Category Archives: Applied Mysticism/Practical Idealism

Wholeness as the Pivot Point of Change

Let me keep this simple. Unless a person who seeks to be the change in the world he or she wants to see (pursuant to Gandhi’s admonition) slips out of and beyond his or her ego, he or she will fail to participate in a true change. The ego is a master of disguises. To change from one ego-disguise to another is no change. For the world to outgrow violence as a norm and instead enter into a phase devoted to healing the wounds of past violence as a new norm, individually and collectively we all must become humble, ego-free healers.

Beyond the phase of healing awaits the phase in which no harm is ever done that requires healing. To reach that harmless phase, we must undo the harm that our harming stage has done. To pivot away from ego requires what we pivot out of the ego’s closed system of thinking to enter into the only true alternative — open-mindedness to all creative possibilities. Wholeness offers us the pivot point around which to turn all of the ego’s ways of thinking on their heads and emerge beyond ego as if we’ve entered into and passed beyond the worm hole into a whole new universe of grand options that set us free to be more than ego wants or believes we can be. Freedom frightens the ego. Freedom wisely lived requires no ego and thus no longer lets fear of change hold us back. Only then can we become the change in the world our hearts desire but our egos fear.

Phase 2 is upon us. We either elect to participate in Phase 2 as one of the healers of the harm done in Phase 1 or we remain a participant in Phase 1. Any attempt to remain loyal to the ego while claiming to do no harm is the cover-up of codependency and enabling that the ego employs to perpetuate its reign of terror. “Oh,” you may say, “but I’m a helpful person who never harms anyone.” Perhaps you truly are. Perhaps you truly intend to be but do not yet realize how your best intentions remain unfulfilled. It is more likely than not that you are allowing your ego to fool yourself into believing you are doing no harm while it’s not true. Do I sound too harsh and unkind to you? Please forgive me if I seem that way. In actuality, all I’m inviting you to do is move beyond the mistakes I made as a co-dependent enabler who failed to realize that my ego was still in charge of my heart and mind and running me in circles like a fool.

Despite the fact that I once desperately wanted to never be a fool, I was one. It was much more obvious to others than it was to myself, but that’s how the ego operates. It makes you look like a fool to others so that they in their own ego-oriented foolishness can comment upon, judge and find fault with your foolishness rather than see and address their own. It serves the ego’s purpose to make each of us look like a fool to others of us. It serve the ego’s goal of perpetuating itself to generate controversy among us and set us to judging one another instead of seeing the ego at work behind the scenes. The ego achieves this ego-perpetuating status quo by convincing each of us to adopt one of its contrasting sets of values as “ours” and set ourselves apart from “others” by virtue of our chosen set of values. Sets of values that contrast with one another establish the basis for on-going, continuous conflicts, discussions to resolve conflicts and all out battles when discussions fail to resolve them. The ego does not want our conflicts resolved. So, my ego will do everything it can to justify my claiming the superiority of my set of values over contrasting sets of value and my unwillingness to see things through the eyes of others whose sets of values differ from mine.

Sets of values may in fact differ for a variety of reasons. But if the reason is not focused with clarity upon the role of ego in perpetuating conflicts and correspondingly upon the means by which we may rise beyond ego, then the sets of values conflict only in relatively superficial ways. Superficial differences among sets of values have historically been sufficient to justify all levels of conflict, including wars. That one group may raise three fingers while pronouncing a blessing while another group raises two fingers is nonsensically superficial. Other superficial differences that have seemingly justified violence by one group upon another may not be as obviously superficial and foolish, but they are. People who allow their egos to be in charge of their decisions resort to a wide variety of excuses for identifying other people as enemies upon whom the infliction of violence is seen as fully justified, even reasonable.

Wholeness is the alternative to the ego. That is why wholeness is the necessary, pivotal component of any path by which a person who seeks to be the change in the world he or she wants to see achieves that goal rather than remains trapped within the ego’s conflict-perpetuating worldwide status quo. A person must be willing to become aware of his or her wholeness and devoted to its nurture and perpetuation in order to stop participating in the perpetuation of ego-generated harm. Wholeness is health. Devotion to the nurture and perpetuation of wholeness in ourselves and others is healing. Without wholeness neither health (Phase 3) as a goal nor healing (Phase 2) as an interim path to that goal is possible. Why? Because the ego will successfully resist healing and health and preserve the status quo of ill-health and harmfulness in order to preserve itself as essential to the person’s sense of personal safety and personal identity.

We who have been raised in an ego-oriented society to believe ego to be our identity are like fish who have been swimming in water without being aware of the water. The only reason I become aware of the water is there came to be a time in my life when I felt like a fish out of water. Amid the discomfort of flopping around and suffocating on the shore, I awoke to the realization that my ego was not my true identity. On that shore, my ego died and yet I, the true me, was still alive. In that phase of my life, I suffered an acute identity crisis. If my ego is not I, then who am I? I spent several years on a quest for the answer to this amazing question I’d previously failed to ask. Who am I?

Early in my quest for answers to this pressing question, I was introduced to a work called A Course In Miracles. I devoted myself to studying this course with more diligence than I’d ever studied before. I had been a fairly good student of other areas of study in my past. This area of study motivated me like none had previously motivated me. In the past I studied other subjects to please others, not expose myself to the shame of public failure and achieve academic expectations and benchmarks set by others. In studying A Course In Miracles, I studied and applied what I learned for reasons far more personal to me, from motivations that arose from within me, as if Life itself called me to succeed. Through this process I awakened to and gradually accepted my true identity and discovered many answers as well as many continuingly unanswered questions. I learned to live by faith in the presence of the Mystery of the Divine, including of my own identity within the Divine.

Above and beyond all else that has motivated me have been the experiences of peace, hope, joy and love that my ego never allowed me to encounter and enjoy. On account of those experiences alone, and not for any argumentative reasons, do I now encourage you to enter upon your own quest for your identity beyond the ego and the path that will take you through Phase 2 into Phase 3 as you emerge to yourself and others as a whole person rather than remain disguised behind the masks and entrapped behind the walls of your false identity of ego. If you feel so called, come forth to join me and others in the realm beyond ego of which Rumi wrote when he penned,

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”

Let me here share a snapshot of my own version of that truth in the form of an illustration I invite you to contemplate for its value to you as your inner voice of Spirit counsels you to do. More about this topic is available by clicking on the Heartbook tab on the menu.

For more encouragement from Rumi as a source of inspiration and wisdom, visit http://launchyourgenius.com/2014/08/04/rumi/.

For more encouragement to understand how to use your own path of faith to grow beyond the ego’s confining definition of your past, present and future, make it a point to enter into your own personal quest for answers to the pressing question “Who am I?” Our human race will not develop beyond its current adolescent stage until each of us asks this riddle of the Universe and learns to listen to the answer we receive within our hearts and minds. I would be honored to encourage you to find deepest satisfaction in your quest.

Free Will – What Is It, How Does It Work?

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Free will has challenged human beings since the beginning of time. In fact, mystics say that we used free will to create the illusion of time in the first place. What is free will? How does it work? These are two questions vital to the welfare of humankind in an age when power expressed as force is running amok around the globe destroying much of life. Is such violent disregard for life an exercise of our individual and collective free will?

To keep it simple, let’s consider “free will” to be one of the features of humans that distinguishes us from other life forms. A sign of this distinction is that we function with a consciousness of time. No other life form has perfected the art of “telling time” as we have. Agates, asteroids, asters, apples, anthrax, amoebas, anemones, anacondas, aardvarks, antelopes and apes do not schedule their lives by the clock even though some do order their activities based on the effect of the sun as the earth rotates. They live in relationship to such conditions naturally without concern for predicting them or controlling them. They’ve found no need or ability to invent sun dials and other handier timepieces until they arrive at a precision pegged on the periodic motion of atoms. We have chosen to do so as no mineral, plant or animal has. Our power to make such choices and carry them out can be called “free will.”

Free will is a power. We sometimes call it “willpower.” We can choose intentionally to fix our wills upon a goal with such determination and discipline that it appears we’ve lost our freedom to choose otherwise. Yet, the truth is that we remain free to choose to focus our determination and capacity for discipline differently if we conclude that the first exercise of our focus and capacity is not achieving the goal we seek and decide to take another approach. “Deciding” is an aspect of our free will. All we need to do to “free” it again is to realize what we’ve focused it on one goal and can nevertheless, despite every argument to the contrary, change our focus if we want to.

Yes, if we “want” to. The exercise of our free will is heavily influenced if not totally dictated by what we “want” to happen or “want” to be true. That’s why it’s important to be aware of what we truly are “wanting” in order to be truly free to exercise our will. Most of us do not remain fully or even partially aware of what we “want” and allow our buried desires to take control of our wills and establish our life’s direction and destiny – even our demise. Beneath the destructive forces now at work around the globe is a desire to do or die. We are choosing death over life, more freely than we realize. We may have become unaware of the origin of our choice to “do or die” but we’ve made it. It remains there for us to choose differently if we want to choose differently. Do you “want” to choose to violate the norms of our violence-prone society and create for yourself and others who choose with you a society based on peace and love instead? You can if you truly want to.

Our “wanting” is the same as our “heart’s desires.” What are your heart’s desires? If what’s happening in your life is not in line with your deepest heart’s desires, why not? What other desires or “wants” have taken over your will to make it seem less than free? Why might you have unwittingly joined in the collective decision to “do or die” instead of to “do and live?” Why might you be willing to throw out the baby of life with the bathwater in order to achieve a death that vindicates your belief, opinion or perspective about anything? About what topic would you prefer to die instead of admit you might be mistaken and could, if you wanted to, change your mind?

I’ve asked key questions. Now, I want (yes, want and as an exercise of my free will) to share with you a perspective that has helped me decide to participate in the peace-and-love-prone alternative to a violence-and-hate-prone society. What I learned that helped me to change my mind arises from our understanding of the process of grieving. I learned that many of our decisions are influenced by our emotions and that we think we “want” what we’re in the mood for. I learned by experience that it’s not always wise and healthy to opt for what I’m in the mood for. Moods offer poor guidance for free will.

