LSP37: The Coat of Many Colours: What Scientology Teaches Us About Gnosticism

There's only thing I like about L. Ron Hubbard's cult of Scientology, and that's the way it serves as a teaching tool about the brutal efficiency of prophetic "revelation."

This morning, on the BBC site, I found a wonderful article by Owen Gleiberman about the new Alex Gibney documentary on Scientology. The documentary, called "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" has been attracting a lot of attention since its release earlier this year. The film is in turned based on the 2013 book by Lawrence Wright called "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief."

Gleiberman ends his article by saying this:

The twisted genius of L Ron Hubbard is that he figured out a way to define and exploit contemporary soul sickness. He was right about the disease. But Going Clear makes a powerful case that he came up with a cure that only made it worse.

Yes, L. Ron Hubbard was a twisted genius. As Gleiberman notes, the film "captures how Hubbard fused reality, fantasy and the pursuit of enlightenment in a way that, according to the film's witnesses, expressed his own highly unstable and even violent nature."

This is what prophets do.

(Please note that I draw clear distinctions between the terms "prophet" and "mystic." For me, the term "prophet" is reserved for an individual of dubious mental health who uses claims of "divine revelation" to establish his or her primacy of authority over others. By contrast, I use the term "mystic" to refer to individuals who are on the extreme end of the "intuition" spectrum, most of whom go through life as writers and philosophers without becoming consciously aware of their vocation as "mystics.")

Prophets who claim divine religious authority for themselves aren't new. Shown here is a red granite statue from Egypt's 18th Dynasty (Temple of Khonspakhered) on display at the British Museum, London UK. Photo credit JAT 2023.

A prophet isn't interested in teaching people how to heal their relationship with God. A prophet is instead interested in crafting an entire "philosophy of science" (a cosmogony, if you will) for the purpose of explaining to you in ruthlessly logical ways why you should hand over to the prophet your integrity; your money; your free will; your core self of worthiness and wisdom; and your relationship with God.

The coat of many colours you were born with is stripped away from you, and in its place you're given a "new and improved" garment of ash.

You're told when you put it on that you're donning the pure white garb of enlightenment. You're told that you're abandoning the burden of emotion, replacing the heaviness of emotion with the weightlessness of pure reason. You're told that all the proof you need lies around you in the Materialist laws of Cause and Effect. You're told that when you see past of the illusions you've created for yourself, you'll suddenly recognize that you can transcend your lowly humanness and reclaim your rightful place in the universe as God. Or Buddha. Or Thetan (as Scientologists describe it).

The garment you've been given reeks of pure narcissism. It reeks of the prophet's absolute refusal to accept that he's a mere child of God. It reeks of his conviction that he himself is so omniscient and so omnipotent that he surely MUST be a god who has lost his memory of his own godhood and fallen to Earth, where he's obliged to dig his way out of Earth's heavy muck so he can stop being reincarnated here.

So have I conflated several different religious beliefs here? On the surface, it would seem so. But no.  What I've done here is describe a single religious paradigm that manifests again and again in humanity's many diverse cultures, not because it's right but because it so beautifully suits the psychological needs of bullies, tyrants, narcissists, and psychopaths.

What I've described here is Gnosticism.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Scientology's underlying cosmogony:

Scientology beliefs revolve around the thetan, the individualized expression of the cosmic source, or life force, named after the Greek letter theta (θ). The thetan is the true identity of a person – an intrinsically good, omniscient, non-material core capable of unlimited creativity. 

In the primordial past, thetans brought the material universe into being largely for their own pleasure. The universe has no independent reality, but derives its apparent reality from the fact that most thetans agree it exists. Thetans fell from grace when they began to identify with their creation, rather than their original state of spiritual purity.  Eventually they lost their memory of their true nature, along with the associated spiritual and creative powers. As a result, thetans came to think of themselves as nothing but embodied beings.

Thetans are reborn time and time again in new bodies through a process called "assumption" which is analogous to reincarnation. Like Hinduism, Scientology posits a causal relationship between the experiences of earlier incarnations and one's present life, and with each rebirth, the effects of the MEST universe (MEST here stands for matter, energy, space, and time) on the thetan become stronger.

