Becoming human

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent dignity and worth of every person. The mystics tell us that most people are sleep walking through life based on their instincts and conditioning. In this sleep walking, there is little dignity and worth for they have not yet realized their potential.

The hallmark of worth and dignity is freedom. Freedom is an inside job not just the eradication of external constraints. True freedom is making choices about our experience. This freedom requires self knowledge and awareness, something most people haven't achieved. If UUs are serious about their first covenantal principle, they would provide more assistance in facilitating the nurturing and cultivating of an interior spiritual life. It is this interior spiritual life which makes us truly human and manifests our true worth and dignity.

The thoughts we have bring either peace or war; either love or fear. Which do you want? Can you tell the difference?

It is taught in A Course In Miracles, in the workbook in lesson 16, that "I have no neutral thoughts." We either walk on the path of the ego or the path of the spirit. Upon the dawning, we must decide which path we want to proceed on. One path takes us to war and fear, and the other to peace and love.

The tolerance for pain in human beings is very high and sometimes, it's not until they hit bottom, that they realize there is a better way. They realize that their thoughts are not an external factor over which they have no control. They come to realize that they can control their thoughts and this control means they have a choice.

This choice over one's thoughts is the beginning of freedom, the beginning of liberation. It is the first step away from being merely an animal to becoming human.

The dawning - "I need help."

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Notice that the principle reads, "inherent" and not "apparent" or "ostensible" or "assumed." The worth and dignity of every person is qualified.

I was talking with a 12 year old 7th grader yesterday who is having trouble in school with his grades and his teachers as well as with his fellow students. His biggest complaint was, what he called, "ridiculous people." I agreed with him that most people are, indeed, "ridiculous." We both laughed about this observation and then I said, "Given that most people are 'ridiculous', how do you think you can best manage this fact in your life?" This began a very interesting discussion based on the presumption that superficially most people are "ridiculous" and yet, deeper down, they all have inherent worth and dignity. How do you get past the "ridiculousness" to something more precious?

We think in images we call thoughts. We make these up. Our thoughts are not real.

The bumper sticker says, "Perception is reality." Most people seem to believe that what they think is real, and they "see" it when they look. They are not "seeing" they are projecting and displacing. What they think they are seeing is an "illusion."

And so when we think things, and see things, we need to remind ourselves that what we are thinking and seeing isn't real but rather perceptions and experiences we have made.

Off we go, "half cocked" as they say, "making shit up" to fit our preconceived notions and preferences.

My favorite bumper sticker says, "Reality is when it happens to you."

Dr. Freud called the checking of our beliefs and perceptions with our experience, "reality testing." We come to learn that life is not the way we thought it was and is, at the bottom, quite different.

We come to the point where we realize that "there must be a better way." As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve step programs with step one, "We have come to realize that our lives are unmanageable."

And so the moral of the story is "Don't believe everything you think."

When will we learn that we can't do it all by ourselves?

As Unitarian Universalists we believe in universal salvation. We have inherited the faith that God loves us unconditionally. Based on this foundational belief, we know that God has not created a meaningless world.

When my two children were killed by a drunk driver I knew that God did not do this to me. I knew that it was a three time drunk driver that killed my kids. I knew this because, as a student of A Course In Miracles, I had practiced lesson 14 in the workbook which is entitled, "God did not create a meaningless world."

It is written in this lesson, "What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

The idea that the path of the ego is strewn with a repertory of horrors and the path of the spirit is comprised of peace and Love instills in us instant objection and resistance. How can this be when the things on the path of the ego seem so real? We have not looked behind the curtain, beyond what Christians call the "vale of tears."

We forget that we have separated ourselves from God and in this separation we make up our own drama, pain, and suffering. The misuse of alcohol and the act of driving killed my kids. Witnesses said that the driver was very upset as he emerged from his truck and saw the wreckage and cried out in an agitated state, "Why do these things always happen to me?!"

Indeed, in a sober state, this is a good question to reflect upon. Today, it is raised for consideration. Why do these things always happen to us? Because we have created and live in a meaningless world as we walk the path of the ego. At some point, it dawns on us that there is a better way.

It is written in the introduction to A Course In Miracles, "This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time."

The dawning that there must be a better way is a significant step onto the path of the spirit in which we search for the world that God has created for us and we give up our own insistence and stubbornness in thinking we can do it all ourselves.

Beginning the spiritual journey

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth. This acceptance and encouragement requires the letting go of "bull shit." Have you noticed that there is tons and tons of "bull shit?"

UUs encourage what they call a " a free and responsible search for truth and meaning," but listening to the sermons and listening to the discussions at coffee hour, most appear to be lost and just wandering in the deserts of meaninglessness.