Grief is a process. The process of grief takes us stage by stage from the pain of being hurt in some manner to the release of that pain and a life beyond that pain. How these stages may progress in your life may differ from the pattern in my life. But, let’s consider how universal it is that grief begins with anger and resolves itself in peace if we allow all of our stages of grieving to function fully. The grieving process starts with the emotion of anger and winds up at the emotion of peace if we let it arrive there and don’t insist on remaining angry or sad (depressed) along the way. Our heart’s desires are influenced by the emotional state we are in. I suggest that being in an early stage of grief allows anger to dominate our “wants” and our wills and sets the stage for revenge-stoked violence to be our choice. That’s why I have learned the wisdom of not making important choices when I am in a HALT mode: Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. When in these mood-modes, it’s wise to wait and allow the mood to pass before exercising my will. Otherwise my will is not as “free” as I would want it to be. (Yes, I do “want” to learn to exercise “free” will, not some form of imprisoned or compromised will.)

I invite you to observe reports of violence for a while and to notice how many acts of violence occur under the influence of anger and/or fear. How many occur while the person who acts violently is still heavily influenced by the motive of revenge? Anger is an emotion that barely hints at the level of pain that a person is carrying around inside from encounters with pain from the past. Unhealed emotional pain is the same as unresolved grief. The “desire” to have revenge or “settle the score” is a symptom of unhealed, internalized pain, even when it may be called “justice.” As the saying goes, “an eye for an eye makes us all blind.” We are in grave danger of being blinded by the violence awash in the world and unable to see our way clear of it. But there is an alternative to blind rage and anger-clouded vision. We can see our way clear if we’ll take the time to grieve, resolve the painful issues of our past and present lives and then move forward together in peace. We can build lasting peace, not merely intermittent truces, through such patient processing of our collective and individual griefs.

Are you willing to step back from the frenetic pace of your life and grieve sufficiently so that your heart’s burdens of pain are resolved and you rise up with fresh energy to help build peace on earth among all peoples of good will? Good will is free will. All human beings are good people at heart. In the depth of our hearts we can find the common ground upon which to build lasting peace. We can find by faith that this common ground is there because the Creator of us all put it there. But to see and stand together upon such holy common ground we must be willing to be determined to acquire, honor and relentlessly use the habits of grieving needed to keep our visions clear and our minds focused on peace instead of focused on justifying anger.

We can “do” peace and live together in it. We need not allow hidden griefs and motives of revenge to dominate and imprison our hearts and minds – or our wills – as if we have no other choice. We do have another choice, a healthier and more promising one. I hope what I’ve written here helps us to see it and to make it. We can choose unifying humility in preference to divisive pride and shame. We need not proudly fight to our deaths over things that matter little in comparison to love’s simpler, more highly valued features and benefits over which no one needs to fight because they are universally available for free. We need not shame, blame or guilt-trip ourselves or others for our decisions or theirs. We can seek to understand by compassion’s perspective “There but by the grace of God go I.”

Many people who advocate on behalf of violence as a solution to human conflicts and confrontations (including to protect innocent defenseless people or in self-defense) have endured trauma in their past, sometimes trauma too severe to imagine if one has not been exposed to it personally. What I write here in no way denies or minimizes the pain that traumatized people have endured or continue to carry as ongoing suffering. I know that I’ve been fortunate to experience only moderate levels of emotional pain. I do not know by personal experience the fuller intensity of pain and suffering. Yet, I continue to advocate on behalf of grieving as the way to heal even the most severe pain and to relieve suffering that otherwise occurs when ungrieved emotional pain is allowed to take root unaddressed, often unnoticed as an underlying theme so prevalent as to be taken for granted as one of life’s unavoidable and permanent conditions.

Ungrieved pain is generating havoc around the world, nearby in our own homes and neighborhoods and far away in the homes and neighborhoods of other members of the human race. My heart’s desire is to help stop this havoc and chaotic, misplaced reliance on inflicting more pain as a response to pain. It’s time to see through the clouds of pain and dust storms of suffering that anyone who acts out violently, even with the full sanction of his or her social institutions, is acting out of unresolved pain. Our social institutions that rely upon punishment to control other people’s actions or impose guilt and shame as a “consequence” of violating those institutions’ rules, roles and rituals are contributing to the overarching pattern of violence that threatens to end the human race. While it is true that we must not deny or minimize pain, we must also not justify inflicting it is as if it is an essential part of the solution. It is a symptom of the problem of emotional unhealthiness we must all address more effectively together. Inflicting more pain and suffering in response to existing pain and suffering is totally counterproductive.

It is my intention to encourage us all to address this unhealthy condition in societies around the world by promoting the mastery of the grief-relief process in place of the grief-infliction process. Too many of our rules, roles and rituals perpetuate grief and pass it along generation to generation, person to person, group to group and humanity to our ecosystem (animals, plants and minerals). Let’s us experiment together instead with the process of relief and see the miracles that peace beyond anger and depression will bring.

Longer explanations of free will have been written by many superb thinkers. If you want to read examples of such works, check out Rollo May’s books entitled Love and Will and Freedom and Destiny. You’ll find great value in focusing your mind on these books and others like them. To do so would be an exercise of your own free will in a nonviolent way. My shorter discussion of free will is not alone sufficient to bring it all home to your heart. If it gets the ball rolling, please keep this ball of healing energy flowing freely within your life as you cultivate your own motivation for learning more about the process of relief called “grieving.” There is no more promising way to exercise your free will than to learn that it’s simply not true that “Big boys don’t cry” or that tears are a sign of weakness. Emotionally unhealthy boys, girls, men and women don’t cry. Ones with tender hearts, reasoning minds and good wills do. Please don’t be ashamed to be one of us.

Which Arms Race Do You Choose to Enter?

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Once again it is evident that those who profit from manufacturing and marketing military weapons continue to engage in propaganda urging US taxpayers to foot the bill for their luxury lifestyles. (Those who pay directly or indirectly for governments around the world are also roped in by this global propaganda machine underwritten by multinational corporations who are more loyal to fattening their own bank accounts and indulging in conspicuous consumption as global playboys and playgirls than they are to any nation or peoples beyond their immediate families.) The main theme of such propaganda is the “arms race.” According this propaganda, we are always at the mercy of hostile nations and unruly hostile non-nations acting on their own. Threats from all sides seem to justify arming ourselves to the teeth. Add to that the seeming threats from within our own borders attributed to criminals, terrorists and general crazies and we have the makings an endless arms race from which no one escapes but a few definitely profit. It’s a bonus to the profit-makers that many US citizens have decided that the only adequate response to this growing perception of apparent hostility from others outside and inside our borders is to arm themselves with weapons supplied by the same arms industry. Ah, the profitability of fear!

Are you and I powerless in the face of this arms race that sucks resources from our pockets as relentlessly as lampreys suck life from lake trout and leeches suck blood from any animal to which they can attach themselves? Are we at the mercy of these profit-making vampires who own and operate major media sources so as to keep their propaganda ever before us? Do we have no choice but to be taken in by the propaganda and participate as unsuspecting or suspicious but compliant dupes and funders of the excesses of those who profit from this arms race?

Not necessarily. First we can decide to disregard the propaganda that tells us that the world is entirely hostile towards the US and that we have no choice but to arm ourselves with a succession of soon-to-be-obsolete weapons in an endless race towards the wars we cannot avoid. The inevitability of war is assumed by the propaganda and the only issue presented is how well prepared will we be to win that war. Few of us want to go down in defeat. So, if one assumes that war is inevitable, most of us will join the cry for increased preparedness at any cost. Yet, we don’t have to believe that assumption or buy into the propaganda. We can choose to participate in an alternative arms race instead.

What might that alternative arms race look like? It would look like neighbors opening their arms to each other and reaching around the globe to welcome strangers as neighbors in our global village. We can ignore the doomsayers and act as if we have a better future based on peace and good will shared by good-natured, reasoning people who populate the globe with values and priorities akin to our own. We can assume not hostility but instead common ground in our shared hearts’ desires to raise children in healthy conditions and share life with loved ones in stability and harmony without fear of losses inflicted by hostile forces prepared only to spread violence like an epidemic throughout the human race.

We could engage in a race into each other’s arms if only we trusted each other more than feared each other. Are we willing to take that risk? Might we set aside our xenophobia and reach out to each other as if we might find friends instead of enemies? What do we have to lose? The military version of the arms race dooms all of us. All we have to lose by taking the risk of embracing each other as neighbors instead of as hostile strangers is doom. Might it make sense to you and I to forsake doom in exchange for embracing peace and the freedom to share the globe with good will?

How will we ever find the courage to take such a risk in the face of pressures to believe the propaganda and stand apart in fear? I suggest our courage will come from our faith that there’s a power greater than the arms merchants and their minions, a Power that will aid our alternative arms race. If we race into the arms of the Creator who loves us, we will discover divinely inspired courage within our hearts and God’s corresponding wisdom to make our dreams of peace on earth among people of good will a reality even in the face of contrary arguments proposed by distributors of death. All we need to do is to decide to be customers of the Distributor of Life who charges us nothing for receiving all we can open ourselves to receive of life. It costs us nothing but our egos to open our hearts and minds to the Source of Life and receive in abundance all that the Source generously offers to share with us. Is humility too great a price for peace on earth?

I hope that anyone who prefers life over death and love over fear will consider joining me in the alternative arms race into the loving arms of God and the people who say “Amen” to God in whatever language they choose to say it. God is great in any language spoken around the world by people of all faiths in a God who wills that the human race enjoy being surrounded and filled with love and allowed to live into the fullness of time as Eternity’s children.

Has Christianity Functioned as an Invasive Species?

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The habitat of the lionfish used to be limited to warm parts of the Pacific Ocean but now lionfish have begun to occupy reef marine communities in warm Atlantic waters too. It is likely that humans introduced the lionfish to these waters by releasing them as no longer-wanted pets. In the absence of natural predators for lionfish in Atlantic waters, the lionfish population in Caribbean waters has grown unchecked. Since lionfish prey upon the young fish of other species, populations of native species in these reef communities have inevitably declined as lionfish consume their young and wipe out future breeders. In this manner, lionfish have functioned as a typical invasive species to reduce populations of native species by their predatory actions. Lionfish have no interest in preserving native populations when those populations feed their appetites.

Christians used to live in certain parts of the European continent where they identified themselves with the empire-building practices of the Roman Empire and used their religious beliefs to justify conquest of other people and their lands when the resources and peoples of conquered populations fed Europeans’ appetites for pleasure and for power. Many Europeans who traveled to the continent of North America to occupy what they claimed to be vacant lands brought their version of Christianity’s attitudes, beliefs and conquest-justify orientation with them to justify taking the lands occupied by indigenous members of the human race away from these native populations.