It's easy to see the narcissism that underlies the teachings of Scientology. This particular body of teachings is so new that most of us haven't yet overlaid the raw narcissism of it with layers and layers of "divine authority" derived from "ancient tradition." Scientology would like you to pretend that L. Ron Hubbard successfully transcended his own flawed humanity, but, as Going Clear shows, this isn't true. The legacy of a revelatory prophet is most vulnerable in the decades soon after his life, when there are still witnesses with long memories and solid documentation who can attest to the true character of the prophet.

Scientology, like other forms of Gnosticism, is really an attempt to rupture the relationship between individuals and God.

It's just so damned inconvenient, from the narcissist's point of view, to have a God who's already here and already acting for our benefit. The narcissist can't tolerate the idea that he -- a human being -- isn't the smartest, fastest, strongest being in Creation. So, to assuage his intolerably monstrous ego, he invents an entire cosmogony where he is God and he is on a brave and bold quest to reclaim his rightful power as God. Or Buddha. Or Thetan.

By looking at the origins of Scientology -- and specifically at the psychological issues that have driven the founders and chief promoters of this new cult -- we can see the pattern of narcissistic behaviours for ourselves. We can then use our observations to help us decide which aspects of our own spiritual journeys are holding us back as we try to heal our relationship with God.

In order to progress on the Spiral Path of faith, science, wonder, and relationship with God, you must start with the assumption that it's good enough for you to be a child of God instead of trying to become Mother Father God themselves.

Being a child of God entitles you to all the benefits of wearing the coat of many colours God gives to all God's children. It entitles you to be fully yourself, without judgment, abuse, or psychological violence. It entitles you to live passionately according to the needs of both the Heart and the Mind. It entitles you to view your human lifetime as a richly rewarding, positive experience instead of a punitive, degrading, sin-filled, mud-wrestling match. It entitles you to blend both Materialist laws and non-Materialist laws in your daily life. It entitles you to be honest with yourself about how much you really want and need to be in relationship with God.

Gardens are one way to experience the coat of many colours while you're here on Planet Earth. God invites you to help with planting and watering and weeding a garden to create a place of peace, beauty, and healing for others to enjoy (including creatures great and small). But God doesn't expect you to be in charge of the design of every living organism in the vast universe we live in. That's God's job!  Enjoy the gardens of Earth while you're here and rejoice in the ways you can help create and sustain such beauty. It may not be a much of a contribution as far as a spiritual narcissist is concerned, but it's important as far as God and your angels and your own soul are concerned.  Great blessings come in small packages!

It's no fun at all believing you're required to be responsible for everything in Creation. Fortunately, God doesn't expect you to be God.

If you can manage to embrace the first stanza of the Serenity Prayer and live in basic accordance with the tenets of the Twelve Step Program, you'll be doing very well as far as your angels -- and your God -- are concerned.

Best of luck to you!

LSP27: Seeds of the Divine: Approaches to Mysticism in Christianity and Buddhism

This post is an excerpt from a reflection paper I wrote for a 2014 inter-religious dialogue course offered through a Roman Catholic seminary (though I myself am not Roman Catholic).  I decided to include this excerpt because it explains in a more formal way some of the points I've been trying to raise about the roots of our world religions.  I welcome comments on these reflections.  Thanks for reading!

Jen
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The Christian world view, with its focus on mystery and love, redemption and forgiveness, is so open to everything in Creation that there is room within it for all God’s children, regardless of when or where they have lived.This photo of spring crocuses, taken in the morning light of the spring equinox, speaks to the joyful images of life, beauty, and creation that were central to Jesus' cataphatic mystical teachings. Photo credit JAT 2016.

