Alone With My Self

Have you ever spent an entire day spiritually alone, just with your Self?

In the context of this question, “alone” does not mean “taking a day off” and doing just what you would like to do for a rare afternoon.  Running personal errands, treating yourself to a day of long-denied entertainment, non-required shopping, or personal pampering.  Nor does being alone mean simply being absent from the usual family, friends, or colleagues.

Being spiritually alone means surrounding yourself in true absence.  No distracting TV/radio/cell phones/computers.  No people at all, except for perhaps an occasional person necessary to help negotiate your way through the day.  No distractions.  No chores to perform.  No conversations with others.  Just you.  Perhaps in a quiet room, or on a comfortable bench in the quiet woods or garden.  Perhaps sitting in a meditation posture; perhaps at a table with pen in hand to jot down a few thoughts.  An occasional slow walk through your surroundings to refresh your quiet time.  Just you.  And your Self.  Your real Self.  The Self you rarely get to talk to, to know better.

For many people, such an undistracted day, in such quiet, in such an aloneness, is a frightening prospect.  The very idea of a silent day creates a sense of high anxiety, if not panic.  We think, “how will I get through these many hours, passing the time alone, and what am I likely to experience?”  It is a time and situation completely foreign to our training and experience, being separated from the task list and human interactions that typically fill our day.  So why would we want to do it?

It is in silence that one encounters one’s Self.  The true Self that lives quietly within us, lost to the conscious mind, crowded from our thoughts.  The truth is, many of us have little desire to meet that Self, even though it is our spiritual essence.  Perhaps we fear seeing an unpleasant person, or frightening thoughts, or scary experiences residing in that Self, a Self normally kept out of view.  Perhaps we resist some negative judgments being directed at us by that Self.  Perhaps we will find too many unfulfilled dreams, failed initiatives, or lost opportunities tucked away into that Self.  Or maybe too many regrets, too many unchangeable shortcomings, too many “I wish I hadn’t done that’s” being lugged around in a heavy bag marked “Failures.”

Or, after we slog through some of this initial dense swamp, perhaps we will find someone else.  A joyful, confident, and happy self we have been missing, albeit a Self bruised and battered around by Life.  A Self that has been waiting a long time to finally meet us.  A Self that would be nice to be acquainted with now.  Of all the Friends on our Facebook page or holiday mailing list, this could be the best friend of all.

Our first encounters alone with our Self may prove very difficult.  It is likely a Self very different from the one we normally see in the mirror.  But it gets easier, and more rewarding, with each repetition.  It takes a while to get to know fully the Self that awaits us.  We will have to take both the “good” and the “bad” of the Self together, just as with any other good friend.  But it is an acquaintance worth making.  It is an acquaintance we can only make within external silence.  Because that Self can only speak very softly, so we have to listen hard to hear it.  And if we keep listening hard enough, and long enough, and often enough, behind our Self we sometimes might hear an even softer Voice reaching out to us.

“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness” (Meister Eckhart).  Stillness with Self is worth eight hours of our time.

©  2014   Randy Bell              www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com

God As Project Planner

Creativity.  It is taking a speck of “nothing” and transforming it into a “something.”  Sometimes creativity arrives in an instinctive flash.  But in most instances, creative endeavors require “a plan” in order to arrive at that creative end point and avoid disaster.  God is all about creativity.  God’s creativity shows in the physical world within which we live, the human form we inhabit, the spiritual being that we truly are.  All of which required their own project plan from the excellent project planner that God is.

Recently, I was feeling highly frustrated by seemingly having hit yet another brick wall in my spiritual path.  The questions of what spiritual direction(s) I should be going, what actions I should be taking, what decisions I should be making, led me to wonder: am I trying to follow a path solely of my own making, or am I allowing myself to be guided by God’s path for me?  I asked myself: If I were God, who wanted to take me spiritually from a beginning point “A” to some end point “Z” (“Z” being known only to God), how would I do that?  What would a smart project plan (i.e. spiritual path) look like?

