God is too big for any one religion

There are many roads to Rome, many ways to skin a cat. There are many ways to enlightenment, to remembering your Divine nature which is your natural inheritance.

Various religions offer different rituals, practices, worship experiences, sacraments. No one size fits all as the existence of all the world's religions attest, but they all aim to the same result, remembering the Divine.

Unitarian Univeralism has recognized this phenomenon and only asks the affirmation and promotion of the free and responsible search for Truth and meaning. This search is first for Truth, secondly for cosmic consciousness, and third for bliss.

Like most religions, Unitarian Universalism dawdles and muddles with the mundane. There are few spiritual Masters to be found among their leaders. As with most religions, religious leadership is perceived, and all too often understood, as political. UUs believe in democratic governance which is fine for the religious organizational management, but spiritual leadership is not based on democratic votes. Spiritual leadership is based on experience of the Truth and Love of the Divine and this experience is intensely personal. It is written in A Course In Miracles, “Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is impossible. Revelation induces only experience.” T-1.II.2:1-3

Religions, to flourish and achieve their mission, must leave the organizational management to the administrators. Administrators can be elected, but spiritual leaders cannot. Spiritual leadership is manifested by a person who has been there, who has achieved oneness with the All, who has dropped the ego, and who has embarked on the walk with Love on the path of the spiritual. These people are rare and even more rarely recognized, but if the student is ready the Master appears and a mutual Love relationship begins and is nurtured and flourishes.

It is rare to find spiritual Masters among religious people. If spiritual Masters are recognized, they often are perceived as a threat to the existing political structure of the religious organization and will be shunned, exiled, excommunicated, or even, as the case with Jesus, killed. Religious organizations, paradoxically from what one might expect, can be hostile territory for spiritual Masters to appear and abide. Spiritual Masters, if they are to survive, often move outside the organization which has not only no longer been a source of nurturance and validation, but antagonistic and hostile.

If you are looking for a Spiritual Master, you will not find him/her within the walls of organized religion but rather on the periphery, if at all connected. The spiritual Master no longer identifies with a religion because the God the Master has found is too big for any one religion.

ForFreedoms - Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. How about helping artists communicate these pro-social messages? Only $10.00.

From the New York Times on June 3, 2018

This fall, thousands of billboard and lawn signs will be erected all over the country in advance of the midterms, bearing names of politicians up for election. But a new campaign by the organization For Freedoms aims to use those tools not to promote specific candidates but to galvanize debate and political participation through art. The organization has enlisted artists like Sam Durant, Theaster Gates and Marilyn Minter to create public artwork and lead town halls as part of a $1.5 million-dollar campaign.

“We are hoping to bring art to the center of public life in the lead-up to the midterms, which is where we think art should belong,” Eric Gottesman, one of the organization’s founders, said in a phone interview.

A central aspect of the effort, called the 50 State Initiative, will be a fund-raising campaign to put up billboards across the country starting in September. Fifty-two Kickstarter campaigns will seek to raise $3,000 per state plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Editor's note:

This is a great Kickstarter campaign and I have supported the billboard in New York. Will you consider supporting a billboard in a state of your choice?

Prophetic women and men - Fred Rogers

One of the six sources for the living tradition of Unitarian Universalism is the words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.

That was Fred Rogers.

Enlightenment loves company

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth, and yet there don't seem to be any spiritual Masters among us. Without spiritual Masters, how can a group aspire to facilitate actualization of spiritual potential?

Unitarian Univeralists draw from six sources. To find a spiritual teacher, the seeker must leave UU and go deeper into one of the other religious traditions. The seeker winds up leaving Unitarian Universlism because the seeker failed to find the help desired for further spiritual growth. This is a shame but a few Unitarian Univeralists have come here and together we can facilitate our growth and find our way and validate each other's efforts, desires, and achievements.

Osho says that the Master has two functions: facilitate a person's awakening, and to confirm it when it occurs.

People are like onions with layer on layer on layer on layer. These layers are circles of privacy. At the heart of a person is the unconscious. Most people have not discovered what their unconscious consists of. Most people don't pursue it because they are afraid of it.