In the process of insuring that native populations (called tribes) would not resist the empire-building of European Christians, the European Christians removed the young of native tribes to teach them in schools away from their families and native traditions. They taught them a Western language, Westernized modern values and Westernized thinking to replace and wipe out the native language and rich heritage these young would otherwise have acquired from their tribal elders. As a result, the population of native tribes declined as their young became consumed by Western values and identified with Western lifestyles. The reefs that previously covered the continent where native tribes once thrived shrank into tiny remnants of the lowest quality lands least desired by the European conquerors. Today those shrunken reefs are more commonly known as “reservations.” They function as a patchwork of impoverished sanctuaries for the endangered indigenous members of the human race who occupied the North American continent before the arrival of Europeans.

There are parallels at work here. Do these parallels demonstrate the invasive and parasitic nature of the form of Christianity that Europeans exported to the North American continent? In the process of this exploitative exporting of toxic distortions of Jesus’ teachings, what happened to his teachings about how those with greater power should treat those with less power? With their superior weaponry and access to continent-spanning communications and transportation systems, were not the Europeans the more powerful? But which espoused true wisdom – the version of Christianity exported to the North American continent or the spirituality of the native populations? Centuries have passed. The evidence is now in. European values and methods have exploited the lands and waters and air as no native population has had the means, heart or will to exploit. We have become a nation rich on material terms and impoverished on wisdom’s terms.

Perhaps it is time for those who have subscribed to the justifications of modern Christianity to repent and turn away from their traditions as their ancestors once demanded that Native Americans turn away from their native traditions. Perhaps it is time for all who have subscribed voluntarily or involuntarily to the language and mindset of domination, conquest and exploitation to repent and learn the language and the practices of Jesus, the language and practices of divine love shared among the peoples of the Earth about which Jesus spoke and according to which he lived while in an earthly form. Beyond his earthly form, Jesus continues to call us to turn aside from the ways of the world, take off our shoes when we are on holy ground and listen to the voice that spoke to Moses from the burning bush. It is the same voice Jesus heard while in the wilderness and invites us today to hear by the power of the Holy Spirit blazing in our hearts.

Could it be that Jesus is so invested in the welfare of the whole human race (and every member of us) that he calls for each and all of us to stop doing unto others what has been done unto us and turn away to do unto others what we prefer from the depths of our hearts be done to us instead? Might we reverse the tides of toxic relationships that are washing across our lands if we were each to become totally committed to allowing the Holy Spirit to detoxify our own hearts and minds and to supporting each other in doing likewise? Could that be Jesus’ plan for ending the suffering we otherwise inflict upon ourselves and others in self-condemnation on account of our buried guilt and shame? Let us hear and honor by word and deed the message “Neither do I condemn you” as we turn away from our stony hearts and instead listen to the stories our hearts yearn to share about the love we want to dare and the miraculous ways we want to care.

Trump or Triumph?

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Let us be grateful to Donald Trump for his exaggerated display of the political option. Maestro Trump magnifies what is true of all politicians – that each seeks to cater to a slice of voters by matching the voters’ prejudices and playing on their fears. Lincoln said it this way, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Recognizing this wisdom, political candidates generally seek to cater to a collection of slices of the voters who remain fooled long enough to vote the candidates into office. After the election, the need to keep the slices fooled diminishes.

Relying upon the shortness of voters’ memories and their lack of attention to issues that really matter, when the next election cycle comes around, politicians can engage in the same process all over again. Being caught in their irrational incongruities (sometimes referred to as “hypocrisy”) rarely deprives a candidate of office. (A scandal that the media finds juicy and marketable may deprive a candidate of office, but not hypocrisy, which is so commonplace as to merit little media attention.) In fact, being an accomplished juggler of inconsistencies often merits ascension to a higher office. We can be grateful to Mr. Trump for not making much of an effort to conceal his contempt for voters who actually try to think about deeper issues that matter and remain determined to build upon their understanding from election to election rather than remain focused on superficial issues and reboot their thinking each election cycle. Such thoughtful voters may be too tiny a minority to sway any election.

Is there an alternative to candidates’ trying to out Trump each other? Yes, but it’s not a political alternative. It won’t get a candidate elected to office. It’s more likely to get him or her scorned, ostracized and crucified as it did Jesus. The true alternative to Trump is Triumph. The small difference of two letters and the hugely significant qualities they stand for make all the difference in the world towards which each candidate leads. The spiral of Trumping and overtrumping leads followers into a ditch down one side or the other of the slippery slope of self-deception. These ditches are mirror images of each other, more similar than dissimilar. They represent the lower reaches of humanity’s decline, the lowest common denominator upon which fractions can be added to achieve temporary political alliances and win elections. “On which side do you stand?” is the politician’s primary question in wooing voters. “Into which ditch do you want to head with me in opposition to the ‘others?’” would be a more candid way to put the question, but candidates rarely are that candid.

The alternative Jesus presents heads in triumph along the high ridge formed by a chain of mountaintops beyond the downward sliding world of politics where “others” oppose each other to gain the power in an “us” vs. “them” worldview. In the mountaintop perspective of mystics (among who Jesus is a prime example), all humanity is one, not composed of oppositional factions but unified by truth and love as one divine family. Jesus lived the mystic’s alternative in which he believed and demonstrated the nature of its power to comfort, heal and bless everyone inclusively as each person chooses to repent of the politically oriented power-grabbing of his or her ego and surrenders instead to the power of God’s grace, mercy and love. As individuals lay their issues at the feet of Jesus, he accepts them as sisters and brothers regardless of what lifestyle they may have led before deciding to put their faith in him. In response to their repentance and surrender, he gives them new life beyond the ego’s false idols and substitutions for life as God created Life. What Jesus gives he gives from the Father from whom all good gifts come. Jesus shares generously all that he has received from the Father of us all. What politician offers that resolution to the issues that plague humanity with divisive violence and grief?

The “i” missing from Trump stands for “integrity,” a quality of life that embraces wholeness of person and shalom of heart and mind. This quality Jesus embodied and offers even now to help each of us embody. The “h” missing from Trump stands for “humility” and “honesty,” two qualities absent from the ego’s orientation and an anathema to political success. Humility coupled with honesty would require that most candidates simply withdraw from attempts to win voter approval to be a leader. It would require admitting that neither humility or honesty is popular among the masses and will not win votes. Voters tend to prefer leaders who are committed to arrogance and ignorance instead so that voters might be confirmed in their similar commitments. It is so much more convenient to formulate off-the-cuff opinions and vote according to them based on ignorance than to do the homework necessary to generate a deeper understanding and vote according to it. It is also more convenient to copy the answers off of another’s answer sheet, especially from one who seems to have the approval of the crowds, than to formulate an answer after much inner scrutiny and self-examination to identify and release internalized prejudices and fears that otherwise sway our choices.

Let us be grateful to Mr. Trump for clarifying just how lacking in integrity, humility and honesty we prefer our political candidates and the political process to be. We no more want a leader who holds us up to high expectations and ideals than we want Jesus to be Lord of our lives. Let us admit that we prefer to be rescued time after time from our individual and collective social follies as we hope Jesus will save us time after time from our spiritual ones. Who among us wants the burden of integrity, humility and honesty thrust upon us all the time? If one takes such ideals seriously, one becomes exceedingly unpopular in a world driven mad by ego’s internal conflicts and insatiable cravings. Who wants to take seriously the notion that to be great one must serve in humble positions and care about the powerless and weak at least as much if not more than about the socially elitist powerful? Who really wants to be assassinated like Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi because we held ourselves to higher ideals of excellence in service to the masses than the masses can tolerate considering for ourselves?

Let us be kind to Mr. Trump. He is serving God’s grand purpose to remind us that there is a clear choice to be made between ego and God. The ego darkens our lives with insane ideas that eventually reveal themselves to be absurd. God enlightens our lives with the only true alternative of sanity so that the truth might set us free. Mr. Trump is doing us all a favor by publically displaying the extreme limits of absurdity and insanity so that we not mistake the political race for the race of which a devoted disciple of Jesus wrote long ago as recorded in 2 Timothy 7-8: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”

Let us long not for Mr. Trump’s or any political candidate’s appearing but rather for Jesus to return as Lord to rule the Earth with love and cause mercy and justice to roll down from the heights of Divine Glory to satisfy all who hunger and thirst after righteousness as God defines the term. In doing so, let us also be open minded about the meaning of that term and not claim to tell others what God means by it. We may all be surprised to witness what it means when God thanks Mr. Trump for his bumbling service as a contrast to Jesus’ Triumph. If God did not work through imperfect instruments and have a sense of humor coupled with all-prevailing grace, which of us could claim to serve Him/Her or have any hope of heaven?

Going Beyond Out of Our Way

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“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” T. S. Eliot

When you go out of your way to care for another person, is it possible to go too far? How might you know that “too far” is? If it’s inconvenient to go out of your way for another person, is convenience the limit and inconvenience where you draw the line? What is it OK to risk when you go out of your way for another person and what is too much to risk? Let’s agree that love calls us to take risks in caring for others. Let’s agree that it’s not always convenient to care for another person as love calls us to care and that there will be times when it’s right in love’s eyes to go beyond convenience and extend ourselves into come degree of inconvenience.

Let’s examine the limit to which love calls us to go and acknowledge love’s power to call us to go farther than we might at first imagine. I suggest that Eliot was correct to note that taking the “risk of going too far” is the only way you or I will discover how far love goes and is ready, willing and able to take us along with it. In my investigation of love’s limitless nature, I’ve become a radical explorer of the nature of love. I confess it. Don’t expect me to argue in favor of setting limits on love’s expression in your life or mine. I genuinely believe that our tendency to set such limits is precisely why the modern world has become as bogged down in fear, violence and suffering as we have. Think about it. If it’s true, as John wrote, that God is love (God = Love, for math fans), then any practice of setting limits on love is the same as setting limits on God. How is that possible?

How could you or I set a limit on God? It’s actually quite simple. We can set a limit on God because God gave us the power to do so. God gave us free will. Free will gives us the power to choose between setting God (love) free to be fully expressed in our lives and in the lives of others or setting limits on that expression. God has already chosen to express the Divine Power of Life and Love in and through your life and mine as fully as we’ll allow. His/Her choice is made in Eternity and stands forever. Our choices are made in the realm of Time and Space and can be made, changed and changed again until we discover a choice we never want to change. The tendency in the modern world, where material values are given greater influence than spiritual ones, is to allow our fears to set limits on the influx and outpouring of love throughout our life experiences. Our fears set very restricted limits to keep us feeling “safe” within our familiar territories. In fact, to make sure we’re feeling safe, our fears tend to gradually shrink the territories within which we are willing to take risks and prevent us from even thinking about “going too far.” Thus it is by fear’s logic we never come close to discovering how far we can go if we were to exercise more courage.