It is in response to Sottocornola and De Giorgio’s closing remarks about apophasis and kenosis that I would like to offer some in-depth observations, especially as these relate to Brassard’s opening thesis about the three basic soteriological questions.   First, I should acknowledge that some of my interpretations spring from my daily personal experiences as a Christian mystic.  To refine this statement, I turn to Bernard McGinn’s three-fold definition of mysticism as “a part or element of religion; . . . as a process or way of life; and . . . as an attempt to express a direct consciousness of the presence of God” (McGinn xiii–xvi).  McGinn’s research has revealed there are different mysticisms, just as there are different Christianities and different Buddhisms.  Apophatic, anagogic, and cataphatic mysticisms do not share the same goals, experiences, or practices.  They also do not share the same answers to the three basic questions about “the human problem” or human psychology.  I myself am a cataphatic mystic in thought, word, action, faith, and experience of the Divine.

Apophatic mysticism, which in its very essence is an experience of losing one’s personal identity within a transcendent cloud of oneness and unknowing, is a phenomenon which crosses all boundaries of race, religion, and creed.  Within Christianity, the tradition of apophatic mysticism can be traced from Plato through many centuries of later Christian figures up to and including Thomas Merton.  In the words of Merton’s biographer Lawrence Cunningham, it is “an imageless mysticism” with an emphasis on “silence, lack of image, presence, and so on [that] is characteristic of the dark mysticism that goes back to Saint Gregory of Nyssa, mediated through the writings of the Pseudo Dionysius and down to John of the Cross, and mediated again through the monastic and scholastic doctors of the Middle Ages” (Cunningham 97).  There’s no doubt that apophatic mysticism is part of Christianity’s tradition, just as apophatic mysticism is the starting point for the Buddha’s own suppositions about “the human problem.”  The point I wish to make is that apophatic experiences necessarily lead to a particular way of understanding Creation that is in direct conflict with the cataphatic and life-affirming teachings of Jesus.

It is a curious thing that a transient experience of transcendent oneness in a person’s life should lead him or her further and further away from an understanding of love (specifically agape) and closer and closer to pure logic and reason as the only adequate tools for understanding the universe.  Yet this is indeed what seems to happen.  Plato, as mediated first through Paul’s own writings on sin, law, and death, has had an enormous influence on Christian thought with the “imageless mysticism” he highlights in Phaedrus.  In Plato’s well-known tale of the Charioteer, which probably dates from Plato’s middle period, he presents a “myth” about the nature of the immortal soul (Phaedrus 245c-250c).  In this myth, the soul is compared to a winged team of horses and their charioteer.  Souls compete to try to ascend to the region above the heavens, the region that is “occupied by being which really is, which is without colour or shape, intangible, observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect, and to which the class of true knowledge relates.” If a soul succeeds in its required task of gazing upon “what is true,” it will be happy and will return to its home in the heavens; but if a soul fails, it will be filled with the weight of forgetfulness and incompetence, and it will fall to earth, where it must incarnate according to specific dictates of divine law.
 
I see strong parallels between the intangible cloud above the heavens accessible only to Plato’s intellect and the cloud of codependent origination accessible only to the Buddha’s intellect. Is it possible that both Plato and the Buddha had personal, apophatic mystical experiences that led them to theorize about the underlying structure of the universe – and therefore the nature of the beings who live within it – and conclude Creation is a “closed system” of oneness governed by immutable law?  It is interesting that both men, writing from an apophatic perspective about the cloud of oneness known only to the intellect and will, both claim that incarnation is governed by rigid laws that can be understood by select human beings and escaped from through rigorous discipline and mental focus.  It is noteworthy, of course, that neither apophatic teacher speaks of the preeminence of love and forgiveness for anyone, least of all God.  Unlike Jesus, they refuse to speak of heart and mind and strength and soul in the same breath (Mark 12:28–34), but instead focus entirely on the mind’s efforts to transcend such lowly human “needs” as love and forgiveness by subjugating and even denying them through ascetical practices.  I have begun to wonder if Plato and the Buddha both make claims for a “closed system” because there is no other way to justify an impermanent apophatic experience of oneness with all that is.
 
