.
Is the caterpillar aware that it is going to become a butterfly? Are you aware that you can become a buddha?
Some people have this awareness that within them is a piece of the Divine. Others have no idea. Nobody has ever told them to look within. If the person did look within and was confused, perplexed, bored, frightened, they stopped. They didn't stick with it. To pursue the truth of the Divine within takes courage, persistence, and faith.
It helps to have someone further along the path of the spirit to encourage others to come along. Most people will not listen because they don't believe the encourager has anything of value to impart. Jesus says in Matthew 13:4-9:
4As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road, and birds ate it.
5Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn't put down roots,
6so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly.
7Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled by the weeds.
8Some fell on good earth, and produced a harvest beyond his wildest dreams.
9"Are you listening to this? Really listening?"
Nah, they weren't really listening. Jesus sounds kind of frustrated. As Kurt Vonnegut was fond of saying, "And so it goes...."
Maybe, you, reader, are listening. So try it. Look within and stick with it. Do it for 5 minutes for two weeks and see what happens. Nothing? Quit. Something? Stick with it. You, too, can become a butterfly.
Unitarian Universalists know that God loves them unconditionally. This understanding is the foundation of their Universalist faith. What they may not know, even though they convenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, is that the search is inward not outward. The search referred to in the seven principles is not on the path of the ego but on the path of the spirit. To embark on the path of the spirit requires a dawning that there is a better way to live life than on the path of the ego, and then, a turning onto the path of the spirit.
The biggest mistake we human beings make is to think that we have separated ourselves from God, the font of our being, the Force which animates the universe.
Oh, we are arrogant, and proud, and blind, and ignorant, but deep down we know better. We are part of the Divine, but we forget when we get caught up in our pursuits on the path of the ego.
On the path of the ego we believe that all kinds of nonsense and ridiculousness will make us happy. Be become frustrated, angry, sad, and then scared when they don't. We wonder what's gone wrong in our lives and we run off to our doctors who give us drugs to numb the pain. We stop searching thinking that the drugs will fix the problem.
So, how is that working for you?
At the deepest level, we only have one choice to make: Love or fear. Which would you rather have?
If we choose Love, we have to move off the path of the ego onto the path of the spirit, and many of us are not ready to make that turn. We want things to be better but we cling to the familiar. We rather dance with the devil we know than the devil we don't know.
Steven Wright said one time, "A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths." And there are those who are agoraphobic, they are afraid of wide open spaces.
There is always something to be afraid of. The news scares us, our relationships scare us, our fear of scarcity scares us. God knows we love to be afraid because it keeps us from looking within where our biggest fear is the supposed wrath of God because of our willful separation from Him/Her.
We are being silly because God loves us unconditionally. We are part of God and God is part of us.
