LSP28: The Burden of Perfection

Ever notice that any good idea, when taken to extremes, can become a bad idea?

From my perspective, the biggest problem with all theories grown from apophatic roots is the burden placed on people to be perfect.

Nobody is perfect, and nobody should be expected by their spiritual leaders to take on the level of personal responsibility required in an apophatic belief system.

Apophatic belief systems are found in every culture and in every major world religion.  Strict monastic lifestyles, as cultivated within Theravada Buddhism and Roman Catholicism, are two examples of this way of life.  But they're not the only examples.  In fact, atheism brings to bear on its adherents the same extreme burden of perfection found within certain religious sects.  This is because all apophatic belief systems (whether theistic, non-theistic, or atheistic) share one major thing in common: an absolute hatred of the humbleness/courage/forgiveness paradigm preached by spiritual teachers such as the Hebrew philosopher Job (author of the Bible's Book of Job) and the Jewish philosopher Jesus (author of the Bible's Kingdom paradigm).

I don't use the word "hatred" lightly.  Apophatic assumptions about consciousness, life, evolution, learning, and relationships are completely different from the assumptions made by cataphatic thinkers.  Apophatics consider Kingdom teachings an affront to their intellectual authority and prowess.

Apophatic beliefs are based on the preeminence of the human mind - on a belief in the ability of the human mind to dramatically alter the universe.  Apophatic teachings, drawing on the natural authority they see in the Materialist laws of cause and effect, are highly anthropocentric.  They see human beings as a group "set apart" by their special mental powers to play a supremely important role in Creation (or on plain ol' Planet Earth, if you're an atheist).  It follows from this (say the apophatics) that human beings have a huge responsibility to themselves and to the planet to scrupulously follow every law they can think of.  Anything short of perfection is considered a failure.  It's therefore not only acceptable but completely necessary to find the flaws in everything you see around you so you can "fix" them.  Inevitably, this leads to the idea that if you always exert the right effort at the right time in the right way (etc., etc.) you - personally - can change the whole world.

Not the world inside you, or the part of the world you're connected to, or the people you know, or the garden you're digging, or the school you're building  . . . but the whoooooole wooooooorld.  And if you fall short of the ultimate goal of achieving full liberation from the cycle of rebirth dictated by the laws of Karma (with the side benefit of using your newfound universal freedom/godhead to help others on Planet Earth escape their suffering), well, then, you're just an awful, unworthy failure, aren't you?  You shoulda tried harder!

So apophatic thinkers are always trying harder, always striving for perfection, always obsessively worshiping.  Or working.  Or counting.  Always rating themselves in comparison to other people.  Always judging others "who aren't trying hard enough."  Always holding grudges, holding onto anger, holding onto denial.  Always refusing to love.  Always refusing to accept.

Meanwhile, cataphatic teachings (as represented by the Kingdom teachings of Jesus) maintain that our universe is guided by both Materialist and non-Materialist laws of science (not just Materialist laws) so it's pretty hard for the limited human mind to figure everything out by itself.  We're responsible for the personal choices we make.  Our inner self - the part each of us is responsible for - is the Kingdom Jesus refers to.  But we're not responsible for the whole universe and everything in it.  It's okay for us to have limits and it's okay for us to lean on others and on God.  It's okay for us to trust God.

It would be easy to say the apophatic thinker sees the glass as half empty and the cataphatic thinker sees it as half full.  But it's much more than that.  It's more along the lines of this: the apophatic thinker sees himself as a very big glass in a very small pond, whereas the cataphatic thinker sees himself as a very small glass in a very big pond.

The apophatic thinker sees himself as a very big glass in a very small pond - but he also thinks he's not yet a big enough glass.  He wants to be so big and so important in the world pond that his glass will be completely full - so full it will allow him to become "one substance" with the Oneness he calls Source (or Money or Success).  He thinks he's so clever and so important in the grand scheme of things that the pond will somehow dry up if he doesn't jump right in there to save it (and everybody in it) by using his "one substance."  He has a Saviour complex.

Perfect Imperfection (c) JAT 2014

Meanwhile, the cataphatic thinker, who sees himself as a very small glass in a very big pond, looks around the pool filled with all manner of life and says, "Hey, this is a beautiful place.  I see a muddy patch over there where I can hang out with my buddies and have some fun.  No one will mind.  It's a big pond, and there's room for everybody.  I'll learn what I can from everyone else.  I'll build something, create something, and share something. Then I'll pick up my garbage, go home, and be grateful for the good (but imperfect) day I've had.  Cool!"

Apophatics don't do cool.

Addendum January 5, 2018:  Interesting research has just been published about the rise of three types of perfectionism among millennials: "Students are feeling more pressure than ever to be perfectionists" by reporter Vanessa Hrvati. According to the article, Dr. Thomas Curran, one of the authors of the scientific study, "described the need to be perfect as a 'hidden epidemic' that could potentially underpin many of the mental health issues students face, ranging from anxiety to depression."


For Further Reflection:

Would it help you to know that, from God's point of view, there's no such thing as a perfect human being?

When God says it's okay for you to be born as a human being on Planet Earth, it's not because God has plans for you to become more "perfect." It's because God has plans for you to know yourself better, to know your fellow angels better, and to know Mother Father God better. But "knowing" yourself is a lot different than matching yourself to a "template of perfection" for an ideal human being. In fact, knowing more about yourself is the very opposite of trying to become an ideal human being. Knowing yourself is essential to the Humbleness paradigm of boundaries and relationships; forcing yourself to be squeezed into the teeny-tiny box of perfectionism means you're not allowed to be who you really are.

