Zebulon Merson, Transformative Counseling | 1314 NW Irving Street, Suite 412 | Portland, Oregon 97209 | 503-975-4851
Copyright © 2008, Zebulon Merson, All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2008, Zebulon Merson, All Rights Reserved.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
— Marcus Aurelius
I have included some quotes, poems and articles which encourage me to expand and rethink my perspectives. Often, it's not so much what an author has written that speaks to me, as what has not been written. In-between the words of others I find my own. It is in the spirit of this contemplation I offer these perspectives.
— Zeb Merson
The word 'Dyad' is from the Greek (duad) and Latin (dyas, dyadis) roots - meaning two units treated as one.
The Dyad looks simple enough with two people sitting in chairs or on pillows on the floor facing each other a few feet apart. The Dyad in practice is difficult to achieve. It is not a conversation. The Dyad is a process of completing communication cycles and listening without judgment. The listening partner must try to remain neutral so that the active partner is left free to be either positive or negative. They need this relationship freedom to reclaim their natural internal freedom - to help them discover their true self - and the true nature of the Life they are living. (They really don't need it - but they are confused - and the dyad helps them out of this confusion.)
In our "normal" conversation we are almost always giving people advice with one person tending to dominate the other. We don't "normally" know how to just listen. When we do listen we don't keep an open mind - instead we take sides. These "normal" conversation results in a level of abuse that creates and amplifies group think. Group think is a consensus agreement - everyone tries to think the same way and there is much emotional energy expended to keep everyone in line. All meaning is derived from the agreement with others. The Dyad is a process of interpersonal communication designed to prevent this abuse.
The power of the dyad comes about because people are willing to work for the other person's freedom and power. This requires a good listener who is actually open to what ever the other person experiences as a result of their contemplation. This doesn't happen if the dyad partner lays a trip and leads the other person in a conversation. Even if the intention is good - it simply doesn't work. The active person needs to lead their own discoveries with the listening partner being open enough to follow the direction set by the active partner. When done right - it allows true help - two people under the direction of the active partner. Turn taking is important - since it allows both to make progress without domination of one by the other. Domination is a trap that we have fallen into many times - and it hurts both people. Things are best when a balance is achieved - and a give and take can proceed.
There are three key elements that are conducive to the awakening of the self, whether we envision this awakening as taking place over lifetimes or in the space of a moment: 1. Sincere Intention to experience things as they are, without prejudice; 2. Openness to whatever arises in your experience, in keeping with that intention; 3. Honesty in communicating to another about the reality of your experience, without need to be more - or less - than you are.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles," 1992 (commonly misattributed to Nelson Mandela, 1994 inauguration speech)
"All my life I had been looking for something and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself."
Gifts of one who loved me,--
'T was high time they came;
When he ceased to love me,
Time they stopped for shame.
It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy; that the world owes the world more than the world can pay and ought to go into chancery and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency, which involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year and other times, in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing.
If at any time it comes into my head that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out values all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a work-house. Nature does not cocker us; we are children, not pets; she is not fond; everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty.
Men use to tell us that we love flattery even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed? Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attached to them. If a man should send to me to come a hundred miles to visit him and should set before me a basket of fine summer-fruit, I should think there was some proportion between the labor and the reward.
For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day, and one is glad when an imperative leaves him no option; since if the man at the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether you could procure him a paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a man eat bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is always a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the office of punishing him. I can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies.
Next to things of necessity, the rule for a gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is that we might convey to some person that which properly belonged to his character, and was easily associated with him in thought. But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part barbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an index of his merit. But it is a cold lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of black-mail.
The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man to receive gifts. How dare you give them? We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something of degrading dependence in living by it:--
"Brother, if Jove to thee a present make,
Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take."
We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign society if it do not give us, besides earth and fire and water, opportunity, love, reverence, and objects of veneration.
He is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence I think is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil or this flagon of wine when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things, for gifts.
This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not at all considering the value of the gift but looking back to the greater store it was taken from,--I rather sympathize with the beneficiary than with the anger of my lord Timon. For the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning from one who has had the ill-luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I so admire in the Buddhist, who never thanks, and who says, "Do not flatter your benefactors."
The reason of these discords I conceive to be that there is no commensurability between a man and any gift. You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small. Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit which is directly received. But rectitude scatters favors on every side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the thanks of all people.
I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must not affect to prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. There are persons from whom we always expect fairy-tokens; let us not cease to expect them. This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold. The best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in the will, but in fate. I find that I am not much to you; you do not need me; you do not feel me; then am I thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house and lands. No services are of any value, but only likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,-- no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you and delight in you all the time.
The whole world has at some time or other smiled at the old lady who found consolation in "that blessed word 'Mesopotamia'; but a very large proportion of the smilers had blessed words of their own, and often there was no more ground for the emotion which these inspired than there," was in the case of the Mesopotamia lady. I have had many similar experiences while speaking in foreign parts. People tell me that I delivered a fine lecture, but they do not consider it a religious discourse because it did not contain such familiar expressions as God and Jesus and salvation which they have always associated with religion and which therefore are necessary to arouse their religious emotions. A good instance is the controversy which recently took place between Mr. Ham and myself in the Register. He wanted to know if I believed in God. I said I would answer the question when he told me what he meant by the word God. He replied, "There is no question of definitions involved. The only question is, does he believe in God or does he not? And if he does not believe in God, no matter what the word means is he not an atheist?" Once I had an almost identical experience with that of the Mesopotamia lady. After I had finished an address, a lady told me that she was so glad that I had quoted from the writings of Paul, not realizing that I had quoted him in such manner as to make him appear ridiculous and to confound the basis of her religion. So words are strange things. They have been called the money of fools, but the counters of wise men. It is a happy expression; and just as your money may degenerate into a most deceitful piece of paper, scandalously suggesting a hoard of gold or goods that does not exist, so the word may become a delusive phantasy of the idea for which it once stood; and the feebler or the more dissipated the intelligence of a person or a generation, the greater the chance that mere words will pass as coin.