In our ego-trained, fear-based orientation to the modern world, we’ve been taught to take a risk that I believe is now haunting us. We’ve been taught to take the risk of setting severe limits on God and the expression of Divine Love. We’ve been taking that risk for so many generations that it is now the social norm and heavily reinforced by social approval. It’s unlikely that anyone told you or me that we were being taught to place limits on God (Love). The ego is not that honest in its dealings with us. It’s actually quite deceptive and likely to claim that we are being as loving as we need to be or even can be when we do only what is socially approved of. It’s likely to teach us to believe that social approval sets the proper limit on love that keeps us safe from going too far. Too far where? In the ego’s frame of reference, too far out of bounds to risk being thought of as foolish and naïve and subjected to ridicule. Too far out of bounds that we risk losing the approval of those whose opinions of us we value most. Too far out of bounds that we risk being hurt and feeling deeply in our hearts in ways we’ve been taught to avoid. Yet, suppose you or I were to reverse the risk ratio and take the risk of defying social approval and exploring beyond conventional definitions and expressions of love. Might we encounter more of God and Love “out beyond social norms?” Might we enter into the realm of mystic experiences to which Rumi referred when he said:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.”

Damn these unconventional poets! Why don’t just they leave us alone? I suggest that they are heaven sent. I suggest that they don’t leave us alone precisely because God knows that “It is not good for man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18 NIV) Poets, lyricists, writers of fiction, composers, dancers, choreographers, painters, sculptors and other artists stir our hearts to take second looks at what the ego has taught us and encourage us to consider changing decisions we might have thought were unchangeable. Artists express the divine grace that may soften our hearts and allow us to rethink a “conclusion I concluded long ago.” (A Puzzlement from The King and I)

As a believer in Jesus, I tend to take a look at what his teachings by word, deed and lifestyle say about issues that haunt me. As I realized that decisions I had made under the influence of ego-based teachings were haunting me, I gradually awoke to the reality that Jesus did not usually agree with the ego’s teachings – if ever he did! He was definitely an unconventional person. He did not seem to worry much about social approval, winning popularity contests or catering to the social elites of his day. He was not running for office or trying to win a job or a life-partner’s attention and affections. He was focused on identifying God’s will in all things and then taking the risk of going too far – at least in the eyes of others. Gradually Jesus’ ideas, actions and model of lifestyle came to influence me more and more. To emulate him I began to shed the common excuses given for not going too far. Some said he was God and, since the rest of us are not God, then of course we cannot go as far as Jesus went in caring about others. He intentionally hung out with folks others did not approve of and avoided at all costs. He seemed to not realize that they were of a different class and (supposedly) looked down upon by God. Jesus went so far as to wind up hanging on a cross as a vilified criminal and endured shame, pain and other unsavory features of human life on his way to death. He could have avoided all that. But would he have honored God and Divine Love if he had? How could he demonstrate how far we can go if he had not gone beyond death to return as an expression of the Eternal?

Is it true that Jesus was so different from you or me that we can excuse ourselves from taking the risk of going too far in following in his footsteps? What if he were actually the same as you and I? Suppose whatever identity with God Jesus had and has we have too? Suppose the fact that we’ve avoided going too far is actually the only reason we don’t know how identified with God we are! Suppose that when Jesus prayed that his followers would know oneness with God as he knew oneness (John 17: 20-23) that he meant precisely that and that his prayers are answered once we quit setting limits on God (Love). Might God be ready, willing and able to show us our oneness with the Divine once we say “Yes, here I am, send me?” Are we afraid to be sent “too far” and never come back to where we’ve been? Are we afraid that an encounter with God will change our outlook on life and our choices forever? The ego is afraid of that outcome. We need not be. In our heart of hearts we are hungering for such an outcome.

Radical nonconformity to the ways of the world includes taking the risk of going too far in the ego’s eyes. Yet it also opens the door to risking that Love will flood in and never stop sweeping us away into greater and greater adventures as well as ever increasing capacity to share Divine Love with others. Might our hunger for adventure and love never be truly satisfied until we take this risk?

How radical is love as Jesus’ followers believe it to be? Let’s check out the oft-quoted follower whose writings appear in the Bible as letters written by Paul. Let’s quote him not for ideas he clung to about how to set limits on God’s Divine will but for ideas about “going too far” in embracing God’s will.

Here is how this eloquent writer spoke about love:

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. I f I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-10 NIV)

Regardless of how eloquently Paul spoke or wrote, he admitted that words lacking in love’s true essence were hollow, pointless and powerless. He acknowledged that all of the partial understandings he might gain about the truth about love would dissolve in the presence of “completeness” or wholeness perfected by God. Paul took the risk of going too far in following Jesus beyond Paul’s (Saul’s) previous life of social conformity and of meeting the expectations of those higher up the ladder in his religious institution. His daring risk-taking brought him into conflict with the very authority figures he’d once tried so hard to please. He became an outsider to the social club within which, earlier in his adult career life, he’d worked so hard to qualify for membership. Traditionalists scorned him as a maverick who’d lost his way instead of honoring him as a master student of their long-awaited Messiah’s Most Excellent Way.

Today many traditionalists selectively quote Paul’s writings when he espoused the preservation of beliefs and practices prevalent in his day, beliefs and practices he’d not yet realized were interfering with the evolution-revolution Jesus had set in motion. Yet, it remains worthwhile to glean wisdom and guidance from Paul’s experiences in his transformation from Saul who had once persecuted followers of Jesus into Paul who himself followed Jesus. The man who had persecuted became one of those he’d previously persecuted. Pretty radical change of heart and mind!

How did Paul address this issue of radical nonconformity in going too far? He addressed it directly by writing: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2 NIV) It’s instructive that Paul tied “going too far” with demonstrating God’s will. Might that be the point of your life as well as mine? Each of us in our own way may have the divine opportunity to prove that God’s “good, pleasing and perfect will” is to share Divine Love for all of us with all of us, without exception or exclusion no matter how much pressure socially conformist thinkers place upon the question of the limits of God’s love. If God loves the previously-hidden but now more-boldly-emerging nonconformist maverick in each of us, then going too far to be true to ourselves as children of God is not possible. Even the sky sets no limit on how far we can discover we can go – if only we let go and let God be God as we let ourselves go far afield beyond the limits of social approval to belong exclusively to God.

The sky does not set limits. It invites eagles to soar and not have to seek safety near the ground. Love likewise invites us to soar to the heights above life’s storm clouds and risk having gone too far. Our wings will not melt off, for they are not attached with wax. They sprout from within the energy field of the divine love that radiates through us as it lifts us ever nearer to the heights of heaven. Some call this falling upward.

Cancer in the Body of Believers in Jesus

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Cancer begins as a few cells rapidly multiply without the purpose-driven orderly structure that controls the growth of healthy cells elsewhere in the body. These rapidly multiplying, disorderly cancer cells form masses of tissue we call “tumors” and may eventually spread throughout the body to generate out-of-control cell-production that proves contrary to the purpose of the host organism. Once the cancerous cells populate too much of the host organism, death looms as the original life-purpose of the organism is lost amid the disorderly purposelessness of the cancer cells. Cancer is characterized by a disconnect between the main organism’s life-oriented purpose and the process of cell production and tissue regeneration. Some people say that cancerous tumors “grow.” But if the term “growth” applies only to orderly cell production that aligns with the life-orientation and purpose of the main, overarching organism then cancerous tissues do not grow. They merely expand in a disorderly fashion that mimics growth but does not contribute to life. Once the main organism’s health declines enough to bring about death, even the cancer cells die. They have sabotaged their host to their own detriment.

If Jesus’ institutionalized Church is Christ’s body of believers on Earth then what might be the cancer that is causing the Church’s decline and bringing the body of believers nearer and nearer to disintegration and ultimately death? I suggest that the cancer can be spotted in every idea and resulting practice that disconnects the Church from the life-oriented purpose God gave it through Jesus. Ideas and practices not in alignment with the God-given purpose of the Church are generating cancerous cell-production throughout the Church that mimics growth but does not contribute to the life of the Church as God defines that life. These forms of illusory “growth” are sabotaging the Church and contributing not to its life but rather to its decline.

I believe that God is working through paths of faith other than the one associated with Jesus. Be that as it may, I’m devoted to the path of faith along which Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to lead all who believe in him. As a believer in Jesus, I seek to hear the leading of the Spirit within my heart and to heed its guidance and honor the wisdom it transmits to faith-oriented believers in Jesus. I accept without qualification Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. John 16:13. That is why this article is devoted to spotting the cancerous ideas and practices at work within Christ’s Church rather than focused upon the possible shortcomings of other paths of faith. Until the Church of Jesus Christ has submitted itself to healing of all cancerous ideas and practices at work within it, it is in no position to point out the possible ills of other paths of faith. The Church must allow the Holy Spirit to point out and remove logs from its own eyes before it tries to point out splinters in the vision of other paths of faith.

To whatever extent any other path of faith may be failing to adhere to God’s purpose and plan for that path of faith, it is the responsibility of faithful adherents to that path to assess those shortcomings and take steps to rectify them from within the borders of that faith as a follower of that faith. Within the body of believers in Jesus we have our hands full addressing the ills of Christ’s institutionalized Church and cannot afford to cast our eyes upon other religions or paths of faith until we’ve resolved all of our own issues between us and God. That is to say that the fact that I take up the task of identifying some of the Church’s blind spots does not imply that there are none present in other paths of faith. It means only that I adhere to the principle of the Fourth Step of the 12-steps and suggest that believers in Jesus must focus on taking our own inventories and repent of our own ill-conceived ideas and sabotaging practices that have led to the decline of the Church at large. Once we’ve humbly submitted to the Holy Spirit’s removal of the logs from our own eyes, we can seek God’s guidance about what to do next with our clarified vision. In the meantime, to honor Jesus as the head of our body of believers, we need to refrain from violating his principle of not judging others.

In this article I do not pretend to present an exhaustive list of the ideas and practices rampant within Christ’s Church that are proving to be cancerous. I intend here only to highlight a few so as to contribute to a dialogue within the Church that may lead the Church, its leaders and its members of all stripes and flavors to humility, repentance and healing. I believe that the process God calls us to engage in is akin to the repentance that Jonah’s message to Nineveh invoked. Ideas and practices not aligned with God’s holy purpose for the body of believers in Jesus are “wickedness” (failure to adhere to holiness) in the eyes of God whether or not they qualify as “wicked” under popular definitions of the populace at large. If God’s people who are called by His name desire with all their hearts to see the world healed of all forms of violence and oppression and the resulting harm, we must heed God’s definition of “wickedness” in order to humble ourselves before God and participate fully in the conditions that permit healing to flow from God unlimitedly.

