True Intentions

Witness the surgeon who spends long hours in the operating room saving lives through delicate brain surgery.  Witness the Peace Corps volunteer who gives up the comfortable life to live and work in minimalist, perhaps “near-primitive” conditions improving the lives of others.  Witness the CEO who works long hours bringing the company back from near-bankruptcy.  Witness the home care-giver juggling time among family, career, and the elderly disabled parent in the home.  Witness the many everyday busy people who somehow manage to always show up at the latest charity function or civic project.

We are rightfully taught to admire and respect people such as these accomplishers.  Those who toil long and hard, sacrifice extraordinarily of themselves thereby benefiting others, and create good outcomes.  They are passionate about all that they do.  But passion can mask many diverse Intentions, and hide inner truths even to ourselves.  So there is a nagging cautionary note that tempers our admiration, nudges us into a deeper look beyond what our eyes, ears and mind may initially perceive.

Reconsider that brain surgeon who believes that his ability to save lives allows him to have a superior dominating power over life itself, an undue sense of invincibility, a condescending attitude towards assisting staff and his patients.  That Peace Corps worker out to save the world driven by hatred for the difficulties of Life, and a near-desperate compulsion to eliminate those realities.  That self-aggrandizing CEO who demands an exorbitant salary for having saved the company by eliminating jobs or reducing compensation for the very employees who translated the strategy into successful actions.  That home care-giver who acts out of a sense of duty, not loving giving, and does so with an embedded expectation that his children will one day do the same for him.  That charity worker who gives time and energy in order to be publically recognized with loud acclaim.  That over-achiever who forsakes time and attention with friends and family.  It is as with the deceit of jealousy: it begins as a warm feeling to be so passionately loved; but over time we realize that it is really about someone seeking power and control over us.  Seemingly good Intentions disguise a life being lived in turmoil.

As we are called to examine more fully the underlying Intentions of others, so also are we required to turn the lens inward to assess our own Intentions.  For we each have an expansive capacity to ascribe positive motivations for each action we take.  We give unsolicited advice; freely tell supposed truths that do not require being spoken; give service that may or may not be wanted or helpful; continually tell others how to live their life.  We tell ourselves that we do these things “for other people’s benefit” even though we are primarily driven by our own needs for expression and fulfillment.  We are as easily blinded to ourselves as we are to others.

This is not intended as a cynical view of the human condition or their interactions.  For upon close examination we find many of pure heart who interject themselves cautiously and give of themselves freely without making compensatory claims for reward.  We experience joy and reassurance from such people.  But we understand that passion can flow from two different well springs: from the pure well of humility, where the giving does not create a debt to be repaid; or from the polluted well of arrogance, where the giving expects expansive attention, a position of power, or public affirmation of one’s goodness.  The well of humility provides the pure taste of genuine joy and lasting spiritual peace.  The well of arrogance gives a taste as of salt water – only temporary happiness, yielding to mental exhaustion as one never-endingly moves on in relentless pursuit of the next triumph, one after another, with only temporary fleeting satisfaction.

Our secular culture teaches us to either admire or condemn outcomes on their face.  But our spiritual teachers ask us to also look deeply at one’s Intentions and true motivations before we judge, before we bestow honor upon another.  Outcomes result from the convergence of many different external inputs.  Intention lives only in the single heart.  “God knows what is in people’s hearts,” the Koran says repeatedly.  So we look closely into those hearts before choosing who to admire, who to listen to, and who to follow.  It is in Intention that one’s real personal Truth lives.

©  2014   Randy Bell

The Other Six Days

“And on the seventh day God rested,” the Bible records.  Having expended the imagination and energy of doing the first work (i.e. creating the world), God chose to pause in the labors and rest, reflect, and honor the results of what had been accomplished.  And so the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) continue with a similar tradition.  Do your work well, then pause for a time of spiritual reflection to nourish the soul.  It is a practice that also exists in some form for most non-Abrahamic religions.  While the day of choice, form and content of this spiritual reflection is significantly different, the intention remains very similar.  Taking a small portion of our time to consider that which is larger than ourselves; explore the meaning of our creation and life; reset the moral compass that guides us through our thoughts and actions of this existence.