Such a word preeminently is "spirituality." While no one is able to define it or has a concrete idea of what it means, yet it suggests at once unction, an exaltation of emotion, a superiority which is associated with hardly any other words in the English language. Spirituality is more profitable to a minister than long hair or a foreign name to a musician. Therefore, if one does not have it he assumes it, and that is why most of the ministers have such an artificial manner and such a smooth and hollow voice. A minister may be ignorant, he may be intellectually dishonest, he may be ethically indiscreet, his sermons may consist of empty vaporings, but if his manner, however assumed and artificial, suggests this subtle and indefinable thing which we call "spirituality," he is a success. In fact, most people seem to feel that spirituality is the sum mum bonum in human life. It makes the future of a novelist and raises every one to a superior plane. Creeds may come and go, saviors may shrink into moral heroes, bishops may lose their antique trimmings; but the future of humanity is safe if we only retain our faith in the spiritual and keep at bay that awful dragon which besets the race in every age Materialism.
Now what do people mean by this indispensable and important thing which they call spiritual? Not long ago some one said to me, "Reason is not everything, there are other, perhaps finer powers in man. Why not consult them? Indeed, we feel that the world and human life as you sketch it, the logical consequences of your merciless logic, are repugnant to this finer spiritual nature of ours. We have a right to listen to it, and reject your apparently unimpeachable demonstrations." I think this person had in mind the message of our finer emotions, which I consider quite as important as the message of reason, so do not think I am going to decry it, or despise it or ignore it; but may it not be possible to come to some clearer understanding of what we mean, when we say spiritual. For instance, not long ago I overheard a conversation between a man and a woman. I was surprised to find that they were discussing me. The man was telling the woman that I was an atheist (which I never have called myself) and he flattered me by adding that I seemed to be a learned and clever fellow. "Yes," she replied. "I grant that, but he is not spiritual." I wonder what she meant by that? Apparently some people have something that I have not, and this something is called spiritual. To tell the truth I have often heard this before, and for many years I have tried to find out exactly what it means. I have read many books on the subject -- Spiritualist, Theosophist, Christian Scientist, Higher Thought, Hindu, Christian, and so forth -- and I have questioned all sorts of people, and found only confusion.
Some people connect it with a kind of mysticism, an intuitive faculty, which man is supposed to possess if cultivated, and which acts as a sort of receiving station for messages which come from the infinite. Others connect it with that which they do not understand. I know people who will read pages upon pages of Science and Health which are absolutely meaningless and for this reason think it is spiritual. There are others who will spend hours upon hours in contemplation or meditation and feel that they are engaged in a spiritual task. Others use the term to cover the emotional life of man as distinguished from his intellectual life. Others call one spiritual when he is reverent, kindly, sympathetic and considerate. And a great many connect it with what I suggested a moment ago -- a kind of artificiality, a pose, which people have cultivated for effect. To these, if a person is physically pale and weakly instead of stout and robust, if he is meek and merciful instead of bold and audacious, if he has a sweet and gentle voice instead of one that is rough and grating, if he is gracious, tolerant, mild, and so forth, he is considered spiritual. Admirable characteristics, most of them. Some have them naturally, and others, feeling the desirability of this spirituality, cultivate them. That is why you find so many ministers, who are regular people during the week, assume all these characteristics the moment they step into the pulpit on Sunday morning. Some one wrote me during the week, that the spiritual are those who believe in a spiritual realm, as contrasted with a physical realm. I presume he means those who believe in spirit or mind as a substance, and not merely as a function of the material.
When I was in the orthodox ministry I could talk about spirituality as confidently as I could talk about material things; though I was only twenty-five years old. In our philosophy we defined the spirit as "substance without extension or parts" as distinguished from matter which has extension or parts. That sounds dry and cold perhaps, but I have searched the warm literature in vain for a better definition. I want to know in plain English what spirit is as distinguished from matter. I would like to get to the heart of the matter. What is it that the world is in danger of losing because of our modern materialism? What is spirit? No definition I have seen differs essentially from that taught me in the theological school twenty-five years ago, namely: Spirit is unextended qualitative substance, that is -- non-quantitative. But all enthusiasm evaporates when you reduce the issue to those cold terms. Who can be profoundly moved over the question whether all reality is quantitative or some of it is not?
There is a mystic type of person who sweeps all this logic-chopping aside with an austere air of spiritual superiority. He knows, feels, or intunes the spiritual. There is no need for any definition. Naturally there is no arguing with the person who knows; but I venture to say that this sort of thing is not superiority. It is not warmth of nature, or intuition, or refinement, or anything of the sort. It is simply intellectual incapacity and the illusion of mistaking introspective reflection for divine revelation. I have heard these people talk for hours about the spiritual intuitions; but it seems strange that these people cannot tell in a few plain intelligible words about the difference, especially, as they claim, when there is such a stupendous difference between the spiritual and the material that the world will perish if it loses even the belief in the spiritual. Let us note that the loss of spirit or belief in the spirit is expected to have tremendous practical consequences. Perhaps we can get somewhere by this line of inquiry.
What are these supposed consequences? Decay of our spiritual faculties of course; but what are they? We push on resolutely through the mist. A hint is given us that morals may suffer. Why? Is a man going to be less temperate and honorable because he has come to the conclusion that there are no non-quantitative substances in existence? It would be just as logical to expect the collapse of civilization because Einstein has shown that space is curved. Artists, poets, novelists, dramatists, I understand are much more spiritual than men of science. But I had always heard that, as far as morals went.... No, that is, a piece of the regrettable controversial stuff of an earlier age taken over by our modem mystics. What other points are suggested? I put this candidly to every religious person. When you contrast spiritualism and materialism in this respect do you not mean that the former stands for refined sentiment healthy imagination, tenderness, generosity of mind, delicacy; and that the latter implies a rather vulgar, calculating, selfish. indelicate, unimaginative type of man or woman? If I am wrong I have read dozens of spiritual and mystic books in vain. But I think that is what most people mean.
