Love Our Neighbor

There are several of the Great Spiritual Teachers of centuries past from whom I draw my spiritual inspiration and guidance.  They take me down paths I wish to travel in my life, paths of personal discovery as well as greater understandings beyond just my own self.  Most often these paths are anything but simple or tranquil; challenges, upheavals, and loss of fancied illusions are the litter along my spiritual roadside.  But I recognize that it is in this instability and change that my true discoveries are to be found – if I but openly look for them.  And so my walk continues on, always knowing that the next challenge is still to come.

Each of my Teachers offers me a somewhat different spiritual perspective and topical focus.  To be able to draw from that breadth enriches the journey all the more.  Yet there is one common teaching that invariably transcends these individual teachings: the expectation to love, and be kind to, all other beings.  It perhaps seems on surface that love and kindness are the easiest things to do; it proves to be one of the supreme challenges to living in God’s image.

It is fairly easy to love those who love you, treat you well, are always supportive, and who are never a hurdle to our ambitions and well-being.  But we are continually reminded, and called to task, that such a selective subset for our love is not enough.  For Jesus, it is to love our neighbor as we would be loved, and for that love to be as boundless and continually forgiving as God’s own deep love for each of us.  For Buddha, it is the call for compassion and empathy towards all sentient beings, with appreciation and sympathy for the circumstances of their suffering.  For Muhammad, it is the gift, the obligation, of welcoming hospitality shown towards all strangers who come to our house.  There are no “except for’s …” here, no nuances, no picking and choosing.  At times we may be called upon to necessarily resist someone’s inappropriate actions.  But we are never excused from sustaining our love, compassion, and hospitality for them.

In this time and place of so much diverse lifestyles, opinions and perspectives, it can be easy to step into judgment and denigration towards our neighbors.  In a lifetime of victimization from verbal assaults, ill-treatment and deception, it can be easy to hold onto and nurture deep-seated angers at past experiences with some individuals.  Even having the desire to love these neighbors who do not think as we do, act as we do, or have been a specific cause of our unhappiness, can seem an impossible task to achieve.  Until we remind ourselves that none of us really knows our own truth and story, much less other people’s full truth and complete story, in spite of our arrogance in thinking that we do.  All of us know what we know, believe what we believe, see what we see, conditioned and limited by our own individual experiences.  And our experiences are miniscule in proportion to the breadth of experiences of all of humanity.

In truth, hatred is easy; extending forgiving and accepting love is hard.  Anger is easy; extending embracing compassion is hard.  Our Great Teachers of the past understood this, and nevertheless chose to follow the hard path.  There are some such good souls even today who also follow the hard path with success, and make themselves available to lead us all by their example – if we choose to follow.  They lead us not into the dark tent of separation, judgment and condemnation, but into the welcoming embrace of unity, openness and acceptance.  They remind us of the universal lesson that arrogance leads not to our spiritual realization, but that humility is the walking stick that supports us in our journey.

We are often frustrated that others do not see what we see and think as we think, why they “don’t get it.”  God observes us fighting so with each other, and wonders, “Why don’t they see all that I see?  Why don’t they all get it – together?”

©  2014   Randy Bell

 



Good And Bad

Most organized religions expend extensive words and effort towards defining what is good and what is bad (“evil”) in this human world.  By extension, secular societies built upon those religious forms and likewise develop extensive rules and laws designed to distinguish between these two conducts.  At first glance, such rules read quite simply and clearly.  The Ten Commandments seem easy enough to understand and absorb, yet they led to over 600 detailed rules of practice under Mosaic Law.  Similarly, Christian Catholic canons, Islamic Shari’ah laws and Buddhist precepts are spelled out in page after page.  Nevertheless, whether we are any more clear about “good” versus “bad” after all of this “explanation” is highly questionable.

So we also see in the secular side of societies.  U.S. and state criminal codes fill a bookcase; the same for our tax codes.  Our religions say “Thou shall not kill,” echoed in the secular laws of our society.  Yet those laws go on to subdivide and rank killing by the degree of badness and scale of punishments.  Murder in the first, second, and third degrees; voluntary versus involuntary manslaughter; suicide and assisted suicide/mercy-killing; accidental death; killing in self-defense; state-prescribed execution; killing as a patriotic duty in wartime – unless you are on the losing side and charged with committing “war crimes.”  So what do we really believe about killing?  Thou shall not kill?  Or Thou shall not kill EXCEPT …”?

In our minds, we can tie ourselves into knots as we run in circles trying to decide whether the violent act of killing is good or bad.  In the end, to answer the question case by case in each individual occurrence and set of circumstances, we usually turn to twelve everyday peers of the accused rather than the greatest religious and civil minds of our society.

