FEELINGS

Existence is a two-sided coin – physical and spiritual.  We are inundated with sensations from the physical world in which we live.  This is why spiritual pursuits emphasize quiet, meditation, prayer, isolation, etc.  Most of us live with our coin tails up.  The physical is a manifestation of (or follows)  what occurs in the spiritual, and we are naturally drawn to the physical because it is easy, frequently enjoyable,  and will fill our existence if we allow that to happen.  Physical existence is based on what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.  All of this can be demonstrated or proven.  Feelings, however, are not subject to proof.  No one can prove they are happy.  When St. Francis of Assisi failed in his attempt to verbally convey his joy in God to the Cardinals, he danced.  The truth and power of the feelings are in the eye of the receiver.  That is, no one knows how another person  experiences happiness – the only frame of reference the receiver has is his or her own feelings of happiness.  In the physical world “feelings” have come to represent weakness, vagueness and femininity.  Many males miss out on a big part of living because they denigrate feelings as representing weakness and beneath them.  Quite the opposite, only a truly strong man can be gentle and kind because he is so secure in his sense of self that his masculinity is unassailable.  

Interesting enough, feelings are the common bond between the two sides of our coin.  On the spiritual side, feelings are the true language, as they do not admit to the limitations of words.  Feelings can allow us the freedom to recognize that not all is within the physical and subject to the measurement of physically-based observations.  Human fear contributes to our giving to The Divine human attributes which disrespects and minimizes The Creator.  The experience of feelings in the spiritual can strengthen our faith so that we no longer fear the fact that The Divine is beyond our comprehension, let alone our understanding.  This sort of strength can give us the ability to appreciate previously unexperienced facets of Great Teachings.  This is, perhaps, best demonstrated by the Persian legend about Iblis.  Iblis was one of Allah’s angels.  When Allah created mankind, He ordered all the angels to serve mankind.  Iblis protested saying that he loved Allah so much that he could not serve another.  Instead of the predictable human reaction of “Go to Hell”, Allah considered for a moment and then asked Iblis if, since he could not serve mankind, could he instead be mankind’s antagonist.  Iblis’ response was “oh yes Lord.”  This, in turn helps with the translation problem of “Shaol” – Hebrew word meaning “place of darkness” – metamorphosing into the modern “hell” as depicted by Dante.  Spiritually speaking, it can be argued that this takes the stick out of the carrot-and-stick equation in the relationship between humans and The Divine.

Considering the foregoing, references to “feelings” are intended to mean spiritual feelings unless otherwise indicated.   

FINDING THE WAY HOME

                On the whole, mankind has gotten “stuck” at the level of The Great Teachers.  As usual, mankind has turned the situation on its head.  We lionize these individuals while failing to follow their teachings.  It isn’t about seeking The Divine, it is about letting The Divine into our lives.  The Great Teachers and what they have taught are not the end; they are the beginning.  The Great Teachers have taught and still teach mutual respect and consideration as the foundation for our lives.  This foundation has been called, among other things, The Golden Rule, The Ten Commandments, and The Thou Experience; and its basic wisdom is that we are all in this together and we will live better if we can recognize that what we do to others, in the long run, has an effect on us.  If we engage in positive behaviors like respect, kindness, and consideration, it adds positive energy to the world around us.  If we do the opposite and practice hatred, violence, and exclusivity, that puts negative energy into the world around us.  This is where using Free Will for the positive is vital because how we exercise it has a very important result in our immediate vicinity.

                If we choose to make our foundation positive, we open ourself to positive energy and then do more positive things, and the cycle goes round and round, and deeper and deeper within us.  We have to choose to let The Divine into our daily life.  The twelve step program has a saying:  Fake it ‘til you make it.  When being respectful of and kind to others becomes simply the way we do things, we are behaving according to the information which The Divine has sent us through The Great Teachers.  Going deeper, through implementing such concepts as wu wei, we then become less “independent” and more an instrument of The Divine to bring this dimension into balance which eventually leads to a more positive world in which to live.  This is the true sense of self which we all seek.  Life is a continuing process of working to grow spiritually and help those who wish to be helped improve and implement their foundation.  We are all teachers and we are all students.