But after spending the time in some formal spiritual gathering in our church, synagogue, mosque or meditation hall; after the prayers, chants, and songs have been sung; after the spiritual talk has been given and heads have nodded in professed concurrence; after one has “seen and been seen” among fellow congregants; then what?  What happens “the other six days?”

For many people, that one dedicated time of spiritual focus – if any at all – is often quickly forgotten over the remainder of the week.  We live disconnected from that supposed renewal of our spiritual time.  Some may squeeze in some crowded moments for morning or nighttime meditation, mealtime prayers, or insightful reading.  Some may pause in short moments during the day and consider the moral factors, the spiritual input, that is appropriate to their next decision to be made.  Some may pause to find the kinder words to be spoken instead of the harsh tongue of our own frustrations.  Some may pause to remember how little we truly know about one another before we pass judgment on them.  And some may pause to remind themselves that each of us is not the center of the universe, but just one small part; humility is the master key that unlocks the Universe’s door.

I know Baptists who accurately quote chapter and verse of the Bible at a moment’s request.  Catholics who are able to keep straight all of the Saints and the Popes.   Jews who faithfully observe the many Laws and Celebrations.  Moslems who speak each verse of the Koran, and prostrate themselves in daily prayers.  Buddhists who readily rattle off any of the numbered teachings of the Dharma.  All have their sacred ritual to follow, ceremonies to inspire us, lessons to teach us.

Quoting the verses, dressing in the robes, wearing the ornaments, and practicing the rituals can nudge us to the spiritual life.  But they are not the spiritual life itself.  It is in our time away from these supports and accoutrements – the other six days – that we must find and practice our true spiritual life.  It is about how we choose to spend our time, choose to speak, and choose to act.  It is about how we consider the needs, welfare and uniqueness of each individual in our interactions with them.  It is about how we carry our spiritual day into our every day.  It is not in the spiritual things, but in our daily routines of living that our spirituality emerges and is fulfilled.

It is not in the 7^th day of rest, but in the other six days of work, that we truly experience the Universe.  Or not.  It is our choice.

© 2014   Randy Bell

 

Lessons Of The Manger

The Winter Solstice.  A celestial moment of nature that reverses a course into greater darkness and instead begins to move us into an expanding light.  A winter time of intended quiet and rest to prepare us for an energetic awakening in the spring.  A spring awakening when, like the trees, flowers and plants, we blossom into the fruits of our intended purpose.

Christmas Day.  For many people, it is a time set aside to honor the birth of Jesus and the spirituality embodied within him.  A time for many to reflect on, and recommit to, the spiritual part of their life.  It is a date that not coincidentally falls just after the Winter Solstice.  As nature begins its annual renewal to a new flowering, so also our spirituality needs a continual renewal in order to fully flower.  For roots to plant deeper, for stalks and trunks to grow higher, for branches to reach out further.

Most people are fully familiar with the story of Jesus’ birth as told in the New Testament Gospels.  It is told beautifully and inspiringly; the public and religious celebrations enacted for Christmas can be quite moving to mind and heart regardless of one’s particular religious beliefs or affiliation.  But as one focuses attention on the celebratory displays, the religious stagings, or loses oneself in the unbounded gift shopping that has come to so consume Christmas, do we take advantage of the occasion to contemplate the spiritual meaning of all of this?  The lessons being made available to us to ennoble our Spirit?  They are relevant and universal lessons drawn from the symbolism of the manger birth itself, lessons regardless of one’s particular faith, perhaps less obvious and often lost amidst the noise of celebration.

The first lesson of the manger birth is that it required a journey to be made.  A taking leave from the ease of a known home, familiar people, and safe environment.  A long and difficult journey made in order to arrive at a new place where the Spirit could make itself known.  So also are we required to make such a journey away from our familiar environs and connections in order to find our true spiritual place.

The second lesson of the manger birth is that the spiritual self had to be awakened and birthed in order to be made real.  The potential for our spiritual presence may always be within us, but its realization must be enacted, must be born from seeding, a gestation, and nurturing.  As we must give a birthing to our own spiritual life after much preparation and with difficult effort.