In saying that I have identified a few of the Church’s misalignments with Jesus’ directions to his followers is not to say that I mention them in order of significance or priority or have cited the most important ones. To contribute to the dialogue about Church-wide humility, repentance and healing, I cite only these for now:

The error of judging people of other faiths, as mentioned above. We are not qualified to assess from beyond the borders of any other path of faith how that path of faith is best lived. That is an internal affair as to which responsibility rests with those who claim that path of faith
The error of citing quantifiable statistics as signs of growth while measures of quality are neglected. When quantity is valued over quality, the Church has dropped the ball that Jesus handed off to the Church. Throughout the Scriptures referenced by Jesus and the Church are many passages indicating that God is more concerned about the quality of life people are experiencing than about the quantity of people who are claiming to believe in Him. God has often preferred to rely upon a few people to accomplish His goals than to rely upon great numbers to prove His significance. In short, God is not concerned with social approval ratings as if God is a politician or Earthly monarch. God does not put His mind upon the things of man. God puts His mind upon the things of God whether or not humankind approves of God’s values, ideas or priorities. For the Church to express God’s orientation, the Church will have to stop catering to social approval, no longer seek to amass quantities of members or money and focus on God’s values, ideas and priorities. To measure the success of the Church by numbers is to measure by the same measurements attributed to newly released movies or TV shows. Audience ratings are not symptoms of the health of the Church except to the extent that high popularity may be a symptom of poor health. Ratings measure the cancerous illusory “growth” and call it admirable. Not so in God’s eyes.
The error of measuring the quality of a believer’s faithfulness to Jesus by the financial prosperity or social popularity of his or her lifestyle. By his example, Jesus revealed the true measures of a believer’s life while he was on Earth. He was neither financially prosperous nor popular. In fact, he allowed himself to walk through life with few possessions and admonished his followers to do likewise. He traveled light but he did not travel far. He remained focused on a relatively small territory of personal concern rather than roam throughout the wider territory using means of transportation then available to him. Today the industrial/technological world has developed means of transportation that enable humans to travel the globe. The Internet empowers our minds to travel everywhere at any time. The practice of traveling widely is promoted by commercialism and mass media as “good.” Good for what? Good for profit-making by purveyors of travel-related services, including the marketing industry. Good for allowing those with wealth to congregate as mutual admirers around the globe and fancy themselves to be participants in a diversely multicultural world when in fact all they are doing is sharing their escapist activities and self-indulgences with other members of their economic class while remaining indifferent to the plight of other classes. I suggest that God disagrees with the standards of the world on this point and prefers that believers focus on local concerns in-depth, moving among all economic classes and other indices of human diversity as Jesus did, rather than spread themselves so thin as to have little significant, long-term impact on anything anywhere. Jesus impacted the lives he touched in significant, life-transforming ways (called “miracles”) and predicted that those who were his true disciples would do likewise, even having greater significance and impact than he had. Jesus was able to perform miracles because he developed relationships locally and allowed the least of these in his locality to have access to him personally. Although he participated in discussions with elites and allowed himself to be interviewed from time to time by representatives of the media of his day, he did not make a priority of doing so. Instead he remained directly accessible to the masses and most importantly to individuals who separated themselves from the masses to approach him one on one. In interacting with Jesus’ energy personally people were brought to faith and offered opportunities to act upon their faith to receive miracles of healing. The Church’s mass-media-influenced values and priorities today turn Jesus’ values and priorities upside down.
The error of catering to worldly powers rather than serving those that worldly powers look down upon, exploit and oppress. The Church has become an apologist for those who wield social power instead of being an advocate for those the powerful disdain. Nowhere in Jesus’ model of life to which he called his disciples did he serve in the role of sycophant to the elites or aristocrats of his time. Moses set captives free. Jesus set captives free. For the Church now to cater to those who hold powerless people in captivity is an anathema to the Father who loves all of us. The modern world is awash with captives of all kinds. Many workers around the world are held captive in one way or another by their employment’s meager returns and harsh conditions. The worldwide trade in sex-for-money in all its forms imprisons participants on all sides of these transactions within walls of secrecy and shame. To help build prisons and justify their existence rather than to visit prisoners and help them never to return to prison ignores one of Jesus’ most strident quality control standards for his followers. To fail to invest its all in helping the least of these to take up lifestyles of freedom and no longer risk going to prison, being homeless or exploited or going without the necessities of life, including personal dignity and the capacity to provide for one’s children, indicts the modern Church.

Christians believe that God’s nature and priorities were expressed in a physical body through Jesus and that Jesus intends the Church as an institution to continue to express God’s nature and priorities. After starting out so well in Jesus’ life, it may be hard to understand how Christianity drifted so far afield from the truth he promised would set us free. But it’s vital that we admit the drift and correct the errors if ever we want to allow the truth to set us free from mistakes humans made in the past. Self-examination, repentance, correction of errors and granting and receiving of forgiveness are not the ego’s talents because these disciplines to which Jesus calls us are expedited by humility and resisted by pride. So long as spokespersons for Jesus filter their information through the ego and water down their ideas and their experiences – their principles and their practices – to suit their egos no significant correction will occur and the power of forgiveness, once so radically illustrated by Jesus, will remain stillborn.

It is essential to rise free of and beyond the ego to correct the errors that the ego has so diligently preserved. Overcoming the ego is what the passages in Chapter 3 of Revelations beginning with “He who overcomes shall” refer to. By the power of diligent self-examination, change of mind and forgiveness of errors, we can join together to resurrect the Church from the tomb into which popular opinion has shoved it by crying out for the crucifixion, censorship and silence of minority members of the Church who have called the Church to account for its harm. It is a mistake to focus on errors as guilt-and-shame-ladened “sins.” To encrust our errors with barnacles of guilt and shame only makes them all the more difficult to acknowledge and shed. Let’s stop adding to the difficulties of the task of resurrecting the Church and simply let Jesus call us forth from the grave as he once summonsed Lazarus, as a friend he missed and wanted to see alive again. We are each Jesus’ friend, no matter how far we may have gone astray. He has not forsaken us. We need no longer forsake him. By God’s grace, we have the power to redeem our error-prone lives and live lives renewed by forgiveness and mercy and overflowing with liberty and justice for all.

The Church’s healing from spiritual cancer awaits us as individuals who accept healing on behalf of the whole. The healing begins one by one and gains momentum as the healed ones gather as a healed body of believers. Healed twos become healed threes, fours and so forth until the heart-count becomes too numerous to quantify. There is no need to count because once we are healed we are all one. When Jesus calls you to join the healing movement by submitting yourself to its heart-cleansing flow, remember that you as an individual do not need the permission of anyone else to participate in the healing. All you need to do to respond to Jesus’ call to be healed is to declare with all your heart, mind, body and soul, “I can, sir,” in the face of the Church’s cancer. As we each do our part as Jesus did, God will do the rest.

We All Win the Final Battle of the Civil War

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Beneath the surface, the U.S. Civil War fought by opposing armies in the middle of the 19^th century continues to rage within many hearts and minds throughout the United States as we struggle with opposing values, ideals and priorities. Issues that preceded the outbreak of armed hostilities between slave-holding states and slave-releasing states still breed unrest throughout our troubled nation. Our issues are embodied in and expressed through economic competition fueled by heady pride untempered by heartfelt justice and compassion. Episodes of armed violence that erupt sporadically are symptoms of our unresolved unrest and our unconscious struggle to find lasting peace of mind, hope of heart and joy of spirit. We will win the battle for peace, hope and joy once we bring our unconscious struggle into the light of our conscious awareness and stop submerging it beneath pretenses of complacency and satisfaction with the status quo.

What is the status quo most of us throughout the U.S. seek to maintain that is actually perpetuating the violence that dismays us? What are we complaining about that we could address effectively if only we were to see it clearly rather than hide from it in the smoke of emotionally heated power struggles? The paradox is that we cannot see clearly what is not yet visible to us until we allow the smoke of anger-fueled battles to clear from our fields of vision and give higher priority to seeing clearly than to battling endlessly for the power to have things our way. Burning anger as a fuel for power struggles pollutes the air of reasoned discussions. Its fumes mask the real issues and raise barriers of defensiveness on all sides. So long as we angrily assert as necessary to our pride the right to have our own way in disregard of others’ dignity, we will remain embattled in anger-fueled power struggles and blind to the alternative within which all can have our dignified way in peace because power is shared equitably.

As an alternative fuel for well-reasoned discussions, a passion for peace burns cleanly. Angry battles are unnecessary. Anger is an early stage of grief. It is not a sign of strength but instead a sign of not-yet-healed woundedness. Peace is a sign of strength even while enduring woundedness. Peace does not ignore painful issues and their associated wounds. It addresses them with reason, seeking to find the root cause of wound-inflicting conflicts and resolving each to every reasoning person’s satisfaction. Anger’s presence is a sign of unresolved emotions bullying their way through the waves of confusion and chaos to ram against ideas angered minds do not find agreeable – or silently swarming beneath the waves seeking to torpedo ideas presented by competitors in a battle for control of the storm-tossed seas upon which humanity sails. Battle-won control does not assure that lasting peace will follow. Battle-weariness is not the same as peace. It is more likely that another round of conflict will arise out of painful memories associated with earlier battles than that sustainable peace will prevail unless our memories are healed of our pain.

No matter how grand a floated ideal may be anger can blow it out of the water. Angry battles to preserve pride as the measure of individual or group success are counter-productive. They insure that all successes are temporary and decline in their capacity to satisfy. Anger acts like an addictive drug because adrenalin that accompanies anger is an addictive chemical. Angry people become addicted to our own body chemistry. We become our own drug pushers, provoking angry conflicts in order to get high. The more one uses anger to justify adrenalin-pumped up action the more one has to escalate its use to produce the next high. Coming down from an angry high does not feel good. Withdrawal from habits of anger can feel miserable. Yet, angry battles to produce pride’s highs only perpetuate the endless rounds of unsatisfying outcomes we’ve endured. It’s time to consider the alternative fully and cease to sacrifice our lives on altars of anger’s futility. It’s time to be wiser and promote peace in place of pride as our priority – and as our privilege.