Putting on my 40-years project planner hat, I opted to play God for a moment.  Over a period of quiet reflection, I retroactively extracted what God’s project plan for my spiritual development has appeared to be thus far.  The Plan for God’s intended purpose and role for me.  The Plan to fulfill the contract we made together when I was born.  I wrote down the spiritual chronology of my current journey begun twenty years ago.  Not in great detail or exhaustive text, but just simply the bullet points of the major phases, turning points and significant milestones in this journey.  When I was finished, the logical flow and appropriate steps that have been taken – i.e. my spiritual path – were laid out in front of me.  Seeing the overall sensibility underpinning the seeming chaos of where I have been does not tell me where this path is to end.  But it does remind me that my life is not just a series of random events, as it often feels day-to-day.  That God does have a general plan, a framework, for me to act within, with a lot of options for adjustment, and a lot of blanks for me to fill in.

It is when I start to think I am all alone in this journey, and my direction and outcomes are totally on me to make happen, that my life usually gets into upheaval and frustration.  But seeing these individual links that connect the chain that is my life brings me back into synchronicity with the Universe’s co-role in guiding my life.  I have much spiritual work yet to do, but The Plan tells me, in gradual increments, what work is to be done and where to find it.  Which rocks in the stream are solid and will support my feet as I move across the dangerous rushing water to the other shore, versus which are the deceptive, unstable rocks that that will toss me into that water.  As Lao-Tsu teaches us, the challenge is to know when to act on our own, when to react to the Universe’s guidance, and when to just sit quietly and wait patiently for clarity.  In the end, the result of our life is still our series of choices.

I invite you to pursue a similar exercise of retroactive planning for yourself.  From whatever starting point is appropriate, to examine the major phases of your spiritual and/or secular journey and their milestones.  Perhaps the phases will stand alone as independent links scattered about the landscape, without the cohesion or connection that forms a strong, secure chain.  If so, we might surmise that one has been only on his/her own plan, without that larger cohesion that comes from God’s planning.

But if we see an overall orderliness of our life within broad, connected linkages, even the most difficult moments of our daily chaos can settle quietly into their proper perspective.  Thereby, we relearn Trust.  Trust that our life will proceed within Purpose if we are humble and willing enough to live within God’s Plan that envelops us.  By seeing the connectedness of how we have lived, we can then walk into our future with the confident understanding that only some of our life is about what we plan to do.  Some of it is about what God is planning on our behalf.  Working together.  That is The Plan.  Whether we are willing to give over some of our ego and illusion of sole control, and instead partner with The Plan, is our only real choice.

©  2014   Randy Bell              www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com

Guilt And Sin

Guilt.  The very word itself hangs over us like a suffocating blanket, blocking out our ability to see the light that is around us.  “Guilty as charged” – whether for violation of the prevailing social code or a heinous crime – may be a necessary owning up to our actions, a necessary step in learning and contrition, a prerequisite to necessary punishment and retribution.  But the fact of being proclaimed “guilty” is only intended to then give way to moving beyond that moment and into a new future.  More often, the judgment of guilty becomes an ongoing, perhaps never-ending drama of repetition.  The original act is continually reimagined; the verdict is re-pronounced by a series of mental juries; the judgment is reiterated from the faces of new stand-in judges that come into our life; punishment is inflicted without end.  The punishment that society deems appropriate may be levied over a long duration.  But the weight of culpability that should be momentary is transformed into a life-long burden we call “guilt.”