The same discussion can hold true for most all of the great spiritual truths and moral laws.  Are our moral truths absolute, or are they relative to people, place and circumstance?  And if they are in fact relative, then how are we to conclude what is right versus what is wrong, what is good versus what is bad?

We will never properly answer that question solely in our minds, by our rational thoughts.  We are all too capable of rationalizing any desired irrationalization to our predisposed conclusion.  Rather, our true moral compass is in our body, our heart, our feelings.  “Good” is that place, that action, those words that create true Joy – in ourselves and in others.  This is not the same as the short-term joy we may experience in the moment; our destructive impulses are all too capable of instant gratification driven by our mind: the sweetness of revenge, the satisfaction from speaking back to power, the thrill of defending the defenseless, the pleasure of a sharply worded retort.  These kinds of joy evaporate soon enough, and later our supposed joy inevitably turns to regret at our impulsiveness, the hurts we generated, the pettiness and thoughtlessness of our action.

In our mind, we will dwell on such false joys, continually replaying the scene, trying to rewrite the script to a better end, while looking for reaffirming confirmation from others.  But in the joy of truly doing good, we are able to take our satisfaction and then easily move on.  There is no need to dwell, to replay, to create alternative endings, to seek affirmation from others.  There is a sustaining calm in our moments of reflection, nothing more to do or say.  Our minds work in the present and look toward the future rather than obsessing and second-judging about the past.  “Bad” things trap us in the past.  “Good” is known throughout our body, settled comfortably in the heart.  That is where we find it.  And there it frees us.

In the end, we are forced to ponder the vexing question: are “good” and “bad” two opposites locked into perpetual conflict for dominance?  Or are they two partners embraced in a dance of perpetual unity, two unique parts of one greater whole?  For undeniably, where one travels, the other is often an ever-present companion, one giving birth to the other.

©  2014   Randy Bell

 

The Maturing Of God

When my children were born, like most new parents I was pretty clueless about what being a parent really meant.  Much less how to actually do it.  I read books, I asked questions.  My own parents were a tangible example, both for better and for worse.  There were no qualifying exams to become a parent; such permission was easier than getting my first driver’s license.

Ultimately, I learned parenting simply by being a parent.  Basic trial and error.  More reactive to circumstances and events that presented themselves, rather than being proactive in determining “this is how I will parent.”  As a result, some things were done well, some things not so well.  In truth, trying to fulfill the perfection your children think you are is pretty futile.  And no doubt vice versa.

In retrospect, there were three very important things I did learn.  The first was that each child you have is different from one another, and different from every other child.  So we have to individualize our parenting to fit the individuation of each child.  Especially if you hope your child will become an independent-thinking , self-sufficient adult.  That is where the true parental difficulty and creativity come into play.

Secondly, I learned was that my parenting job had to change over time.  What was needed from me for my 1-year-old was vastly different when he became an 8-year-old, further when he became a 15-year-old.  I needed to be very directive to my infant child; I had to give my teenager a lot of slack to learn who he is and how he would sustain himself as an adult.  As a child, she needed to hold my hand crossing a busy street.  As a teenager, she had to cross it alone.  As an adult, she has had to hold the hands of others.  The parent role is an evolving one.

Thirdly, I learned that I had to learn.  The questions my children would ask me, the choices that they made, the personalities that they developed, the knowledge that I gained, all required me to question myself.  Question my own thinking, my own values, the appropriateness of my own upbringing.  The old adage is very true: the good teacher (parent) listens to, and learns from, his student (child).

This understanding of parenting is also applicable to God’s spiritual parenting of us.  We want to think of God as perfect, as all-knowing, as omnipotent – all of which God is.  Just as we thought our own human parents to be.  In that idealization, we typically see God as somehow fixed in time and place, constant and unchanging.  Not true.  God is always learning, growing, maturing, changing.  Growing by self-initiative; growing in reaction to human maturing.  God just happens to be way ahead of us.

We err in thinking about God, and relating to God, when we fall into the trap of a “static parent” perspective.  When we were a child – both individually as well as the collective whole of humanity and civilization – our singular and collective immaturity required God to be very directive with us.  Do this.  Do that.  Follow my rules (commandments).  But now, singularly and collectively, we are somewhere in spiritual adulthood.  God has long since moved to more of a guidance role, cutting us slack, giving us room to exercise our own judgments – for better or worse.  Like a good parent, God is always right there for us, available to counsel us if and when we seek it, but relying upon us to make good decisions reflective of our increasing maturity.  God is no longer directive, but consultative, reflective of our own and God’s increasing maturity.

God is not static.  God has changed, has grown, has learned about spiritual parenting from – in Western religious terms – Genesis through Revelations and to this day.  Change is inherent in all creation, including with God.  What we hear for our spiritual history should not confuse us, but inspire us with confidence.  We are no longer the child Adam or the child Eve.  Neither are we yet the spiritual adult we will ultimately become.  God has been smart enough to learn over time, and to adapt as we have changed.  We should be smart enough to follow God’s model for our own growth, and act more as the spiritual adults we are becoming.

