Question of the day

What do you think and feel if your religion is attacked? How do you manage those thoughts and feelings?

Whose will? Mine or thine?

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Where does this search take them? For what are they seeking? The perennial philosophy teaches that truth and meaning are not to be found in things external but rather in things internal. If we are to search within what will we find but illusions, drama, misery, suffering, and temporary happiness?

The Buddha taught us the truth of impermanence. The Buddha taught us that suffering comes from attachment. Detachment and non attachment is an emptying of one's illusions and clinging. It is a letting go and a purification of one's ego to make room for the divine. We are told that we can't have both. Ultimately, we have to choose between the ego and the divine. UUs have few mystics in their midst except their appreciation of the transcendentalists and yet, it seems, Unitarian Universalism has eschewed the mystical root of spirituality to its detriment.

The moment you are empty of yourself, you are full of God. Both cannot exist together, remember. Remember again and again: both cannot exist together: it is either you or God. And it is the foolish person who chooses himself. Choose God: disappear as an ego. Forget yourself as an entity separate from existence, and in that very disappearance you are reborn. It is a very paradoxical state: the moment you are empty of yourself you become full, and full for the first time, overflowingly full, inexhaustibly full. The ego is just a shadow, it has no substance. It is a dream, not a reality. Drop the shadow so that you can attain the substance. Drop the false so that the real can be attained. All that I teach here is how to be empty of yourself so that you can be full of God. And the fullness is fulfillment.

Osho. First in the Morning: 365 Uplifting Moments to Start the Day Consciously, p.3

It is written in A Course In Miracles: "Now must you choose between yourself and an illusion of yourself. Not both, but one. There is no point in trying to avoid this one decision. It must be made. Faith and belief can fall to either side, but reason tells you misery lies only on one side and joy on the other." T-22.II.6:6-10

Basically it comes down to God's will or your own. Only the foolish would choose their own when they could enjoy the whole cosmos.

Question of the day

Is the belief in Santa Claus and Jesus different? If so, how?

Where is truth and meaning located?

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. What is the truth and meaning that they seek? Where is it to be found? Where will the vision quest take them? The sages tell us that truth and meaning is not external to us, but deep within us. If we are to seek truth and meaning we should look within not without.

There are illusions and then there is truth. When it comes to illusions how can one discern truth among them? One illusion is no different in form and any other. The only difference is content. Seeking and finding truth requires a shift to a whole other level. This shift is what A Course In Miracles calls a "miracle." The 44th of 50 principles of Miracles is "The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His Atonement."

This awareness is a huge thing of which all human beings are capable. We all have the potential of achieving this awareness. As Jesus says, "Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you." However so few people are seeking and without the intention the finding is unlikely to happen unless there is a moment of grace to which the person is open to accepting.

If you are reading this, it may be accurate to assume that you are a seeker too. Thank you for your intention and effort. Together we become The Christ and we join in the At-One-Ment. Welcome.

"We have not lost anything. God is not lost and hence has not to be found. We have only forgotten; it is just a question of remembrance. It is there in the deepest core of our being. Call it truth, God, bliss, beauty: all those things indicate the same phenomenon. There is something eternal in our beings, something immortal, something divine.

All that we have to do is to go deep, dive deep, into our own being, and see, realize, recognize. Hence the journey is not really a journey. We are not to go anywhere; we have simply to sit silently and be." Osho, First In The Morning, p.2

Question of the day

Do you need to be right about things or can you take a position of relaxed curiosity?

We could not survive alone. We need one another.

Unitarian Universalism can be a godless religion. It welcomes atheists, agnostics, humanists, secularists as long as they agree to covenant to affirm and promote UUs seven principles. All of the seven principles are important and perhaps one of the most interesting and the one least understood is the third principle which is "acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth..." This principle along with the first which is the belief in "the inherent worth and dignity of every person" have no meaning were we not to assume the communal nature of our well being. No person is an island. Homo sapiens could not survive were the members of the species not interdependent on one another for physical, social, emotional, and spiritual development.

The atonement, at-one-ment, is when everybody loves everybody all the time. When you love your brother and sister, their spirit not their body, then Love joins you bringing comfort and peace and joy. These relationships are called "holy", "holy relationships," in A Course In Miracles. ACIM describes "Holy relationships" as God's will. It is stated in ACIM,

"If you attack whom God would heal and hate the one He loves, then you and your creator have a different will. Yet if you are His Will, what you must then believe is that you are not yourself. You can indeed believe this, and you do. And you have faith in this and see much evidence on its behalf. And where, you wonder, does your strange uneasiness, you sense of being disconnected, and your haunting fear of lack of meaning in yourself arise? It is as though you wandered in without a plan of any kind except to wander off, for only that seems certain." T-22.1.1:2-7

One of the slogans in AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, is "You are as sick as your secrets." Our biggest secret, which often is unconscious, is that we care nothing for God's will and just want to be left alone to do our own thing. Even worse, we try to hid from people, and God, what we are doing and what our intentions are because we are ashamed of the secrets we keep and what they will think of us, and do, should they find out. Because of the secrets we keep, we see our brothers and sisters as a threat to our safety and so we lie to them, manipulate them, attack them, and say we hate them. We hate them because of our fears of being found out. This fear of being found out robs us of our peace and joy.

Honesty is the best policy. We should strive for authenticity, genuineness, and sincerity. This striving is manifested in our discerning and attempting to do God's will for us. In the great Christian prayer, the "Our Father," we pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." When we bring our will into alignment with what believe is God's will for us we experience great peace and joy, and this peace and joy we want to extend to our brothers and sisters. We can say sincerely and with deep genuineness, "Pax vobiscum."

This desire and ability to extend the joy and peace we have achieved through aligning our wills with what we believe is God's will for us is an important indicator of advanced spiritual development.

Question of the day

Do you think you are a body with a spirit or a spirit with a body? Does it make a difference in the quality of your spiritual life?