As I – and all mystics throughout history – can attest, a mystical experience is so intense that it changes the way the mystic looks at everything.  One cannot help but seek a framework in which to understand the experience.  An apophatic mystic seeks a philosophical framework that starts with a transpersonal, impermanent oneness and works backward.  A cataphatic mystic seeks a philosophical framework that starts with a highly personal, “image-filled,” permanent Divine Love and works backward.  An anagogic mystic uses elements of both paths and tries with all his or her might to unify them (as the majority of Christian mystics seem to have done, perhaps following Paul’s lead in 2 Corinthians 12:1–9 and 1 Corinthians 15:50–57).

As a practising cataphatic mystic, who has daily experiences of the presence of God, I can attest to the feeling of “being filled up with love” that comes from being in humble relationship with God.  I would not describe it as a feeling of kenosis or self-emptying.  In fact, it feels exactly the way Jesus described it: using the fullness of one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength to sustain a relationship of love and healing with a God who is an infinitely loving and healing God.  It takes every ounce of courage plus all the gifts given to us by God to participate in this kind of relationship with God.  The corollary is that when we speak of shedding aspects of ourselves in order to be freed from suffering or sin, instead of using the alternative presented to us by Jesus – forgiveness! – we slowly but steadily chip away at the gifts God has given us so we can know what Divine Love and forgiveness really mean.  Of course, apophatic mysticism is not interested in the question of a personal Divine Love, because such a love is a question for the heart, not the mind.

I therefore argue against the use of a doctrine of kenosis in inter-religious debate.  There have been efforts to describe kenosis as self-giving (in contrast to the original meaning of the word, which is self-emptying) but if it is self-giving Christians wish to speak of, then I would suggest we speak of it as Jesus himself spoke of it.  The Gospels tell us clearly that Jesus does not endorse a withdrawal into a cloistered or consecrated ascetic community but instead insists we be full participants in community life and healing, even when others shun us for our unflinching commitment to wisdom, compassion, dialogue, healing, and service.
 
The remarks I’ve made here apply equally to any closed apophatic system, including Christianity’s own dark mysticism, and is not an indictment of the Buddhist quest for wisdom and compassion, which is filled with true sincerity, dedication, and long experience; instead, my remarks are a realistic assessment of the ways in which an apophatic world view may block and actually interfere with our quest for wisdom and compassion because of a starting assumption that denies the Divine Heart.  By contrast, the cataphatic world view is a universal theory but not a closed system.  In fact, the Christian world view, with its focus on mystery and love, redemption and forgiveness, is so open to everything in Creation that there is room within it for all God’s children, regardless of when or where they have lived.

Despite my dissatisfaction with apophatic teachings, wherever they originate, I see many positive “seeds of the Divine” in Buddhism.  Two “seeds” that seem to have sprouted more systematically in Buddhism than in Christian orthodoxy are “the deep knowledge of human psychology shared by Buddhists” (Brassard 439) and the intense focus on praxis, as expressed through the moral teachings of the Eightfold Path.  These two seeds were also primary concerns for Jesus, as shown throughout the Gospels.  It is interesting to ponder how Christianity might better fulfill its stated goal of helping people heal their relationship with God if the Church were to combine Jesus’ cataphatic teachings with a stronger focus on both praxis and human psychology.  I argue this would in no way diminish the sense of mystery and awe that are so important in the Christian relationship with our loving God.  In fact, when Jesus presented his own thesis (the Kingdom paradigm) on the three basic questions about the human problem, he may already have understood that the mysteries of Divine Love, healing, forgiveness, faith, and redemption are intertwined in our physical reality in positive ways that somehow transcend the cause and effect laws formalized within apophatic teachings.
   
As Jesus taught us, and as Nostra Aetate affirmed, great things can be accomplished in this world when we open both our minds and our hearts to each other and to the mysteries of Divine Love.  There is no need to choose between the mind and the heart.  Both are reflections of God’s own image and God’s good Creation:  “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.  And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace (James 3:17–18).”

Thanks be to God.

Works Cited:
   
Brassard, Francis, Maria A. De Giorgi, and Franco Sottocornola.  “Buddhism and Christianity.”  Catholic Engagement with World Religions: A Comprehensive Study. Ed. Karl J. Becker and Ilaria Morali.  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010.  438–458.  Print.

