A judgmental attitude always gets one into trouble

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, but, like all human beings, they easily slip into judgment forgetting what they covenanted to affirm and promote.

A judgmental attitude always gets one into trouble.

When we make a judgment we become irritated and angry.

Irritation and anger is a symptom of our fear.

We should ask ourselves when we are becoming judgmental, "What am I afraid of."

On the path of the ego, there are numerous things we fear.

On the the path of the spirit, there is nothing to fear because we realize that the things on the path of the ego aren't real. The things on the path of the ego are interpretations and meanings that we have made up.

Is the glass half full or half empty?

Drop the judgment. It is what it is. In this awareness there is great peace and bliss.

Do you believe in magic?

Unitarian Universalists all too often believe in magic.They seem to believe in the power of human beings to shape their own destiny on their own.

UUs eschew authority and while they pay some respect to democracy pretty much want to call their own shots and do their own thing.

This attitude doesn't work very well and Unitarian Universalism is a very small denomination with its numbers dwindling because their basic belief  in their individual magical powers is untenable.

Do you believe in magic?

Indeed you do. We all do. We say to ourselves, "If only I obtained this, had that, or that happened then I would be happy."

We attribute our happiness to external events and circumstances.

When these desired objects and events fail us, we become angry or sad or both.

Sometimes we feel guilty that we wanted to control things and failed.

As the bumper sticker says, "Shit happens," and my favorite, "Mega shit happens."

We find ourselves in a hell of our own creation. We thought we could control things, achieve things, obtain things, make people behave toward us as we desired, expected, demanded. Naaaaaaaah, it doesn't work. How long does it take to realize this?

The locker room slogan says, "Winners never quit and quitters never win." Really?

There is a time to quit. There is a time to find a better way. There is help available.

Turn within and ask the Holy Spirit, Jesus, God, Mother Nature, the Muse, the Universe, Life, to help you. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous in their twelve step program, "Surrender to you Higher Power, whatever you conceive your Higher Power to be."

As the jokester said, "If God is your co-pilot, you're in the wrong seat."

Have you accepted your mission from God?

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote seven principles. This is their mission if choose to accept it. If they do accept their mission is has deep and pervasive implications for their life.

How does a person following a spiritual path spend his/her day?

(S)he starts with God, ends with God, and remembers God several times during the day.

The person following a spiritual path asks him(her) self, whenever there is a choice to be made, "What would Love have me do?" "What is God's will here?"

It is in doing God's will that we align ourselves with the Divine.

As the Blues Brothers said, "We're on a mission from God."

The last judgment

Bill asked me if I believe in the last judgment?

I said, "Yes, but not the way most people probably do."

Bill said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "God doesn't judge us. God just strips away all the pretense, all the lies, all the conditioned patterns of our unconscious defense mechanisms, and asks us to look at ourselves the way we truly and authentically are. If we like what we see, we are in heaven, and if we don't, we are in hell because that is what we will experience for all eternity."

"So," said Bill, "to thine own self be true?"

"Sort of," I said. "That's a start, but it's more like to thine own self be true that you believe is God's will for you to be."

"Well, okay," said Bill, "but how does God want us to be?"

"Loving, and at peace," I said.

"God wants heaven for everyone," asked Bill?

"Exactly," I said.

What is the end of the world?

The Unitarian Universalist preacher said from the pulpit that the goal of UUs is not to get people into heaven but heaven into people. UUs believe in heaven on earth. It is not some other place one journeys to but right here, right now, among us.

A person was telling me last week about the apocalypse, the end of the world. It was a story full of judgment and punishment that he claims his church taught him.

I smiled and listened. I didn't say it but was thinking, "Golly gee, what kind of a God is it that this church is promoting? What kind of a world is this church painting a picture of?"

I said to this fellow at the end of his description, "Wow, that's some story."

He said, "So, are you saved?"

I said, "Oh, yes."

He said, "Good. God bless you."

And indeed, I am saved by a God of Love and forgiveness not the gods of vengeance, judgment, condemnation, and punishment.

Forgiveness is necessary for churches who teach such nonsense, and their missionaries who promote and spread their misguided teachings about a vengeful, judgmental, condemning, and punishing God who is a projection of this God's believers own guilt, suffering and anguish.

With this forgiveness comes a compassion which is not condescending or patronizing, but rather is empathic and understands the pain which contributes to such warped and distorted beliefs.

God is Unconditional Love and generates a gratefulness for existence and an extension of peace and joy into the world.

The Atonement is when everybody loves everybody all the time and when this occurs the end of time will have come because there will no longer we any need for the world of the ego in which we must learn the lessons of the spirit. We all will become one with all of existence, God.

Unitarian Universalism: A Way Of Life podcast. Milestone 2 on the walk with Love on the path of the spirit - honesty

All that you've got is your soul

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Where will this search take them: down the path of the ego or the path of the spirit?

Religion makes a big deal out of sacrifice and giving things up. There is an attraction to asceticism which, as it moves to an extreme, can become masochistically sick.

Buddhism is clear, in its teachings, about the importance of the middle path, and balance.

Giving up of the path of the ego, though, is no sacrifice, because, once properly understood, the idols of the ego would not have provided the yearned for fulfillment anyway. Pursuing the idols on the path of the ego is a wild goose chase and never comes to the desired fruition. It is barking up the wrong tree.

Where is the sacrifice, then, in giving up the idols on the path of the ego?

The things on the path of the spirit lead one to authentic fulfillment and wholeness. To pursue the things of the path of the spirit one has to leave the path of the ego. This is no sacrifice, but a turning away as the idols on the path of the ego no longer seem relevant, meaningful, desirable.

Turning from the idols on the path of the spirit is not a sacrifice but a liberation, and freedom from and thereby a freedom to.

As it is written in A Course Of Miracles, the fraudulent motto of the path of the ego is "Seek and do not find."

Jesus says in Matthew 16:25-26:

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for My sake will find it. What will it profit a person if that person gains the whole world, yet forfeits their soul? Or what can a person give in exchange for their own soul?

As Tracy Chapman sings, All That You Got Is your Soul.