So it follows that in this whole controversy there is a confusion of ideas, a double meaning. There are two meanings of the word spiritual -- one the philosophical and theological meaning (unextended substance), and the other when the word is used to indicate those g r a c e s and qualities of mind and character which I have enumerated. Similarly there are two meanings of the word materialism -- one the philosophical meaning that all things are quantitative, and the other the popular or literary meaning when the word is used to denote the deterioration, the coarsening or vulgarizing of the mind or taste of a person or a civilization. There is no connection between the two meanings of each word, yet half the literature of this subject is useless because they are not kept clearly apart. Now in regard to the philosophical difference it does not matter two pins what the ordinary person thinks. Some one says, do you mean to imply that it does not make any difference whether a man is a materialist or a spiritualist? That is precisely what I am trying to make clear. So far as this life and its finest requirements are concerned, it does not matter. Of course it matters vitally in connection with the question of immortality, with which we are not concerned this morning. But it quite obviously does not matter in connection with man's highest interests on earth. Whether we grow more gross, more selfish, more grasping, more vulgar, more dishonorable, or whether we grow more delicate, more tender, more sympathetic, more aspiring, or more affectionate does not depend on whether we think the mind quantitative or qualitative. It depends on what we think of the values of those qualities. And I for one choose so-called spiritual qualities of mind and character because for me they contain the most enduring and highest joys of earth. Therefore, in this practical sense I am a firm believer in the spiritual life. And when I use the term as I frequently do, it is in this sense that I use it.
Well then, being a believer in the spiritual life, I want to know something more about its nature and its origin. At this point, I thought of Henry Drummond's attempt to apply the natural laws to the spiritual world, and it occurred to me that if there is such a thing as the spiritual life it must have a science of its own, and it must be more or less similar to the science of the physical life. It must deal with the same problems, seek answers to the same inquiries, use the same methods of investigation, as the science of the physical life. In short there must be a sort of biology of the spiritual life. And so I am going to follow the methods of biology in our attempt to understand the spiritual life, that is, use the same method of study as in our attempt to understand the physical life. First in regard to its nature.
What is life, either physical or spiritual? Of what elements is it composed? In what terms is it to be described? Such questions, of course, bring us face to face with the greatest mystery of our existence. Millions of words have been written, thousands of books have been published on this problem of life -- what it means, how it is to be understood; but never so far as I know has anyone, except the Fundamentalists of course, been able to discover what it really is. The nearest approach that has ever been made to the solution of this problem is found in what is known in contemporary science as "the energy concept of life." At bottom of course this is only the substitution of one word for another. To say that life is energy is only to raise the question as to what energy is, just as the ancient teaching that the earth rests on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, only raises the question as to what the tortoise is standing on. But if the definition of life as energy does not tell us very much, it at least suggests certain pictures, which help us to understand some of the practical phases of the problem. For energy conveys to us the idea of motion and activity. Inside a living organism we see a source of power, which by some manner is released in terms of movement. Outside the living organism, we see certain results achieved, certain things effected by this release of power. Put a nonliving object in an environment and nothing happens. Put a living object in this environment, and something does happen. Energy, in other words, or life in terms of energy is a creative principle. It has the capacity to start itself; and when it starts, a long series of results transpire. Sometimes these results seem altogether out of proportion to the cause. The electric energy transmitted through a small copper wire is capable of moving a long and heavy train of cars. The energy hidden away in a microscopic atom, we are told, might blow the earth to bits. But the connection between cause and effect here is always real. Life is energy-by which we mean it is the creator or initiator of movement, change, development. We are different from moment to moment because the life principle is at work within us.
Of course, I have been speaking of physical life, but this same idea applies to spiritual life as well. What we mean by spiritual life is just as much a mystery in religion a physical life is in biology. The theologians have tried as make things plain by inventing a lot of big words, such as regeneration, salvation; but such words only add confusion to the mystery. I do not think we can say anything more about this spiritual life than that it is a form of energy -- by which we mean that it is a source of power which when released is capable of producing changes in the outer world. We may not know what this power is, but we can see what it is doing in the outer world. In other words physical energy is not the only energy that is at work among men. Steam, electricity, muscular contraction, are not the only forms of power which are moving the world. There is another kind of power -- that which we think of as the mental or spiritual life. What it is we do not know. How it works we cannot say. But that it is a reality is a fact we cannot deny.
Take a word for example or an idea -- the purely spiritual phenomenon of thought in its spoken or written form. Think of the energy that is released by a thought, and how this energy sweeps through the centuries like fire across a parched prairie. "The power of thought," says Bertrand Russell, "is greater than any other human power . . . . It is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man." Think of the teachings of Socrates, how they have come to human ears in every generation like chords of noble music, lifting men to dreams of beauty and deeds of sacrifice. Take Jesus for example, and think of the changes that have taken place in the world because of the thoughts which have been ascribed to him. Or think of Tolstoy or Voltaire, or Abraham Lincoln or Ingersoll, and the tremendous influence of their thought and the changes brought about in the world as a result of their words.
But words are not the only form of spiritual energy. A deed is even more potent than a word - a deed of sacrifice, and just as truly an effluence of the spirit. It is possible that the words of Socrates might have endured had he not drunk the hemlock; but it is certain that this martyrdom added an incalculable amount of energy to what he taught. So with Jesus. It is hardly likely that his words would have been treasured and elevated had it not been for the deed of heroism which brought his life to a termination. Or as an example of the deed without the word, take John Brown at Harper's Ferry. What this old man was able to do in the flesh was trivial; he was seized and put out of the way very easily, but what about his spirit? This was a force so great that it moved armies, shook continents, and turned the fide of history. It was more valuable to the northern cause in the Civil War than a hundred regiments. It was true that John Brown's body lay a mouldering in the tomb; but it was also true that his soul went marching on.