© 2014   Randy Bell

 

One Mystery Of Life

There are many things in life that remain a mystery to me.  Even after all my chronological years of learning and observation.  One thing that has interested me throughout my years is the human mind: the patterns of its thinking; the decisions it chooses for action.  Foremost in my curiosity is the phenomena of why and how human beings hate.  I accept that hate is derived from that most basic of emotions, anger.  But what kind of thinking from anger would lead us to such a strong result as hate?  And thereby to the actions people are capable of taking from the power of hate?

Part of the mystery is that hate seems so counterintuitive.  In many situations, hate takes us to the exact opposite conclusion than that we would pursue from a non-hatred motivation.  Who we choose to lash out at, and upon what provocation, makes no sense in the quiet reflection of the afterward.

We often choose to be on our best behavior with strangers, and reserve our wrath for the friends and family dearest to us.  We spew hate and disdain onto whole groups of people for the transgressions of the few.  We choose to hate people who look and act differently than we, based upon race, gender, economic status, or any other imaginable grouping; yet we make little effort to know any of them personally.  (It is a lot easier to hate someone from a distance than when you know their name, see their face, and share a meal together.)  When such hate grows and accumulates in numbers, then whole nations hate other nations.  We fight wars among people who, at their core, have the same aspirations and goals as we have.  The differences are only on the surface of style, culture, geography and heritage.

There are two forms of hatred that are the most baffling to me.  One is religious hatred.  Every major religion I know rebukes violence and hatred in an expectation to love and respect one another.  Yet religious persecution, torture and violence have been with us for at least 2000 years ever since the Romans went after the Christians (though I suspect they really saw the Christians as more of a political threat than religious adversary).  The wars that have been fought “in the name of God and our one true religion,” and the designation (in the eye of the beholder) and torture of “heretics,” has kept us in a continuing state of separation.   It is a hatred from human frailties and ego that has little to do with God’s expectations.  What mankind has done “for the glory of God” over the millennia and still to this day is frightening.  It is the stupidest hatred in which we indulge.

The second most baffling hatred is when one discriminated group chooses to then discriminate against another.  We might think that any group that itself has been a victim of unjust hatred and discrimination would thereby be the most tolerant of others.  They who personally know the sting of injustice should be the most just to others, their pained hearts being the least willing to inflict pain upon others.  Yet more often than not hatred overrules the heart.  Those that feel hate often become the most hateful and discriminatory in a perverse form of revenge.  When we do not have power over our life, in compensation we seize power over the even less powerful.

All of this is the human mystery to me.  There is much hatred in our country and in our world today, surrounding us in much anger.  There is no good argument to be for hate, even when we try to cover over and disguise our hate by spouting all kinds of noble-sounding intentions.  Even as we disclaim the outcomes from our hateful actions.  And even as we proclaim, “not me.”  Indifference and denial from hate is no less harmful than violence born from hate.  Thereby, the first step in eliminating hate is to recognize and acknowledge how it lives within each of us.

©  2014  Randy Bell

 

Look Homeward Anger

Anger.  The very word carries within it a sense of strong power.  A negative power which we feel rarely results in positive outcomes.  Even when we may think that anger propels us into a necessary action, we nevertheless feel we have to re-label it as a “righteous anger” – as if needing the full weight and permission of the Universe to justify it.

We are always very sure about the “cause” of our anger.  We have the person who provoked our anger clear in our telescopic sights, pinpointed with laser accuracy.  The person, the time, the place, the incident.  Though sometimes that picture blurs; it is not an individual, but an institution that precipitated our ire.  These institutional perpetrators sometimes seem worse than the individual ones, because there is no single person that can be targeted, no one individual with whom to work through the problem.

But as we look through the telescope at our “enemy,” what happens when that lens suddenly encounters a mirror instead?  What happens when we see ourselves in that reflection, looking back at us with a fixed glaze?  Do we turn away, not believing our eyes?  Or do we ask ourselves, “why am I seeing this person in my sights?”

The reflection is important.  Because that is where our true anger lives.  Because what we are mad AT is merely a reflection of what we are mad about IN ourselves.  And that is the really important anger we need to get to know more fully.

The fact of what was said to us, done to us, is what it was and remains unchanged.  That fact causes us to make a secular/temporal judgment as to whether the action was hurtful or helpful, motivated by ill-will or good-will.  But our emotional response is our spiritual choice.  Consider Pope John Paul II: the would-be assassin seeking to kill him was wrong to do so; yet instead of calling in anger for his trial and execution for that deed, John Paul sat in the jail cell with his attacker joined in prayer.