                Behavior demonstrates acceptance of the teachings.

                Implementation of the teachings equates to accepting The Divine in one’s life.

                Gaining a true understanding of the words of the teachings helps in applying the teachings correctly.  For instance, sometimes what we have been taught is kind really isn’t, as when we become enablers.

                When we demonstrate acceptance of The Divine, acceptance by The Divine follows as day follows night.

                This symbiotic relationship is the doorway to one’s spiritual path.

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Life

The Divine can only be understood intuitively.  Words can only pluck the heartstrings to help set up a fortunate vibration to enable intuitive understanding.

                “God created us in his image” means not our bodies but our hearts and souls. The Divine gave us the capability and  desires that we behave in all situations as The Divine would behave.  We have the capability to let The Divine’s love,  kindness,  wisdom and  power simply flow through us, undiluted and undiminished.  We diminish this capability with our exercise of ego which is our belief in ourselves separate from The Divine, our inappropriate beliefs as humans, our old habits, and our acceptance and practice of man’s beliefs, expectations and mores.

                Negative experiences are given to us to allow us to first discover this capability within us, and second, to practice it.  When you know that you have the capability to live in and through the power of The Divine, there is nothing which can stand in the way of doing what The Divine has for you to do.  When you live in the power of The Divine, you are allowing yourself to be that which The Divine created in Its image and you can and will overcome all stumbling blocks, no matter what they are or how they present themselves.  This is being a passer-by as spoken of by Jesus.

                Let your words flow from The Divine.  Let your actions come from The Divine.  Let your feelings be those of The Divine.  Become an extension of The Divine by relinquishing your ego – your need to control and/or understand.

In reality we are but tools, here on this earth to do the will of The Divine.  We cannot see far enough, wide enough or deep enough to fully understand the purposes for which The Divine asks us to do or say things.  By The Divine’s grace we can have the wisdom to know that whatever The Divine asks of us is a proper and appropriate part of the fabric of creation as It is being woven through time toward the end of time and our return to The Divine.

The Divine has given us free will so that we may choose to journey with The Divine or flounder around on this earth until we have enough experiences to begin to see the light of the capability within us and journey toward it.  This is life.

THE NEXUS WITHIN

The information has been with us for generations and in spite of all the variations on the theme, mankind simply has not tumbled to the “nose” on its face.   Each individual is a unique nexus between the physical world in which we live and the spiritual plane to which we aspire.   Many have been turned aside from this aspiration by the behavior of those who loudly pronounce that they have THE WAY.  There is no THE WAY because each individual has a different history, a different set of gifts and talents, a different viewpoint, a different way to respond to emotional or intellectual stimuli, and, as a result, a different future.   Of course, there are those who try to adopt another’s belief wholesale.   

While possible, it is not recommended because such adoption of another’s belief is, by definition, limiting to the adopting individual because it does not and cannot take into consideration the entirety of that person.

If visualized, this nexus might appear like the narrow part of an hourglass.  Instead of letting through grains of sand to mark the passage of time, it is letting grains of understanding come from the spiritual plane into the physical plane.  We commonly refer to these grains of understanding as intuition, instinct and/or commonsense, which are, of course, the voice of the Creator within each of us.

Recognition of this nexus is all around us.  One of the most forthright is Joseph Campbell’s statement in the introduction of his book The Inner Reaches of Outer Space  to the effect that we live in a universe of nuclear furnaces pulling away from each other at the speed of light, and each of us is but a speck of dust on a very small rock orbiting around a minor furnace – when one can recognize that and still understand that each of us is an integral part of the entirety of Creation, then one is ready to begin one’s spiritual journey.  There are other indicia:  the search for the Holy Grail (not the cup of Christ!), the ethical training which is the foundation for learning any of the martial arts, the more recent idea of the rainbow connection, etc.  Mankind has a disturbing habit of looking at a picture but only recognizing part of what the eyes actually see.  When most people think of the Pony Express they focus on the incredible athleticism of both the horses and the riders, but tend to dismiss the fact that the whole point was the delivery of the mail in the saddlebags which they transported.  Furthermore, the saddlebags were only a container for the mail which, in turn, was just a written expression of a communication between two individuals.  That communication was, in fact, a way of reaching out between two individuals, likely in furtherance of, or as an invitation to, the effort between two individuals to share something which was of importance to them.  (Remember, the service was very expensive in terms of the economy of those days.)

