Category Archives: religion and spirituality

Jerry Falwell, Jr. Was a Victim…of Sorts!

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Jerry Falwell Jr. fell victim to “christianizing.”  Being raised in conservative Christianity, with his father being a prominent preacher and eventual founder of the Moral Majority movement, he had no “choice.”  Spiritually-minded people of all persuasions often fail to realize that the wisdom given them by their tradition came through culture, one important dimension being language itself.  Furthermore, regardless of how noble the teachings of any tradition, these teachings come to us through this culture with its tremendous pressure. There is an hard-wired socio-cultural pressure to “sign-on” and fit into the group that one is born into and accept its central tenets without question.

Falwell, Jr. like myself got enculturated into his faith but has yet to find the courage and grace to wrench free of its grip to the point of finding “wiggle-room” so that the teachings could become less cultural and more personal; one could even say, “less institutional” and more personal.  Any spiritual teaching has to be “institutionalized” if it is to be passed on to future generations and there comes the rub; for, as this “institutional framework” evolves it creates positions for power to evolve and hungry young egos always realize that and see it as an opportunity.  As noted before, “c’est moi” as that was the direction early in my life though I only fancied myself as a “small fish” in a “small pond” compared with the larger pond that Falwell Jr. had available.

This is not a hit job on this hapless man who has been broadsided by reality.  If this “broad-siding” had not begun in my early 20’s and relentlessly gnawed away at my constitutional hypocrisy, I too would today be a fervent defender of my ego and passionate defender of Trump.  And the “gnawing away” continues as the Pauline “the flesh” never leaves us, for which I am grateful; for, it is lovely to be human and no longer to have to be “christian.”

Meditation Reining In the Spinning of My”Monkey Mind”

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In 2011 I stumbled into a meditation class at an Episcopalian Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas in which Eastern and Christian meditation were equally emphasized.  The class was exploring a book by Richard Rohr, “The Naked Now,” a Franciscan priest in Albuquerque, New Mexico who was the founder and director of The Center For Action and Contemplation.  It was this class and luminaries such as Rohr, Thich Nat Hanh, Thomas Merton, et al who brought to my consciousness the relentless “spin” of my religious mind/heart.

That class taught me there was no “right” way to meditate.  I learned that meditation was about reining in the incessant chattering of the “monkey mind” and that any daunting of that relentless mantra of the egoic mind was the goal.  The basic instruction was, “When you find your mind, wandering away, merely bring it back to a mantra, a ‘sacred word,’ or even one’s breath.  The goal was merely “reining in” that mind, not doing anything “perfectly.”  One thing I quickly realized was just how much my spiritual life was about “getting it right,” aka “perfectly.”  I gradually became aware of the relentless unconscious mantra, an internal dialogue which had haunted my life, “Do it perfectly.” This venture into the discipline of meditation brought to my consciousness the tyranny of self-talk which was a piped-in “muzak” drone designed merely to fill the otherwise pregnant void of my life.

This experience was the advent of “the light of day” to my life, inviting me to “listen” better to what I was hearing “out there” but also to the incessant grind of unexamined internal dialogue.  “Ears to hear that were ‘hearing not’” were beginning to hear for the first time; eyes that had never seen before were beginning to see for the first time.  One could even say I was being “born again” in a very real sense though without the hysteria of the “born again” culture.  I want to share here a relevant observation from a noted teacher of meditation, Laurence Freeman, who is the founder of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM):


To see reality as it is, or at least to free oneself progressively of its
filters, is a major act of faith. It expresses the trusting face of faith
because our attachment to the beliefs and rituals of our tradition can
become a false and falsifying security. And so, many deeply religious
people feel an aversion or antipathy to meditation because it seems to
(and indeed does) undermine the secure boundaries that protect our world
view and our sense of being superiorly different from others.

A way of faith, however, is not a dogged adherence to one point of view
and to the belief systems and ritual traditions that express it. That
would make it just ideology or sectarianism, not faith. Faith is a
transformational journey that demands that we move in, through and beyond
our frameworks of belief and external observances—not betraying or
rejecting them but not being entrapped by their forms of expression
either. St Paul spoke of the way of salvation as beginning and ending in
faith. Faith is thus an open-endedness, from the very beginning of the
human journey. There is, of course, value in a framework, a system and
tradition. [But] if we are stably centered in these, the process of change
unfolds and our perspective of truth is continuously enlarged.

NOTE:  Laurence Freeman, WCCM, and meditation culture are a gift to me as a result of blogging.  Freeman and many others I would never had heard of without having cyber “met” a woman from Toowoomba, Australia.  Thank you, Anne-Marie.

