UU A Way Of Life Weekly Review - 08/09/20 - 08/16/20

Spiritual book discussion - The Spiritual Child - Difference between religion and spirituality.

                                     Spirituality and religion are often two different things.

In a twin study on religion and mental health, psychiatric genetic-epidemiologist Kenneth Kendler and his colleagues looked at “religion” as compared with “spirituality” in nearly two thousand adult twins. It was shown statistically that in people’s lived experience, personal spirituality is a different concept from adherence to religion or choice of religious denomination. Instead, spirituality was shown to be a sense of a close personal relationship to God (or nature or the universe or whatever term each person used for higher power) and a vital source of daily guidance.

Miller, Dr. Lisa. The Spiritual Child (p. 7). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In Kendler’s study, spirituality did not meaningfully correlate with one specific religious denomination; there are highly spiritual people in all denominations, and highly spiritual people who don’t adhere to any specific religious denomination. With these distinctions established, science had identified a crucial and valuable dimension of “spirituality,” and researchers could get busy exploring spirituality’s contributions to good health, mental well-being, fulfillment, and success.

Miller, Dr. Lisa. The Spiritual Child (p. 8). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Psychological research has found that spirituality and religion are two separate things although they can overlap.

Spirituality is the felt attunement with one’s Higher Power. It is a feeling of belonging with something bigger than oneself. As we will find, this sense is innate and natural and is either nurtured or extinguished by many factors with one of the most important being the relationship with the primary caregiver with whom the child is bonded and attached.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote seven principles the third of which is the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations. This acceptance and nurturance is important for parents as they in turn nurture their children. People can’t give what they don’t have and so the primary focus of a children’s and youth program in a church should be on the parents' relationship with their children which often is the template for the child’s experience of transcendent unconditional love.

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Spiritual practices #8 - purification and detachment

Spiritual practices #8

Spiritual practice of purification and detachment

The eighth  component of spiritual health is freedom from and freedom to  and the cardinal sin # 8 is slavery and acedia.  The spiritual practice to mitigate slavery and acedia is purification and detachment.

In order to open one’s heart to the world of the soul, a person must detach from the idols of the ego. All the things we are socially conditioned to think will make us happy in the world of the ego is an illusion and impermanent. The Buddhists teach four noble truths which include the idea that suffering is caused by attachment and the end of suffering is facilitated by giving up attachments and practicing detachment.

Throughout religious history there have been many spiritual practices of purification, the primary one being fasting. However, there are many others such as the giving of alms. Making sacrifices and offering our sacrifices up to gain holiness is a primary idea in Christianity. The great Christian prayer which Jesus taught His disciples to pray says in part “...and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil….” Temptation being referred to in this prayer is attaching ourselves to the idols of the ego believing the ego’s promises that they will make us happy.

Freeing ourselves from the shackles of this “veil of tears” liberates us to pursue the holiness, the oneness of the soul, which we yearn for by returning to the Oneness from which we separated ourselves at birth.

Everyday, moment to moment, we ask ourselves, “What would love have me do?” and choose the path of the soul instead of the path of the ego. Practices of purification and detachment help us become aware of our power to choose which is the source of our freedom: the world of the ego or the world of the Spirit..

In principle five of Unitarian Universalism we affirm and promote the “right of conscience” which is our innate compass gulding us from slavery under our ego attachments and towards liberation of the soul into the world of the Spirit.

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson # 15 - My thoughts are images I have made.

Lesson #15

My thoughts are images I have made.

We project our thoughts all the time and see what we think we see. In psychology, based on research, we have come to understand what is labeled as “implicit bias” or “confirmation bias” or “prejudice” or a “self fulfilling prophecy.” What we think we are going to see, we see, and use it to make sense of our experience without realizing that we are merely making a movie. As Shakespeare writes in his play “As you like it,” “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man, in his time, plays many parts.”

When we are mindful, and get into our witness and observe objectively our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, preferences, we start to realize there is a whole world of the soul beyond the world of the ego. We start to understand the world of the ego for what it is merely an illusion which we create in our own minds having been seduced by the ego to believe in its idols.

When we begin to see the world of the soul, our spiritual life begins to open up and grow and we detach from the things of the ego and make space for a transcendent understanding.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote seven principles. The seven principles, if understood deeply, transform us from the world of the ego to the world of the soul.

The first principle affirms and promotes the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This principle is not of the world of the ego which believes in superiority, acts unjustly, is filled with distrust, and fears helplessness. The first principle recognizes and acknowledges that we all are the beloved creations of the Higher Power and that our usual thoughts about the world of the ego are just images which we have made.

Good news for 08/16/20 - 85 years ago the Social Security Act was signed into law.

  Eighty-five years ago, on Aug. 15, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. On that momentous day, he proclaimed, “If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.”

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.

Video #1 ACIM Workbook Lesson #1

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