And we need not confine ourselves to historical examples of the spiritual life as a form of energy, working vast changes in the world. Is there any one of us who has not met this energy in his own experience as surely as he has felt the shock or seen the illumination of an electric current? Cannot you remember hearing a word or reading a thought which has transformed your whole life? Have you not encountered some noble deed which has lifted you above the ordinary affairs of life? Have you not met men and women whose personalities have literally poured strength into your lives, so that you have found it possible to do things which you could not do before? Talk about spiritual life as energy! There is nothing to compare with it from the standpoint of results. Take the world as we find it today. Trace back its phenomena to the ultimate causes from which they sprang. Recognize to the full the physical forces of nature attraction, repulsion, heat, electricity. Emphasize to the uttermost the social and economic factors in human development-food, climate, soil, production, distribution, transportation. Count in every natural force ever discovered and every machine ever invented, and still you have not explained the world. Something else has been at work -- the spirit of man. In other words, there is an energy which springs from the heart of man. What it is we do not know, any more than we know what electricity is. How it works, we cannot say, anymore than we can say how radioactivity works. But that it is real, that it produces results, is as certain as that we breathe. It is thus that for pragmatic reasons we accept the spiritual life as one of the elements of the universe. The spirit of man, like the forces of nature, and like the physical life, is at bottom, energy.
When we study biology we find that a second important question arises in respect to physical life, and that is in regard to its origin, as to where this peculiar thing we call life came from. And this question of its origin is quite as baffling as that in regard to its nature. In answer there are two surmises, or speculations.
In the first place there is the view that something new entered this planet with the appearance of physical life. A germinating seed derived from some foreign source found lodgment upon the earth, and from this primeval seed have sprung all the myriad forms of life. Where this seed came from and how it got here, no one presumes to know. It has been suggested that it may have come from a neighboring planet on some meteor, or that it may have descended in the rain from heaven. All such notions, of course, are purely fantastic. What we have here is simply the assertion that there is an absolute gulf of separation between living and non-living matter, and that the two came together from different sources and as the result of accident.
The other opinion and the one that has behind it the authority of modem science, is that life arose directly by the process of evolution from the material substance of the earth. There is no absolute division between dead matter and living matter; it is not necessary to imagine that something new appeared on this planet with the advent of physical life. On the contrary these living forms of plants and animals developed as naturally from the chemical elements in the primeval slime, as the reptile developed from the fish or the bird from the reptile. What happened exactly, when the non-living became the living, we cannot say; all we know is that from the beginning the elements in this universe were constantly undergoing changes in their relation to one another, and finally there came a moment when certain energies pre-existing in the cosmos fell into a certain combination with the chemical elements already existing, and life was the result. The nature of this combination has for years been the subject of investigation by distinguished scientists who are determined to bring about an artificial form of life in their laboratories. Whether they succeed or not we must believe with them "that life arose from a re-combination of forces pre-existing in the cosmos." The line of evolution, in other words, is unbroken, it suffers no intrusion from without.
Now it is interesting to notice when we turn from physical to spiritual life, that these same two opinions make their appearance in philosophical discussion. The biology of the spirit is identical with the biology of the body in the answers it offers as to the origin. Thus traditionally we have the idea that the spirit, or the higher aspect of man's nature, has entered into his being from without. This is the picture that is given to us in Genesis, where God is represented as forming man out of the dust of the earth and then breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. And it was this breathing into him of the divine spirit that made him a living soul. And this idea has been held by some modem scientists, though very few. For instance, Alfred Russell Wallace taught that there is no way of accounting for the higher elements of man's nature except by an influx of some portion of the spirit of deity. Just how or when this influx of spiritual life into the material world took place, Wallace does not explain. He simply affirms that in the very necessity of the case, it must have come not from within, but from without.
This idea, however, finds little support, in the scientific world today. A second opinion as to the origin of spiritual life, identical with that of physical life, is the one which is finding general acceptance. Just as we have seen that the life force in its lower forms, developed out of the chemical and physical forces of nature by an unbroken process of evolution, so we see now that the spirit of man developed out of this same life force in its higher stages of fulfillment Says Professor Le Comte, "There was a time in the history of the earth when only physical forces existed, but at a certain stage chemical affinity developed into the earliest an simplest form of physical life force. This life force took on higher and higher forms until finally what we call the spiritual appeared -- a new and wondrous thing, but still nothing more than the life force derived from preceding forms." Spiritual life, therefore, is just as much a development out of what has gone before in the evolutionary process as physical life is; which means that the origin of spiritual life.
And so the spiritual life today is not something separate and apart from man, which operates through him, but an expression of the combined functions of the human organism. Thus far I have been dealing with the spiritual life as though it included the whole of that energy which we think of in contrast to physical energy, but which is more frequently thought of as the mental realm. It was necessary to do this in order to make the distinction which I have in mind. For I want to show you that what we call the spiritual life is merely one phase of the mental activity, and is a word which we use for convenience more than anything else. For instance, the mental life expresses itself in various ways, which for convenience of speech we call the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual. These are not different mental processes; they are merely different realms on which the mental process is brought to bear. Today we regard human life as a unit, the mental life as simply a portion of the manifestations of that unified life, and the spiritual life as simply a portion of this mental life, operating in such manner as to distinguish it from the intellectual life or the moral life or the emotional life. There are things which we speak of as being spiritual, just as there are things which we speak of as being moral and things intellectual, but they are all parts of the mental life which in turn is merely a portion of the unified life of man. They are all forms of human activity.
Perhaps a good way to bring out what I have in mind would be to say that the spiritual is a term for activities concerned with the higher human values in all their manifestations. It is human activity which alone is spiritual. Seen in this light it will be quickly realized that it is absurd to contrast the spiritual with the physical. The proper contrast is to those activities which lie below the level of the spiritual. So, you see it is entirely a matter of values, which we ourselves must determine. What one person considers spiritual may not be considered spiritual at all by another. But I think most people would agree that the spiritual emerges when there is intelligence of a fairly high order, a sense of right and wrong, an ability to set up standards, a drive for creation in art and in social relations, a wealth of imagination. The spiritual is nothing more nor less than that function of human life which manifests itself in the more refined and delicate attitudes of mind.