Cunningham, Lawrence S.  Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision.  Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.  Print.

McGinn, Bernard.  The Foundations of Mysticism.  Vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism.  New York: Crossroad, 1991.  Print.

Odin, Steve.  “Kenosis as Foundation for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue.”  Eastern Buddhist 20.1 (1987): 34-61.  ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials.  Web.  23 Mar. 2014.

Plato.  Phaedrus.  Trans. Christopher Rowe.  London: Penguin–Penguin Classics, 2005.  Print.


For Further Reflection:

As you proceed along your own Spiral Path of wonder, science, and faith, it's important that you always keep your eyes and ears open to the promises being made to you by various religious leaders and gurus. Are the promises you're hearing based on equality of outcomes? Or are the promises based on equality of relationships? Although these two religious "highways" may not sound different from each other at first, they lead your brain's biology in different directions, so the physical wiring of your brain will depend on which of these two "highways" you give priority to.

The former highway (equality of outcomes) leads to moral codes based on laws, uniformity of belief, denial of historical and scientific fact, eradication of uniqueness, and the pure logic of salvation. All major world religions include some doctrines that promise equality of outcomes (i.e. if you correctly obey Laws A,B, and C, you'll get guaranteed results of X,Y, and Z), but some religions have more such doctrines than others. Platonism, Buddhism, Philosophical Taoism, and Ancient Near East Wisdom rely almost exclusively on equality-of-outcome doctrines. So do New Age and New Thought teachings derived from these earlier sources.

The latter highway (equality of relationships) leads to moral codes based on respect for interpersonal boundaries, openness to experience and change, conscientiousness, remorse, and the quixotic logic of healing. The Abrahamic religions, as well as Sikhism, Baha'i, and a number of aboriginal traditions, contain strong equality-of-relationship doctrines (though this isn't a comprehensive list of religions that incorporate equality of relationship). Wherever such doctrines exist, you'll see religious customs that are more expansive, inclusive, and emotionally uplifting.

Your guardian angels (the ones who are trying to help you heal your relationship with God during your human lifetime) are very keen on spiritual and religious theories that lead to equality of relationships. This means your angels are especially enthusiastic about praxis (i.e. spiritual practice) that promotes strong, healthy, respectful interpersonal boundaries between you and others, as well as between you and God.

Sometimes this means learning to say no -- learning to say no to those who are trying to take advantage of you by blurring the healthy boundaries that should exist between you.

From my own perspective, this has been one of the hardest things to learn and remember and implement in my daily life. I often struggle to say no, but I've learned it's a necessary part of knowing God and knowing myself.

Opening up your heart to others means you instinctively feel their pain. (This is what empathy is, after all.) But it doesn't always mean you should take on other people's pain or fix everything for them. You have to trust that your brothers and sisters are fully capable of learning how to heal their own pain without abusing and manipulating others.

Yes, it's not always easy to step back and let someone take charge of their own choices. And yes, people need many kinds of assistance and support as they learn how to cope in mature, effective, loving ways with their own pain. But if you really want to know what Divine Love feels like, you have to accept that individuals have the power within themselves -- within their own souls -- to become stronger, wiser, and more courageous as they wrestle with the fear that comes with pain.

Sometimes you have to step back so the sunlight of God's love can work its magic on the seeds of redemption that lie within everyone you know and love.

This is the one of the most overlooked aspects of Jesus' teachings -- trusting that God wants us to say no to religious beliefs that damage healthy boundaries and respectful relationships.

Religion and faith aren't the problem in our world. Doctrines that dictate equality of outcomes are the problem, both within and without religion. So try to recognize and push back against such salvific doctrines wherever you can.

It's one of the fastest ways I know of to build your relationship with God.

LSP16: You Don't Have to Climb Mount Everest

"Healing and Hope for the Brain-Soul Nexus" is the tagline for one of my earlier books, and it's the central theme of all the work I've been researching on humans searching for God. It's actually a pretty simple idea, the idea that if you heal your own brain-soul nexus, you're on the "easy path" to knowing God in this lifetime. But since when do most of us want to do things the easy way?

