Tag Archives: ego

The Fallacy of One-upmanship

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Jiddu Krishnamurt

As modern society became increasingly competitive, we adopted as one of ego’s justifications for competitive modes of living the “survival of the fittest” aspect of Darwin’s theory of evolution. We thereby chose to glorify one-upmanship as the wave of our future. Competition became a dominant theme in economic life as well as personal life, with professional sports offering a way to combine the two and fabricate vicarious opportunities to be a winner or loser by over-identifying with other people’s achievements. In doing so we neglected to notice that Darwin’s theory also incorporated cooperation among members of a species for survival.

In our self-deprecating neglect, for centuries we’ve been one-upping each other as if that process carried to its extreme and unbalanced by concern for the human species as whole creates a better future. By measuring our progress mainly in materialistic terms and accepting collateral damage (even among our own loved ones) as a norm, we’ve ignored other measures of the quality of life and failed to notice life’s decline. In glorifying one-upmanship as the wave of the future upon which to surf to shore as champions of injustice, we failed to notice that we are riding that wave into shallower and shallower waters and waving good-bye to a deeper, more enriching future. Now storm-generated waves of competition crash upon the shore to produce tremendously powerful undertows that drag many of us along the grinding bottom to drown in self-pity and self-contempt for our failure to thrive as upmanshippers.

If you are one of the disenchanted surfers who wants to find a way out of the shallows to avoid the grind and not be as likely to drown, consider what I share in the ABCs of love portion of this web site. There you will find promising ideals to put into practice in cooperation with others as practitioners of love. The principles of love are worthy of your heart’s desire for an upgraded lifestyle as you renew your capacity to sail the high seas. The adventure of truth-seeking awaits you as you discover the treasure chest of love that your fear of pirates has caused you to bury in your heart.

God is an Authority Figure Unlike Any Other

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The heart of Jesus’ mission has always been to reveal that God is an authority figure unlike any other we may have known – or even heard of or imagined – throughout our lifetimes. Followers of Jesus have the same mission. Most of us have resisted the opportunity to fully benefit from this mission because we remain hung up on our experiences with human authority figures. We acquired hang-ups as earthly authority figures exercised power over us in clumsy, perhaps even cruel ways and now we tend to automatically hang up on Jesus when he calls us to walk with him through our past experiences to know and show God as an authority figure unlike the earthly ones of our past. I write this post to encourage all of us to listen when Jesus calls and hear and heed the more completely heart-satisfying message about God’s authority and power as he offers it to us. We miss out on the grace of God when we ignore Jesus’ call to share the true nature of God with a world that hungers to know an authority figure of His/Her qualities.

How does God differ from earthly authority figures in offering to relate to us? Let’s explore several differences among the many that exist.

As we grew up, we experienced parenting figures, older relatives, teachers, coaches and others who wielded authority that we were taught to obey (or at least appear to obey) as quickly as possible to reduce the risk of wearing out their patience and tolerance. When we did not obey quickly enough to satisfy our authority figures, we usually endured punishment in some form, what the authority figures commonly called “consequences” for behaving in ways unacceptable to them or for being too slow or inattentive. Even when not caught misbehaving, we often still felt guilty about violating our authority figures’ rules and not complying with their expectations. We took their values, rules and corresponding expectations to heart and learned to feel guilty for not following them instantly even long after they ceased to be actively in our lives as authority figures. As we adopted their values, rules and expectations as our own, we learned to believe them to come from God “on high.” In this manner, we learned to confuse God with earthly authority figures and failed to see the significant distinctions highlighted in this post.

In contrast, God is an authority figure who 1) holds us to high expectations of progressively greater excellence but not instantaneous perfection and 2) does not punish us nor want us to feel endless guilt when we fail to uphold divine standards in our human lives. Our conscience’s feelings of guilt may be helpful guidance when we realize we’ve not met God’s expectations but God does not want us to hang onto any guilt we may feel. She/He wants us to forgive ourselves and let guilt go because He/She knows that guilt interferes with our freedom to learn the lessons in wisdom and grace that we gain from our failures to fully satisfy God’s standards of excellence. He/She also knows that fear of punishment does not improve our capacity to learn and grow on account of our experiences in life. Fear only inhibits our growth towards the mature wholeness God wants us to enjoy. In helping us to grow strong enough to clear every hurdle of God’s expectations, Jesus introduces us to God’s forgiving nature that we might be free of guilt, no matter what we may or may not have done to fall short of God’s healthiest expectations or how many times we may have stumbled on our journeys. Lightened of all burdens of guilt, we are more likely to gain mature humility and soar higher to clear each hurdle the next time it appears in our lives. God generously grants us limitless opportunities to do so.

Throughout our lives, we likely encountered earthly authority figures who played favorites and recruited people to their side in order to demonstrate the influence and significance they held and impress us with the losses we risked in being uncooperative. These experiences set us up to assume that other authority figures, including God, would relate to us in similar ways. We learned to believe that popularity and social status are desirable, especially popularity and favor with influential authority figures whose opinions of us might make a difference in how things turn out for us. In the process of relating to such authority figures we may have developed habits (mostly unconscious ones) that came to control our words and actions – perhaps even our thoughts – as we did all we could to seem to be on the side of the authority figures who ruled our lives and remain in their favor. On the other hand, we may have developed habits of rebelling (perhaps secretly) against authority figures and did not allow them to directly influence our lives much at all. From either perspective, many of us failed to develop close, meaningful, mutually respectful and fear-free relationships of trust and transparency with our earthly authority figures.

In contrast, God is an authority figure who does not play favorites in any way and has absolutely no need to be popular or have others on His/Her side in order to be powerful. It’s a mistake to believe that God needs approval from anyone to be the Supreme Authority Figure in the Universe. He/She has no more need for social approval than He/She needs to inflict pain, guilt or punishment in any form on anyone. If you think about it, you’ll realize that earthly authority figures react to our mistakes as if they’ve taken them as personal insults – as if their egos have been bruised by our failures to live according to their expectations. Since God has no ego and does not need our approval, why would God react this way? It is only in the interests of earthly authority figures to claim that God reacts this way so that they can claim that God backs up their earthly authority. Such claims are the ultimate expression of the desire for earthly authority figures to recruit others – including even God – to their side to demonstrate their power. God takes no sides in expressions of earthly authority and seeks only to guide earthly authority figures to exercise authority with wisdom born of humility and to avoid hubris. Since God does not play favorites in any way, He/She does not favor one earthly authority figure over another but rather seeks to guide them all, regardless of the degree to which any may be inclined to listen to Him/Her. As Jesus’ life reveals, as our Divine Parent, God invites us all – earthly authority figures and the rest of us – into close, meaningful, mutually respectful and fear-free wholehearted intimacy with Him/Her even as She/He serves as our Ultimate Authority Figure.

It is commonly said of earthly authority figures that power tends to corrupt them and absolute power tends to corrupt them absolutely. In this manner, the higher up the ladder of power that an earthly authority figure rises, the more likely it is that he or she will wield power with decreasing empathy, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, humility and grace and with increasing hubris. Studies have discovered scientific evidence of changes in our brains and how we think as we rise to wield earthly power. Although these changes do not occur uniformly in everyone, the risk is great that they will occur unless disciplines are in place to curtail their development. (For more about this topic, visit http://www.daedalustrust.com/ and read “Power Causes Brain Damage” in the July/August 2017 issue of The Atlantic Monthly at theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/.)

In contrast, God is an authority figure who is not corrupted by any degree of power, even absolute power. By nature, God is infinitely powerful and yet also incorruptible. He/She never stoops to bullying, bribing or being bribed. If anything, His/Her grace and mercy expands the more we try to no longer conform to the patterns of the world and instead allow our hearts and minds to be transformed as the means of demonstrating God’s good and perfect will towards everyone. That is, the more diligently we strive to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God regardless of social disapproval we may encounter and the failure of others around us to do likewise, the more He/She welcomes us to be close and comforted even in the midst of our most troubling testings and trials. How few earthly authority figures compare well to God on that standard!