I am heir to a rare but not entirely unique privilege. I have the privilege of having been cast out of pride’s status quo and required to remain on the sidelines relatively free of battlefields. As a result, my battle-remote field of vision is less smoke-filled and more prone to see with peace and hope-filled joy what embattled peoples have not yet realized is right before our eyes and readily within our reach. What I see in my field of vision are masses of people who have endured much pain in their struggles to survive amid centuries of economic competition that is now proving totally incapable of satisfying many while it relentlessly channels economic prosperity and pseudo-privileges of pride to relatively few. This distorted distribution of economic benefits is another symptom of the underlying, not-yet-unresolved issues about which I write.

Anger in reaction to harmful economic inequities is understandable. Anger is not bad. It’s simply not the condition under which we can adequately address lasting resolution of issues that preserve economic inequities. We who weary of feeling powerless and inadequate to the task of resolving these issues need to exercise wisdom to develop long-term solutions to these long-standing inequities. Anger interferes with our capacity to listen to and heed wisdom’s guidance. Let us not judge and condemn ourselves for feeling angry or afraid. Anger and fear are understandable reactions to painful belief in our powerlessness. Yet we can learn to set aside our angry reactions and our fears of perpetual powerlessness to confer together in communal peace that arises from personal self-disciplines of inner peace. Every person has the capacity to contribute personal inner peace to an outpouring of communal peace – no matter how extremely justified anger and fear seem.

As has long been trumpeted, “To the victors go the spoils!” Every war has required that there be winners and losers, victors and victims, heroes and scapegoats. The outcome of wars has always been to allocate the spoils of war so as to perpetuate pride’s status quo within which battles of one kind or another remain inevitable in recurring cycles of warfare. Lessons of pride learned in earlier wars cause warring parties to modify their methods and submerge their battles and their allegiances beneath the surface out of sight – hidden behind charming smiles and soothing words that mask their wounded pride. Pride’s lessons preserve the distrust and secrecy that undergird all warfare rather than promote the alternative of trust and transparency upon which lasting peace may be established.

As yet the pride-free lesson has not been learned that all forms of battle for one person’s, group’s, nation’s or culture’s supposedly superior way of life at the expense of another’s supposedly inferior way of life represent the same mistake repeated over and over again with insane results only the hardest-hearted prideful person could admire. One proof of such insanity is found in the fact that the victors to whom the spoils of each successive battle go progressively decrease in proportion to the battle’s victims. Smaller grows the pool of spoils-receiving winners as larger grow the widening pools of losers from whom the spoils are drained. Fewer and fatter are pride’s vampires as larger grow the pools of blood from which they drink. If blood is a symbol for life, then no one wins when blood is distributed throughout the body of humanity with pride-rewarding inequity. Distribution of the spoils of war to preserve pride’s dominion within the status quo – no matter how artfully disguised as change – spoils everything for everyone in the long run as the health of humanity’s limbs, organs and associated functions decline. Pride is healthy for no one, not even for the privileged few who cling to their pride at all cost to themselves and everyone.

The world is awash with symptoms of the futility of perpetuating pride’s competition-driven status quo. It is time for reasoning human beings to set aside pride and shame out of concern for the welfare of the whole. To stop perpetuating the status quo of declining human functioning (sometimes called “systemic” or “institutionalized” dehumanization or exploitation) we must look squarely at what pride’s status quo is and let it go as an alternative no longer appealing to us. We must grow wise enough to spot it in all its forms and respond each time it is offered to us by admitting “Been there, done that” and engage in it no more. Until we repent of our participation in pride’s status quo and commit ourselves to living according to the only true alternative of peace-generating humility, we are doomed to repeat the errors of our past and unwittingly participate in perpetuating violence while the alternative of peace remains unseen yet right at hand. I write now to invite those who want to see what I see to join me in seeing it as our collective vision. We can choose to embrace peace together and establish it as a viable alternative to futility so that others can consider it when it becomes their turn to do so. Love’s humility is the alternative to pride’s futility. The more love’s alternative exists in tangible expression because its practitioners reveal it through our lifestyles, the more clearly others will behold it and find it appealing to them as well. By our commitment to love’s alternative even in its birth struggles, we will invite others to win together with us the one final universal battle in the Civil War. No war is civil. Peace is. We must first reclaim peace within our hearts before we can share it with others in sustainable Civil Peace.

The alternative about which I write is a blend of the most promising of all individuals’ and cultures’ ways of life and visions for a better future. Love’s most promising multicultural ways and visions have humbly endured the tests of time. Just as the Earth’s current non-aristocratic masses are enduring much pain and suffering in the modern age, enduring pain and suffering has been the norm for the masses throughout human history. All viable cultures’ most highly evolved ways of endurance and visions for relief from pain and suffering blend together into the Alternative I’ve seen is not only possible for us all to share but actually the only viable alternative to warfare and its pain and suffering. As the humble sages and elders of every reasoning culture teach, we either choose to perpetuate our suffering or to relieve it, heal from it and live beyond it. Habits of pride passed along through many generations conspire to perpetuate our suffering. Yet in one generation we can learn to set aside pride’s habits if we want them set aside in order to embrace the Alternative to suffering about which so many dream. Those of us who set our hearts resolutely upon the purpose of embracing life fully as wise and humble people of all ages can embrace life for all of humanity. We can be the hearts, minds, hands and arms that reach out to embrace the whole solution for us all. Voluntary humility achieved through surrender of both our pride and shame, not forcefully imposed humiliation, will save humanity for all of us.

The U.S. Civil War was called the “war between the states.” The universal civil war is also a war between states. But it is a war between two states, just as the U.S. Civil War was a war between two orientations towards freedom. The universal civil war is also a battle about freedom. It is a war between on the one hand A) those who believe in slavery for some (or many or most) and freedom for many (or some or few) and on the other hand B) those who believe in slavery for none and freedom for all. The choice of sides in this universal war is that stark. It is a radical choice because it reaches to the root of freedom’s origin and insists that no compromise with principles of universal freedom can be practiced without sacrificing freedom for us all. Pride’s status quo stands for perpetual compromise and its resulting loss of universal freedom and substitution of universal slavery. The Misery Compromise has been tried and failed. Attempts to compromise have proven that misery cannot be distributed to some without inflicting it on all. It is time to take a radically uncompromising stand for liberty and justice for all or suffer slavery for our children and their children.

The war between the states about which I write is a war between two states of mind – one free and one enslaved. Those who have endured much pain and suffering may find it hard to believe that the alternative to suffering actually exists – already available to be accepted, adopted and appreciated every moment of the day and night. Yet, because it is true that those who endure all things have endured as love endures, this alternative that love offers is already the alternative for which those who have suffered most are well-prepared. If love endures all things and you’ve endured all things, then you are love. Your essence is love that endures for eternity. The endurance of suffering is simply a period of preparation for rising beyond suffering as you accept release from misinterpreted lessons of suffering. The key false lesson suffering seeks to teach you is that you are enslaved forever to suffering, destined to perpetuate it always either as a sufferer or as one who inflicts suffering. This key lesson is not true. It is a misunderstanding adopted by a mind confused by pain and the fear of greater pain. To avoid greater pain, our minds interpreted past pain as proof of our unworthiness to be freely loved and loving as if our destiny is to always suffer love’s betrayal and loss. Instead of abiding by this false lesson, we can choose to neither endure suffering nor inflict it. That’s what the Golden Rule teaches. This rule is honored in some version by every benevolent spiritual path of faith. (See http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm) No one is excluded from the power of the Golden Rule.

The Alternative within which you naturally belong but may not yet behold is the Alternative of Love. It is the Alternative towards which every version of the Golden Rule points. It is a state not only of mind but of heart as well. It is the natural state into which we emerge as we practice reconciling our minds with our hearts and allow the best of reconciled blends to merge as the truth of who we are. The war between the two possible states of mind can be won by any individual who decides to win it within himself or herself and learn to rise beyond his or her own inner conflicts to discover and practice inner peace. It is a war won by daring to open one’s heart to love again and allowing love’s power to reconcile all conflicting points of view in the light of eternal love’s humility. As individuals welcome heartfelt inner peace as their new norm and join with other welcomers, their peace-enriched community emerges beyond battles abandoned in favor of reconciliation and cooperation in rebuilding relationships within the sustainable social ecosystem of humble love.

To rise beyond the battlefields into the Alternative Way that does not recycle its adherents into another round of conflict and renewed pain and suffering requires that we each let go of ego and its sightless habits. We must learn to be increasingly more insightful in order to overcome the ego’s sightlessness and see the vision that emerges from the ego’s smoke and mirror battle tactics. We must realize that pride and shame are flipsides of the ego’s coin and not truly alternatives to each other. They are inseparable, complimentary twins. We are not better off by becoming proud instead of ashamed. Our life is not improved by adopting stigmata of shame as badges of pride to flaunt before those who once shamed us. In fact to do so adopts the very values, priorities and pride-shame duality of thinking that our prior oppressors believe in. It is a mistake to adopt their orientation towards relationships and still expect not to join them in their loveless lifestyles devoted to competitive individuality and devoid of heart-satisfying intimacy. Peace awaits those who shed our armor of pride and allow our wounds of shame to heal in love’s light instead of remaining hidden to fester in fear’s darkness.

In modern times, those once stigmatized and taught to feel ashamed for being a person of darker color skin, of non-heterosexual orientation, of non-mainstream gender orientation, of feminine qualities or of other labels low in social power and approval have tried to convert their badges of shame into badges of pride by rallying together and no longer allowing themselves to remain isolated from each other in hiding. They have “come out” of hiding, claimed their social standing as legitimate and empowered themselves through the ballot box in a republic in which the right to vote offers illusions of power even when election outcomes are heavily swayed by the money of the dominant few. Unfortunately, they have also claimed their legitimacy on the ego’s terms of pride as if ego sets beneficial terms. Ego can never set the terms of love. It sets the terms of fear, terror and atrocities inflicted by one upon another, individually or in groups. The ego offers no alternative to itself because it knows of none it can tolerate. It is close-minded – a closed thought system from which there is no escape or relief unless one exits the system entirely. We must shed our egos to be free of both pride and shame – and free to experience love instead. Ego-dominated minds repudiate love. Our hearts prefer to welcome it. Let our minds now agree with our hearts’ desire to know love by experience. That is wisdom’s way.