While just about everybody else on the spiritual circuit is out there hammering away at the importance of ancient consciousness-altering tools such as prayer and meditation, me, I'm hammering away at the importance of consciousness-healing tools.

This goes back to the roots that are holding up your spiritual tree. The spiritual practices you choose to highlight in your life will depend on the starting assumptions -- the roots -- of your relationship with yourself and God. These choices matter because spiritual practices, no matter which tradition they stem from, all have a specific scientific purpose. They're all designed to do something specific to your brain chemistry.

And there you were thinkin' that spirituality is an escape from ordinary, everyday, scientific realities  . . .

Perhaps you already know that ancient spiritual practices are based on empirical observations about the science of brain function. But most people have been led to believe that spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, fasting, hallucinogenic drugs, trance states, and energy work are somehow separate from everyday science. They've been led to believe the divine rules are different when it comes to ancient spirituality.

They're not. The rules have never been different for these practices. These practices all create specific changes in your brain architecture whether you want them to or not. They're very powerful tools -- far more powerful than modern pharmaceuticals such as S.S.R.I.'s or mood stabilizers -- and as such, they need to be understood and respected for what they can do, as well as what they can't do.

In my view, it's irresponsible and reckless for religious leaders to recommend intensive use of spiritual practices in the naive belief that science doesn't apply. In God's Good Creation, science always applies. Nobody can escape the consequences that come from overuse of spiritual practices, just as nobody can escape the consequences that come from overuse of food or medication or alcohol or anything else that affects our brain chemistry.

As many wise people over time have pointed out, moderation is the key.

What I'm trying to say is that it's not smart to sign up at the spiritual smorgasbord and pile up your plate with all the ancient goodies you've never tried before. You need to remember that some of these old practices can hurt your brain -- not because the ancient teachers didn't understand how the brain works, but because they did.

I know this is a distressing thought, but there has to be a solid, scientific reason why so many people over so many centuries tried so hard to reconnect with God, yet never felt a dammed thing except frustration and despair. Do you really think God created your brain in such a way that you'd have to climb Mount Everest so you can feel God's love? Do you really think that only the people who set themselves apart to constantly pray and meditate have the potential to feel God's love?

There are ways of communicating clearly with God that can help you heal your brain-soul nexus and feel God's love. (And no -- I'm not about to suggest anything occult!)  There are ways of talking with God and sitting quietly with God that look on the surface like ancient prayer and meditation, but are, in fact, something quite different because they use different parts of the brain than ancient practices use.

What matters here is whether you use the parts of your brain that are hardwired into your soul's own needs.

Consciousness-healing techniques (as opposed to consciousness-altering techniques) always start with an unshakable belief in the good soul that you are.

Instead of trying to climb the spiritual Mount Everest proclaimed in many ancient religious texts, try hiking up a real hill and taking in the view with all your senses. If medical or financial limitations prevent you from visiting the countryside, try sitting in the sun by your favourite window or taking a short walk in your neighbourhood if you're able. Look at the trees. Listen to the birds. Be grateful for the gifts of Creation that surround you and support you. I know this sounds ridiculously simple and not very flashy. But that's the point. God loves all of us equally and wants everyone to have a chance to feel Divine Love. So why would God set up a system that allows only the rich or the full-time ascetics or the already-enlightened to heal the brain-soul nexus? God wouldn't. So start where you are and don't be ashamed if your current circumstances are modest and maybe even a bit ramshackle. God won't care as long as you're trying each day to be a loving person! This photo was taken outside Banff, Alberta. Photo credit JAT 2015.

For Further Reflection:

There's been a lot of talk lately, even among scientific circles, about the importance of gratitude in maintaining our physical and mental health. Gratitude for the good things that come our way is one of the few spiritual practices everyone can agree on. It offends no one. It's also an effective strategy for countering the negative thoughts we all struggle with. Gratitude helps us see the glass as half full rather than half empty. So I highly recommend the practice of positive gratitude to everyone.