By their nature as “earthly,” our human authority figures are physically outside of us and rule over us while we grow from childhood into adulthood. As they train us to conform to their spoken and unspoken rules, expectations and way of life, they hope that we’ll internalize their dominating values, ideas and attitudes and allow them to rule unquestioned for all our lives as if our parents and other earthly authority figures are eternally with us and as absolute in knowledge and power as God is. It is common for this to happen. We are apt to struggle throughout our adulthood trying to take back our true power from such internalized authority figures in order to value ourselves and recover our freedom to outgrow their training and become our own persons with power to question what we’ve been told.

In contrast, God is present within us from the start – when we were first created – and reigns beneath, alongside and around us as the nurturer of our true nature and source of health and wise guidance. Rather than be a source of rules for us to obey and expectations for us to satisfy, God is the source of all we need to fulfill our divine destinies as Her/His children. God’s resources are offered freely and abundantly to us from within as well as outside of us. Guidance, wisdom, love, motivation and the energizing opportunities of life are some of His/Her most precious gifts extended openly to each of us. We are each God’s favorite child of the model and design we are because we are each uniquely who we are. No one can compete to take our place in relationship with God. If a person tries to compete with us for a relationship with God, that person is merely abandoning his or her natural relationship with God and trying mistakenly to substitute a lesser quality relationship. That’s a foolish choice made by all who continue to fear God and seek to come into Her/His presence disguised as someone else rather than to approach the throne of grace “just as I am without one plea.” Unlike many earthly authority figures, God is not poised to pounce upon us with a judgmental, fault-finding attitude as many people mistakenly believe but rather is peacefully and lovingly at rest within us, continuously inviting us to be at ease within Her/His inner embrace. As we accept love’s invitation to be at ease, we release stress and have far less reason to take on any dis-ease.

Unless a human authority figure masters the art of humility and disciplines himself or herself to rise beyond ego’s claim on his or her mind, to one degree or another, he or she will engage in hypocrisy. His or her actions will to some degree conflict with each other and with his or her words. He/She is likely to hold differing standards for himself/herself as well as for others as part of playing people against each other or currying favor with some in preference to others. She/He may make mountains out of molehills while overlooking some mountains as if they were molehills. Blowing hot and cold, using double standards and playing games with emotions will be part of his/her typical patterns. Worse yet, he/she may be petty, vindictive, heartless and too little concerned about the welfare of others whom he/she tends to undervalue as a matter of routine.

In contrast, God is free of hypocrisy and remains steadfast in His/Her orientation towards each and every one of us as a divine child welcome to participate in the divine family business as Jesus did. God holds out holiness as the universal standard for Himself/Herself and for us too. Since holiness is the same as healthiness and wholeness shared in oneness with God and each other, it is a high standard worth attaining. It is also natural to us because it is the nature in which we are all created as extensions of the Holy Parent. God indulges in none of the traits of an ego and sustains positive regard for all of us regardless of how well or poorly we may satisfy His/Her standards of health and wholeness from time to time. Jesus told the story of the prodigal son to illustrate God’s commitment to our well-being for all eternity.

I hope that these thoughts stir up hope that many of your assumptions about God’s nature and your relationship with God are based on fallacies acquired along the way in your life. None of these fallacies needs to continue to interfere with your awareness of God’s presence within you because you have the power to change your mind and allow your heart to be cleansed of all fear moment by moment by God’s love flowing freely from the throne of grace to you as a tree of life planted astraddle the river of life. The river of life flows with God’s love for all of us, without exception – no matter what we may have said or done or what we or anyone else may think of us.

I encourage you to set time aside to rest with God as Jesus frequently did as he spent time away from the crowds and even from his disciples. Put down your roots into the soil of unconditional love and drink of the river of life as often and as deeply as your heart desires. There is no more promising way to use your time than to put a smile in God’s heart by smiling there with Him/Her. She/He delights to share your joys as well as your sorrows and other heartfelt emotions throughout your lifetime because in your open sharing She/He knows that you have come to trust that you are best off when you spend time regularly in God’s home within your heart. None of us is banished to live as a prodigal child for any longer than we want to. When we decide to come home to God by welcoming His/Her presence within us, we’ll know it has happened forever.

Rival or Revival?

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The ego feels threatened by God because the ego has no function or purpose in God’s realm. Thus, the ego sees God as its rival and the cause of all conflict rather than the Source of All Life lived in endless harmony. Our true nature yearns for God because God’s presence within us empowers the revival of our true function and purpose as divine lovers embodying, as Jesus did while expressing himself through a body, our natural, created capacity to live in harmony with each other and with all forms of life. Free will is our power to choose which relationship to have with God – rival or revival. The first arises from a false identity with ego. The second is a process to enjoy forever as the truth sets us free to live as God created us to be.

Created with free will, we have the power to choose whether to see ourselves as God’s rival as ego does or see ourselves as empowered by God to experience revival from the dominion of fear over which ego presides into the dominion of love within which ego fades as our habits of thinking fearfully fade. With which do we choose to identify – ego or God? We are either falsely fabricated by-products of the ego or truly created children of God. No one can make this choice of identity for us. To force us to choose to be God’s child would be to deny our free will’s fullest power. To not be rivals of God we must have the power to reject God and choose ego instead and yet remain loved unconditionally by God and welcomed to return to our senses and choose again to honor our true nature and our created, natural relationship with God. Only when we realize that we have the power to reject God can we accept that we have the power to stand freely alongside God as divine children — together within the holy family God envisioned when God created us.

God did not create us to be less free or less powerful than God. God envisioned us to be co-creators of heaven with God, to participate fully within the family business of co-creation. In time we will realize as Jesus did that we “must be about our Father’s business” and cease to compete with Him/Her as if to set up a rival business. God does have a monopoly on love. Yet God’s generous nature would withhold no feature of love from any of us. Unlike human business monopolies based on profit-making, God seeks no profit from the distribution of love in abundance except the joy of sharing life with us openly and honestly. Our main challenge now is to step free from ego’s false teachings and instead live with all our hearts with awareness of God within the core of our beings for the purpose of sharing love as generously and abundantly as God does.

Will you join me in this grand adventure in exploring a universe free from fear’s domination? Will you join me in allowing all excuses for interpersonal violence and planetary exploitation fade away? It’s unreasonable, even maddening to strive to rival what is best when revival of what is best is as near to us as our hearts.

The Blaming of the Screwed (Or Letting Sleeping Gods Lie)

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It is the nature of the ego to twist the truth into pretzels well salted to cause more pain to those already wounded. The ego produces both heroes upon whom to heap praise regardless of its unwarranted nature and scapegoats upon whom to heap blame regardless of its irrational nature. To make sure that an ego-based culture appears to be balanced, the ego assigns some members roles of heroes and other members roles of scapegoats or anti-heroes. In this way, the culture is divided between two opposing forces who play out their competing roles before audiences populated by the ego-culture’s majority of members who prefer to avoid being noticed as their best way to avoid taking the risk of being praised as a hero or critically judged and later blamed as a scapegoat.

The masses cower in fear of being singled out for the ego’s heartless judgment – to be praised or scorned – because they have noticed how routinely praise turns into scorn as heroes fall under the overwhelmingly unreasonable and unhealthy expectations placed on them by the masses. Heroes desperate to please the masses overtax themselves to perpetually warrant praise and avoid scorn. When heroes fail to live up to the expectations of the masses, the masses turn on them to convert them into scapegoats. The feeding frenzy is brutal as hero-worshippers fall upon their wounded former heroes to tear from them every shred of human dignity. From the perspective of the masses, it’s better to never ascend to the heights of public praise than to descend into the status of publicly scorned fallen hero.