The third lesson of the manger birth is that spirituality arrived, and was born into, a world of simplicity.  No riches were required; no exultant setting needed.  Our spiritual life lives in an uncomplicated, unadorned place, surrounded by and grounded to Nature’s essence; a simple manger, a bed of straw, swaddling clothes for warmth, in a barn surrounded by animals of help and sustenance.  We can choose to bring luxury into our lives – our own forms of gold, frankincense and myrrh – but we know that they are not required.  Unbounded love, quiet peace, and simple contentment are the true gifts that come from our spiritual being.

In respect for whatever may be your traditions and beliefs, may such gifts be a part of your spiritual birth at this Christmas time.  Peace be within you always.

©  2013   Randy Bell

Being Who You Truly Are

“To thine own self be true.”   (Shakespeare)

Such a seemingly simple request made of us.  But like most spiritual ideals, often so very difficult to actually pull off.  Living genuinely in the truth of who we are sounds desirable on its face, but how often do we truly live in such a manner – even when we pretend we are?

The first hurdle is knowing, in fact, who “I” actually is.  Most of us live in an unconscious reaction to our entire life catalog of events, thoughts, experiences, and interpretations-in-the-moment – a catalog that predominately resides hidden and mysterious in our minds.  A catalog which then requires considerable time and effort to uncover, strip away, re-think, and then apply into our current life.  Until then, we spend a majority of our time believing we know what we are about – thoughts, values, ambitions, religious beliefs, etc. – but in fact living out a pre-rationalized path we have made up to conveniently fit our history.

Our second hurdle is knowing what we have truly learned and concluded on our own for ourselves.  As opposed to beliefs which are simply echoes of those who have had significant influence on our life experiences, and their interpretations of our experiences.  Or who taught “the facts and the truths” to us, an unquestioning listener, who rarely directly challenged and analyzed the veracity of those teachings.  In which event we never quite figured out whether those teachings were truly thereby our own, or just the convenient cloning of someone else’s thoughts.

The third hurdle is the dominating weight of the society in which one lives, whether it be a religious, cultural, political, social or geographical group.  Peer pressures to get along can be an overwhelming force on even the strongest of individuals.  “Fitting in” is a natural desire as another way of defeating our fears of being lonely, of being disconnected from our surroundings.  Acceptance of us by many others seems to also quantitatively affirm “I” in spite of our own self-doubts.  But such group approval comes at a severe personal price, for a society can be very unforgiving when its boundaries are crossed.  So we have to continually ask ourselves exactly who it is that our society is approving – our true self that is being reflected into the world, or a disguised self reflecting a portrait spray-painted onto us by society like so much cultural graffiti.

Discovering who the true person is that resides inside of us is a challenging endeavor.  It is a spiritual journey, a personality journey, a journey of discovery about one’s self and Life itself.  We use the discovery tools of differing viewpoints, other religions and cultures, other geographies; we explore the thoughts and experiences held deeply in the recesses of our minds.  Given what we discover, and understanding that we are now called to live radically differently, it is also a journey mainly for the fearlessly committed.  Because it is highly unlikely that the “I” that we discover bears much resemblance to the “I” we have comfortably known.  Once one starts such a journey, and thereby tumbles down the rabbit hole into one’s own true self, one will likely never be the same, never see one’s self the same way, and never able to go back to the old self again.  Old affiliations no longer work, and a different set of people and environments are required to give support to that newly rediscovered self.  It is a long and continuous journey, with occasional companions coming alongside into our life for a period and then leaving again.  But it is essentially a journey that must be walked alone.

The Buddha forewarned us that many will start such a journey, but few will succeed.  And Jesus consistently warned that the spiritual life – being who you are, with God – would always be a difficult one.  But when one’s life ends, who is it that will then be presented to the Universe: the culturally created “I,” or the true “I” of Being?

© 2013   Randy Bell

Giving Extended Thanks

Thanksgiving Day.  A holiday.  A gathering of friends and family, rarely spent alone.  Feasting on foods of all tastes and colors spread thickly across the table – yet always leaving room for the gluttony of desserts still to come.  The sights and sounds of football games either supplementing or distracting from the meal and the company.  The continuing sounds of conversations, reminiscing, catching up, reacquainting.  Or increasingly instead, people heading out the door for holiday Friday shopping now regrettably moved up into Thursday; buying toys for loved ones trumping time spent actually being with and connecting with those loved ones.