Just as Creation is balanced in its physical expression, so are we to be balanced between the physical world in which we live and the world that lies beyond that which we can experience physically.  The other part of this equation can be accessed only through that nexus or passage that lies within each of us.  Just as muscles can be strengthened by proper exercise, our nexus can be made stronger.  Through use of time and energy in peaceful contemplation one can learn to receive communications from that other dimension.  Those who have, in the past, been able to do this have joined the ranks of those to whom we refer as the Great Teachers.  They brought to mankind, not their views, already thought out and ready for consumption, but basic information for use by the individual in the individual’s own journey. 

Each of us, as part of Creation, has a responsibility to take the raw information given to us by the Great Teachers and use it to create our own spiritual feast.  Just like creating our dinner, we need to use those parts of what the Great Teachers have given us that our minds and hearts can accept and digest.  At the same time, we need to recognize that as we grow stronger in our ability to hear and accept communications through our own nexus, we may be able to accept and digest more of what has been presented on the buffet.

All the Great Teachers have taught essentially the same thing – how to live a decent life.  Obviously, then, ethics are the meat and potatoes of our spiritual feast.  While the nexus is vital, (just like the horses and riders), it is the communication itself which is the point.  Ethics are vital to our ability to interact with one another in a peaceful and productive way.  The Golden Rule stands out for its simplicity and profoundness.  Ethics help humankind survive itself.  Lack of ethic has led to crisis after crisis on all fronts, including but not limited to:  environmentally (pollution and destruction of habitat vital to the continuation of life as we know it), politically (wars), economically (financial crises and crashes destructive of the ability to sustain individual lives and/or life styles), and socially (racism, gender bias, and all their variants). When it comes right down to it, action without ethics is brutality!   Examples are, unfortunately, so replete that further statement is unnecessary.

In the basic design, ethics work best if practiced as a two-way street.  Of course, perfection does not exist in this dimension; therefore, the ideal of all the members of humankind being willing and able to practice a mutually agreeable ethical code is unlikely.  In the absence of perfection, it is incumbent on all members of the human race to do the best they can individually.  The Golden Rule and its ilk are, therefore, not only useful but essential as a guide for each of us. 

We live in a world which encompasses many different cultures and societies which are implementations of those cultural mores.  As individuals we can best navigate this world in a civilized and decent way by strengthening our nexus and letting Jimminey Cricket come through and sit on our hearth (in the physical world, a sign of good fortune!).         

Personal Relationships

When Hindus meet they greet each other with a bow with palms and the insides of fingers pressed together.  This is not to honor the other person but instead, it is a recognition of the Atman or spirit within the other person.  Developing the habit of recognizing that we all have a tiny piece of the Divine within us results in a very different psychological experience.  Instead of emphasizing the differences between two people, we are emphasizing the similarities.  This alteration in consciousness is frequently referred to as The Thou Experience.  This is the manner in which we try to engage in our personal relationships.

                With The Thou Experience as the basis upon which we build our personal relationships, there is an obvious problem to be addressed.  We live in the Dimension of the Pairs of Opposites.  We have up and down, in and out, male and female, black and white, north and south, and, of course, positive and negative, or as some prefer to say good and evil.  In this Dimension, if we are to have good, we must have evil.  Trying to eradicate evil is ill-advised not only because it is a waste of time and energy but because it often leads to some very undesirable results.  (For a more in-depth look at this problem see Joseph Needleman’s Commentary to Chapter 2 of the Feng-English translation of the Tao de Ching.) The problem, then, is how does one live The Thou Experience in a world where evil exists.  To do so requires that one recognize that there is a difference between judging another person and recognizing the reality of the actions of another person.  Living The Thou Experience does not require that we interact in any meaningful way with someone whose actions we see as negative or harmful to us.  We can decide that we do not want to have a meaningful relationship with someone whom we know to be, for instance, a murderer or a thief, or physically or psychologically abusive, without judging that person as “bad” for engaging in such behavior.  We can simply remove ourselves from their space.  When circumstances dictate that we have some interaction with a person who we do not want to be around, we can be guarded in our part of the interaction, keep it as infrequent or short-lived as possible, and move on.  Of course, it is not necessary to be rude or inconsiderate – only pass by with as little personal investment as possible. 