Now this idea of the natural or evolutionary origin of the spiritual life as a whole, and this thought that the spiritual is simply one of the manifestations of mental activity, makes a complete change in our conception of religion. What it accomplishes at bottom is the elimination of all that we mean by the supernatural. Hitherto we have always divided our world into two parts, theologically speaking -- the natural and the supernatural, the earth here and the heaven up there, man here on earth and God up there in heaven. In the same way we have divided our practical life into the natural and the supernatural -- or as we speak of it the physical and the spiritual, the sacred and the secular. The Bible is a sacred book because written by God, while other books are secular because written by men; the church is a sacred institution because supernatural in origin and dealing with spiritual things; while the state is a secular institution because natural in origin and dealing with worldly things; a sermon is a sacred discourse because it deals with heavenly or eternal subjects, while a lecture is a secular discourse because it deals with worldly or temporal subjects. In the same way we have conceived of man's religious or spiritual life as the problem of conversion or regeneration -- that is, the problem of getting rid of the nature of which he was born on the earth and which is therefore "of the earth earthy," and substituting in its place a new nature which has its origin in heaven, and is therefore heavenly or spiritual.
But all this is now swept away by this new idea of the natural origin of the human spirit, and the acceptance of the theory that what we call the spiritual is simply a phase of man's mental life. We see today that there is no such thing as this arbitrary division between natural and supernatural, flesh and spirit. All the spiritual there is, is right here in this world and definitely connected with the flesh. With this standpoint we see how ridiculous and false is the arbitrary between things sacred and things secular. Everything in the human world has come from the life process that is behind. Everything that is a part of the man is a creation of his being and a projection of his spirit. In this sense every thing is neither sacred nor secular but just natural and normal, because it is all the outgrowth of the same thing. Plato is as sacred as the Bible, the state as divine an institution as the church, a sermon no more spiritual because it talks about man's soul and heavenly mansions, than a political address which talks about man's body and earthly tenements. Of course, we may speak of some things as more sacred or more spiritual than others, but this is purely a matter of values which we ourselves ascribe to them, and not because there is any essential difference in their origin or nature.
As for man himself , he is no more to be saved by substituting some outside spiritual nature for his inside human nature than he is to be educated by scooping out his brains and substituting the brains of an angel. All the salvation will ever gain must be found within himself just All the spiritual life that he will ever find, is the life that he is now living when developed to its highest and noblest possibilities. This religious business therefore is a matter not of conversion, but of education, not of substitution from without, but of development from within. The spiritual life is attained not by putting on a whole lot of artificial pieties, but by fulfilling to the uttermost the ordinary commonplace virtues of daily life. St. Paul was greatly mistaken in his contrasts of the flesh and the spirit, but he had the right idea when he said that "the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance." To be spiritual is simply to be nobly human, it is to be sincere, honest, reverent, high-minded, just, and noble in all our dealings. And it is to the development of this kind of spiritual life that scientific and humanistic religion addresses itself. Not for the sake of the development of the spiritual as something in itself, but because in so far as those things which we call the spiritual life of man are developed, human life in general will become more desirable. They are the things that make life worth while; they are the things, which if properly developed, will make life beautiful.
So there is no such thing as the spiritual, as distinguished from the physical. The only spiritual there is, is a function of the physical. And what we mean by the spiritual is simply certain phases of the mental function, which deal with the higher values of human life. Some physical organisms naturally function in this manner, others need to develop this type of expression. But the important thing is really to develop it, and not assume an artificial attitude, which pretends to have it when it does not. For the very essence of spirituality is integrity, honesty, sincerity.
"The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."
Spirituality is a confusing word. It is a kind of code word for what is right or wrong with us usually, the elusive something that we want or need and do not have. It is, as Ann Tyndall has remarked in her series on spirituality, "the ideal, inchoate, something more" in our lives that we yearn for, sometimes desperately, but cannot define. Mark Belletini, who is the UU minister in Hayward, California, and a member of the faculty at Starr King, has written a wonderful summary of the many variations that he--and I and probably every UU minister and undoubtedly a good many lay folk as well--have heard since the mid-1980's about what spirituality really means.
In congregations I have served or visited, I have often heard assertions like "We want more spirituality in our services." I also hear: "What's all this spirituality baloney? I thought we grew up and away from that nonsense."I never quite know what's being invited or damned. That's because when I interview folk as to what they mean by this word (that was once a simple Catholic word referring merely to religious practice as opposed to religious belief) I get many answers. Here they are:
1. Spirituality is the unashamed use of God/Goddess/Spirit talk in services as
opposed to stated reluctance to use such terms. I hear this frequently. It may be
just the best, latest and most wearying disguise of that great old
"Theist/Humanist" debate, the Free Religious/Unitarian debate, Universalist "no
Hell/temporary Hell" debate etc.
2. Spirituality is the mysterious word in the sentence "I'm not religious but I'm
spiritual." I think this can mean either "I think all institutional religion is suspect
or even evil, but I enjoy feeling a sense of awe beneath the stars by myself," or
"Institutional religion bores me, does not engage me, leaves me cold, and I have
had to find a 12-step group, a Course in Miracles group or some other non-
church group in order to fulfill my spiritual needs." This is one I've heard
frequently.
3. Spirituality is the equivalent of accepting Christ as Lord and Savior, usually
remembered as a disagreeable, embarrassing event. I heard one woman voice
this interpretation after hearing one of Scott Alexander's "Evangelism"
workshops. She was sure this is what he meant. (It was not.)
4. Spirituality is talk about the immortal human soul, or about the transient in
relationship to the eternal. One woman I know left the San Francisco church
because it wasn't "spiritual" enough. That is, Diane Miller and I did not address
reincarnation, life after death, and the diamond durability and preciousness of
the human soul, understood as an eternal distinct Self.
5. Spirituality is a code word for deeply felt emotion. To want more spirituality
in services is to want to feel more in services...feelings of connection, transport,
relief, absolution, belonging, contentment, joy and the chills. This is often used
in contrast to the word "intellectual" which is a code word for "unfeeling and
drearily rationalistic." I often hear this in smaller fellowships that once had talks
by local sanitation workers on landfill issues, but now want "spiritual" topics.
"Spiritual" in this case still very often seems non-theistic. Sometimes it's a code
word for "We shouldn't have been talking about landfill in the first place."