Part of the problem is that although we're very different from each other as persons-of-soul (that is, as children of God), God has given all of us very similar biological bodies as human beings. So it's hard for us to accept that it's okay for us to be similar on the outside but radically different from each other on the inside - different in terms of our temperaments, interests, abilities, learning styles, relationship styles, and so on.

If we were to wander around one of the multitudinous ecosystems of Planet Earth, we would see at a glance an abundance of species all around us. We'd notice that no two species are exactly alike. We wouldn't question the reality that each species has unique talents and attributes, talents we cherish and are continually amazed by. (How many people have looked at a hawk and not envied its ability to ride the unseen thermals of the sky?) Further, we'd quickly observe that within each species there are many individual variations of colouring, temperament, adaptability, leadership ability, and longevity. Abundance of talent is what we expect when we look at God's creatures here on Earth. It's supposed to be that way. And we have no trouble accepting that a hawk can't be a hare. Or vice versa.

Except when we look at ourselves. Many of us just can't seem to get past the idea that our outsides are 90% of our story. We reason that if 90% of a hawk's story is in its body, and if 90% of a hare's story is in its body, then 90% of a human's story must also be in its body. This, after all, is the inevitable conclusion that derives from atheistic theories such as natural selection and non-theistic evolution.

Fundamental to atheistic cosmogonies about life on Planet Earth is the belief - nay, the certainty - that there is no soul, so obviously there can be no soul to shape the inner landscape of each unique human being. From this assumption flows the implicit logic that human beings are really just a bunch of interchangeable building blocks. And from this comes the inescapable "fact" that these building blocks must be perfectible if only we can acquire the right knowledge.

Eat this food. Take this pill. Do this exercise. Obey this commandment. Be a prisoner of the DNA you were born with. Don't you dare have the temerity to believe your inner self is a whole lot bigger than your DNA says you are. Lower the bar for yourself. Lower the bar for your children and your neighbours. Be the least you can be. But throw yourself on the mercy of the wise leaders who can tell you how to perfect yourself, and maybe - just maybe - you'll be lucky enough to have a few fleeting moments of Happiness.

When Michelangelo was lying on the scaffolding of the Sistine Chapel so he could paint its famous ceiling, I doubt very much he was thinking about his perfect pasta intake or how many steps he'd walked that day.

And I doubt very much that any other human being could have told the story Michelangelo told in the precise and lasting way he told it.

He was one of a kind, a child of God with a unique inner story and a unique way of sharing it.

As all of us are when we allow ourselves to be who we really are.

LSP17: "Why Didn't God Just Show Up in Front of Me?"

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a man I'll call Joe. Joe was very angry about the question of God and suffering (the theodicy question). Some of Joe's anger came from his experience as a gay man who was forced to deal with emotional and spiritual abuse from homophobic Christians who believe God rejects homosexuality. 

 

I continue to marvel at this carving of a heron feeding its chick. How did the artist envisage such beauty when he or she picked up a simple, 3-foot log and began to shape it into an image of abundant Life? Each time I've moved over the past couple of decades, I've lived in trepidation that one of the delicate wooden legs would snap. But sometimes it's the slenderest of connections that holds us up. Photo credit JAT 2021.

 

Joe asked questions that many other people are asking about God. He demanded to know where God had been while he was suffering. He asked why God hadn't just shown up in front of him to give him clear answers about his sexuality and faith. He asked why he had to figure everything out on his own without any help from anyone at all.

This is what I wrote in reply:

What I'm hearing is a lot of anger that God didn't just show up in front of you to tell you it was ok to be gay.

So I'm wondering . . . have you thought about what it would have been like at a practical, realistic level if God actually had shown up to talk to you? Have you thought about the fact that such a miraculous occurrence would have made your life much worse, not much better?

As a mystic, I live on a daily basis with phenomena that seem normal and very practical and scientific to me, but even for me some things would be too much. Too much for my very human, very 3D brain to process. The brain has limits. The brain expects a certain measure of consistency and predictability from the world around it. This is how the healthy brain copes with all the emotions and perceptions and memories and learning processes we cram into it.

Okay. So think about this for a minute. You're sitting in your bedroom and you're praying to God about the painful situation you're in vis-a-vis your family and your sexuality, and suddenly you look up to see an angel of God standing beside the door. You can see the angel's face and hands and wings and glowing robes. Next you hear the angel speak. The angel says, "Fear not, for you are gay. I have come to tell you that God loves you because you are gay. Now go into the world and preach what I have taught you."

So you go downstairs and you tell your family what you saw and heard, and they call a psychiatrist friend of theirs and have you involuntarily assessed, and the psychiatrist gives you a tentative diagnosis of schizophrenia.

So far, you're not better off.

This isn't the worst part, though. The worst part is the self-doubt generated within your own brain about your experience. You start ruminating on it. You go over and over the experience. Did you really see an angel? Who was he? Or was "he" a "she"? Why didn't the angel stay longer? Why didn't he say more? What did he mean when he said you should go out and preach what he taught you? What did he actually teach you?

Did you really just imagine it? Did you have an hallucination? A psychotic break? (Maybe you did!!! -- omigosh, you've gone crazy, and now you'll never have a life or a partner or a job ever again!!!) Can you trust yourself now? Can you trust anyone now?

The loving God who is with you always is not going to set you up for a tragedy like this -- a tragedy that would make your life much worse.

Joe, you ask, "Why did I have to figure out everything on my own?" (Though I confess I'm surprised you show no gratitude towards the on-line friends and the non-Christians and the books you referred to, who've helped you on your journey according to your own testimony).

You had to figure it out for yourself so the knowledge would be yours. So the insight would be yours. So nobody could take it away from you ever again.

