Showing posts with label Spirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spirituality. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

What is the "Higher Power"?



The new metanarrative is "spirituality." The answer the "nones" give to the question of identification with a religion is "I'm not religious but I'm spiritual?"

The problem that arises with a statement like "I'm not religious but I'm spiritual" is that no one knows specifically what "spiritual means."

Spiritual usually means a relationship with a Higher Power whatever one conceives as their Higher Power being. This conception of  Higher Power though is not widely shared because there are "different strokes for different folks." 

Is there a definition of the Higher Power that a large percentage of people could agree on?

It has been suggested  that the characteristics of the Higher Power are the good, the true, and the beautiful. The good, true, and beautiful is an experience more than a cognitive perception.

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Is Unitarian Universalism irrelevant?


Is Unitarian Universalism irrelevant?


One of the central functions of religion is to teach people how to discern the workings of the spiritual in their lives. To put it plainly, it is to help people become aware of what their soul desires and  to help their minds pay attention to this awareness.

Harry Hollywood, 06/08/21


Most churches with their leaders, priests, pastors, ministers fail in this central task because they are not aware of their own souls' desires let alone the people to whom they aspire to minister and serve.


What does the soul desire ultimately? Unification with the Divine.


How is that unification to be achieved? It is described in the spiritual literature as “The Way” and it can take many forms although whichever way is taken leads to the same destination.


Unitarian Universalism is one such way and because of its lack of clarity and focus, it often is experienced as irrelevant and nothing more than a means to fellowship and socialization and/or a pursuit of social justice objectives. In this way of functioning, UU misses the point and is off the mark and will continue to decline as a vehicle of spiritual growth and experience.


Sunday, March 1, 2015

Do UU ministers manifest an awareness of the inner altar?

Richard Trudeau writes in his book, Universalism 101, "I call on my fellow UU ministers - and, recognizing that it can be hard for old dogs to learn new tricks, I especially call on UU seminarians - to recommit themselves to their role of teachers. Teachers shape tastes and do not merely accommodate to them." p.16

Unitarian Universalism does not need more teachers. What would they teach? You cannot teach what you do not know. Unitarian Universalism needs more holy men and women who have a personal experience of the divine, the sacred, the spiritual. Where are the holy men and women of Unitarian Universalism? Where are they formed and upon what is their spiritual practice based? You cannot find, and do not achieve a spiritual life from books and from teaching. Books and teaching can point to the holy and divine, but they are fingers pointing at the moon, they are not the moon.

Holiness, sacredness comes from an experience of the authentic wholeness of which we are apart. It comes from sincere and genuine inner exploration. It comes from what has been called prayer and meditation and the development of cosmic consciousness and enlightenment. Most of UU "teaching" is too distracting. It focuses on the world. Trying to change it and fix it a fool's errand based on hubris and resentments and this is not holy work nor does it manifest a positive example of where holiness resides which is on the inner altar of our being.

Would that UU ministers were able to access this inner altar and manifest this awareness. As Steven Gaskin said one time, in the last analysis all we have to offer is our own state of being. UU ministers need to look within and share what they find with others by their presence not by their teaching in the usual sense of that word. Their lives and manifestation of their awareness of the inner altar is what is nourishing, edifying, and facilitative of spiritual growth in others.

We all should be accessing our inner altars and in the process becoming more genuine, sincere, authentic and aware of the All. We need ministers who can facilitate this process because they have been there themselves and they manifest these qualities of authenticity, genuineness, sincerity, and cosmic consciousness to the world. Leave the teaching to Fox News and Pat Robertson.

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Doris.

Doris who?

Doris locked - that's why I'm knocking!

Matthew 7:7 "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

There are many searchers knocking, but UU ministers are not opening the door. Perhaps it's because they don't hear the knocking, or they don't know where the door is. UU seminaries should be helping students find the door.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Without a spirituality we die


"We must find some spiritual basis for living, else we die."

Bill Wilson, one of the founders along with Dr. Bob, of Alcoholics Anonymous

It is interesting that Bill Wilson says that we must find some spiritual basis for living, else we die and not a religious basis for living. The founders of AA were very clear that spirituality and religion are two different things and while they insisted on spirituality they did not insist on religion for the simple reason that when confronted with addiction religion doesn't work.

"Getting religion" is not the answer to addiction any more than "getting religion" is the answer to cancer, or diabetes, or Alzheimer's disease. And yet when wounded, when terrified, when on the edge of life as we know it, spirituality is the best place to turn because that is where God, our higher power, the Tao, the force in the universe is.

Walter Clark said that "One goes to church and gets a little something that then protects him or her against the real thing." Carl Jung said "...one of the main functions of formalized religion is to protect people from their direct experience of God."

Unitarian Universalism is wild. Its detractors accuse it of not even being a real religion because it doesn't have a creed and UUs can believe anything. Unitarian Universalism is a small religion because it doesn't offer the structure, the answers, the security of most religions, but on the contrary it does offer the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and it does offer the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within its congregations and in society at large. No popes, no kings, no grand poobahs to pronounce the infallible truth or off with your heads or consignment to hell for all eternity.

The spiritual basis for living in the Unitarian Universalist tradition comes from the 7 values or principles which Unitarian Universalists covenant to affirm and promote. Having entered into such a covenant they go looking for inspiration both without and within.

The real spirituality of Unitarian Universalism occurs over coffee hour each week where we listen to each other's stories. It reminds me of the stories of early Christians when the non christians observed them they often remarked, "Look how they love one another."

Without our shared values, we would die, and yet with them, we live, in faith, hope, justice, peace, and joy.
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