Specious Reality Gets a “Reality Check” Here and There

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My focus here recently has been reality, as in “reality.”  My emphasis is the vulnerability that “reality” faces, as it is something other than the basic assumptions that we take for granted.  Here, I am putting on the table something that cannot actually be put “on the table.”  For “reality” is subtle to the point that we can never fully grasp it with our feeble, pea-sized brain but only with a discerning heart that can understand these subtleties, or at least understand that they can only be inferred.  In this effort I make it very complicated…because it is complicated, infinitely so…but it can be simply presented by borrowing from the Apostle Paul, “We see through a glass darkly.”

It is this “darkliness” that is imperiled with the term I employed days ago, “the judgement of God.”  Psychologist Carl Jung used the word “einfall” to describe this irruption into our consciousness, an intrusion which often rattles our cage beyond our comfort zone.  Another term I’d like to introduce here is the “black swan” popularized several years ago by Nassim Nicholas Tasseb with his book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.”  Tasseb uses the aberration of a swan being black rather than white to introduce the shock of cognitive dissonance, the “catastrophe” of realizing that things are not as we see them.  According to Wikipedia, Tasseb’s metaphor “lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought.  A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved.”

Our world is now being shaken to the core, with many “fundamental postulates” jeopardized.  Any country worth its salt will have leaders who will avoid blaming anyone, will focus on the problem as it applies to its own people, and offer a well thought out strategy for this perilous moment in history.  The image of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, confined to a wheelchair, calmly guiding us through the Great Depression and into the 2nd World War came to my mind.  What courage, fortitude, and faith.  He knew it was not all about him.

Greta Thunburg, Courage, and Trumpian Cowardice

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A friend this morning was crowing about Greta Thunberg, and even likened her unto Jesus.  I have some hesitation in even sharing this as I know Thunburg would grimace at the comparison.  But I know what my friend had in mind.  Thunberg is a “voice crying in the wilderness” with the “wilderness” consisting of those of us who live lives of “quiet desperation” with our voices muted into compliance of the status quo.  Sure, Thunberg has battled depression as her father noted and this activism is a very healthy and productive means of addressing the bottled up frustration that contributes to depression.  We are all motivated to do and say the things that we do and say. And whatever is driving Greta Thunburg is beautiful and powerful.  It is so sad to see how prominent people like Steven Mnuchin and Donald Trump have sought to diminish her. They are totally unwilling to look at their motivations, their dark side.  They cling to their “objectivity.”

I want to share with you an observation from one of my blogging friends in response to my post of several days ago, quoting Jim Green’s remarks from his book, “Meditations and Depressions”: It is unrealistic, and a misunderstanding of the inner life to aspire to a state of consciousness that is entirely untouched by the storms and the tremors of our passions and our sometimes chaotic thoughts. That would be a rather sinister dream of a meaningless purity – and the end of our humanity. Our pathology and our psychopathology will always be with us. But they don’t need to be always in control. Through our askesis – our practical training and exercise – we can put them in their place: held and embraced by the infinite peace and generosity of the heart.

Jorie Graham Offers an “Incarnated Word”

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Jorie Graham is one of my favorite contemporary poets.  In the following poem she exquisitely explores the vulnerability of human subjective experience, a dimension of experience which is often blocked in our Western world of compulsive linear thinking.  This vein of thinking, described by Carl Jung as “directed thinking” is intentional with the intention being to comply with the expectations of the external world into which we have been born.  Jorie writes from, and certainly lives from what Julia Kristeva describes as the “semiotic” dimension of human experience.  This is the realm that W. H. Auden described as “flesh and mind” having been “delivered from mistrust.”  I see this as an incarnated experience where one has found the power to speak freely from the heart with consideration for his/her context but not a slavish consideration.  This is when truth and wisdom are presented to our world.

Self-Portrait: May I Touch You

Jorie Graham

here. May I touch your
name. Your
capital. May I
touch outcome, kindness, slur down my caresses to
throat, eyes, end of the tunnel. Come out. Now your name is changed. How do I reach
right name, right bandage – the character that you will be for now
in the dark, where there is need – is there still need? – can you be for this short time
singular? You need to be singular. There you are changing again. These words are
furrows. Now they are
arrows. Don’t touch where it says no. It says no everywhere. Where is the spot where you
are faking it. That spot. So well. Can you tell. Doesn’t work for you. What works for you.
The rouge you have applied to see who you would be for a while. You
change your mind. You change the shade. You recognise yourself for a while
then it grows old. The pupae in the mud grow old. They’ve slicked it smooth as skin with
perfect perforations. All entrances and exits. The only way, right way, the pupae morph
to their winged
stage and grow. They exit not to return. Those who laid them do not return. They
change from
unborn to being here now, 67 degrees under the eaves as they come out. I watch. Nothing
can change out here in the given. It is given and it is received. If ants find the pupae
they eat the nest through. Sometimes they get to live their life. I know you need to be
a significant player in
the creation of
your veri-
similitude. Abide abide. Do you do nude. Can I touch your apparition, your attitude,
multitude, your eternally misunderstood solitude – do you do adulthood, husbandhood,
motherhood – listen: sap in the dogwood – not like blood, crude, flood, lassitude – I want you
to come unglued – clad in nothing but blood – in it – dripping wet – appearing always re-
reappearing,
of course wearing your camouflage – whatever you currently identify as – clad in your
surface your newest reason – may I touch it – your phantom your place-
holder, undelivered, always in the birth canal, undiscovered – your personal claim on
the future, residue of all the choices you’ve made thus far, also the purchases, invoices, in
voice where your change resides, in vice where it settles – skin – a win win – the management
wishes to express concern – can I touch there where you appear in the mirror – where you lay
your simulacra down – lave the mercurial glass – bypass being – hardly a pingwhere you
boomerang – here you are back outside – ghost money –
do you not want to feel
the fierce tenacity of
the only body you can sacrifice – the place where it is indeed your
fault – there in the fault – no heartsearching? Me with my hands on the looking glass
where your life for the taking has risen, where you can shatter into your million pieces –
all appareled refusal. What are you a sample of today –
what people.