This is an honest, truthful, fair path to understanding and transformation. It requires that you "raise the bar" for yourself by taking personal responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings, and self-knowledge rather than relying exclusively on the authority of others. It requires that you use the resources of your own 3-pound universe (that is, your brain). It requires that you look at Creation in new ways you never thought possible.

And it doesn't ask you to learn within a framework of occult magic, as Pauline Christianity and its predecessors have long expected you to do.

So maybe you might want to consider cutting God some slack.

(I know you say you don't believe in a theistic God, but methinks thou dost protest too much.)

Love Jen

Just for the record . . . I personally believe that a person's core sexuality, whether homosexual or heterosexual, is hardwired into his/her DNA as a permanent, natural, and healthy aspect of his/her core identity. It's a non-negotiable part of who we are. To treat another person badly on the basis of DNA-based sex or core sexual orientation is about as far from loving as it's possible to get. I reject all religious teachings that claim "divine justification" for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The path of knowing yourself (including knowing and trusting your heart-based sexuality) is a commitment to opening your eyes and your heart to the many everyday clues that surround you all the time. Part of this commitment is a willingness to ask what your fellow human beings can teach you about yourself and about God. Books can teach you. Art can teach you. Scientists can teach you. Families can teach you. Your task is to be part of Creation -- to immerse yourself in all its many narratives -- so you can begin to recognize the colours and shapes and movements and sounds that resonate deep within your heart. A painting that resonates with you is important because you're responding to images your soul finds familiar and comforting. A painting that speaks to you is doing just that -- speaking to you about who you really are. And listening to a painting is a lot less stressful for you and your family than listening to an angel who suddenly pops into your room. This room at the Art Gallery of Ontario features late nineteenth and early twentieth century Canadian artwork. Photo credit JAT 2018.

 

For Further Reflection:

After you begin to master the practice of spiritual gratitude (contemplation and thanks for the positive experiences in life) comes the difficult part of your journey: learning to how to wrestle with the question of suffering and then, after a lot of mistakes, come out smelling like roses.

Nobody wants to do this part. It's just so hard. It's so darned hard that all major world religions have shied away from the question by offering you various escape mechanisms (e.g. salvation; Judgment Day and hell; nirvana; energy balancing; scientism) that sound really good -- and really easy -- by comparison. In Christianity, the apostle Paul thought Jesus' teachings on the theodicy question were so ridiculous and so impossible for regular people to invest in that he (Paul) grafted a Saviour religion onto the root of Jesus' teachings. Paul thought this was a good idea because he didn't share Jesus' faith in the power of individuals to venture into the heart of suffering to seek the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life, so different from the Tree of Moral Knowledge, is a tree that's covered in all sorts of unwieldy branches and painful sticky patches and bunches of ugly-looking fruits that ripen at puzzling times. It's unpredictable. It can't be harnessed or controlled. It leans away from you when you try to capture it; then, when you've given up in frustration and stop focusing on it, it suddenly drops sweet seeds straight into your heart. There is a paradoxical blend of beauty and terror in this experience.

Despite our unwillingness to voluntarily approach this tree, God and God's angels regularly drop us onto its branches so we'll have the chance to figure out the mystery of Divine Love and Forgiveness for ourselves. This is what happened to Dr. Alexander when God plucked him from his orderly life and showed him the Tree of Life, which is to say the family of loving angels he was introduced to during his near death experience.

The Tree of Life, like the trees we know on Planet Earth, holds within its gnarly structure rings upon rings of memory -- memories of transformation, memories of healing, and memories of love.

At the very core of the Tree of Life lie the memories from our Mother and Father's earliest times together. Here rest the memories of redemption.

It's redemption that we, as human beings, experience each time we choose to face our experiences of suffering and learn from them. We don't escape our suffering; we transform our suffering by using our whole selves -- our hearts, minds, bodies, and courage -- to take what we've learned and help others.

Redemption doesn't happen automatically. You have to want it. You have to choose it. You have to dredge up every ounce of courage you can muster to face the pain. You have to be willing to be changed by a past -- a set of memories -- you can't change. You have to learn to bend, like the Tree of Life -- to bend away from those who want you to forget who you really are. You have to learn to forgive.

None of this is easy, but regular people do it every day in every part of the world despite the lack of encouragement they get from their spiritual and religious leaders.

Redemption (unlike the promise of religious salvation) is a universal practice unbound by gender or race or sexual orientation or clan or religion or culture or history. Anyone can choose it.

Jesus knew this. It's what made him so unpopular among his religious peers.

LSP10: The Importance of Being (Earnestly) You: Throwing Humility Out the Window

In Dr. Alexander's book, one of the key themes is the importance of feeling you're wanted -- wanted by God and also wanted by your family. Dr. A. is very frank about an episode of depression and heavy drinking he fell into after he learned the birth parents he'd been searching for didn't want to make contact with him. (They'd given him up for adoption as an infant.) He understood at a logical level that those who loved him couldn't help him unless he participated in his own recovery (page 56-58), but at the same time he couldn't shake the despair of the heart that came from his belief that neither his birth parents nor God wanted him.

There's a deeply important truth embedded in this part of Dr. Alexander's story. It's the truth that you are important as yourself. As a soul and as a soul-in-human-form, it matters that you are you. Your job as a human being is not to empty yourself of your true self (a religious process most often called "humility") but to fully embrace the knowledge of who you are as a unique child of God.

I want to be very clear here on a couple of points. First, I want to emphasize that what I'm saying here is the very opposite of the doctrines -- the tree roots -- that underlie most major world religions. It's almost universally taught that if you want to get closer to God, you have to get farther away from your own defective "youness", your own corrupt ego, your own grasping illusory self. In other words, you have a religious duty to not be you.