Deep down people are afraid that they are inadequate or defective in some way. Hell knows they have experienced this and been told this often enough. This Hell is the work of the ego. The ego tells us that nobody is ever good enough, has enough, is doing enough. The ego operates on the law of scarcity and deprivation.

The Master tells us that the Law of scarcity and deprivation is not true. People are not defective and inadequate. In fact, they are already perfect as creations of God and loved unconditionally. The Master asks us to remember what we were before our social conditioning and to experience this innocence, this heaven again. You'll know it when it fills your heart with gratitude and abundant Love.

When we experience this gratitude, love, and innocence, we are confused and wonder what this experience is and the Master affirms and validates the experience and says to us, "Yes, that's it. You've found it." For most of us, it seems unbelievable. We need to share the experience and have it validated by someone who knows, who has been there and is there too. They say, "Misery loves company" and it is more true that enlightenment loves company as well.

Quote of the day - Camille Dungy

I made a decision to have a child, and it’s not a decision my husband and I would have made if we couldn’t have faith that our child — and children like her — could enjoy the freedom to achieve her full potential. Every day I work to make this world worthy of the risk I took. 
Camille Dungy, The Sun Magazine, June, 2018, p.5

Editor's note:
The U.S. census has reported that the fertility rate in 2017 in the U.S. is 1.8 which is below the 2.1 replacement rate necessary to maintain the population. 

The suicide rate is again up from previous years.

These social indicators may mean that Trumpian policies have contributed to Americans having less hope in their own lives and the future.

Can Unitarian Universalism help restore faith in our own well being?

Willingness to appear crazy

I remember being on the sidewalk at a table at the village's sidewalk sale announcing the opening of our Unitarian Universalist church and a woman said to me accusingly, "Are you Trinitarian?"

I said, "No, mame."

She huffed, "I thought so!" in an indignant and contemptuous manner.

One of my co-workers said, "What was that about?"

"She wanted to know whether UUs believe in the Trinity," I said.

"What's that, " my co-worker asked.

"The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," I replied.

"Don McLean, American Pie. Right?" he said.

"Yeah, right," I said.

When we turn from the path of the ego onto the path of the spirit, people will call us crazy. They will say we are mad, madder than the mad Hatter.

St. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians that those who have chosen to walk the path of the spirit instead of the ego appear to others to be fools. We appear to be misfits and indeed we are. We no longer are going along with the herd. We are going against the grain, upsetting the apple cart, disturbing the status quo. This scares people. The things they have believed in and done and value are, by us, no longer believed in, no longer valued, and we no longer are going along in the same direction traveling on the accepted and "normal" path.

At first they criticize and say we are wrong and bad. Then they call us crazy and mad. And lastly they exile us or even try to kill us either socially through shunning or literally as they did to Jesus, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and John and Robert Kennedy, and Malcom X, and Gandhi.

Assassination, whether psychologically through gossip and false accusations, or socially through exclusion, shunning, and exile, or physically by murder, torture, and deprivation is often the price paid for choosing not to continue on the path of the ego and, instead, walking the path of the spirit.

And in making that choice, and taking the path less traveled, we experience such Love and joy and peace that the sufferings inflicted by those on the path of the ego seem inconsequential and like a mosquito on an elephant's behind.

And so, those who embark on the mystic's path appear crazy to the rest of the world. And it is this willingness to appear crazy that empowers a person to pursue the way of Love.

Laugh or cry?

Unitarian Universalists tend to be a serious bunch. They laugh once in a while but they are known for taking themselves very seriously.

One of the signs that a person is on a spiritual path is laughter. The spiritual person is full of comic delight. Once one understands the wiles and cares of the ego, how could one take the path of the ego and the things on it seriously any more?

The absurdity, the incongruity, the insanity is simply funny. And the hurt and pain which accompanies the works of the ego only add to the comedy.

When Jesus was being crucified and said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," I imagine Him saying this with amusement. He was right. They didn't know what they were doing. It was so tragic, the whole thing was a joke.

They say "you can either laugh or cry." The difference is which path you are walking on. The path of the ego is a vale of tears. The path of the spirit brings laughter and bliss.