If it is true that what we perceive in the world is the result of our psychological set and projections, then what we think we perceive is meaningless. It is nonsense. It is drama. It is what we angrily and sarcastically call "bull shit."

Is your life full of "bull shit?"

Has the "bull shit" that you think you perceive tired you out, exhausted you, stressed you out? Even good things don't seem to last long or be as good as they are expected to be. Some days our meaningless lives are depressing, boring, upsetting, and, maybe, temporarily elating.

The path of the ego is always counterfeit and enervating. We get to the point where enough is enough and it dawns on us that there must be a better way. This dawning brings us to embarking on a search for what that better way might be, and this is the first step onto the path of the spirit and the beginning of a spiritual life.

Meaningless thoughts show me a meaningless world

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The premise of this principle is that meaningless thoughts show us a meaningless world. The key question is "where does the search for truth and meaning take us?"

Comedian, Flip Wilson, when he did his Geraldine routine, would say in a saucy way, "What you see is what you get." I change it to "What you think you see is what you get."

The fact of the matter is that we develop certain psychological sets and project our beliefs out into the world and create what we think we see. If you think you are a bad person and the world is a bad place, then bad things will happen to you. If you think you are a good person and the world is a good place, then good things will happen to you.

Is the glass half full or have empty? Do you have enough or are you lacking? Are you pretty and handsome or blemished and ugly?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder we have been told, as well as that it is only skin deep.

You can't tell a book by its cover we have been told, and we are encouraged to not only read it but read between the lines.

It is written in Lesson 11 in the  workbook for students in A Course In Miracles, "My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world." In other words, the path of the ego is a path of nonsense. The path of the ego is a path of inanity and insanity.

When we realize the drama we create by projecting our thoughts and beliefs out into the world, we realize that there must be a better way. Indeed there is and it begins with forgiving ourselves and others for our stupid thoughts and beliefs. At the end of our life, and when our souls are pried lose from our bodies, we realize, then, if not before, what is really important.

To transform instead of inform requires walking on a new path

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Is this search to inform or to transform?

Meditation is like watching clouds float by in the sky. We realize that our thoughts don't really mean anything. They will change soon enough and be replaced by other thoughts.

Sometimes we remember and these memories become thoughts but scientific research has demonstrated that memories, while they can be emotionally engaging, are usually inaccurate in significant ways.

These observations leads us to the awareness that cognitive functioning has little, if anything, to do with our spiritual consciousness. In fact eliminating our thoughts is the goal if we are to become spiritually aware. As we spiritually mature we move from the path of the ego onto the path of the spirit and life opens up to us in whole new ways.

Here is what Osho has to say:

"Knowledge is available from the outside. Knowing needs an inner purification. Knowledge is information, knowing is your capacity to see, to understand. Knowledge never transforms anybody. It can make you a great scholar, but to be a scholar is to be nothing but a parrot. The scholar simply repeats: he is a gramophone record, neither more nor less. But a knower knows, knows on his own authority. He does not believe, he sees. He is not a Christian, he is a christ; he is not a Buddhist, he is a buddha.

Remember this. It needs a radical change in your consciousness, a totally new kind of consciousness: alert, aware, meditative, loving. These are the foundations which will make you able to see. You will not become more informed, but you will become totally transformed.

My work is not to inform you but to transform you."

Osho. First in the Morning: 365 Uplifting Moments to Start the Day Consciously, Day 153

How to create heaven on earth

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. UUs also covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. These two principles raise interesting questions of deep down what do we mean by the word "person" and where does one find this thing we are attempting to describe? The search for the person is not without but within. If one goes within what will one find?

It is a well established scientific fact that we project our thoughts, beliefs, past experiences, and emotional reactions onto current objects. We don't see what actually is there but what we think we perceive. As the slogan says, "Perception is reality." In this sense, we create our own reality.

If you believe you are a good person living in a good world, good things will happen to you. If on the other hand, you believe you are a bad person living in a malevolent world then bad things will happen to you.

This principle of projection is a fundamental law of the ego. This law is below the level of consciousness for most people. They do not realize that the "reality" they are creating, continually, isn't real.

On the one hand, projection is a product of our experience. The bumper sticker says, "Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement." However, we have the ability to be mindful. We have the ability, stronger in some than in others, to examine and reflect on our experience, and manage it. Rather than being reactive we become responsive.

Spiritual teachers tell us that living the good life entails meditation or some call it now days, mindfulness. I call it the "witness." To what extent does a person have the capacity, the skill, to just observe his/her own functioning?

This power of observation of one's own functioning is the key ingredient in the spiritual life which brings one to peace and joy and heaven on earth.