Second, I want to emphasize I'm not in any way endorsing the idea that you can be whoever you want to be or the idea that nothing you do as a human being is wrong. This is the extreme opposite of pure religious humility. It's a belief system that's widely touted within New Age circles (as in the books of Neale Donald Walsch and Marianne Williamson). To be clear, the tree that grows from New Thought roots is a tree that insists that God is not just a bit stupid, but is also incredibly selfish and narcissistic as well as stupid. Just so you know . . .

Somewhere in the middle of this jungle of depressing religious beliefs about "who you are" is a fairly simple tree that fits with all our best ideas about healing and peace and relationship. It's the tree that grows from the belief (in my view, the truth) that you are a child of God. Not a defective child. Not an inferior child. Not a lost child. Just a child who is very brave (because you chose to incarnate) and a child who is deeply loved and trusted by your divine parents.

Note that I'm NOT saying you're a small piece of God, or a small spark of God who's trying to return to God, or a small drop of water in the great ocean of Absolute Reality, or a pure mind trapped in a corrupt human body who's trying to return to Ultimate Truth. (These, by the way, are all theories that have been put forward and endorsed by major world religions over the centuries. If you want to read more about this, you can check out my Master's Research Paper.)  What I'm saying is that you're exactly who you appear to be -- a unique child who needs to feel loved by his/her own family. What I'm saying is that it's normal and healthy for you to need to know you belong, that you belong in your human family (and also in your divine family) BECAUSE you are you.

Don't try to follow the example of asceticism practised by such traditional Christian Church Fathers as St. Jerome. Ascetic practices, which spring from the roots of religious humility, damage the brain networks you need in order to know yourself and feel God's presence in your life. In God's view, your biological body is a gift to you and should be treated with the utmost gratitude and respect. When you punish and subjugate your body with ascetic and obsessive-compulsive practices, you're saying to Mother Father God that you don't trust them. If, instead, you're moderate in all things related to your biological body, the spiritual path will flow more easily for you. This 18th century terracotta sculpture of St. Jerome, by Angelo Gabriello Pio, is on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

One of the most important things you can take away from Dr. Alexander's book is the fact that he's describing a journey about one person, one unique child of God. When he makes his journey, he doesn't see a big cloud of oneness. What he sees is unique individuals who choose to be together in a community of love. The love he feels is like a single force that unites everyone. But the love doesn't erase the boundaries between individual people. Each person, no matter how divine, is a unique individual. A different person. A different soul.

What makes divine love such a powerful force is the intense respect and trust shown by such very different people towards each other. They're all different people who are coming together as a community with a common cause. They don't all have to be the same. They don't all have to be the same size or the same colour or the same gender. They don't all come prepackaged with the same interests or abilities. But they do all share one thing, one very important thing that unites them as a family:

They're all using their powerful free will to choose to love and trust others, to respect others for their uniqueness.

So when Dr. Alexander says he came back from his journey with three major insights (page 41) -- "You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever; you have nothing to fear; and there is nothing you can do wrong" --  he's referring to the truth about our relationship with God as souls, as children of God. He's saying that when you're choosing to be your true self as a loving child of God, you can do amazing things in the universe, no matter where you happen to be incarnated.

It's an incredibly simple idea, really. It's also an idea that has huge implications for our ability to feel the love that comes from belonging to such a breathtakingly beautiful divine family. But first you have to be willing to believe in the idea that a loving God would not -- and could not -- bring into being any souls who were not already perfect in their own sweet way before they chose to incarnate as human beings on Planet Earth.

It's okay for you to believe you're wanted by God. This isn't pride. All children want and need to know they're loved by their parents for who they really are. Religion tells you this is the one thing you're not allowed to believe. I'm telling you, and Dr. Alexander is telling you, that this is the Number One thing you should be allowed to believe.

You are, indeed, loved, cherished, trusted, and respected, and it's okay for you to trust this truth.

The world would be a much happier place if people were allowed to trust in the brilliant love of their awe-inspiring divine parents and their divine brothers and sisters.


For Further Reflection:

A lot of spiritual people these days have some ideas about Divine Love that really don't pan out when you stop to think about it.

If you insist, as so many seem to be insisting, that humans are working to achieve an evolution towards greater love and harmony and unity in the universe, then we can assume you believe the universe is defective. We can assume you believe that after 13.8 billion years, Divine Love hasn't yet reached a state of "maximum penetration."

Why would you believe that? Why would you believe in a defective universe when you have the option to believe in a universe so strongly grounded in Divine Love and Divine Forgiveness that God is willing to let you incarnate on Planet Earth so you can learn more about who you really are and how the universe came to be?

Spiritual leaders have been talking about Divine Love as if it isn't already here, as if it isn't already surrounding you every moment of every day, as if its role as a fundamental field underlying all of quantum theory is still in need of some work.

Some spiritual leaders have even been talking about God the Mother and God the Father as if they don't already know who they really are.

Are you freakin' kidding me? Do you honestly believe the vast, multi-layered, infinitely complex universe we live in could possibly stay glued together if God was existing in some sort of psychodynamic fugue state? Do you honestly believe that God, who is already holding together all the underlying quantum fields and particles of the universe through the conscious application of free will, would suddenly decide they need a hefty dose of forgetfulness as a human being?

It's an incredible blessing to be able to trust that God is actually God, not an adolescent narcissist in need of self-actualization.