Anger is not an absolute emotion; it is a relative one.  Your triggers are not necessarily my triggers; the depth of your reaction may well exceed mine; the reaction you chose to take could very likely be different from mine.  And while our anger likely continued well beyond the incident in question, our perpetrator has probably long since forgotten about it.  Even though we clearly have not.

People and institutions will always continue to “do things” to us.  That is an ongoing reality of Life.  But “they” do not “make us angry.”  We CHOOSE if we will be angry.  A choice we make from a broad range of other possible choices.  The figure that is looking back at us in that mirror is asking us WHY we chose anger.  What are the experiences and thinking patterns in us that drove us to that option.  Why was the degree of our response so furious.  These are the enlightening lessons waiting to be learned.  And such learning is the better use of our time and energy.

When we recognize that anger is a valuable pointing tool for understanding our own self and our inner conflicts, from which we can draw great personal growth, that is how we can transform the negativity of anger into the positivity of a guide.  It is insight that can come in moments of reflection after our anger subsides; with practice it can ideally come even before it gets out of our mouths.  It is not about blocking, stifling our anger.  It is about transforming it before it leaves our body and attacks another.  It is about transforming the sourness of our potential words into a sweetness of personal discovery.  For there is so very much to be learned in that spiritual classroom of our anger.  Look homeward, anger.  Look homeward to find the angel inside.

“You are responsible for everything you experience.  You can no longer say, ‘He made me angry.’  How could he make you angry?  Only you can make you angry.  That understanding changes your way of relating to the world and your way of looking at stress.”

(John Daido Loori, Zen teacher)

 

©  Randy Bell   2014

Finding Your Spirituality

It is not easy to get through most of our days, given the many demands on our time, tasks to be done, places to be and people to be with.  Yet even as we pass through these daily events, we often have this inner sense that we are “doing” without “engaging.”  That what we are doing is just continual repetition, rote functioning, perhaps with some momentary but fleeting pleasure.  Or the day is spent in draining controversies, feeling upset in response to difficult conflicts.  All the while, some small thought in our mind knows that something in our life is missing, something is being shut out and not attended to.  A thought ignored, because we feel we have no room left for anything else on our very full plate.

What is being ignored is our spirit, that little piece of creativity and connection that lives within us, that usually sits on the periphery of our daily calendar.  It is continually calling for its turn for our attention, its place on that calendar, its chance to breathe and infuse the quality of our lives.  Finding that spirit, prioritizing it over all other demands, and giving life to it is what the pursuit of spirituality is about.

Spirituality gives true life to our existence.  It is in spirituality that we actually taste the meal on our plate rather than hurriedly push it into our mouths while we drive our cars, or stare distractedly at our technology screens.  It is actually watching the movie or play, listening to the music, truly listening to the words that others are speaking to us, instead of pushing it all into our background noise while we send out our latest text messages.

Spirituality is simply disengaging for a moment, and spending that time in the company of our real self.  Getting to know our self in a deeper and connected way – and from this process discovering how little we actually know our self even after all these years.  Once we find our self, spirituality is then finding connection with a universe much larger than we have previously known.  Not just a world of family, close friends, our neighborhood, our workplace, but to a vastly greater Universe that transcends all we currently know or can imagine.

There are many ways to express our spirituality.  For some, it is within a formal religious structure of church / temple / mosque / meditation room, with all its attendant rules, dogma and ritual.  But as helpful as it may be, religion is not required, nor is any specific set of beliefs.  Religion is about the mind, seeking to direct the body in thoughts and actions.  Spirituality is about the heart, living within participatory experience.  Spirituality is not in the thinking; it is in the doing.

What is important is not THE form; it is finding the appropriate form that works for you.  Sometimes, with similar people and right intention and appropriate circumstance, our church gathering can be about spiritual experience.  But experiencing spirituality can also be a walk in the woods or on the beach, sitting on a boulder on a mountaintop, serving others in a homeless food kitchen, running a marathon, or losing one’s self “in the zone” of performing music, crafting woodworking, or creating an art form.

Spirituality is simply experiencing that which takes us out of our everyday, helping us understand that beyond us lies a far bigger existence than we have seen – God, the Universe, Spirit, Nature, or by whatever name – and finding the connection of our small existence within that greater welcoming tent.  We are, but we are part of.  Until we see, and become, that “part of,” we remain incomplete.

Spirituality may be as though a tough hike over high mountain trails, likely through harsh and foreboding weather.  It is a hike that we have to walk alone, even when in the company of strangers that we call friends.  But it is a great view from the summit.  It is the sky-filled sunset enveloping that mountaintop that infuses our spirit; yet when we see the universe clearly, it is a simple blade of grass that encapsulates all of life held in our hands.  We have the time for this hike, if we seek it.  Do we have the commitment?

©  2014   Randy Bell

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