Students of birth order identify the first born as predisposed to compete for the roles of heroes or standard bearers of an ego-culture’s most rewarded and idealized values – even when those values are myths honored more in the exception than in the rule. Heroes are taught the value of keeping up their image to remain objects of praise as false idols regardless of the declining substance behind their image. To cultivate and maintain their images as heroes, initially first born or otherwise born, the heroes must climb over others to ascend ladders of success they identify as theirs to top in order to tower over others by comparison. Inflicting pain on their competitors is necessary to ascend most rapidly because pain causes competitors to be at least reluctant to challenge them if not crippled in capacity to challenge. Thus heroes need wounded competitors to prevail as heroes. What would be the significance of praise if it were not contrasted with scorn? All the ego’s world is colored by such comparisons between winners and losers by whatever criteria winning and losing is measured. In obedience to the ego’s rule, we heap praise upon winners, heap scorn upon losers and do all possible to distinguish one from the other! Such is the fundamental order of the ego’s culture.

Those who are born into circumstances rich with opportunities to earn praise seek to preserve the culture into which they were born. Those born into circumstances deficient in opportunities to earn praise naturally feel screwed by what seems like “fate” and suffer within the circumstances they did not cause. The injustice of such suffering is apparent and yet prevails so long as the ego’s culture remains the status quo. Changes that only change how circumstances favor one group over another group merely change how injustice is distributed and who is encouraged to become heroes most readily and who is encouraged to become scapegoats to keep the ego’s culture in balance. The ego will always demand the existence of heroes/winners and scapegoats/losers. Which members of society take up which roles is a matter of indifference to the ego so long as the clear distinction between the two is preserved. Cycles of hero-worship and scapegoat-blaming will continue until the ego’s system is entirely replaced by an alternative that is based not on fear but on love – love as defined by Love’s Divine Source.

A sure-fire way to disrupt the ego’s system is available. All we need do is to no longer allow sleeping gods to lie. Every person who survives in society by masquerading as an ego is in truth a sleeping god. While asleep every god who adopts the ego’s roles as his or her means of survival is lying. He or she is participating in twisting the truth into well-salted pretzels by twisting the truth of his or her genuine, divine nature into a false image of a human being who values social approval over authenticity and personal integrity. All of us hunger for the freedom to be and express authentically who we are as children of God. That’s what being a “god” means. So long as we remain too afraid to explore and express our authentic nature as God’s children amid the ego’s pressures to conform or be scorned, we will suffer (often in silence but suffer nevertheless). When we dare to be true to ourselves as God created us, we will cease to suffer. We will still feel pain as inflicted by those who inflict pain on others as their means of climbing ladders of social success as rewarded by the ego. But we will need no longer endure the chronic suffering of one who has betrayed himself or herself out of fear of the ego’s methods of enforcing conformity upon the masses.

Our choice is not to avoid pain. It is to embrace the pain of standing out among the ego-conformists to be neither hero or scapegoat and no longer value “winning” or “losing” on ego’s terms. The ego-enslaved will characterize us as “losers” but little do they know because they have yet to discover the relief of release from fear’s pretzeling social pressures. Being twisted by our own lies causes our own suffering. We have the choice to awaken as God’s children and rise beyond ego’s enslaving twisted definitions of happiness and success to explore, embrace and enjoy freedom to be ourselves. No longer hero, scapegoat or cowering member of the masses, we are free to envision the alternative to the ego’s fear-based culture and flock together as birds of a feather – as eagles who soar where the sky is no limit.

Let’s stop blaming the screwed for the ills of our society or holding heroes accountable for “fixing” those ills we are helping to produce and maintain. Let’s instead no longer be sleeping gods and awaken to our true nature as God’s children. Let’s move forward together as co-creators of a culture rooted in the soil of God’s unconditional love for all humanity, rising up relentlessly beyond ego’s hard-heartedness and branching out in all directions to welcome all who would take up our common cause – the call of our hearts to end the interpersonal violence and planetary exploitation that distresses us all. No matter how much praise we offer to heap, no hero can do for us what we must do for ourselves. No matter how much scorn we offer to heap, no scapegoat can be blamed for not substituting for the responsibilities only we have the power to carry as we contribute to our society’s freedom from fear.

Radical Christianity – Where Is It When We Need It?

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Today we face an epidemic of wounded bullies who resort to tactics of warfare (violence, threat of violence, propaganda, censorship, espionage, diversionary actions, attacks and counterattacks, toxic weapons of individual as well as mass destruction of persons, social standing and property rights, etc.). With the encouragement of a culture that mistakes violence as means of promoting safety, they impose their agendas of physical and emotional dominance within our homes, neighborhoods, communities, nations and world. In wrapping themselves in verbal cloaks of self-justifying excuses, they claim as their back-up authority extreme misrepresentations of religious texts, Constitutional provisions, laws and other verbiage that is readily subject to distortion by angry men and women. And few in their audiences bother to study the true nature of the cited religion, Constitution, laws and other source of justification to discover how completely the bullies are distorting these revered sources.

As anger clouds their reason, bullies seek reverence by association, being unable to feel secure in it for themselves directly. In truth, they use such revered sources to avoid being aware of guilt and shame they carry in hidden places in their hearts and minds. While citing external authority for their actions, they know in their hearts that they lack legitimate authority. Grievously wounded in childhood, bullies turn the tables and do unto others as was done unto them until they experience healing and restoration to sanity.

We call some of these bullies “radicals” or “extremists.” In fact, all bullies are radically afraid and extremely wrong in their misguided approach to problem solving. Their fear of failure drives them to stamp out all forms of accountability by which their failures might come to light. Theirs is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fear is their deepest truth. It drives them insane with shame to even consider that their inner pain and turmoil would ever become public knowledge because they view personal struggles and the honesty and humility needed to address them as signs of weakness. They fear the stigma of being publicly pointed out to be mistaken and deprived of the social acclaim they so desperately crave. They are the “heroes” who master the art of ridicule and scapegoating of anyone who dares to disagree with them. Having mastered this art, they fear now that it will be used against them by others who seek to dethrone them and become society’s alternate heroes (“good ones”).

Radical or extremist Christianity offers the true alternative to this self-fulfilling prophecy by offering the model of Jesus’ life and his principles that everyone can put into practice. Anyone can follow Jesus’ example and put his principles into practice to alleviate the pain others suffer in silence and open the door to reconciliation between bullies and those they have bullied. There need be no guilt or stigma for being mistaken nor guilt or stigma for having inflicted, silently condoned or fearfully tolerated violence in any form upon anyone. Jesus calls his followers to release everyone from guilt and shame by mastering the art of unconditional love, with its reconciling tools of repentance, forgiveness and acceptance within relationships that set us free from any and all misguided ideas we ever adopted as alternatives to truth.

Radical Christianity can be practiced not merely to first do no harm but to secondly undo harm (heal). To practice radical Christianity requires that all who have endured harm in any way become masters of the art of unconditional love and grow to apply it in every single circumstance in his or her life, without exception. Jesus did that. We can also do that. We can become aware that all forms of harm done to us are birthed within pain in those who seemed to have harmed us. We can become aware that all seeming attacks upon us are cries for love – cries to be released from guilt and shame. And we can reach within ourselves to find the wellspring of unconditional love that flows there and offer endless cups of refreshing restoration to innocence to all who seek it from us.

Do we have to wait until someone recognizes his or her own mistake or attack as regrettable before we release him or her from its karmic consequence? No. We can release as immediately as we become aware of feeling the pain that signals we are in the presence of a carrier of pain. As Jesus declared from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” we can similarly call upon Abba, Father, to shower blessings not curses upon those who spitefully use us — whether by intention or by ignorance. We who have ever been social scapegoats at the hands of society’s heroes stand in the most favorable position to invoke the same authority and power that Jesus exercised throughout his life. In Isaiah 53:3, the Bible tells us that Jesus “was despised and rejected–a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.” Likely having even anticipated that feature of his ministry on Earth, Jesus nevertheless prayed in the garden of Gethsemane (as well as other times most likely) for the power to do God’s will and not shirk the opportunity to demonstrate God’s power to bring forth new life from the grave mistakes we are all capable of making.