Despite what you may have been told, the universe is doing just fine, thank you very much. All the I's have been dotted and all the T's have been crossed in the great big Divine history of Love and Forgiveness. We'll continue to explore this history together, and we'll continue to find new ways to express our infinite gratitude to our wondrous Mother and Father for all that they do and all that they are. But the only reason you're here as a human being is because God, Master and Mistress of the science of Creation, know that it's safe for you as a child of God to temporarily incarnate.

You're just here for the history lesson.

LSP9: The Cosmic Web of non-Materialism

Those who reject the idea of a loving, personal God because of the "irrational beliefs" of religion are often shocked to learn that all major world religions in the world today are founded on Materialist science.

Materialism is a belief system about the world -- a major root system -- that throws all its eggs into one basket: the Law of Cause and Effect. In the Materialist world view (whether it's the belief system of a classical physicist, such as Isaac Newton, or the belief system of a Christian theologian, such as Thomas Aquinas) the universe is understood to be built upon a series of unbreakable laws. Break one of these carefully documented laws and the consequences will be swift and harsh.

The philosophy of Karma, which underlies Buddhism and much of Hinduism, is a pure Materialist belief system. Within Christianity and Judaism, the belief in Covenant -- reliance on any sort of "revealed" contract between God and human beings -- is also a pure Materialist belief system.  You can dress up these Cause and Effect beliefs all you want (with Christian grace being a particularly successful form of tree decoration), but, in the end, what you have in all these cases is a philosophy that starts with the assumption that God is stupid.

God is not stupid. And God is not just a bunch of semi-conglomerated universal laws floating around as a big cloud of nothingness, waiting desperately for you -- frail human being that you are -- to figure out how to escape the Materialist laws of Planet Earth and return to your true place as a  . . . as a . . . no-self who is pure Mind. Or pure Truth. Or pure something, anyway, except for the one thing everyone agrees you won't be allowed to be once you're reunited with the Absolute Reality -- which is yourself.

Because you (and I say this facetiously, of course), you, who are a child of God, could not possibly be good enough for God. Because God is so stupid that God only brings inferior, corrupt souls into existence who must struggle and suffer and sin and err and be full of repentance and humility and worship before at last seeing that they themselves are "pure nothing" and only God "IS." So enjoy your suffering while you're here on Planet Earth, because at least you're "you" while you're here! Don't expect to be "you" once you're outta here, 'cause that's a belief system for the weak and stupid who haven't achieved enlightenment!

There's another way of looking at the universe, of course -- one that's much less depressing.

Let's start, for argument's sake, with the theory that God is really smart (in addition to being really loving). Let's start with the theory that God is probably operating at a speed of thought, love, and action that's on the same scale as Planck's Constant, which is rounded off at h=6.626 X 10-34 J.s (a very, very tiny number). And let's assume that God has also probably noticed that, hmmmm, ohhhh, that non-locality (instantaneous communication between two paired particles) is an operative, verifiable force in the universe. And that God realizes only 4 to 5% of the energy in the universe is the stuff we can easily see and touch and measure (i.e. "baryonic matter").  And that God was probably working within the "cosmic web" of dark matter reported this month long, long before we even noticed it was there. 

Is it too much to ask that we trust in the theory of a God who is much, much smarter than we are? Is it too much to believe that a God who lives in a non-Materialist universe probably operates according to non-Materialist principles of science?

As the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus reminds us, it's never a good idea to think you're smarter than God. "Daedalus and Icarus" by Anthony van Dyck, from around 1620, is on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

 

 

 

The lives we live as human beings on Planet Earth are only one small part of a very big picture. Let's start with the truth about non-Materialism as one part of the root system for the Tree of Peace we want to grow while we're here. Let's allow the science -- the very vastness of the science -- to show us more about who God really is.

It's in knowing more about who God really is that we grow closer to God. It doesn't matter to God that we can't understand all the science. God knows we have human limitations!  All that matters is that we give God some credit for their incredible brilliance and that we trust they know what they're doing!

Thanks be to our very smart and loving God!


For Further Reflection:

It can be a real struggle for us to let go of our human ideas about justice and punishment and revenge. But learning to see justice through a non-Materialist lens is an important pathway for learning more about God.

We often don't realize how much time we devote to questions of justice. But if you think about the issues that preoccupy you -- and upset you -- you'll see they frequently relate not just to morality but to justice. We wrestle with it constantly. We fill our newspapers and our religious sermons and our websites and our storybooks and our dinnertime conversations with debates about justice. When we believe the legal system has failed us, we turn ourselves into saviours and warriors of justice. When we believe God has failed us, we turn to other systems of belief, such as atheism or scientism or non-theistic philosophies, to justify our actions and reactions.

The authors of the sacred texts that guide all major world religions have always known this, so at the core of all religions you'll find a body of doctrines that speak authoritatively about justice -- how to decide what's right and what's wrong, how to punish the perpetrators of injustice. While these doctrines often look good on paper, it can often be much harder in real life to navigate the complexities of justice.

The Eastern theory of Karma, a theory which has attracted much interest in the West since philosophers reintroduced it here in the late 19th century, has taken the messy guesswork out of justice by preaching a Materialist doctrine of universal cause and effect. Such a doctrine satisfies the all-too-human desire to see people get their just deserts, if not now then in a future lifetime, when they no longer have access to any of the memories of the harm they created. What could be more delicious than knowing your greatest enemy will one day be punished and won't even know exactly why?

The Materialist model of cause-and-effect justice endorsed by countless human beings bears no resemblance to the understanding of justice held by God or God's angels.

If you asked your angels how they would describe justice, they would reply that justice is a process of learning how to use your own free will wisely (i.e. with love and forgiveness) and learning how to fix (or at least help fix) the mistakes you made before you learned how to use your own free will wisely. In other words, angelic justice is akin to what we humans call "personal responsibility."