If “guilt” is the secular statement laid upon our errors, “sin” is the parallel language of the cleric.  Certainly when we turn away from God, forget the calling out of our best self, and lapse in our judgment of doing the highest good for the most beings, such forgetfulness needs to be identified, acknowledged  and accepted.  It is only from identifying-acknowledging-accepting that we learn what better choices were possible for us, what is the clearer path to God.  Making good choices usually gives us a valuable confirmation of what we have learned, but rarely teaches us new things.  Errors more easily demand our attention and our reflection due to the significance of their consequences.  If we are open to it, our errors are our greatest teachers of Life.  In the context of our true Purpose, our errors are to be welcomed and treasured even though they may cause us (and others) pain in the moment and thereafter.

Unfortunately, guilt manipulated in the hands of some secular authorities (parents, teachers, bosses), or sin in the hands of some religious authorities (priests, ministers, rabbis, imams), simply becomes another tool of control and domination over the mind.  For these “authorities,” a continual emphasis on avoiding guilt and sin seems more of a priority than living positively in truth within the actual experience of God.  Administered with a heavy hand, continually reinforced, guilt is used to equate our actions with the very worth of us as a human being.  “Guilt and sin” swallows up our soul like an anaconda wraps itself around the body of its prey, choking the life out of its victim.  No good lessons are learned, only the diminution of our soul results.  Error of judgment is made into an error of self; a moment of bad action is made into badness itself.  Learning is lost to punishment; a potential teacher instead becomes an executioner of a soul.

Guilt is one of the least productive emotions that live in our minds.  Sin-based guilt is even more damaging and ill-productive, because it comes between us and God, and God’s overall design for our life.  God cares less about what we have done, or where we have been, versus who we have become and what we are doing now.  The “holy ledger” of our good and bad deeds is less important than the diploma that acknowledges what we have learned from those deeds.  God starts and ends with us in love, forgiveness and acceptance.  God understands that – IF we do not lock ourselves in a prison of the past – error is a prime tool for finding our way forward.

So we need to resist our conditioning towards guilt and sin.  We need to use whatever secular therapy and/or spiritual discovery tools can purge ourselves of past guilt, and disconnect ourselves from the anchor of regret.  We need to reject those who would lead us into the spiritual abyss that lies behind the twin doors labeled GUILT and SIN.  Only then can we lighten our load so as to be able to live freely, and thereby walk into the future that God is providing to us each day.

©  2014   Randy Bell              www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com

Death Of A Friend

I lost a dear friend the other day.  Another casualty to the unrelenting ravages of cancer.  It was a spiritual friendship of much depth, even if our chronology was only of a few years – unlike his high school sweetheart and beloved spouse of 50 years.  Longevity can be enviable, but sometimes depth can partially make up for a short calendar.

For some, death is only vaguely foreseen, and strikes suddenly with little preparation or advance notice.  Such a death affects little of one’s daily life up to that moment – hence always “tomorrow.”  For others, death is predictable if not scheduled, and that predictability drives the schedule of their lives – hence never “tomorrow.”  In either case, death ultimately comes to each of us.  And more often than not, it comes about consistent with how we have lived our entire life.  Yet on occasion some follow the path of their death into a U-turn, going in mind and heart to places they never dared venture before.

My friend and I spent many an hour over coffee and bagels exploring the subject of Life, Life’s meaning, and our relationship to God.  And what it means to truly “live with God.”  There were always so many questions to explore, answers to be sought.  But they were never questions about whether God, doubts about God; rather, there were only questions about how to know God.  What God is truly about, and thereby, what we are truly about.

And so this dear friend’s impending death emerged to be just one more question, one more exploration, one more opportunity for understanding.   That his death was certain, and on a short timeline, was never denied.  That many human experiences and special relationships would be lost was also  understood and expected.  But the inevitability that we all face – yet continually deny – was accepted; yes, with sadness, but with little regret.

By embracing his reality, even as he sought to extend it by the drugs and the radiation, greater clarity came.  When death finally does come over that distant hill, parks itself on your front stoop and rings the doorbell, it brings in its briefcase a full serving of clarity.  Clarity about what is truly important in our human life rises to the top, and all the false importances that we have chased for so long settle to the bottom like dirt separating in a water glass.  So we can sip from the clear water on top, and leave the extraneous behind.  In that clarity, time becomes precious, personal interactions become primary, needed words finally get said.