6. Spirituality is a word for the use of historic, altered or freshly created
religious/psychological art forms in our congregations...prayers, litanies, guided
meditations, special holidays, water ceremonies, flower rites, liturgical dance,
bells, sacraments, vestments, candles, communions, in short, everything sensual
and colorful, every time syncopated and rhythmic. This is one of its most
frequent meanings, as far as I can tell, both for the inviters and the damners.
7. Spirituality is the code word for respecting silence, relinquishment, letting go,
and the attitude, often associated with Zen, contemplative Christian and certain
kinds of humanism, that most if not all human religious assertions are just
expression of hubris and thus empty, unreliable, or even silly. Only a few say
this, but its very important for them, I think.
8. Spirituality has to do with telling stories and using myths in services instead
of talking prosaically about doctrines, teachings, common history and abstract
ideas. I hear this very frequently.
9. Spirituality has to do with everything lumped into the category New Age: i.e.
crystals, guardian angles, entities, various divinations, magicks etc. This is a
meaning given this word by a small portion of UU's but I have certainly heard
this more than once.
10. Spirituality means letting oneself go with the music without regard to the
meaning or semantics of the words. It means concentrating on the uplift and
deep interior and unvoiced power released by great choral and instrumental
music without regard to whether there "really is" an Agnus Dei, a Lamb of God,
or not.
Mark's response is to give up using the word as much as possible. Rather, he says, he is
trying "to say exactly what I mean about emotion, ritual, story, color, or silence without
sidetracking onto a word that seems to communicate only sporadically."
I find myself going in the opposite direction, a not uncommon experience for me, or for
that matter, for UU ministers in general. We always seem to be moving, shuffling theologically this way or that, ambling conceptually in yet another direction, passing one another as we journey along. It is often confusing, but I would choose no other calling and no other religious community within which to live out that calling. Probably no other religious community would let me! We are all trying to learn and grow and find deeper means of expressing the inexpressible. One thing we know is that standing pat with where we have been will teach us nothing. Like the old story of the Universalist preacher who was asked where Universalists stand and who responded, "we do not stand, we move," UU ministers keep moving. We're always out there truckin'.
For many years I avoided the word, spiritual. It called up unpleasant, pietistic images
from my childhood in the south where being spiritual meant being falsely pious, ostentatiously good, moralistic to a fault. Largely because so many people have begun using the word, and using it in ways that I can be comfortable with or that challenge me in positive ways or inspire me in important directions, I have begun to find ways of using the word without having bad memories overwhelm its richer connotations.
When I use the word I am thinking of spiritual as being something profoundly human and
profoundly important. It is arguably our most human trait--and apparently uniquely so--to need for life to have some kind of meaning, some sense of worth, some structure--even if it is chaos--that makes what we do and say and feel matter, maybe not ultimately, but at least within some context of experience. I have always called this the religious dimension, but now I use both the word religious and the word spiritual. Either one points to the same reality, the same human aspect.
Khoren Arisian, the long-time Humanist leader and currently minister of the church that
John Dietrich served for so many decades, puts it very nicely.
I'm convinced....that we are a spiritually predisposed species....I believe that as
sentient beings we generate such spirituality as there is from within ourselves
and that--as Fueurbach, the nineteenth-century philosopher, would have put it--
we may then choose to project such feeling outward and objectify it. What's real
is the primary experience; the objectification of it is symbolism.
Like Arisian, I am a disciple of Fueurbach and before him Spinoza. My interpretation of the "primary experience" is that it comes only within: within our own selves, within the species of which we are a part, within the overarching reality that is nature or the universe. There is nothing external to this reality, no Super Nature.
But whether my interpretation or that of a super naturalist Christian or any other view is
correct--and probably none of them is fully so--the most important thing is that all humanity is involved in spirituality. We just experience it differently, describe it differently, react to it differently, think about it differently. And as long as we don't get in each other's way as we go about living the truth of our interpretation of the "primary experience" of spirituality, such variation is both to be expected and to be praised. It gives each of us the chance to be uniquely who we are.
My own spiritual journey has led me along a path that has included a primitive kind of
conservative Christianity, a vague sort of theism, a deep sense of connection to the Jewish experience, a resonance with the Quaker idea of God within each of us, a brief fling with atheism, a spell of believing they have randomly come into and be sustained in existence, a longer spell of seeing a world created by some Force that remains completely hidden from and uninterested in us.
This last described view--a kind of Deism--has been modified in recent years by an
awareness that we live in a universe that apparently wants us to pay attention. We are so
designed or evolved as a life form that curiosity is a vital and necessary feature of who we are. Not only curiosity, which leads us to look at and explore the way things are and how they came to be, but also contemplation, looking and appreciating and enjoying. I am hardly the only person who likes to look at a beautiful sunset, the fall foliage, the first buds of spring, or listen to the sound of a waterfall or a robin singing or the whisper of the wind in tall grass, or smell honeysuckle or good rich earth. We like to look at each other, to see one another dressed in fancy clothes, quaint hats, interesting socks, and yes, to see each other naked. The universe in all its manifestations calls upon us to look, to listen, to smell, to touch, to contemplate, to enjoy, to reflect upon, to notice, to pay attention to and to participate in, to take action, even to challenge.
This is the kind of world we live in. It is the kind of creatures we are. The world keeps saying to us: Observe, Act, and we keep doing just that.
Evelyn Underhill, a 20th century mystic wrote something that I like. He described a
spiritual attitude as the ability "to look with the eyes of love," no matter what it is we gaze upon--and I am sure he would have said to listen and smell and touch with love as well. This attitude, Underhill suggested, was an attitude of complete humility and receptiveness. When we do not look at another person or another object in order to evaluate, to criticize, to analyze but just to
see, then, Underhill taught us, we see them for their sakes and not for our own, more nearly as they truly are than what we want to make of them.
Thomas Merton expressed the same thing in almost the same words: "Love the world,"
he said, and he tried to do that, both as a contemplative and as someone deeply sensitive to the fact that others would read and be influenced by what he wrote. It is by some such approach as this that it becomes possible to develop a faith in life like that of Nat Lauriat, who remarked that after 50 years in the ministry he could boil down his faith to what he regards as an irrefutable proposition that "good is possible." Only if we look with the eyes love, only if we love the world, can we possibly declare that good is possible, or care whether it is, or act on the possibility.