In the case of someone like Dr. Alexander, who didn't ask to have a near death experience but was swept into one anyway, his angels would have conferred with God the Mother and God the Father about his life choices. Together they would have decided to show him he hadn't been using his free will wisely and could do better.

The last part -- "and could do better" -- is very important. To an angel, a person who's not trying to be his or her best self, who's not using his or her soul talents in the wisest way possible, who's not listening to his or her own soul, is perpetrating an injustice. So it's time for a learning experience, a chance for this person to take greater personal responsibility for his or her own choices.

But each person is unique. Each person has unique strengths and absences-of-strengths, so the definition of what you can do as a human (i.e. what you can take personal responsibility for) and what you can't do as a human (i.e. what you can't take personal responsibility for) is unique to you. This is what sets Divine justice apart from Materialist justice. Divine justice is based on who you really are as a soul.

Your angels will never ask you to do something you can't actually do. It may feel at times as if they've given you more than you can handle, but that's only because they have more faith in you than you do.

LSP8: It's the Roots, Not the Fruits, That Matter

The key to finding your reconnection to God is to understand how your brain-soul nexus actually works. 

I'm not a big believer in the idea that you can get closer to God by following a lot of fixed rules or rituals. On the other hand, I know that getting closer to God isn't a free-for-all where you can take any path you want and expect to get where you want to go. In fact, despite all the talk from spiritual teachers (including myself) about journeys and pathways, what matters most is not where your feet and hands go, but whether you can grow eyes and ears on your feet and hands.

This is another way of saying that the brain-soul nexus is a strange yet beautiful synthesis of Heart and Mind, Body and Talent, eyes that can hear, ears that can see, and pathways that travel long distances without your ever leaving home.

In this way of understanding your relationship with God, the metaphor of a garden is easiest to understand.You take seeds of knowledge and truth, you plant them this way and that in the little patch of Creation that belongs to you and you alone (your 3D body and brain), and you make choices about which plants to nourish and which plants to discard from your own garden. Eventually, your choices grow from tentative saplings into sturdy trees that control the environment of your garden. This is the years-long process we call "growing up."

The trees you grow in your inner garden depend on your fixed assumptions about life. Everybody has their own set of fixed assumptions. We aren't always consciously aware that we have these fixed assumptions. But we all have them. Our human brains couldn't function otherwise. 

   In your inner garden, you have more control than you realize over the kind of tree you're growing. But as in any beautiful garden, it takes time and hard work and commitment to keep your garden healthy. Don't listen to any spiritual teachers who promise instant fixes. A pine tree worth remembering doesn't grow from a pine cone overnight. Photo credit JAT.

 

From your sets of fixed assumptions grow related thoughts, beliefs, and actions. So these sets look a lot like a tree. The roots of the tree are your fixed starting assumptions, the beliefs you simply won't budge on. The trunk and all the branches grow outward from the unchanging roots. Mostly what you see when you look at the tree are the upward-reaching branches with their bounty of leaves and blossoms and fruits. But without the roots, there would be no branches, no fruits. The root is what matters. To know what kind of tree you're growing, you have to look at the roots.

The metaphor of the tree doesn't apply just to individuals. It also applies to major belief systems, major ideologies. Every religion and every spiritual tradition on Planet Earth is like a tree. Each religion has its own particular set of roots--the core beliefs it won't budge on. From each set of roots, a distinctive tree grows. The tree grown from Pauline Christian roots is not the same as the tree grown from Mahayana Buddhist roots or the tree grown from Native Canadian Algonkian beliefs. These are different trees. They're NOT, as so many people would like to believe today, different branches of the same tree. They are different trees. They're different because they have vastly different roots, vastly differently starting assumptions.

Albert Einstein really hit the nail on the head when he said, "It is the theory which decides what we can observe." This is such an important statement--such an important truth--that it's on my short list of fixed starting assumptions, the beliefs I won't budge on. Einstein's brilliant observation is one of the roots of the tree I'm trying to describe here.

I see in most of the world's religions some lovely leaves and branches (for example, customs related to community healing and life passages) but in trying to reverse-engineer the process of reconnecting to God, I've looked only at the roots of major religious traditions. What I've seen is that major theories about God have been holding people back in their attempts to know God. It's the theories which have decided what they can observe.

All major world religions start with the assumption that your brain and soul are NOT intimately intertwined with each other in a GOOD way. So people spend their whole lives trying to escape from either their "bad" bodies or their "bad" souls or both.

This is exhausting and frustrating and leads to intense disillusionment, and it's no wonder that many people simply give up on the idea of a loving God.   

The honest truth is that if you insist on trying to find God by climbing trees that are covered in the horrible thorns of distrust in God, you're going to get stabbed and cut and covered in painful scars.

Would it surprise you to know that you have the seeds for a strong and vital connection with God--the seeds for a tree of completeness and wellness--right inside your own biology?

It's there because God is a lot smarter than you've been led to believe.


Addendum September 5, 2018: On August 29, 2018, the Pew Research Center (an American think-tank that carries out public polling and analysis on a wide variety of contemporary topics, including religion) published a new analysis that examines religious beliefs and behaviours. The Religious Typology: A New Way to Categorize Americans by Religion finds seven major religious categories from highly religious to non-religious. What distinguishes the seven groups from each other is their root beliefs--their fixed starting assumptions about God, sacred texts, and the afterlife, as well as morality and spiritual practices. The Pew analysis also reveals the links between these root beliefs and such cultural and social choices as political affiliation. For the record, I would place myself in Pew's "Diversely Devout" category.