How does the spiritual practice of gratitude differ from an ordinary, on-the-fly expression of thanks? It differs because it's a contemplative practice instead of a social practice. If you're like most people, your brain is adept at manoeuvring through complex social interactions (saying thank you automatically) but much less comfortable with contemplative norms (saying thank you when there's no direct social benefit for you). So it will probably take you some time to develop the habit of spiritual gratitude.

Set aside some quiet time each day to reflect on the small things you're grateful for. The place and time don't really matter. You can do your contemplative work wherever you feel comfortable, which may need to be the bathtub if it's the only place where you can find some time and space for yourself in your busy day. You can write down your observations about gratitude if you want to, but, again, the process isn't rigid, so you don't have to write anything down unless it helps you.

The core of the practice is to quietly thank all the people (including God and your angels!) who brought positive encounters and experiences and everyday needs into your life. That's it. Three honest daily observations about the people (especially God and your angels!) who helped you are usually enough (unless you had an especially eventful day). The key is to become conscious of the help you received. Don't take it for granted.

(1) Be aware. (2) Be appreciative. (3) Say thank you. These are the three essential steps of positive gratitude.

It's important not to cheat by making blanket statements about how lucky you are and how grateful you are for just, well, everything. In order for the practice of gratitude to make a difference in your life -- for gratitude to permanently alter your brain networks in helpful ways -- you need to spend quiet time each day untangling the great big ball of blessings you've received. You need to separate and sort your blessings (as best you can) into individual threads.

Why do you have to remember the individual people and individual acts that have made a difference in your life? The answer lies in the way your brain works.

Your brain is tasked with innumerable responsibilities each day, and each task uses up precious biological resources. So in any circumstance where your brain thinks it can save energy by using macros or stereotyping or quick algorithms -- in other words, "brain apps" -- your brain will use its built-in apps unless you tell it otherwise. Like it or not, your brain (unless you tell it otherwise) has an unfortunate tendency to see other people as faceless, nameless "worker ants" whose only job is to serve you. As far as your brain is concerned, this is both logical and efficient, especially in our harried, over-stressed culture.

Naturally, if your brain is invested in forgetting who people are and what people did for you, it becomes difficult for you to see other people as unique individuals and cherished children of God. It then becomes harder to know them, to know yourself, and to know God.

The goal of contemplative gratitude, therefore, is to insist that your brain smarten up and change its priorities. You're telling your own brain that one of your important new priorities is to see other people as individuals, to appreciate their talents, to understand how important they are to the overall happiness of the whole community.

With practice, you'll know them better and you'll know yourself better. Eventually, this will help you know God better.

A wonderful side benefit to this spiritual practice is the unintentional and unavoidable growth of your own sense of Humbleness. After you've spent a year thinking about all the ways in which your neighbours have helped you, and all the ways in which their talents differ from yours, and all the ways in which they're worthy of appreciation, it's pretty hard to maintain the illusion that you're better than other people and more deserving of God's love than other people.

After all, you ain't growing and picking and sorting and packing and shipping and marketing and grinding and brewing all those coffee beans by yourself. Are you?

LSP6: Why God?

Why God? Why a personal God instead of a transcendent cloud of Oneness from which all of us come and to which all of us return? 

Quite simply, knowing God makes you a better person.

We human beings are funny creatures. When we sit down long enough to notice what we're really thinking and feeling, all sorts of strange emotions bubble up inside us. We want more than anything to feel we belong and to feel we have a purpose in life. We want to feel safe--emotionally and physically safe--and when we're not, we feel frightened and anxious. We long to be surrounded by beauty and peace and kindness and honesty, and when we're forced to deal with selfishness and betrayal and corruption, we're devastated.We want to know others and we want to be known--really, really known and accepted for who we are deep inside. We desperately crave love and trust. We desperately need other people.

Is it wrong for us to feel this way? Are we to blame for our own suffering because we're too attached to certain people and ideals and creature comforts? Are we suffering because of the weight of our emotions and attachments? Or is it possible we're suffering because we haven't been paying enough attention to what we really want and need?