In some instances, a few people will pause to reflect on the bounty and blessings that this day, this meal, this gathering represent.  Thanksgiving has its spiritual component, but it is also a secular, very American, holiday open to all citizens regardless of their ancestral heritage or religious affiliation.  A cooked turkey knows no prejudice.  All of us were once outsiders, with recent or distant family who traveled to these shores for a multiplicity of reasons and ambitions.  We each continue those travels in a spiritual search for universal connection and personal fulfillment of our unique potential.  We thereby pause to express our thanks to those who make our travels possible.

It is perhaps easy to sit at dinner and give gratitude to those close to us gathered at our table.  Certainly we should give thanks to those who are near and dear to us.  It is perhaps more difficult to remember and acknowledge those many others who are not at our table, the forgotten ones who are nevertheless an important part of our life’s journey.  Instead of focusing on the usual smiling faces of our dinner companions, perhaps it is of the faces of those who are far removed from us that attention should be directed.

The farmers and grocers who labored to make available all the food that now sits before us on this Day.  The military and public service people who give us the ability to come together to eat safely in our homes – many of whom are thereby unable to share a table with their own loved ones.  All of the service providers and retailers who help us get through our day and accomplish our many required tasks.  The people who buy the goods and services that we create and thereby sustain us.  Our workmates – peers / subordinates / supervisors at many levels – with whom we are interdependent and labor together to fulfill our work within a Purpose.

The teachers who inspired and challenged us to do bigger things, think bigger thoughts.  The mentors who believed in us and took time to listen and give us worthwhile guidance.  The spiritual teachers, both long past and present, who help us find the real person that lives within, and assist in our connection to the greater Universe.  Our neighbors, far and wide, often faceless and voiceless, whose presence and great diversity keep our vision broad and our ego humbled.

On this Thanksgiving 2013, may we remember and give thanks to that extended family of humankind of which we are most fortunate to be a small part.

© 2013  Randy Bell

 

Worrying About Worrying

“I have had many problems in my life – most of which have never happened.”  So said that great observer and commentator on the human condition, Mark Twain.  With spot-on accuracy.

Like many other human traits, worrying in moderation can be a helpful human exercise.  A small dose of worry can cause us to pause and consider the many potential outcomes of our actions or the events that affect us.  It can give us time to properly strategize our actions, and have alternative plans on the ready should problems arise.  But when worry crosses a very real boundary, when we spend too much time worrying about too many potential negative circumstances, when worry prevents us from moving forward with the business of our lives and our own fulfillment, then our worry has become unhealthy for us.

Everything we do in life carries unforeseen risks.  Using a little bit of worry to identify and reduce the number of those unknowns can give us forward-moving confidence.  But when excessive worry morphs dreams into “that’s impractical” and therefore are not pursued, our worry has exceeded its benefit and needs to be suspended to another time.

We worry about our children and whether they will be safe.  Our country and whether it will survive the tensions within.  The health of our family and friends and whether they will avoid sickness or death.  Losing our job, or our house being damaged by a storm, or our car going kaput one dark night on a lonely stretch of highway.  Whether gremlins lie in wait for us underneath our beds.

Worry is simply another manifestation of our fears.  Fear is a difficult emotion for most of us to admit – to ourselves and to others.  So we give our fear the more acceptable label of “worry.”  And if we so choose, we can martyr ourselves by spinning our worry all the way around to be a supposed testament to our strength of character, not a flaw of our weakness.

We call our fear the more socially-acceptable action of “worrying.”  Thereby, we disguise and paper over that underlying fear.  And we claim for ourselves an undue moral superiority that our worry about others supposedly demonstrates our concern for the welfare of humanity.  But what the worry in fact exemplifies is a lack of Faith, an absence of Trust.  We lack Faith that there is a greater Universal force surrounding ourselves that is consistently leading us to that other place where we need to be – leading us through recurring bouts of upheaval by bouncing us off the bumper guards of Life.  We lack Trust that most of what we fear will in fact not happen to us; the sky is really not preparing to fall upon us.  And if it should, that in the broader scheme of things we will ultimately wind up in a far better place, however difficult may be the journey to that place.  A place which our worst-case worry will never envision or take us to.