For Further Reflection:

Once upon a time, a man and woman lived in a wondrous state of completeness and wellness in a garden created on Planet Earth by God. They knew God, and God knew them. The man and the woman were humble before God, because they knew they were children of God, not incarnations of Source itself. But at the same time, the man and the woman were loved by God and trusted by God. In fact, they were loved by God and trusted by God so much that God asked them to help in the great task of caring for all the life that grew and flourished in the garden.

Something about the way in which God had shaped the bodies of the man and the woman gave these children of God a unique skill, a skill not fully granted to any other creature on Planet Earth. It allowed them to see the fruits of two very special trees that grew in the middle of the garden. One was a tree that bore the fruit of life. The other was a tree that grew the fruit of moral knowledge. Each tree had the potential to show the man and the woman one half of God's face, but only half.

After a time, the man and the woman began to notice the fruit of the tree of moral knowledge was easier to pick and easier to eat than the fruit of the tree of life. The tree of knowledge took less time to cultivate. Its fruit came more often and hung lower to the ground. It showed them many hidden things about how to use and manipulate the tools of Creation. With such knowledge and such tools, they didn't need to bother with the slow-flowering tree of life, which gave them useless things, such as tears and love and music. The man and the woman, drunk on fermented knowledge, felt powerful, like gods themselves.

In their impatience, lured by the promise of godhood through knowledge alone, the man and the woman failed to see that, beneath the garden soil, the two trees were intimately joined together through a network of roots and symbiotic spores and energy flowing back and forth along quiet, enduring pathways that wove together all of Creation. The two trees depended on each other, and, in turn, all the other trees of the garden depended on these two for help in staying strong and true no matter the winds that came their way. In this way, even the smallest of trees, anchored by the blessing of life and the blessing of moral knowledge, was able to give shelter to the creatures of earth and air and water.

The man and the woman, certain they had used their unique skill correctly, and unwilling to accept that a network of roots and symbiotic spores could be more important to the health of the garden than their own clever hands and feet, lost their ability to feel the sense of completeness and wellness that had once sustained them. Then they lost their ability to see the garden, though it still existed everywhere around them. And finally they lost their ability to see the face of God.

The unique skill of all human beings remained with them, though, and no one could escape from its double-edged truth as both blessing and curse.

Free will, it is called.

Its story lies at the root of everything we call religion and spirituality.

LSP7: God, Science, and Miracles

I'm pretty tired of reading in my theology texts that nobody can possibly know God so there's no point trying.

What these theologians and philosophers really mean is that nobody they know has successfully met with God by following the spiritual steps dictated by theologians of the past. They assume two things here: (1) the spiritual steps themselves are correct and (2) God can't be known directly by us no matter how hard we try. Too bad, so sad.

From the viewpoint of the scientific method, this approach (this methodology, if you will) falls well short of tenable. If the steps aren't working, then challenge them! Don't just stand there like a blubbering idiot and say you've followed all the steps but they're not working because you're flawed and full of sin. Challenge the steps themselves! Go back and examine the whole procedure with the keen, objective eye of a scientist whose experiment has failed again and again because he's overlooked a flaw in his starting assumptions. Don't assume your starting assumptions are right!

"Astronomy" by Luca Giordano, painted in the mid or late 17th century, not long after Galileo Galilei clashed with the Roman Catholic church about how we should understand the solar system. Galileo, building on the research of earlier scientists, dared to challenge the church's starting assumptions and paid a price for trusting that God is smarter about the laws of physics than any human being. This painting is on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

I can say this now with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but I still remember how hard it was to challenge lifelong assumptions. I have great empathy for anyone trying to do this. I know how painful it can be!  Nonetheless, it has to be done whether you're taking the "hard way" or the "easy way" on the Spiral Path that slowly wends its way towards full relationship with God. Your wanting to challenge old assumptions is a necessary beginning.

Being in relationship with God isn't as difficult as you've been led to believe. Basically, it's the same as being in a full, healthy, mature relationship with anybody who's important to you--your parents, your children, your best friends (though NOT your lover). To have a mature relationship with anyone (a relationship founded on mutual understanding, love, respect, and trust) you first have to be willing to know who the other person is. Who the other person really is. Not the myth of the other person. Or the lies told about him/her. Just the honest truth about who the other person is--his/her talents, strengths, absences of strength, sense of purpose, sense of humour, past history, sources of grief, and sources of infinite joy.

To truly know another person--including God the Mother and God the Father (who are two different people)--you can't simply make stuff up. You can't invent myths and lies about them to suit yourself. You have to listen to them. You have to quietly and respectfully listen to who they really are, to what they're saying directly to you.

Western Christian orthodoxy has tried to co-opt this idea by reverently talking about God's continuing self-revelation, but they've insisted on putting a huge wall around God, and have allowed through only a tiny trickle of truth about who God really is.

One thing I can tell you about God the Mother and God the Father is that both of them love science.  Just love it. They're both big-time science geeks.

Now, I'm not saying they only "do science" and nothing else, because this wouldn't be true. (They're both polymaths, in fact, with talents in every field you can imagine). But if you really want to get to know our blessed, beloved Mother and Father, you have to allow science and faith to be on the same page at the same time. You can't reject science as a valid path to knowing God.

This means you also can't reject the validity of non-Materialism, which is the study of science as it really is, not the study of science as you've been taught.

This is a complicated way of saying that you can be a highly educated person who loves science and still have a scientific basis to believe in miracles.

Really.


For Further Reflection:

How do you get to know someone you've never seen with your own eyes or heard with your own ears? Our first reaction is to say it's impossible. We can't do it. We shouldn't even waste our time trying.