I will miss my friend.  I will miss our conversations.  I will miss the stimulation of thinking, the camaraderie of our shared ongoing search.  All pursued within that Irish passion, smile and good humor.  He will be missed by many others in their own way, from their own experience.  Be well and at peace, my good friend.  Yours was a life worth remembering.  Enjoy all the new answers you are now finding to your so many questions.  Know that in another time and place you will have new questions to be answered; your journey will continue.  But for this moment, be now with God.  In the place where we will all ultimately arrive.

In my memory of Dennis Murphy.  June 19, 2014.

 

© 2014   Randy Bell

 

The Other Civilizations

Recently, I opted to sit on my lawn enjoying the expansive view overlooking the valley below, intent on allowing myself a rare moment in quiet contemplation.  It was one of those early summer days of warm sun yet cooling breeze that are delightful to enjoy in this special mountain setting.

Sitting in my chair, lost in my scattered thoughts, I was distracted by small movement at my feet.  Looking down, I noticed some kind of bug moving through the grass, working its way determinedly around my feet.  Given my complete lack of knowledge about the insect world, I had no idea of the scientific label of this small creature.  Hence the generic “bug” would have to do.  As I continued to watch, it became clear that this bug had a very purposeful objective in its mind, a task to be done, a mission to complete.  This was not just a bug’s time off for a recreational stroll.

Then I noticed other movements out of the corner of my eye.  A grasshopper now jumping through the grass, pausing, followed by another quick jump.  An ant crawling through the increasingly busy terrain, crossing paths with a good-sized spider – but not one so good-sized as to send me scrambling to safety in the face of a dime-sized potential assassin.

Similarly others continued to come, the territory below me becoming a bustling traffic intersection of many species.  A miniature society normally invisible to our eyes, but today teeming with the busy doing of Life, all in harmony with, and unthreatening to, each other.  An organized, complex society we pay little attention to – except to squash when it invades “our” territory.

Yet noticing all that movement below me, and thinking about the bird building its nest on our porch to hold its reproductive eggs, and the bees and hummingbirds drinking from the well of our brightly-colored flowers, served to remind me of how little we think about the full scope of God’s creative output.  Most of our time, we look around and see, and think only about, human beings – ourselves and others.  As if we are the only thing of importance on the earth, the center of all attention, the only “life” going on here.  But if we ever indulge the luxury of time spent truly looking at what all surrounds us, we create a fresh opportunity for our humility to arise.

How often has Man, to whom was given “dominion over the fish … the fowl … the cattle … all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon it,” interpreted that dominion to mean “ownership,” seemingly bordering on the unrestricted master/slave plantation mentality of so long ago where living “possessions” were used however one pleased.  Rather than accept the responsibility of “stewardship” to protect and help manage all of these more humble gifts of God’s total creation entrusted to us.  By scriptural tradition, human beings were the last item on God’s creation checklist; other outputs were more important to do first, and were necessary to allow for the creation and sustaining of human beings.

We ignore the very real existence of dirt, rocks, trees, plants, and yes, the bugs, all nourished by the sunlight, oxygen and rain that gives them life.  We presume our superiority as humans as though we are the only meaningful creation, the center around which the Universe revolves – as erroneous as those ancestors who believed that the life-giving sun revolved around its child Earth.  Every creation of God breathes, feels, knows fear and safety, and lives and dies.  Because every creation of God is just one of infinite transformations of cell forms that breathes, feels, knows fear and safety, and lives and dies.

The deer and the mosquito remind us of the importance of our relative unimportance.  That Life is not just about us.  Life is about knowing the unknowable, incomprehensible vastness of the Universe, into which we are inescapably interdependent and connected.

© 2014   Randy Bell

 

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