Does “It Take A Village?” Yes, It Does!

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“Families are to be from.”  This was a wry quip from a high school student of mine in the early 80’s when a sociology class discussion about families was wrapping up.  This young lady was grasping the complexity of family relationships even at her young age, recognizing poignantly that one needs to extricate oneself at some point in life from the familial orbit.  This is usually done with the normal developmental process as young people reach maturity, seek a mate, marry, have children, and begin a family of their own.  But sometimes even then the emotional ties with the family of origin will be inordinate and, one or both of the marital partners will not have “cut the cord” and complications will develop.

The family is a primary dimension of social life.  Family structure is the template in which a child finds his place and learns how to “find his place” in the family at large, i.e. the community, and eventually even in the world “family.”  The family is where connection is established, and explored, and the skills…or lack thereof…will be offered in the social body. The anchor of the family is the mother and father and if their relationship is not stable, or insincere, then the children will not have a stable basis upon which to find their roots in the family dynamic.  A college psychology professor of mine, decades ago, noted that for a child it is more important for a child to know that his parents love each other than that the parents love him.  For the connection between “mommy and daddy” provide an anchor for an inchoate identity and from that anchor will arise a knowledge of parental love that is not prosaic or formulaic.  The script always includes “mommy and daddy love me” but the nuances of the family dynamic, based on the connection between “mommy and daddy” often convey otherwise.

But let me close this grim assessment with a positive note.  The human soul is indomitable.  Most families provide what British psychiatrist Donald W. Winnicott described as “good enough ‘parenting’” (his term was “good enough ‘mothering’”).  If parenting were perfect, then children would get a naive impression life is about and would be ill-equipped to face that “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” And a facetious note is here in order.  My children are perfect!  That is because my “children” are only whims and fancies of what might have been, whims and fancies that I pine for, but have never experienced.  That is because I never had the courage to take that important plunge into the “dog-and-pony show” of this human endeavor and father children, trusting that Life is good and that all would be well.  But I firmly believe that “there is a destiny that doeth shape our ends, rough hew them as we may” and that all is well in the end.  Yes, even with this current political maelstrom that is gnawing at the soul of my country.

 

Authenticity, God, and Identity Crisis

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People of spiritual commitment often, if not most of the time, come to the point in their life when their faith needs to be cast aside.  This is the time when emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually the maturity has been reached to realize that even spirituality can be used to cover up the essence of life, even the “God” that we purport to worship.  This does not mean that this “God” will necessarily be forsaken but that one’s projections about “God” will be seen for what they are and cast aside, leaving one with the possibility of discovering “God” in a meaningful fashion.

This identity crisis, usually in mid life, is when the fantasy world that we have created and wrapped around ourselves is crumbling, providing for us an opportunity to enter into a more authentic dimension of life.  Even the “God” we have been worshipping might be seen as a self-serving fantasy and will have to be given up for a more honest, humbling relationship with a God who is the very Ground of our Being, our Source, and not a mere prop to adorn the hollow life that we have been living.

Anthropologist Clifford Geerst once said, “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.”  It is challenging to contemplate that the whole of our life, including our faith, is suspended in these “webs” and that to achieve any authenticity we will have to wrestle with them and discover as did poet Adrienne Rich that, “We can’t begin to discover who we are until we recognize the assumptions in which we are drenched.”  It is only when some, or most of these “assumptions” begin to crumble that we can begin to understand the wisdom of the crooner Leonard Cohen, “There’s a crack in everything; that is how the light gets in.”