But one of the best parts of being human is our constant need to reach out to know more about people we've never met but whose lives have shaped our own.

We do this every time we pick up a book. Chances are we've never met the author, never seen the author with our own eyes, never heard the author's actual voice. Yet, by the time we finish the book, we have a strong sense of who the author is as a person: his or her interests, talents, quirks, assumptions, prejudices, burning passions, and so on.

We do this every time we walk through a museum or an art gallery or a building with historical roots. We experience the creations of people we've never met, and through their creations we come to know something about their hearts and minds.

We do this every time we softly rock our newborn infants to sleep with gentle cooing and sweet lullabies. We feel the deep power of love, and for the first time we understand something unexpected about our own parents, and their parents before them. We realize that all the words we used before this perfect moment fell short because love isn't words. It's relationships.

Everything around you--everything you learn as a human being on Planet Earth--holds within it multiple layers of observation and communication and memory about who God is and how the universe unfolded. The more you pay attention to the world around you--the more you open your Heart to the feelings that move in earth and sky and water--the more you'll come to know the authors and artists and scientists and parents who are our extraordinary Mother and Father.

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.

LSP3: An Angel Feast

"An angel feast." This is what I wrote at the top of page 100 in Proof of Heaven. (I'm always making notes as I read, which is why I buy books rather than borrowing them from the library or studying them in digital format.)

Dr. Alexander's story about visiting Heaven isn't just about himself. It's also about his family and friends, all of whom were changed by his unique journey. You could say, in a way, that Dr. Alexander was a pilgrim who took an unexpected trip to a land few visit during their human lifetimes. When he returned, he brought with him Divine seeds that were sort of like pilgrimage souvenirs. These seeds of knowledge and truth became freely available to others to plant within their own Hearts if they so chose.

So in Proof of Heaven, page 100 describes events that were unfolding for Dr. Alexander's family and friends. They had spent five frightening days at the hospital as they tried to care for him and each other. Everyone's nerves were frayed, and three people (first Phyllis, then Sylvia and Peggy) decided to go back to Dr. Alexander's family home for a rest. At this point, Sylvia discovered that someone had left the freezer door open in the basement, and food had started to thaw. A puddle of melt water had already formed on the floor.

This puddle on the floor was the angels' invitation to a feast.

Faced with this new problem, the three women at the house had to choose between one of two paths that constantly confront us.

The first path (the usual, heavily travelled path) is to fall into patterns of blame and shame: "Who left the freezer door open? It's all your fault! What a waste of money! We don't have time to go to the grocery store to replace all this food! This is so unfair! Why is all this happening to us? God doesn't care about us. If God cared, he wouldn't have let this happen when we're so weary and full of despair! Doesn't he know we can't take this kind of stress? Why is he letting us suffer this way? It's not fair!"

Don't try to carry the weight of the heavens on your shoulders. That's God's job! This covered cup, showing Heracles supporting the heavenly sphere, was made in about 1630--1640, probably in Germany. It's on display as part of the Kenneth Thomson collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

The second path (the less common and more poorly understood path) is to see the potential for healing: "We're all heartsick and worried. It's all right for us to feel this way. It's normal!  But the truth is, we can't do this alone. We all need each other. We need to be together. We need to look after each other. And we need to look after ourselves. There's no point pretending we're superheroes who can go for five days without a rest. Let's stop for a short rest. We'll cook the food that's already thawed, and we'll invite our family to be together, and we'll even go to the store and buy some fresh bread because we all need a good meal and a chance to recharge our batteries together! We trust God to look after Eben while we're here. This is the right thing to do!"

As we know from the book, Dr. Alexander's loved ones chose the second path.

Being in daily relationship with God means learning how to think as an angel does (that is, as a person-of-soul, a term I often use for angels). It doesn't mean acting the right way according to a traditional set of Divine Laws (orthopraxy), and it doesn't mean having right faith in a traditional set of Divine Doctrines (orthodoxy). Being in daily relationship with God means you're willing to look for the invitations from God that are all around you every day. It means you're willing to see the blessing in a puddle of water on the floor.

A puddle on the floor that brings a heartbroken family together has more meaning to God and God's angels than all the "blame and shame" words written by history's many prophets.

Here is what I've learned as I've walked the Spiral Path: When all you see around you is lemons, ask for help in seeing the hidden lemonade your angels can see (even when it seems impossible that such lemonade could exist). It's always there. Always.


For Further Reflection:

Think about all the religious and spiritual traditions you've learned about so far in your life. If you could boil down each set of teachings to its essential image of God, would you find examples of Path #1 (where difficult situations are seen as punishments from God or the Universe) or would you find examples of Path #2 (where trials and tribulations are seen as opportunities for change, growth, and learning)?

Most spiritual seekers have no idea that it's the image of God they have in their heads that has the greatest effect on the direction of their path.

The second greatest factor is the image people have in their heads of themselves (that is, how they view the essence of their own core self, which is the soul).

If you have a negative image of God and a negative image of yourself, you'll always see the worst in every situation, and you'll spend a heck of a lot of time on Path #1.

If you have a negative image of God and a positive image of yourself, or a positive image of God and a negative image of yourself, you're again going to have a heck of a time.

It's only when you have a positive image of both God and your own soul that you'll be able to learn how to find Path #2 in your life, and, more importantly, how to stay consistently on the path where lemons become lemonade.

Though you may assume that all major world religions and all popular spiritual teachings already profess a positive image of both God and the soul, you'll find after careful reflection that few of them do.

This is why so many people in so many places have had such a difficult time reconnecting with God.

They're looking for God in all the wrong places.