The ego’s way is to set stereotypes and images upon the altars of our hearts and minds and worship them as false idols. Ego claims that our failure to measure up to the “ideals” of its stereotypes and images defines us as failures – as shame-faced losers in the battle for popularity and prosperity. Fame and fortune are two of the ego’s false goals by which it seduces us into following its dictates and considering no other power possible. But there is another power that is not only possible but inevitable. It is the power that ego fears and seeks to teach us to ignore and to avoid at all costs if we become aware of it. In the presence of this power, the ego fades to nothing, not to black but to invisibility in its clearly spotted uselessness. The ego justifies its existence based on our needing to be defended from threats of pain and suffering. Yet paradoxically only when we adopt the ego’s ways are we actually exposed to suffering as accumulated pain. Without the ego we are invulnerable to suffering, not because we cannot feel pain but because we can always heal from every form of pain and rise free from pain again. We have no need or desire to accumulate and retain pain as suffering. Only the ego bids us to retain pain and store it up as suffering to serve as the motivation for lessons the ego teaches. Pain drags us down into the ego’s realm of fear, including the fear that suffering is endless – as our form of hell in Time and/or Eternity, a punishment we somehow deserve and must preserve. As fear’s alternative, love lifts us up where we belong – healed of all pain associated with guilt and punishment and free to soar as innocence personified.

The ego’s definitions of all things are false. It defines freedom as enslavement to perpetual attempts to avoid pain and to escape from suffering by self-indulgence in mind-numbing activities that lead to heartless indifference to others and ourselves as well. The ego teaches us to be blind to the reality that we cannot be indifferent to the pain and suffering of others without adopting pain and suffering as our personal experience too. The Golden Rule always operates, whether we treat others well or poorly. No amount of ego’s escapist ways (no matter to what extravagance indulged in) will free us from our confrontations with the pain and suffering that we carry around inside. Only by achieving inner peace through inner healing will we experience the freedom we desire. Our hearts desire. Our minds aspire. When we set our minds to aspire after what our hearts truly desire, we will encounter wisdom and gradually become wiser in all our ways. The Alternative Way is Wisdom’s Way taught by all the ancient paths of spiritually rooted benevolence and humble simplicity.

How long do you prefer to remain fooled by the ego into believing in a fruitless quest for the joys of deeper satisfaction where such joys and satisfaction do not await you? The ego’s path of futility appears to be populated by many diverse choices. But that diversity is an illusion so long as all choices are based on fear of strangers and fear of forgiving others (and yourself) for the pain and suffering you associate with them (and yourself). All who have endeavored to live by ego’s teachings have fallen into the same pit of sightless battles by which we blind ourselves and others to the truth we might otherwise see. Our pain blinds us to the true reason for our suffering. By trying to turn the tables to cause others to suffer instead, we are only perpetuating the suffering we all endure and adopting the ego’s way as if it is the only way. We are mistaken to take pride in the suffering we endure or in the pain we avoid by transferring it to others instead. We are mistaken to be ashamed of the pain and suffering we have endured as if we’ve done something so wrong as to never be forgiven for it. We are mistaken to interpret pain as punishment for guilt we imagine is ours to carry for a lifetime. Release from secret inner agonies of guilt arrives with shedding of our egos.

We are also mistaken to be afraid to face the stranger who hides within us as if our secret side is a guilt-ridden creature of shame (when this is not so!). We are equally mistaken to fear strangers we see around us as if they are the reason for our inability to feel free of guilt and shame (again not so!). Our secret feelings of unrelieved guilt and shame compel us to try to outperform others to atone for our secret guilt and shame. This false need to feel guilty is all part of the ego’s game to keep us its prisoners for fear that the skeletons in our secret closets will destroy us if revealed. To heap more guilt and shame upon ourselves for failing to outperform others overburdens our own hearts and minds with immense distress. There is no relief or healing in competing ruthlessly to survive or come out on top. Pride is not an antidote to guilt or shame. It is a cover-up, not a cure. Only our devoted walk along humility’s centered path will lead us beyond the dilemmas of the internal civil war between two states of mind. No matter how submerged beyond our conscious awareness it may be, an endless civil war between pride and shame (and guilt and blame) enslaves us all. We can choose instead to be free by choosing consciously to liberate each other from the ego’s grip on our hearts and minds. Liberty and justice for all depends upon our cooperation in each other’s liberation from the ego.

Xenophobia and unforgiveness are two symptoms of the ego’s unhealthiness that we can intentionally address regardless of our lack of health insurance coverage. We need no one’s permission to master the arts of hospitality to strangers and forgiveness of all peoples (including ourselves). We will eventually see the smokeless, unpolluted vision and surrender our former attitudes and practices once we tire of the insanity of repeating the ego’s varied ways of preserving our fears and avoiding true forgiveness for fear of appearing weak if we forgive. The strong forgive. The self-confident and secure offer hospitality to strangers. (Please watch this video if you might appreciate more evidence of forgiveness’ value: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSCx1XS0f8Y.)

We will win the final battle of the Civil War because it is a battle Love has already won for us. All we need to do now is decide which side of the finished battle we stand on – the side of the winner or the loser. The battle itself is over. Love welcomes all to stand up as winners. No one is a loser because all of us are lovers-in-training, never losers. The battle was between Love and the Ego that demanded that pride and shame rather than humility and compassion should prevail as standards for humanity. Love prevails within humility as we walk on Earth doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with Love as our God and the God of everyone. There is no other God but the Love that endures all things, the tender-hearted Being of Divine Love whose grace, mercy and forgiveness is infinitely unlimited. This is the One with Whom our hearts yearn to reunite and share life. It is the One who stands ready, willing and able to reunite with us upon our wholehearted willingness to surrender our ego and all our ego’s habits of a lifetime to allow us to learn and practice for the rest of our lives the habits of Eternity’s Loving Alternative.

Once believers in Love acknowledge and accept Love’s Grand Design and allow Love to define whom Love includes within the scope of Its Design, Love will reign universal and supreme for all. Only by our mistaken exercise of our free will in favor our own enslavement to the ego can Love’s Alternative Way be temporarily thwarted. Once believers in Love embrace and implement Love’s Grand Design, none will be left out of Divine Love as shared here on Earth because those who live under Love’s authority will welcome all who may think of themselves as strangers to Love and help them to discover that they were wrong about being strangers to Love. Every stranger who believes himself or herself to be estranged from Love lives that way only because of his or her mistaken belief in the permanence of that estrangement. In Love’s eyes, there never has been any estrangement, only a misunderstanding on the part of each person who mistakenly believes that separation from Love is possible and must be endured forever as punishment for having somehow lost love’s favor by being wrong. Being wrong does not offend love any more than being right guarantees love’s favor. Favoring equally both the ones who are right (or believe they are right or fight to prove they are right) and the ones who are wrong (or accept the possibility of being wrong or cease to fight to prove they are not wrong), love invites us all to meet, share love together and reconcile our differences in peace.

Oneness with (non-separation from) Divine Love has always been the condition that exists between Love and every member of the human race. Believers and non-believers in Love who do not yet “know by experience” of the eternal existence of this oneness or unity between Love and humans have allowed their minds to be clouded by battle-smoked beliefs and fears that temporarily disrupt their capacity to experience our eternal oneness. The path towards such experiential knowing begins with a change of belief in the possibility of Love and Oneness with It. Only when a person believes can he or she experience that in which he or she believes. Believing precedes experiential knowing.

In an earlier era when most people believed the Earth was flat, explorers who believed that the Earth was instead spherical and then acted upon their non-mainstream belief encountered opportunities to experience the Earth’s spherical reality and eventually revealed its spherical nature to all who believed their reports. In the current era when many people believe that peace and love are flatly impossible, every person who chooses to no longer conform to a belief in the impossibility of peace and love will be free to explore Love’s well-rounded nature and encounter experiences of its all-encompassing reality. Once the spherically holistic nature of Love’s All-inclusive Oneness is experienced, our quest for Peace and Love transforms from being an impossible mystery to becoming an ever more unfolding and enriching mastery. It becomes mainly the challenge to change one’s mind about Love’s dynamic nature and choose to stand with Love in our shared Victory Celebration beyond fear.

Those who set aside their egos even for a moment glimpse a vision of a different possibility. To dare to be that different and no longer honor the ego takes courage, the courage that every one of us can find within our own hearts as we dare to believe that there is a better way than our ego’s dreary day. The ego cannot offer us The Better Way. Love can and does – even here and now as heaven’s presence on the Earth. By exercising our courage and compassion as cooperative, curious, creative and committed members of the human race, we all win the final battle of the “us” civil war.

Share with me not the gift of a piece of your mind but the gift of the peace of your heart!

Ask Not What Our God Can Do for Us, Ask . . .

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If humans want to experience ourselves as fully divine beings of light, we must position ourselves in God’s position. How do we position ourselves in God’s position when we cannot replace God? We do so by loving and serving humanity as God wills that humanity be loved and served, thereby aligning our will with God’s will. When our wills are aligned with God’s will, our spirits, hearts and minds will come into alignment too. Our wills will become extensions of God’s Will, our spirits and hearts will become extensions of God’s Spirit and Heart and our minds will become extensions of God’s Mind. Without replacing God, we will manifest God through our human forms, the very expression of the divine made incarnate that Jesus modeled while on earth. This is oneness with God in the fullness of our capacity to know it while yet expressing life through our bodies. This is what it means to be fully human and fully divine, to live the paradox of being gods and yet not God. And that is the manner in which we become aware that Love is all we are just as Love is all God is.

To attain our highest evolutionary ideal as diving beings of light, humans may yet be inspired by lofty words accompanied by daringly compassionate deeds. As he boldly accepted responsibility for leading his nation, John F. Kennedy once inspired listeners by declaring “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” His call to reverse our aim from narrowly self-centered targets to broadly other-focused goals still resonates with many who heard his inaugural speech on a cold January day in 1961. Today the Spirit of Love calls to us, “Ask not what God can do for us, ask what we can do for God.”

If we ask we will hear the Spirit say, “As earthly channels of grace and blessing upon which I must rely, love and care for all of My creation. Raise up all the children whom I entrust to you as if they are all Beings of Light and Love created by Me as their Divine Parent. Let harm come to none and heal those who have already suffered harm of any kind. Come into My arms of love with humility that I might love you as an example of My mercy and justice towards all of humankind and then go forth to tell others of what you have experienced of Me according to My will that heaven come to be on earth.”