 

David Whyte and T.S. Eliot on the Subject of Faith

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The following poem by David Whyte portrays faith in a more meaningful fashion than what I’ve been familiar with most of my life.  In this poem, faith is presented with a “loss” dimension, poetically conveying the need of “losing one’s faith to find one’s faith” (my paraphrasing). This is related to the observation by evangelical-Christian literary, “hall-of-famer,” Oswald Chambers who noted the danger of “believing only in our belief.”  Whyte and Chambers, and many other spiritually-oriented persons, see the danger of an ideological faith, understanding that the ideological dimension of faith must lose its tyranny in order for the underlying dimension of human experience that faith points to can be experienced.  This is precisely the wisdom conveyed in the famous Buddhist teaching, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”  Whyte captures this truth with the image of the moon fading away and offering, “the last curving and impossible sliver of light before the final darkness.”

Poem by David Whyte: “Faith”

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

T.S. Eliot also understood this subtle dimension of faith, noting in The Four Quartets:

And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning 
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled 
If at all. Either you had no purpose 
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured 
And is altered in fulfilment. 

Clinging to Guns & Religion, “Part Deux”!!

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Religion, like guns…as explored in my last post… is a contrivance but one that is a Divine intervention if we find the courage and humility to reach maturity and slough off the “letter of the law” dimension and wrestle with “the flesh,” the term the Apostle Paul used to describe the abysmal baggage of human-ness that we seek to avoid.   The word religion stems from, “re-ligio” which means “to bind together,” reflecting the human wisdom that we are a divided soul and need to be reunited with our self.  But this reuniting is painful as “the Fall” into human cognition, necessary for the creation of human culture, created us delightful…to a fault… personas that we are fearful of laying aside and allowing reunification with our inner Essence so that S/he can have expression.  We don’t realize that if we find the courage to go through the “crucifixion” necessary for this resurrection our persona will not be destroyed but merely integrated with our inner essence, giving the buried “Christ child” a chance to find expression in the form of a fully functioning authentic human being. But the “clinging to religion” that Obama recognized (see last post) gets in the way of the life process, individually and collectively.  And it is no accident that God—we find the perfect symbol for power and authority.  The ego has found a perfect expression to assert itself and with the slogan, MAGA, our country has found a mantra to energize a desire to return to past imperialistic glory.

“Clinging” in itself is central to the problem.  There is a popular bromide, “Love holds with an open hand.”  But in some circles, especially the conservative culture in which I was raised, “clinging” is an essential dimension of faith, illustrated in the classic hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross” with the line, “So we’ll cling to the old Rugged Cross….”  This is a stage of faith, very much related to a developmental stage in which we “cling” to our momma until maturity allows us to diminish the “clinging” and relax into a more open trusting with relationship with our Source.  This usually corresponds increasing trust in and with our very self, with others, and even life itself as we relax into the “loving embrace” of the One who “shaped us from our mothers womb.  Reminds me of the Old Testament wisdom, “Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You. For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.…”

Imprisoned With Ideas!!!

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Jungian cage cartoon

“Woo-hoo, we’re Jungians!!!”

This cartoon beautifully illustrates the fate of ideologies which captivate lost souls who thus become “ideologues.”  Posted in a Carl Jung facebook discussion group, it demonstrates the necessary role of irony in dealing with ideas and avoiding their imprisonment, including the caption, “Woo-hoo, we’re Jungians.”  This cartoon reflected knowledge of a lesser known but profound quote from Carl Jung himself, “Thank God I’m not a Jungian!”  Jung knew that his teachings were captivating to some who did not exercise what the New Testament calls as, “discerning Spirit” and used his teachings to create a shallow ideological identity in which they could hide and avoid the gut-level wisdom that his teachings offered.

I facetiously toy with writing my copy of the Gospels someday, clearly identified as, “fictional,” and in them I would toss in at some point Jesus saying as he fled the hordes of “mindless” escape-oriented seekers, “Thank God I’m not a Christian.”  For Jesus’ teachings clearly recognized the entrapment of taking spiritual tradition and teachings only on the superficial level and he used the world, “hypocrites” to describe them, people who were simply actors offering to their community merely the “performance art” of spirituality.

This phenomenon which is so egregiously conspicuous now in my country takes the teachings of Jesus only as “ideas” without ever bothering to explore them in depth to the point of discovering that, “the idea is not the thing” and that ideas have value only when they open-up into a region beyond themselves.  The ability to understand this includes getting to the point where one realizes that buried in his heart is a hidden region that can be found only by opening oneself to it, an opening-up which is not a simple rational undertaking resulting from a moment of revivalistic fervor.  This “opening up” is the discovery of the mystery of life, buried far beneath the conscious edifice of one’s persona, related to what T.S. Eliot described as, “a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.”  Jesus put it this way, “You can find your life only by losing it.”  This is really difficult if you are a “cradle Christian,” one who has been enculturated into the Christian faith as it will often feel as if one is losing his faith.  In a sense, one will be losing his “faith” but possibly only its ideological dimension, allowing the freedom to venture into the, “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”