Let us consider Jesus’ example and assess our own lives for the opportunities we have to follow in his footsteps in radical ways, not just to the cross but beyond it and the tomb. We who have been scapegoats have already experienced the cross and the tomb. What now presents itself to us for our exercise is the power of the resurrection and new life. God offers it both to scapegoats and bullies alike. We who have been scapegoats have every reason to feel empathy and compassion for the bullies because we know the experience they will pass through in order to be free of their self-inflicted guilt and shame. We hold the keys to their hell on Earth. As keepers of the peace, we must use those keys wisely and widely without regard to persons on account of any criteria by which those who do not yet know Jesus nor follow him radically may judge and condemn us or others. We release ourselves from the remnants of our own hells on Earth when we release others from theirs.

Is it not time to set ourselves free by setting others free? That’s how the Golden Rule works at this radical extreme in society’s need for an end to interpersonal violence and planetary exploitation.

R.I.P. – God is the Lap of Luxury

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How much better off everyone would be if we were each to accept the gift of intimacy that God offers all of us! This gift is a crown of purest golden love bejeweled with many precious gems of wisdom. It adorns both our minds and our hearts to interconnect us within ourselves and with each other wholeheartedly in peace, hope and joy. As children of the Reigning Monarch who Creates Universes, while we accept this royal gift as our natural inheritance, we need not die to receive it. Not does it do anyone good to try to kill God to usurp the throne of grace and take it from Him/Her. We need only be willing to thrive beyond our wildest hopes and dreams, coming fully alive to R.I.P. with God while yet experiencing and expressing life through our bodies and for all Eternity beyond such physical limitations once our bodies cease to function. No one will succeed to God’s throne and replace Him/Her. Yet everyone can succeed in joining God within the realm of grace set before us as a gift for everyone to share.

No amount of wealth can supply the luxury that personal intimacy or oneness with God supplies. That’s the irony that those who seek worldly wealth fail to admit is true. Whether you seek it for yourself or envy it when others have it, worldly wealth in any form – money, power, social status or any other – at best covers up the insecurities that come naturally from worrying about how God looks at one’s life. At worst the endless cycles of pursuit, envy and worry associated with making worldly wealth one’s primary life-goal and measure of success aggravate the internal turmoil one experiences when an intimate relationship with God seems not available to be enjoyed at our leisure.

The gift of intimacy with God is available to everyone freely — without cost of any kind. Most people find that reality too unbelievable to grasp or act upon. We are raised to believe that everything costs something and that nothing worth having is free. And it’s often true that possessing something to the exclusion of others comes with its costs. Carving out a piece of the pie for ourselves to enjoy as our personal dominion costs whatever we have to trade or give up to carve, possess and retain it. So, how could a personal, intimate relationship with God not also cost whatever we have to trade or give up to enjoy it? The best bargains in life still have trade-offs and costs, so we believe. We believe it until we experience life differently from the way we’ve been taught to expect life to be. Only by strange experiences beyond our expectations and immediate comprehension can we learn that our expectations have been holding us back from the best life and God have to offer.

Many people postpone resolving their issues with God until as late in life as they can. They assume that resolving their issues with God early will deprive them of the pleasures and other satisfying qualities of life they crave. They crave to carve a huge slice of the pie, perhaps a larger slice than anyone else has ever carved or perhaps a modest slice compared with others. Craving to carve consumes most of us to one degree or another. We measure our success and happiness by the slice of life we can call “ours.” We may even prefer to call it “mine” if we have no one with whom to share it whom we trust enough to share it without taking it from us.

The key to revisiting our beliefs about carving and the necessity of constantly craving more rests in realizing that we are making assumptions about life that are not necessarily true. For example, we are assuming that sharing will result in loss because others will take advantage of our generous nature and run off with the wealth we crave to call our own and keep control over. But, suppose that the type of wealth that truly allows us to R.I.P. with God cannot be taken from us nor ever run out no matter how widely or wildly we share it?

Suppose that intimacy with God is available to me without making it less available to you or to anyone else? Does it not make sense that an eternal, infinite God is expansive enough to share the Divine Heart of Love with you, me and everyone without anyone having less than anyone could possibly crave? How huge a slice of God might you want to taste in order to prove to yourself that God is huge enough to satisfy you while satisfying everyone else too?

Think of it this way: How much water do you imagine dipping out of the Pacific Ocean to have all the water you’d ever need or want? Assuming you did not want to claim a monopoly on the ocean and sell it to others for your own personal profit, how much of the ocean’s water do you actually need or want to possess at any one time? Do you imagine having to hoard your desired portion and keep it safe from others or do you realize that there’s no lack of water in the ocean that requires you to hoard it? Any water you dip out and use will find its way back into the ocean through the Earth’s never-ending hydrological cycles. It will return to the ocean for you or anyone else to dip out again later if you want or need it. The same is true about God’s love and all other aspects of Divine Nature. The supply of God is more than oceanic. And the replenishing cycle of Divine Love is more reliable than our planet’s hydrological system. God is not finite as the Pacific Ocean is. God is infinite. God is a reliable resource to draw upon for all of our life. Why not rest in peace with God now instead of postponing your rest while you spend decades of your life scrambling after slices of pie in various forms that matter so little in eternity – and are defined only in illusory terms anyway?

When I say “in eternity,” I mean “in your heart.” Your heart is inseparably linked with God for all time and beyond time. When you learned according to the ego’s rules to deny your emotions and numb or harden your heart to the world around you, your motive was to protect yourself from pain. Despite this worthy motive, an unforeseen side effect took place: you taught yourself to forget your naturally restorative intimacy with God within your heart. You do not need protection when the powerful energy of divine restoration is available to you. Divine intimacy and all it offers are still there in your heart, waiting for you to resume any time you decide to seek God’s presence within you. God is waiting patiently for your return home to your heart’s dominion. God is waiting for you to make room in your awareness for what has been missing from your awareness – your heart and all that your heart deeply desires.

Do you suffer a loss when you resume awareness of your heart? Not in truth. But for a time it may seem like you’ve lost the protective schemes you set up to protect yourself from awareness of your heartaches and your heart’s not-yet-met desires. In returning to intimacy with God by turning inward within your heart to connect again with God where God waits, you are making the choice to unlearn all the lessons of ego-protection that you so diligently learned under the ego-mind’s dominion of fear. The ego even convinced you to fear God and expect only punishment and pain from God on account of shutting Him/Her off from your awareness and from your life. You control the tap for shutting off or turning on your God-intimacy-awareness. The free will that God created you to enjoy remains yours. For a time you’ve been exercising your free will to ignore God’s call to return to intimacy with Him/Her. And yet in so doing you’ve ironically lost your sense of freedom. Why? Because we can enjoy being truly free only if we enjoy our freedom within our intimacy with God and make our intimacy with God a primary focus of our attention and our commitment within our free life.

Is it time to reconsider where you’ve allowed the primary focus of your attention and commitment to aim? Are you willing this season to begin an experiment in R.I.P. with God before you are on your death bed? I encourage you to run the experiment throughout 2017 to see what difference it makes in your peaceful enjoyment of life. Wisdom can be yours to exercise and invest as you choose. All you need do is stop (meditate), look within (contemplate) and listen to (commune with) your heart. Your heart is well-stocked with wisdom to guide you on your adventure in intimacy with God. Within that divine intimacy awaits all the love you’ve ever craved to experience and share. There’s no end to the wealth that is the most precious in the universe. It is yours, mine, his, hers, ours and theirs merely for the allowing and receiving.

Let’s all rest in love’s lap of divine luxury this season and for the rest of our lives – here on Earth and afterwards. Prove to yourself that there is life after death of your body by experiencing it fully while yet experiencing your body too. Fully physical, fully divine!

Pointedly Evolving or Pointlessly Revolving Spirituality?