If all adults throughout humanity were to re-order our priorities to make the welfare of children paramount among the issues we address with all of the resources, energies and time available to our hearts and minds, we’d revolutionize the world because we’d all become one global village united in our devotion to every child’s well-being. We would make no weapon or tool of destruction until we’d first served all the children according to all of their needs in body, mind, emotions, relationships, will and spirit. Before we counseled together about how to make war, we’d counsel together about how to ensure lasting peace so that the abiding safety and tranquility children need to develop into wholeness according to God’ design for their unfolding fruitfulness would be, like the soil in an orchard, undisturbed. To nurture our children as trees within their global orchard, we would order our lives after the ideal of the infinitely patient and merciful Parent and discover the totality of our Divine Parent’s commitment to us as well.

In the process we’d experience the Answer to life’s most enriching riddles, “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” “In both the short and the long run and in all ranges in between, what really matters most?” We’d come face to face with our neglectful as well as abusive inhumanity towards other human beings and sort out our personal responsibilities for perpetuating that inhumanity, learning along the way that we are not as powerless to make a meaningful difference as we’ve managed to convince ourselves we are.

We’d learn to tune out our ego’s constant chatter about justifications for our being neglectful and even cruel and abusive towards others, and instead tune into the still, small voice of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe who whispers words of wisdom in our hearts but never insists that we obey them. We’d come to understand the meaning of “free will” and how it offers us both the responsibility and the power to create the world we live in, be it healthy or unhealthy, kind or cruel, sane or insane, uplifting or oppressive, encouraging or disheartening, empowering or intimidating, creative or destructive.

In mastering the disciplines required to undo our allegiance to ego’s tyrannous reign on earth in modern times, we would come into increasing awareness of our ancient native realm beyond earth and learn to practice here those principles honored there. We’d uproot our tree of life from the soil of dualistic social approval and disapproval and transplant it into the richer and more rewarding unified soil of unconditional love, appreciation and affection. We’d forsake futile efforts at intimacy on ego’s terms and instead enjoy the abundant sweetness of intimacy on Divine terms. We’d learn to set aside all learned obstacles to the flow of love as a natural life force and rest in peace within that flow’s refreshing stream long before our bodies decline to function and we rest in peace beyond the body’s realm. In this way, we’d learn to live in the Present as if the Past, Present and Future were one within Eternity.

To make our peace with God while our bodies remain here on earth is the wisest re-orientation we can choose to make. We can emigrate from hell to heaven while yet remaining on the earth in bodily form. Our free will empowers us to make that choice for ourselves and for loved ones who remain faithful to us. If we choose hell-on-earth’s orientation, we can hardly expect wiser loved ones of any age to remain attached to our way of life. Our hearts call for them to detach from hell and enter into heaven before us, waiting patiently for us to come to our senses and choose to join them in earthly heaven too. No political considerations will separate us from God’s peace of mind, hope of heart and joy of spirit unless we remain allied with the mistaken belief that God/Goddess favors some of us over others of us.

That there is no hell except by reason of having chosen poorly to believe in the divisive illusions of the ego is a paradox worth discovering in person. By choosing to invest ourselves in unforgiving orientations and insisting that vengeance be given its day on earth, we can adopt hell as our future just as others adopted it for us as our past. Yet every day of our lives we have the power to choose to step away from the mistaken choices others made that so heavily influenced our thinking and chiseled our beliefs, as if epitaphs upon our gravestones, and with Divine help learn to think again more sanely.

Never has violence begat anything but greater harm within expanding spirals of violence. Never has a whitewash over unresolved emotional issues begat anything but festering wounds and ugly outbreaks of heartrending violence. Because forgiveness allows buried bodies to rise up to new life without burdens of guilt and shame, we need not remain chained to the buried pain of anyone’s past woundedness – including especially our own. We are free to choose to rise beyond past pain and present suffering to soar together as mighty eagles above the storms – somewhere beyond the rainbow that symbolizes the Divine promise that grief need no more flood the earth to deprive us of our second birth.

Let each of us ask our Divine Parent how we each can more fully participate in awakening peace on earth among people of good will so that ultimately all people feel free in their hearts to become and live as people of good will. No child of God of any age or station in life need be left behind in the School of Highest Education in which each member of the student body is devoted to the welfare of the whole.

Implications of Jesus’ Prayer for Oneness

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Jesus’ prayer for all believers to know oneness with God is recorded in the 17^th Chapter of John. Its implications ripple outward into his call that his followers treat the “least of these” as if they are one with him. This core theme of oneness echoes throughout Jesus’ ministry as he constantly questions the standards used by others to separate “good” people who are supposedly worthy of social approval and warm welcome from “bad” people who supposedly deserve only disapproval and avoidance or exile if not outright attack.

We are all one within God and with each other because we are all (each and every one of us!) created in the image and likeness of God, expressing God’s divine nature. Long ago, a fundamental flaw crept into Christian theology when elitists bent on accumulating power over the masses adopted the concept of “original sin” or “created flawedness.” This transparent lie helped to keep the masses controlled by their constant fear of being condemned by God, for whom the elites conveniently claimed to speak to the terror of the masses who already feared the elites. The elites equated their neglect and abuse of underlings with the way God saw and treated humanity. How convenient to claim to speak for God to justify one’s own cruelty!

The concept of “original sin” is such an insulting idea in its disparagement of God as Creator that Jesus has to constantly serve as Redeemer to correct it. We need a Redeemer only because we believe false ideas trumpeted in the marketplace by those who hog the soapboxes and pulpits as socially aggressive personalities who crave social approval so much as to demand that they set the standards for social approval. As their craving for political power as a false substitute for spiritual power corrupts their minds and hearts, they do all they can to lead others astray with them. Those who question such absurdities are colored as heretics and blasphemers and made to serve as martyrs and scapegoats for religio-political heroes/bullies.

Who sets the standards? Man or God? Woman or Goddess? Jesus says that his (and our) heavenly Father* sets the standards. He modeled that truth so radically that he submitted his own lesser will to the greater will of the Father even unto death on the cross so as to demonstrate the power that arises from Oneness lived to its extreme. We are called today to do likewise, but few are willing to endure the merest hint of social disapproval (let alone the public humiliation of a cross-hung criminal) to do so. We mistakenly keep expecting religio-politicians to approve our “deviations” from their critically acclaimed social norms and flinch when they disapprove instead. How timid we are compared to Jesus and his original disciples!

Why does Jesus direct us towards serving the “least [familiar or approved] of these?” Because the more we embrace the stranger in the other person, the more we’ll have opportunities to get to know the stranger in ourselves and accept ourselves more completely too. It’s all a developmental thing actually. The human race’s diversity expresses more than mere diversity of surface appearances and actions summed up as “images,” “lifestyles” and “cultures.” In addition to demographically measured diversity humanity expresses our developmental diversity, the steps of development each of us has achieved with respect to the multifaceted range of human wholeness God designed us to master. We develop in response to our social environments. So, we tend to develop different facets of our gemlike wholeness on different timetables depending upon the social environments to which we have been exposed so far. (Do we not sometimes say, “He is a product of his environment?”)

For this reason, when we encounter a “stranger,” he or she is “strange” to a significant degree precisely because he or she has been exposed to different social environments or conditions than we have. We encounter the effects of those different social environments as embodied in and expressed through the “other” or “stranger.” Yet if we were totally honest with ourselves we would say, “There but by the grace of God go I.” We’d admit that we would be much like the stranger had we endured the social environments through which he or she has evolved.

Each person we meet offers us another opportunity to learn more about ourselves as we might be had we lived a life different from the one we’ve lived so far. Those opportunities offer insights into our wholeness because they reveal aspects of ourselves that our current or previous social environments may not have mirrored back to us before so powerfully or at all. And we tend to mirror for the other person in each relationship similarly helpful feedback about himself or herself. When we mirror feedback consciously without judgment or fault-finding, we are lovingly nurturing each other. The social environment of lovingly nurturing each other with gracious feedback is the kingdom of God Jesus represents and encourages us to enter into – seeking first God’s righteousness and no longer asserting our own (inadequate!) self-righteousness. That God’s righteousness is infused with grace and mercy is a lesson we need to learn by heart until we master it. Meeting and serving strangers so as to be their gracious hosts affords us opportunities for such mastery. Through practice, our mastery of hosting strangers empowers us to rise beyond xenophobia and learn to welcome each supposed “other” as a sister or brother – no longer a stranger at all.

Jesus calls us to be servants of those we know and those we don’t know because he knows how immature we are and always will be if we remain trapped within our social bubbles or cocoons. Within heavily defended comfort zones based on conformity, discipleship is moribund. Constant rebirth amidst the challenges of diversity is a part of maturing as a disciple. Jesus’ own journey illustrates that one must never pitch a tent and try to preserve the status quo, even one as magnificent at the Mount of Transfiguration. For us to develop or mature progressively as spiritual beings, humility requires that we admit that we are often ignorant – not stupid but lacking in information and ill-informed. The brightest genius can still be uninformed or ill-informed. In humility we listen and learn – and perhaps even laugh at ourselves more readily rather than fume over every little error (or non-erroneous nonconformity called an “improvement!”) we or others may make. Jesus asks us to listen within our hearts and minds to the Holy Spirit. That’s why he sent the Holy Spirit to be our constant Teacher as we develop greater maturity as his followers. Even today there are things that many of Jesus’ disciples cannot yet bear to hear, as he long ago foresaw. (See John 16:12.) Yet we can all become delightfully competent, ever-growing-wiser students of the Truth that sets us free to development our wholeness more and more completely.

Freedom to be authentic and whole beings of integrity and love as God created us to be is scary. It implies loss of social structures we once depended upon to guide and protect us on our journeys. In His quest for our highest good, our Father does not intend that those social structures with which we become so familiar during various phases of our development become our imprisoning status quo of traditions or “laws” (rules, roles and rituals). Like the gantry of a rocket that once enabled the rocket to stand erect and not fall over while it was assembled, equipped and fueled, social structures must at some point release us to soar beyond them. When that happens we are dependent on our internal guidance systems. The more our internal guidance systems are attuned to God’s will, spirit, heart and mind the more at peace with God we’ll be as we journey onward in our quest for more elegant mastery, deeper enrichment and more lasting satisfaction as our Father’s servant-sons and -daughters. Those who serve with grace achieve a high orbit from which to envision and embrace the whole of humanity as God’s family of beloved and much favored children.

*Today Jesus would have no problem calling the Supreme Parent “Mother” too. He could not do so earlier due to the social constraints of his historically first human audience with whom such a concept would have sidetracked communications too much. See, John 16:12-15 for Jesus’ explanation of his plan of sequential communication with successive audiences.

ã Art Nicol 2013