Looking "with the eyes of love," (loving the world) is fundamental to spirituality.
How do we do this? I think we have to practice. To practice is to do something over and
over and over until we get it right, like learning a new composition on the piano or a new step in aerobics or how to do flash sessions and surf the net on a computer, or even carrying out the duties of one's profession as a doctor or lawyer, in both of which it is said one practices.
Contemplate & Act. Some regard these as being at odds with each other. I agree with
Parker Palmer that, "contemplation and action are not contradictions, but poles of a great paradox that can and must be held together." Like most other things in life, there will be some of us who are drawn to one extreme or the other. I have known people who get antsy if they are not doing something every minute. Many of us will find ourselves in need of stillness and busyness. What is important is that we not dismiss the opposite pole from the one where we feel most comfortable, that we go on recognizing that whatever may be our spiritual way or our spiritual way of the moment, there is another way of going about life. Contemplation and action are not at war with each other. They are different ways of loving the world.
My own sense is that most of us most of the time need to keep aware of both poles and to
practice them as we are able. I see the need for contemplation, whatever the form it may take and there are many, as that which enables us to see, to better understand who we are and what our place is in the scheme of things, what false paths we may be pursuing, what good deeds we may have passed up, what joy and beauty we may have missed and what goodness we have been a part of and been responsible for. We need time to just reflect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that,
The simple habit of sitting alone occasionally to explore what facts of moment lie in the memory may have the effect in some more favored hour to open to the student the kingdom of spiritual nature. He may become aware that there around him roll new at this moment and inexhaustible the waters of Life; that the world he has lived in so heedless, so gross, is illumined with meaning, that every fact is magical; every atom alive, and he is the heir of it all.
This is not an awareness that can come if every moment of our days is filled with busyness and activity.
The Tibetan spiritual leader, Sogyal Rinpoche, has criticized western society for drawing
us away from the contemplation of the truths of existence. "The pace of our lives," he writes,
...is so hectic that the last thing we have time to think of is death. We
smother our secret fears of impermanence by surrounding ourselves with
more and more goods, more and more things, more and more comforts, only
to find ourselves their slaves.
It is not merely death that we avoid thinking of till it comes into our midst. It is also goodness and beauty and joy and love. The world is "illuminated with meaning", but we have to pause, ponder, take in this meaning. Instead we are endlessly busy answering and generating messages by beeper, voice mail, e-mail, and cellular phone; endlessly buying and selling in the world's most over-produced economy; endlessly racing from one appointment to another as though time were of the essence and more important than life itself.
All the great religious leaders of humanity have taught and lived a life of sometime
contemplation. Moses went into the wilderness, and later up on a mountain. Jesus went aside to pray. Mohammed went into a cave and Buddha sat under the Bo tree. There is a time for sitting alone and just letting our thoughts and feelings calm down, letting deeper voices within us speak to us, giving ourselves the space to see what our lives are about, time to consider, to reflect, to contemplate without action.
And there is a time when we must take action, when sitting still is not enough, when the
very meaning we have glimpsed is betrayed by our unwillingness to act on it, to further it, to share it with others. Alison Boden, the new chaplain at the University of Chicago, wrote that "the moral test of spirituality is justice. I challenge students with that. The primary test for religion is not about feeling good about yourself. It's about being good, which means doing good." Rosemary Radford Rueuther, the Catholic Feminist theologian who spoke at our recent General Assembly, said on that occasion that "we need to knit justice and spirituality together."
If all we do is contemplate, we only have half of what spirituality really means.
Moses went off into the wilderness, spoke with and listened to the burning bush, and then, at risk of his life, returned to Egypt to lead his people out of slavery. Jesus came down from the hillside to face the greatest trial of his life, his arrest and interrogation and ultimately crucifixion. Mohammed became not only his people's spiritual leader but their political and military leader as well. The Buddha, once enlightened, spent the remainder of his long life traveling about sharing his awakening.
In our own time I think of Dorothy Day, who after her conversion to Roman Catholicism
spent many hours every day in agonized contemplation, but she spent more hours out on the streets of New York helping the homeless and the hungry and the hurt. Or consider the Dalai Lama, whose role is both to exemplify the contemplative, spiritual life and also to be his people's political leader.
America's greatest moral leader of this century, Martin Luther King, Jr., was a man of
quiet contemplation, of prayer and study, and yet equally much a man of action, of the streets and the barricades, a man who confronted directly the political and economic challenges of the day.
These were, of course, all people of unusual stature and discipline. So often we find it
easy to dismiss their example by assuming that we could never be like them. Of course, we couldn't, but then we are not expected to be. The Hasidic tradition teaches that when judgment day comes, we shall not be asked why we were not like Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer.
We shall be asked simply, why were you not more like your own self?
I like something John Garvey said, when asked which was the best technique for
developing a strong spirituality. "Do what you are doing," is what he said, meaning that we should not disparage our own capabilities or dwell too long on our own failures, or look for special techniques. Do what we are doing, perhaps tomorrow do a little bit more, and just keep at it. We do not have to be bright moral stars or internationally known celebrities to do good, to make spirituality live in the world. We just have to do what we can.
I read a story a few days ago that illustrates the power of doing what we can
A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in high
school by telling them the difference they each made. Using a process
developed by Helice Bridges of Del Mar, California, she called each student
to the front of the class, one at a time. First she told them how the student
made a difference to her and the class. Then she presented each of them with
a blue ribbon imprinted with gold letters which read, "Who I Am Makes a
Difference.” Afterwards the teacher decided to do a class project to see what kind of impact recognition would have on a community. She gave each of the students three more ribbons and instructed them to go out and spread this acknowledgement ceremony. Then they were to follow up on the results, see who honored whom and report back to the class in about a week. One of the boys in the class went to a junior executive in a nearby company and honored him for helping him with his career planning. He gave him a blue ribbon and put it on his shirt. Then he gave him two extra ribbons, and said, "We're doing a class project on recognition, and we'd like you to go out, find somebody to honor, give them a blue ribbon, then give them the extra blue ribbon so they can acknowledge a third person to keep this acknowledgement ceremony going. Then please report back to me and tell me what happened."