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Politicians refer to the “rubber chicken circuit” as shorthand for going around shaking hands and eating meals with an array of their constituents at various local gatherings. That’s an ego’s way of cultivating popularity and votes while avoiding making tough commitments that might cause controversy and lose approval and votes for the politician. Although not openly announced, politicians’ unspoken mantras are “Stick to topics the are safely trivial or trendy and popular.” “Avoid dealing meaningfully with anything that is controversial.” “Get elected or re-elected to office at whatever cost.” Based on the rubber chicken circuit, as much as possible politicians remain amiably bland and elastic much like the chicken they learn to stomach and smile over during their meals with constituents. Nothing really changes. Constituents cease expecting anything to change. Ah, now there’s a sustainable comfort zone so long as the chickens don’t come home to roost too often and cause constituents to wonder how to hold their elected officials accountable for the mess in the barnyard.

As spiritually cloaked politicians seeking favor with audiences who will elect them “Pope” of their gathering and donate money to pay the bills, popular speakers and teachers of popular spiritual constituencies travel around similar circuits to maintain their amicably bland, noncontroversial positions as leaders whom their constituents are willing to follow and keep in office. These “leaders” make sure not to expect “too much” of their constituents and carefully espouse ideas and address topics that allow their constituents and themselves to remain on the circuit as chicken-hearted practitioners of whatever path of faith they identify as theirs. That’s the ego’s way of co-opting spiritual principles as tools for gathering people together in social groups for mutual admiration and self-congratulatory celebrations. The ego is slick. It does not have principles that require it to honor the actual substance of spiritual principles and practices. Its solitary principle is self-preservation. All other supposedly sacred principles may be sacrificed on the altar of ego-preservation. Egos within the leader and constituents silently conspire to lead everyone on circuits of different configurations that have one thing in common, namely that they always wind up back at the same point at which they started. And they manage to dress up that starting point as a new destination and celebrate arriving there. It’s so safe – for the ego but not for the community supposedly served by the leader.

Here’s a web site illustrating how widely varied racetrack-like circular thinking can be while the vast majority loop back to the starting point:

https://www.pinterest.com/explore/race-tracks/

Spiritual evolution does not happen on any circuit that makes continuous revolutions around the same track. If a supposed leader’s role is merely to appear to be ahead of the pack on every lap of the track and keep the pack entertained enough not to notice how repetitive their experiences actually are, then most leaders of most spiritual communities are excelling in their roles. The ego would like us to believe that they are “doing their best” to lead. The truth is that they are doing ego’s best to covertly mislead. To avoid actually allowing us to experience spiritual evolution, the ego’s goal is to keep us spinning our wheels around the same track or switching to alternate tracks as we explore a variety of spiritual paths that distinguish themselves in their details but all race around some form of a closed circuit. No matter how convoluted the loop, it’s still a closed loop. True spiritual evolution progresses along an open path. That’s scary to the ego. Uncharted territory? Rough patches? Going off track may happen? Unexpected developments that require us to use our spiritual principles under extremely taxing conditions so as to enhance and deepen our understanding of our principles through practice? “Heaven forbid!” cries out the ego. But actually such an open path of ascension through unexpected rough patches and off-track exploring is our way to heaven at heaven’s bidding. Not “Heaven forbid” but “Heaven does bid!”

I write this blog simply to bring this matter to your attention. Are you following a leader around a closed loop that leads back to the point you began? It might take a few years to wind back around and there may be window dressing to cloak the old as if it’s new, but what’s really going on? When spiritual leaders rotate from audience to audience are they conspiring to hide the fact that none of their audiences are actually making progress? Dare to ask yourself. Your heart will tell you. Listen closely and watch what your wise heart brings to your attention. Ask for clarity and your experiences will reveal it to you.

Is your organization’s supposed spiritual leadership actually a closed shop of politicians carefully screening their inner machinations from your view? How willing are the leaders to hear your pointed, probing questions and respond with honest disclosures of both the facts and the process by which they lead? Are the leaders typically talking to you about the latest books they’ve read? Are they simply appearing to stay ahead of you by reading the latest teachings of other ego-encircled, ego-circling authors so that you are relieved of the responsibility for finding time to read those books and think about them for yourself? Do you notice any patterns in the process? Is it convenient for you to pay someone else to do your homework for you and keep you feeling smugly safe within the cocoon of your existence rather than to shake up your comfort and stir you to explore on your own?

Watch out for patterns of convenience and complacency. Leaders who allow you to pay their salaries so that you don’t have to do the homework required to make your own spiritual progress are hoodwinking you. Ask to have the blinders taken off and see what’s going on for real. A rubber chicken life is not worth living. In the end, you’ll feel cheated because you allowed it to happen to you. You’re only cheating yourself by being unwilling to ask tough questions and find out how your leaders respond. Don’t chicken out now or you’ll regret it later. Neither a rubber nor a plastic life is anything but ultimately a disappointing exercise in futility. Keep your heart open and see what’s there to be seen. It’s not so much about having eyes in the back of your head as having the sense to listen to your intuition and see with your heart too. Your heart holds a vision for the life you earnestly desire to live. Are you letting that vision lead you or are you perishing without a vision simply because you won’t turn into your heart? Remaining out of touch with your heart and blind to the grander vision is a choice. It’s your choice, a choice you have both the power and the responsibility to make moment by moment.

Called to Heal the Harm

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Within every path of faith there are principles and practices that support healing physical, emotional and mental wounds by faith. As a follower of Jesus, I am compelled to acknowledge that his path of faith did not stop at the principle “first do no harm” but moved beyond merely “ceasing to do harm” to heal harm already done. This, I submit, is Jesus’ ultimate weapon of mass reconstruction to be applied at any time before we use our ultimate weapons of mass destruction any further. We are fooling ourselves if we believe that we are not already using weapons of mass destruction and spreading them worldwide into hands of many angry people bent on revenge for past harm done to them and to the group of people with whom they identify. What will be the most persuasive antidote to such revenge-motivated actions that spread harm further and more massively? The antidote that will persuade the pain-angered weapon holders to lay down their weapons and join hands in peace will be healing of the harm they witnessed and release from the pain they have endured.

The sacred teachings by which Jesus’ life is surrounded and supported include miraculous concepts that point to miraculous actions that result in miraculous outcomes. Do we not sense our need for miracles in this modern era? It is time to activate miracles and set them free to achieve their goals. We who follow Jesus are empowered to activate miracles, as, I believe, are others who follow other faith-based practices. Since I am a follower of Jesus, let me address the path of faith along which Jesus walked while on earth to activate miracles and leave it to others more knowledgeable than I to address other miracle-activating paths of faith. We are all in this together and need not compete with each other over who performs miracles. There is enough harm already done for as many healers to address as may devote themselves to doing so.

We who follow Jesus are not challenged merely to be “good” people as if conforming to the best of current social norms is enough to satisfy our high calling. We, like Jesus, are challenged to be “God’s” people, God’s children who activate miracles as Jesus did while walking the earth. “These and greater things shall you do,” Jesus declared to his followers. We must now believe him and activate “these and greater things.” Will we do it by our own power as “good” people who take care of each other? No, that’s not enough. Is it enough to take care of strangers and be “good Samaritans?” As helpful as that is, it does not yet carry us into the realm of “these and greater things.” Being God’s people who do good towards others is helpful because those actions call into question the doubts others may have about God’s willingness to be helpful to them. Our helpfulness may open the minds of those we help to the reality of God’s willingness to perform miracles for them, miracles beyond their minds’ understanding but within their hearts’ hopes and desires.

Yet, to be fully faithful followers of Jesus, we must now learn to activate those miracles, those “greater things” of which Jesus spoke. We will not activate them by continuing to conduct the religious business of Christianity as usual. We must move radically beyond business as usual to be fully followers of Jesus. The ultimate social justice is to undo the harm others have already suffered and demonstrate that such harm was never intended by God. We reveal God’s true intentions by releasing God’s power to heal every form of harm completely. To declare that we cannot do this “ultimate” form of justice is to declare that Jesus misinformed us about our capacity to follow him. This capacity of which he spoke remains largely unexplored by his modern followers. Some of his first followers explored and exemplified it. For example, the Bible describes this incident in which two of Jesus’ first followers participated: “But Peter said, ‘I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!’” Acts 3:6 ESV.