God's love is Beauty. Don't reject it. Rejoice in it! Photo credit JAT 2018.

For a long time now, human beings in all places and in all religious traditions have been trying to answer the problem of suffering by following one of two major paths. (Yes, more paths!) The first major path is the path of spiritual ascent that leads to holiness and perfection (in technical terms, "anagogism"). The second major path is the path of self-dissolution and blurring of boundaries for the purpose of rejoining the cloud of Oneness (called "apophasis"). Both of these paths are paths of abandonment--abandonment of yourself and abandonment of God. Neither path (not even when they're combined, as they often are, in a one-two punch) will help you become a better person--the person you want to be deep in your Heart.

What helps you become a better person is your faith and trust in the "rightness" of needing powerful emotions such as love and safety and deep acceptance in all your relationships. Families (and communities) that embrace the "rightness" of love and safety and deep acceptance are families that are healthy and happy (within the limits of our temporary human lives). Families that focus on achieving holiness and perfection (anagogism), or on beating all emotional needs out of you because emotions aren't "logical" (apophasis) are . . . well, I think you know where I'm going with this.

Knowing God the Mother and God the Father as the people they are means you have a constant source of inspiration in your life for how to be the person you want to be. A person who is patient. And kind. And grounded. And forgiving. And full of empathy for all life (not just caring about the people you know). And courageous. And balanced. And willing to do the right thing. In short, you become once again a person who's in full relationship with all of life, including all the reaches of Creation you'll never see for yourself with your own human eyes.

It all boils down to relationships. Everything that really matters in our lives depends on relationships.  We're hardwired this way. We want and need Divine Love because Divine Love is the ultimate expression of two or more consciousnesses building a relationship of beauty and truth and learning together.

There's no force I've encountered that's anything like the feeling of unconditional love flooding into your heart and mind and bones and gut. This love--which begins within the Hearts of God the Mother and God the Father and within the infinite love they share for each other--this love . . . it's gravity. It's sanity. It's safety. It's trust. It's truth--but not one single truth. It's the truth of everything. It's the truth of you and the truth of me and the truth of all of us. Countless truths, all equally valid, all founded in the reality that we are not One Truth but instead are One Big Family.

All that we most cherish, all that we view as the best expression of ourselves and our communities, depends on our having the courage to love and trust. Forgiveness and transformation and emotional healing all depend on the love and the trust. Once you allow your own heart to be open to these wondrous emotions, you won't be able to stop yourself from letting the rest of it pour in, too.

You won't be able to stop yourself from feeling the gravity of God's love.


For Further Reflection:

Have you ever paid attention to how you feel--how you really feel--when you're treated by your human family if you're just a robot who performs needed tasks? Or a person who's valued for the status you can bring to your family but not for the unique emotions that make you you? Or an invisible slave who's only important in so far as you worship and obey your hierarchical leaders? Do you enjoy being treated in these ways? Do you like being told repeatedly you're unworthy of love? Or does it feel wrong to you in every way?

Being loved by your family is a deep, rich, ongoing set of observations and conversations and memories between people who aren't carbon copies of each other yet who value each other despite their differences. This applies as much to your relationship with God as to your human family.

To seek the path of holiness and perfection is to make the claim that God is only willing to love those who meet a strict and narrow standard of what it means to be beautiful in God's eyes. Such a claim has nothing to do with the way God loves you.

To seek the path of Oneness, where all beings are said to merge into a single Intelligence or Source, is to make the claim that God isn't capable of seeing you and loving you as a unique individual. Furthermore, claims for apophatic Oneness implicitly suggest that you're somehow already a spark of God -- not a child of God, but an actual piece of God's core essence. Have you given any thought to the narcissism involved in such a claim? Have you thought about how it feels from God's perspective when you work your ass off on spiritual practices that claim to give you a godhood that was never yours to begin with?

The human Mind is easily tricked into assuming that God only sees beauty in things that are perfectly perfect.

Fortunately, the Heart that's able to love the imperfectly perfect is a Heart that knows God.

A God who loves you despite the fact that you're very normal and very human and very not God is so much easier to trust.