Later that day the junior executive went in to see his boss, who had been noted, by the way, as being kind of a grouchy fellow. He sat his boss down and he told him that he deeply admired him for being a creative genius.
The boss seemed very surprised. The junior executive asked him if he would
accept the gift of the blue ribbon and would he give him permission to put it
on him. His surprised boss said, "Well, sure.” The junior executive took the blue ribbon and placed it right on his boss's jacket above his heart. As he gave him the last extra ribbon, he said, "Would you do me a favor? Would you take this extra ribbon and pass it on by honoring someone else? The young boy who first gave me the ribbons is doing a project in school and we want to keep this recognition ceremony going and find out how it affects people."
That night the boss came home to his 14-year-old son and sat him down. He said, "The most incredible thing happened to me today. I was in my office and one of the junior executives came in and told me he admired me and gave me a blue ribbon for being a creative genius. Imagine. He thinks I'm a creative genius. Then he put this blue ribbon that says 'Who I Am Makes a Difference' on my jacket above my heart. He gave me an extra ribbon and asked me to find somebody else to honor. As I was driving home tonight, I started thinking about whom I would honor with this ribbon and I thought about you. I want to honor you.
"My days are really hectic and when I come home I don't pay a lot of attention to you. Sometimes I scream at you for not getting good enough grades in school and for your bedroom being a mess, but somehow tonight, I just wanted to sit here and, well, just let you know that you do make a difference to me. Besides your mother, you are the most important person in my life. You're a great kid and I love you!"
The startled boy started to sob and sob, and he couldn't stop crying. His whole body shook. He looked up at his father and said through his tears, "I was planning on committing suicide tomorrow, Dad, because I didn't think you loved me. Now I don't need to."
Helice Bridges
All because a teacher did what she had been doing, teaching, seeing the worth of each of her students, spreading a sense of her own delight in life. That's a beautiful practice of spirituality.
Contemplate and act. If we would be good observers, we must develop a discipline. If
we would act for justice, we must be prepared to hold fast to our commitments despite the inevitable discouragements.
The practice of spirituality, of contemplation and action, will not make us perfect. But
the more we practice, the better we shall be at both contemplating and acting. The better we are, the better the world will be.
When we look--and act--with the eyes--and a heart full--of love, we make real the faith that the "good is possible." We make the world meaningful by our practice of spirituality.
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
-Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
"Whenever I ask a certain acquaintance of mine to tell me what he knows about anything, he wants to show me a book: he would not venture to tell me that he has scabs on his arse without studying his lexicon to find out the meaning of scab and arse.
All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own. We closely resemble a man who, needing a fire, goes next door to get a light, finds a great big blaze there and stays to warm himself, forgetting to take a brand back home. What use is it to us to have a belly full of meat if we do not digest it, if we do not transmute it into ourselves, if it does not make us grow in size and strength?"
"For in truth to be able to help another person, I must understand more than him - but nevertheless first and foremost also understand what he understands. If I do not then my superior knowledge does not help him at all. If, nevertheless, I asset my superior knowledge, then it is because I am vain or proud, for basically instead of helping him I essentially want to be admired by him. But all true help begins with an act of humility; the helper must first humble himself under the one he wants to help, and therewith understand that to help is not to command but to serve (...)"
"Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, 'This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.'"
"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there."
"At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time."
"I was thinking of my patients, and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were masters of their own fate. It was not a matter of bad or good luck. When they could no longer blame fate, they were in despair."
"Can one expect good faith from the leaders of parties? Their philosophy is meant for others; I need one for myself. Let me seek it with all my might while there is still time, so that I may have an assured rule of conduct for the rest of my days."
"To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it."
"The question is only whether from now on we shall have to refrain from tying description to a clear hypothesis about the real nature of the world. There are many who wish to pronounce such abdication even today. But I believe that this means making things a little too easy for oneself. ... The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist."
"God has given you one face, and you make yourself another."
"If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price."
"Man is never alone. Acknowledged or unacknowledged, that which dreams through him is always there to support him from within."
"Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, the present and the future are but one moment in the sight of God, in whose sight we should try to live. Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of thought. The Imagination can transcend them, and move in a free sphere of ideal existences."
I just wanted to pass on a few ideas from a Jean Houston seminar on "Social Artistry" I attended a few weeks ago. I didn't take all that good notes, but here are some of the gems I picked up.
"Social Artistry is the ability to create something more out of the sum of the parts around you. It is the manifestation of a larger whole that calls each person to a deeper meaning and truth."
"Social Artists are those who are far-seeing, who can see years into the future and know what is useful to be done. They are able to see trends and the emergence of new patterns out of the apparent chaos."
These are some of the skills of a Social Artist:
Perceives trends
Notices the perspectives in things
Imagination
Works with imagery
Perceives old and new myths
Being comfortable and fluid in multiple cultures
Notices patterns in the outer world, in part based on one's own inner work.
Awareness of new forms of intelligence
Working with many different kinds of time
Orchestrates one's energy.
Knows when to relax and when to shift into other systems of energy.
Control of nostalgia
Knowledge of new leadership, new visions.
Notices when the story changes.
Recognizes when the story is getting old.
Looks for what is trying to happen.
Doesn't look to politics for answers.
Rather looks at popular culture to know what is going on.
Both high-tech and high-touch.
High internal skills.
Develops new perspectives and translates them into social forms.
Works on whole-system change.
In touch with one's own body.
Recognizes that a lot of change requires neurological change.
Starts with changed perspectives, rather than with just concepts.
Sees oneself not just as one thing, but as many aspects working in concert.
Embraces the open moment
Looks for the essence in other people, organizations and situations.
Is willing to stand ridicule
Sees oneself as an active presence of a much higher presence.
Speaks from the heart, one's true message.
Orchestrates change.