From this example, it’s important to note that it does not take money to activate miracles. That fact is of interest to most of us followers of Jesus because we’re not wealthy. Silver and gold we may not have “none” but we have little. It may even be true that being wealthy would interfere with the conditions under which “greater things” or “ultimate justice” is best activated. We who are not wealthy need to concern ourselves less with issues related to income and wealth inequality and focus more upon the disparity between the capacity in which Peter walked and our capacity to activate miracles. What’s in the way of our activating miracles as Peter did?

In the centuries since Peter activated miracles as a follower of Jesus, many influences have come along to dilute the power of his followers to do likewise. It’s time to cut through all layers of dilution and boldly step out as Peter stepped out. Peter’s a great example of the boldness we must acquire because he, like us, at first made a lot of excuses for not following Jesus boldly. But in time he found the courage to do so and to quit explaining away his lack of capacity.

Since Peter stopped explaining away his lack of capacity, Christianity has been taken over by hosts of teachers and preachers who explain eloquently and otherwise why we’re powerless to activate miracles. We are overwhelmed with explainers who want us to believe that they are the exemplars of the maximum possible faith in Jesus. Jesus has a term for such explainers. It’s not a favorable or flattering term. About such teachers and preachers he spoke when he mentioned “blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!” Matthew 23:24 (NAS) In accompanying passages of the New Testament he had harsh things to say about them as he warned against following them. Over the centuries, such teachers and preachers have carefully avoided using such passages except when it served their purpose to perpetuate their favorite prejudices and/or preserve their positions of power. Rarely if ever have they cited those passages when confessing their own blindness and repenting as openly before their congregations as they had earlier misled them. Those who strain to focus on trivial matters so as to distract us from the camel in the room — that they don’t want to talk about and prefer that we’d all swallow together — occupy roles of leadership throughout the human institution that has replaced Jesus as God’s representative on Earth. We need to ditch such blind leaders before they ditch us more than they already have.

We common folk who follow Jesus do not lack the capacity to activate “greater things” by which harm already done may be healed, unless we resist surrendering our lives in service to God. That resistance to surrender is inherently intertwined within our egos, which are devoted to “edging God out” as much as possible from our lives, as 12-step programs reveal. The convenience-oriented, complacent, competitive ego active in all of us due to our social training within an ego-oriented society must be de-activated if we are to activate “greater things.” The ego is interested in activating only petty things, not greater things. In fact, based on ego, we become activated at the slightest irritation. Will we follow Jesus beyond our ego’s arguments and explanations for why following him is “impossible?” Will we cease to allow our ego’s petty irritations to distract us from answering the Spirit’s call to heal?

The ego is expert at formulating excuses and justifications for not following Jesus “that far” and at distracting us from such pursuits. One of the ego’s main excuses is “No one else is doing that. Let’s not look foolish in trying it ourselves.” Our fear of failing and appearing foolish in the eyes of others prevents us from taking the risk of serving God in this amazing capacity that Jesus exemplified and promised was ours as much as his. Peter hid from others for fear of looking foolishly associated with Jesus before men, women and children. Then he found the courage within him to dare to look foolish so that he might demonstrate why Jesus placed such faith in him as to call him to step from the safety of the boat to walk on water.

Jesus is calling us now to do the same. How do we do it? 2 Chronicles 7:14 states the “how” this way:

“. . . if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (NIV)

This is the way Peter did it too. He humbled himself, prayed, sought God’s intimate presence within his heart and turned from all excuses he’d been making for not surrendering himself in service according to Jesus’ model of service. In this manner he prepared his capacity to activate “greater things” without taking upon himself the arrogant notion that the power to do so would be his alone. He set aside his ego to turn from all the ways, values and attitudes of the ego (for such is the meaning of “wicked ways”). With his ego set aside, he was able to look past his fears and converse with God heart to heart. God hears within our hearts, where we hear Him/Her as well. Thus God heard Peter and fulfilled the Divine Promise to heal according to God’s will and way, not the ego’s will and way. And thus also Peter heard God within his heart and dared to utter his powerfully healing statement of faith.

It’s important to note the context in which Peter’s ego-dissipating faithfulness allowed God to perform “greater things” on account of Peter’s presence. Peter followed Jesus admonitions and practiced what he’d been taught while walking with Jesus. For me, four points stand out in the following expanded description of healing that took place:

“Peter looked directly at him, as did John. ‘Look at us!’ said Peter. So the man gave them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!’” Acts 3:4-6 (Berean Study Bible)

Point 1: Peter was not alone in his reaching out to others. John was with him. Peter acknowledged that fact when he told the man “Look at us” not “Look at me.” Peter and John were acting in concert. Thus Peter and John activated “greater things” by “gathering two or more in the name of Jesus.” Both Peter and John were devoted followers of Jesus. They were complying with Jesus’ model of sending out disciples two by two and taking few worldly goods with them. Peter may have been the one who was more ready to speak up as the more socially aggressive member of the team, but John’s presence in wholehearted agreement was essential to the activation of “greater things.” John was not merely being passive. As an active listener and keen observer, he was a full participant.

(Let’s stop over-admiring those who are socially aggressive in leadership positions and stop assuming that their outspoken nature makes them somehow more important than those of us who remain observantly quieter. We too have value in activating “greater things.” By our presence and ability to listen heart to heart and make eye contact, we set the stage for activation of miracles as much as any more verbose person does. Activation of “greater things” is a collaborative process best set in motion by whole people who collaborate according to their diverse contributions. When we walk together as followers of Jesus, we discover, reveal and engage in our capacity to activate “greater things” because Jesus keeps his promise to be there with us. It’s by Jesus power and presence offered by and through us together that miracles take place.)

Point 2: Peter and John traveled in ways that allowed them to cross paths with those who needed “greater things” to happen for them. These were the common folks who were likely more receptive to miracles on account of having spent so much of their lives despairing of any truly effective help ever coming their way. (In modern society, these would be the folks who lack access to universal healthcare, bank accounts, credit cards and smart phones.) The man whom Peter and John met had already experienced the futility of expecting “silver and gold” to heal him. When he looked at Jesus’ followers he looked with “expectation.” He was not as disappointed by Peter’s disavowal of financial wealth as we might believe. When he heard Peter’s “but,” he knew something better than another trivial coin was about to come forth. What he received exceeded his mental expectation of alms and addressed his heartfelt prayer for healing. By reason of his own life experiences, he had been prepared to be receptive to the healing offered.

What a miracle! God heard the man’s prayers in part because the healed man had also set aside his ego and become humble before God. His life hardly provided him the means for “wicked ways.” Thus in this context, three humble children of God failed to pursue socially “normal” definitions of success and instead encountered God’s healing. Peter and John would have missed this opportunity had they traveled as members of the privileged class upon a camel, cart or other convenient conveyance. So, too, modern followers of Jesus fail to encounter opportunities to activate “greater things” when we move about in cars and take advantage of our financial means to serve ourselves with conveniences that are not enjoyed by more humble members of society. In our cars (or on public transportation with our ears and eyes filled with piped in sounds and images from our smart phones) we may travel alone or together, perhaps even singing songs of praise to Jesus, but always we must be on the lookout for opportunities to step away from the conveniences by which we insulate ourselves from the storms of life and instead walk on troubled waters as Jesus calls us to walk.

Point 3: Both Peter and John looked directly at the man on his mat, noticed him and made eye contact. Only one of them spoke but both locked eyes with the man who requested help from them. Neither Peter nor John turned away from witnessing the distressing circumstances of this man’s life. They both acknowledged the man’s presence – and his humanity as well as his divinity. They both looked upon him with compassion, not disdain or judgment. In short, they looked as they had witnessed Jesus look upon so many people whose life experiences had humbled them. When Jesus looked, he was moved by compassion to work miracles. Likewise, Peter and John exposed themselves to being moved and thus allowed the power of miracles to move through them in their open-heartedness. They allowed themselves to serve as channels of healing blessings rather than to maintain their egos’ resistance to that role.