Sin

The mere mention of the word “sin” triggers a response in everyone.  If raised in a country where Christianity or Judaism are paramount, the response is one of “what did I do wrong?”   For the rest of the world, it is one of “how did I fail to follow protocol?’  Humanity has had rules from the time  we began to live together in tribes.  Those rules have to do with how each of us treats the other.  So-called civilized societies developed these rules into laws which were eventually written down.  Breaking a law may or may not be what is considered “sin” but it is definitely a crime.  Just as crimes are divided into categories according to the seriousness of the particular crime as perceived by the society in question, so is sin, and, therefore, so are punishment or consequences.  If we unthinkingly do anything which adversely affects another, that may be a violation of the law and of the instructions of Master Yoda to always keep our minds on what we are doing.  Consequences tend to be light, sometimes almost unnoticed.  If we consider the pros and cons of a situation and make the wrong choice, that is an error.  If we are lucky, the consequences are that we learn a lesson and do not repeat the mistake.  The real problem arises both in the spiritual and physical worlds when we act without regard to the consequences for others.  The ego says “I’m going to do as I please” or  ”I am going to do it my way”.  Another way to “sin” is to be fearful to the exclusion of any consideration of one’s own ability to handle a situation or without consideration of the benefits one has encountered on one’s spiritual path.  These are sins not only against others but against oneself in trying to walk your spiritual path.       

It has been said that mankind is the only part of Nature which is not completely obedient to The Divine.  Attached to this thought is the idea that mankind includes among the many tools in its “bag” that of Free Will.  It has also been said that the best thing to do with Free Will is give it back.  Free Will is the doorway to Sin, whether accidental, ill-advised, or willful.  Typical of mankind, it takes Free Will and runs with it.  Unfortunately, like Wrong Way Corrigan, mankind is running the wrong way, toward physical achievement.  The right way, obviously, is to use Free Will to eschew the physical in favor of the spiritual.  There are several methodologies to take one in the direction of the spiritual.  One of those ways is the Taoist philosophy of wu wei.  (An excellent discussion of wu wei appears in The Empty Vessel magazine, Winter 1994 issue.)  Another iteration of the approach is the concept of being a passer-by which was suggested by Jesus in the Thomas Gospel.  Free Will is very dangerous if used without wisdom.  It behooves each of us to find some guidance on the subject.   Conducting life with The Thou Experience helps keep violations of standards (and laws) to a minimum.  For those who do not want to go that deeply, there is the Golden Rule.  Or, if not the Golden Rule, there are the Ten Commandments of Moses.   

WHAT IS IS

Let life be whatever it needs to be.

What is is, and that’s all there is.  Much of our difficulty in living life comes from personalizing everything.  Jesus said become a passer-by.  Get your emotions out of the situation.  Further, get your interest out of the situation.  When we have a dog in the fight it is much harder to let what needs to happen come forth.  We “fix” things for others and ourselves.  Much of what happens during our lives is simply part of life and not personal in any way.  If we can remember this fact and let life be whatever it needs to be, we rid ourselves of much of our burden of living.  If we can learn to go with the flow of creation, which sometimes does have backwaters, the journey is much easier.  In taking on situations to “fix” them rather than simply be part of them, we not only cause ourselves more problems than actually belong to us, but we endanger our own spiritual situation and often times cause the situation to have to be “re-set” to get the lesson through to the intended student. 

                Basic rule of thumb – only do what you can, do the best you can, and trust in The Creator to take care of you because you are The Creator’s child.