When our worry arises, we need to ask ourselves five questions: What is my underlying fear from which this worry comes?  What is the realistic probability that it will actually happen?  What is the worst real permanent damage that could befall me that I cannot handle?  What would be the potential good to me should this actually happen (and there is always a potential good!)?  Therefore, in which right place should I put my constructive energy?

As the Serenity Prayer says, change what you can, accept what you cannot, and know which is which.  In the face of Faith and Trust, worry dissolves into confidence about our future within Life’s Purpose.  And what I do know in my heart is that while some outcomes of our worry may prove difficult, those outcomes are always within our capacity to manage.  Of that, I have no serious worry.

©2013   Randy Bell

 

Death And Renewal

In late October, we had an atypically early blast of cold winter weather with a dusting of snow.  24 hours later, the large, beautiful hydrangea flowers were no more, their leaves now a sad, wilted green.  The leaves on the trees had turned brown and were quickly falling to the ground – the denuded trees now showing only the skeleton of their trunk and branches.  Yet as I saw this recurring cycle of nature’s dying, I also remembered that next spring those hydrangeas will be back, as colorful as ever.  The stumps of the trees I had to cut down this summer will sprout new shoots of saplings to replace the majestic trees that are no longer as they were.  And all the grass and brush that I spent hours mowing will reappear, awaiting their next round of required landscape maintenance.

In all of nature, “life” blooms, and then expires – whether by damage or by just plain aging.  It is then renewed into a more highly developed form of its old self, or instead into yet another incarnation altogether.  Where there is not renewal of that original life, there is likely a renewal of a life that is adjacent to that death.  As when a leaf disintegrates into the dirt as fertilizer for the tree.  Or ground up cornstalks become food for cattle.  Nothing truly ends; but every thing changes.

My mind turns to reflections on death as I pass through certain milestones of my aging.  50 years ago on a hot summer evening in May, my classmates and I graduated from high school.  We were now ready to go out, face the world, and live the expected vision of our lives.  Just six months later, I was a typically confused college freshman eating lunch in the dining room of my fraternity house, when the news came that President John Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.  An hour later, sitting in my Freshman English class on that Friday afternoon, together we heard the shocking confirmation of his untimely death.

The memory of that moment, and all of the subsequent moments that followed over that long weekend, are deeply etched into my conscious memory.  They are always with me to this day, recalled with little effort.  Just as my father remembered sitting in a restaurant eating lunch when the news came over the radio of the death of Will Rogers in an Alaskan plane crash.  Or as my two now-grown children likely remember their very personal day on 9-11.  Kennedy’s death, and the subsequent assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy five years later, irrevocably changed me.  Their deaths were also my death – the death of my innocence, the death of the protective cocoon of my small-city southern upbringing.  But those deaths in turn served as a rebirth for me - a new person of different beliefs and a broader understanding of human reality.  Just as I would be renewed (“born again”) and recast numerous times over the course of my ensuing life.

Death is not a singular event at a singular moment in time.  Death is a series of events occurring at irregular points in time that lead to constant change and renewal.  Just as Buddhist enlightenment or Christian encounters with God is not just one moment of instantaneous transformation, but a constant sequence of smaller insights and shifts that collectively take us to a new place, continually becoming yet another version of our prior selves.

Regardless of our age, we have already been through death many times over.  It is the separation that occurs when our grown children leave home.  When we leave our colleagues at an old job that no longer fits us.  When we move ourselves to an unfamiliar locale, away from all that we have known before.  When we necessarily discard a previously held idea or belief that is proven to be invalid.  When we surrender yet another self-illusion and its resulting arrogance.  When we enter a new stage of our chronological life.  When close friends and family leave their current existence and “pass on.”  Each of these transformative events, however sad in the moment, concurrently renews us for our next phase of life.

Nothing in nature stands still.  Life is always moving to “the next.”  But it is a physical law that nothing can move forward until it turns loose of where it is, what it is holding on to.  This is a spiritual truth also.  If all of the death that we see in nature is simply a stage in transition to something new, why would we presume that human life has been created any differently?  In truth, “death” means simply that what was no longer exists; what will be is just beginning.  As unknowing as we may be about what our next renewal will be, we can be confident that we are in fact being renewed into that which is most appropriate for us.  Just as in all of Creation.

© 2013  Randy Bell