Point 4: Peter and John took the risk of allowing others to notice their power to activate miracles. They had witnessed how Jesus had been treated when the crowds noticed the miracles that poured forth from his life. They had seen the fickle nature of the masses who crowded in close around him, then welcomed Jesus as a popular conquering hero and next turned upon him only a few days later to cry out, “Crucify him, crucify him.” Peter and John had every reason to know that they were at risk if they revealed themselves as operatives of Jesus. Yet, such mental awareness did not prevent them from setting “greater things” in motion by acting as their heart called them to act. Compassion is an affair of the heart, not an attribute of reason. We do not argue ourselves into feelings of compassion, empathy or other emotions that link us to others as members of one race. We feel those links happening inside of us. We feel them where Jesus said that the kingdom of God abides. We feel them where our emerging wholeness beyond the ego allows us once again to feel.

As we “trust, feel and talk about things that matter,” we emerge together beyond ego by sharing and thereby overcome our sense of separation from each other that ego produces. Sharing our internal kingdom’s energies heart to heart reminds us that we are not alone nor lacking in inherent self-worth no matter what our social status may be from time to time. We set aside past lessons in distrust and dare to experience renewing lessons of trust. We set aside our ego’s habits of denying our emotions (and our heart’s wisdom) and instead encounter new habits of realizing, acknowledging and expressing our emotions helpfully (and listening to our inner wisdom heedfully). And we not only talk about things that matter but also do what’s necessary to activate what matters.

Our capacity to activate “greater things than these” matters to the destiny of humanity. May we each follow Jesus as our role model, friend and empowering presence by joining with other followers to serve the Living God — whom Jesus called Abba Father — who desires to comfort, heal and bless us all. For such a God is Abba Father to us all as no man has ever been or ever could be alone. (And Holy Mother to us all as no woman has ever been or ever could be alone.) Followers of Jesus, as was Jesus, are nothing but expressions of trivial futility unless we activate Divine Power to flow through us as we remain connected with our Source.

Co-Conspirators in Deceiving Ourselves

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Unless you are willing to be diligently honest with yourself about your emotions and learn how to express them in helpful instead of harmful ways, you participate in your family and all groups and communities including society at large as a co-conspirator in perpetuating lies. Pretenses, deceptions, images, roleplaying, lies, propaganda, marketing, spin-doctoring, excuses, justifications, rationalizations . . . It does not matter what we call them. They are all classified as unhealthy for relationships at all levels or “dysfunctional.” Don’t let the variety of terms fool you. What matters is that they are all of the same nature at heart. In their essence, they are all expressions of our failure to be honest with ourselves about our emotions and about our lack of skills in processing our emotions in healthy, caring ways.

Failure to be in touch with, aware of and capable of expressing our emotions in healthy, helpful ways causes our hearts to be deceitful because we need habits of deceit to keep our emotions from coming to our awareness or letting them be spontaneously expressed. We each build our habits of deceit to mask our emotions. We build these habits one step at a time through painful experiences as we practice denying how we feel and instead pretend that we either feel some other way or do not feel emotions at all. For most of us, our habits become reactive and we operate on autopilot while no longer aware of how we hide our emotions from ourselves and others as if emotions are dangerous. Might we want to practice another, deceit-free way of relating to ourselves and one another and stop pretending that we enjoy our deceptive lifestyles? Might we want to unwire our autopilot and become consciously aware of and responsible for our emotions again? The automated deceptive way is not our only option. We are merely mistaken to believe it is. We could choose to become diligently, courageously and compassionately honest in all humility and enjoy life a whole lot more simply because we’d be a whole lot more whole.

The root cause of the painful emotions we feel is the way we crucify ourselves and others on the cross of pride and shame as the horizontal bar and guilt and blame as the vertical shaft. By pride and shame we bar the door to heartfelt intimacy. By guilt and blame we continuously give ourselves and each other the shaft. We draw and quarter ourselves on this quadrant of crucifixion when, truth be known, we do not need to crucify ourselves or anyone else if we’d let go of the habits of judging ourselves and others by how successful we are at being dishonest. We could instead appreciate each other for doing our best to be honest as we struggle together to change our habits and master the art of humble honesty. And we’d no longer have reason to hate ourselves for lacking the courage to be honest about the sensitive nature of our hearts.

No one starts out with the intention of building a life based on lies. Every one of us without exception begins life as a sensitive, innocent child who knows no better than to blurt out the truth about how we feel. Yet, so long as we are raised around people who have been well-trained in the social rules and traditions of censoring and silencing their hearts, we will learn to censor and silence ours as well. We learn as we are punished for being honest and rewarded for pretending. To get along with others whose hearts are censored and silenced according to the “reward-and-punishment rules of the game,” we must learn to play the game of pretending. If we learn the game well, we’ll learn to punish ourselves before anyone has to punish us or to shift the punishment to others by blaming or shaming them. “He started it” is a good start in shifting disapproval to the other towards whom we point our finger of ill-fate. The other fingers point back towards ourselves in silent self-hate.

To fail to learn to play the game well is to be exiled into loneliness or condemned to suffer at or near the bottom of every pecking order in town. We learn to scratch in the earth in the barnyard for our tidbits of approval and be afraid of those with more powerful social status and pecking power than ours. Only when we can peck as well the best of them do we dare to challenge those who previously pecked us and take our turn as a pecker. Most of us live as chickens, too scared to challenge the roosters in the barnyard, but a few dare to challenge them and learn to crow as loudly and peck and kick as furiously. But few challenge the whole idea of being a member of the farmer’s cooped-up flock. To sustain such a challenge promises only more heartache of the most primal nature – total rejection from the group by whatever criteria we identify the group.

The roosters compete to rule the roost. In the human flock, a rooster need not be a male cock. She may be a hen who decided to copy a cock’s ways and out-do cocks at their own game. Female roosters are increasingly more prevalent in modern times as feminism asserts the rights of women to be as nasty in their ways of competition as men have ever been. The rules of the game don’t change. Only the players change according to the current trends favoring dominance under the group’s rules for power-grabbing. And when competing within the rules fails to gain the goals we seek, we subvert the rules and grab power some other way if we can get away with it. Layers of deceit hide our corruption of the rules. Politics continues as business as usual in all arenas of life in which power-dominance rather than power-sharing prevails as both the means and the end. Only the rare bird who declares there is another way of honoring power as a shared community asset to bless the whole community dares to stand apart from the politics of the day and show himself or herself as an example of what could be “if only” we dared collectively to try this alternative long enough to give it a realistic opportunity to prove itself.

On the way to proving that an alternative does truly exist, those who dare to stand apart as examples fall and disappear because the roosters in the barnyard set no self-restraining limits on how they will exercise power to keep and advance their rooster status as they also protect the game that favors their dominance. Assassination is an acceptable means for those who have in mind as their ultimate goal the maintenance and advancement of their deceitful claims to roosterhood. Rather than be exposed for their ruthless means of maintaining their roosterhood, current roosters will go to any length to wipe out (or at least disembowel) the opposition’s leadership, oppress the opposition’s followership and write history to demonstrate the superiority of maintaining the status quo of the roosters’ dominance in the face of claims that an alternative exists. It’s always better that one man or woman should perish than that a whole barnyard of peckers in their pecking order should perish. By whatever means necessary, these truthseekers – and worse, truth-tellers — must be silenced.

And so it goes throughout human history. Men and women who seek to stand up for justice for the whole flock and dare to challenge the way things have always been die if they are not willing to be silenced some other way. The more they speak from positions that may be heard by the flock, the more likely it is that they must die. Silencing them simply will not be permanent enough for the sake of roosters’ collective claim upon permanent dominance. Roosters prefer to fight beak and spur against other roosters on rooster terms than to see the whole system by which rooster dominance is preserved be replaced by a system with other values, means and ends. Roosters fight for preservation of the status quo even when they have to switch out their positions of dominance and take up other roles of power within the flock. Why? Because they have no idea how to participate in the alternative way of distributing power equitably among the members of the flock for the benefit of the flock instead of for the roosters’ own private benefit. Private benefits, private property, exclusive control and dominance and similar values swing widely out of balance when the roosters become desperate to preserve their positions of power by any means available. Heartlessly deceptive means are as good a means as any other when the chips are down. What is heartlessness to the man or woman who long ago gave up having a heart in favor of pretending to be satisfied with amassing power for powers sake?

How might we stop playing by the roosters’ game and participate in the alternative way of shared power? We must stop being self-deceptive and start being honest with ourselves and others about our emotions. Denial of emotions produces egos that are more than willing to continue to play games to manipulate other people to amass power, property and popularity by any means. The more hardhearted the ego, the less the rules — as well as personal character, integrity and authenticity — matter. All that matters is gaining more power. What the cocks and their competitors for power among the hens won’t tell you is what they do not know for sure but likely do suspect. In their lust for power, greed for prosperity and vanity for insanity there’s something of great value missing from their lives.

What might that “missing element of life” be that can only be experienced by those who are honest about their emotions and free their hearts once again to be tender and compassionate? What do the defenseless have an opportunity to experience that competitive egos miss? Listen to your heart. You may well sense the answer there. It’s a truth that we all share. It’s the one true power that really matters. It is love that has gone missing while we’ve scrambled in the dusty barnyard for our bits of grainy approval flung to us by very few who own the barnyard and pen us up so deceitfully. It is love that can come our way as unexpectedly as insects and worms might pass our way to supplement our artificial diet of bits of putrefying grain. Love has the power to liberate us to range cage-free.

Might we dare to value love more than another insect or worm that holds protein for our bodies but no energy for our spirits? Might the owners of the barnyard and our pens be amazed if we were to fly the coop entirely and cease to be imprisoned by our egos? Might we be willing to discover once again that we have wings meant to fly free and range beyond our cramped cages and fenced-in barnyards? Might we discover what’s been too long missing in our own lives and value it so highly as to stop pecking on each other long enough to discover that in each of us is a sister or brother who once was a good egg until she or he mistakenly learned the barnyard’s games of power-dominance and mistook it as the only way to survive? Might by love’s power it be possible that we all may thrive – all without exception or exclusion, including the roosters who previously believed so cruelly and self-deceptively otherwise? As we each forsake the way of self-deception let us always remember that we once, too, were deceived into forming ego’s habits of dishonesty. May we allow every other person to rise free of ego too – without pride or shame, guilt or blame remaining to taint their risen presence. We all need to be resurrected from the ego’s tomb and allowed to see and be the light again.

What If We’re All to Blame?

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The blame game is sheerest nonsense since most of us adults who are participants in the US economy and have the right to vote both with our money and our polling place opportunities share the blame for the deplorable state of the world. If you’re as convinced as I am that the blame game takes us nowhere closer to understanding how the US has fallen to the low we’ve reached, perhaps you’ll consider with me this solution: Let’s treat the situation as if we’re all to blame and take up responsibility for our part in generating this deplorable condition and for our part in co-creating the true alternative. The false alternative, of course, remains to deny that the US society is in deplorable condition and keep right on going down the drain with our eyes closed. If we try that approach, we won’t need to worry about being blamed for sticking our heads in the sand because we’ll have already stuck them somewhere darker to prepare for our future drainhood.

For myself, my children, my grandchildren and others about whom I care, I prefer not to go blindly down the drain without doing my best to head back up towards the rim of the basin and perhaps even climb out of the tub, sink or toilet bowl we’re in. I believe we’re flushing our future down the drain no matter what downward spiral we say we’re stuck in. I want to be honest enough to see that pattern at work as we whirl around in our confusion pointing fingers at each other while trying to transfer blame to someone else. We’re acting like terrified children on a merry-go-round screaming at each other to make it stop so we can get off and blaming the person on the other side of the merry-go-round for making it go around faster and faster. Just because we keep seeing the same people on the other side of the merry-go-round does not mean that they are more to blame than we are for the ride we’re all taking. We’re all being taken for a ride. (That last sentence uses a verb in the passive voice that does not disclose who’s doing the taking.)

Perhaps you find spinning in circles amusing. I don’t. After a while it makes me sick to my stomach. So, I decided to listen to my gut and search for a way off the merry-go-round. I found it. I’ve found that the process of getting off made me feel confused and disoriented at first because while standing on solid ground beyond the merry-go-round my head was still spinning as if I were still on board. It took a while to adjust to standing on stable ground rather than spinning around. At first I was still dizzy, even more aware of my dizziness than before. In the process of regaining my balance, I learned that I had adjusted to the spinning as best I could and now needed to re-adjust to non-spinning stability again. In time, I did. Now my stomach has settled and my mind is at ease. Now I can heed my gut intuition as well as reason with my mind as a unified field of feeling and thinking my way forward through life with wisdom as my guide. I enjoy using this new orientation to guide me forward beyond the merry-go-round into more promising, stable territory.

To stay off the merry-go-round in all of its forms and formats in the world, I had to shed the part of me that is tempted to ride along and play the game of spinning tales and using circular justifications and excuses for my decisions and actions. I had to stop pointing my finger “over there” and claiming that the “other guy or gal or they” made me do it. I even had to stop claiming that God or the Devil made me do it. I had to take full responsibility for “doing it,” whatever “it” was from time to time. “Yes, I did it and I accept full responsibility for doing it.” Tough sledding sometimes.

It was not easy to offend the popular opinions of powerful people and go against the flow of social conformity to act according to my heart’s intuition and my mind’s reason as best I could. It has not been easy to make mistakes and take responsibility for them so as to learn all I could from them rather than close myself off from these ofttimes painful learning opportunities. It has been no easier to make right decisions, be roundly condemned for them by others and still take responsibility for them as if they might, perchance, have been right or at least closer to the target than I’d been before. Whether I decided or acted “right” or “wrong” in the eyes of others depended on the views of those who judged my decisions and actions according to their own preferences, prejudices and power to control what I did. The characterization of my decisions and actions as “right” or “wrong” did not depend on their objective nature but on the subjective viewpoint of those who judged. Some judges even relished the chance to punish others so much that they would leap at the opportunity to wield power over me, even arbitrarily, just to feel powerful. I’ve offended a lot of viewpoints as I did my best to swim upstream as a nonconformist against the current of conformity that’s relentlessly sweeping us all down the drain.

What part of me is tempted to go along with the crowd and not offend the status quo of the drain-heading flow? It’s the part of me that’s susceptible to being influenced by social approval, an experience I admit I crave. I much prefer to be approved of than disapproved of. The part of me addicted to social approval is the same part of me that is susceptible to other forms of addiction or dependency under the influence of any of my natural appetites. It’s my ego. Based on any appetite, my ego may turn me back drainward at the least little excuse if I let it. The patterns of my life are aligned with drainward compliance because I was taught all my life to be a “good little boy.” Translations for that phrase for me turned out to be “conformist,” “people-pleaser” and “conflict avoider.” To fail to conform to the expectations of others, displease someone important or stir up controversy was “bad” and was punished by social disapproval. I had to learn to stand up in the harshest streams of social disapproval and nevertheless face away from the drain and do my best to swim away. Sometimes, the best I could do was root myself in place and resist the drainward flow, like the post of a pier resists the flow of the tide swirling by it. The tide of social opinion blames me for resisting its flow. Yet the truth is that all I am doing is standing my ground and refusing to go along with the riptide of popular social viewpoints or the egotistical preferences of authority figures supported by those who blindly follow them as frightened, compulsive people-pleasers, as once was I.

It’s not been easy to learn to stand up for myself after spending my first decades learning to go with the flow and not assert any viewpoint not pre-ordained to win me social approval or at least avoid social disapproval. I had learned to be silent when the risk of disapproval presented itself. In fact, I had learned to take no risks and hide myself from the mainstream of the drainward flow. For some time, I clung to the rim of the basin and held on for dear life. Eventually I let go of the rim and allowed myself to be swept totally down the drain while being characterized as totally disapproved of. There turned out to be no greater freedom from fear of lost approval than to lose it all, drown in disapproval and resurface somewhere down the drain where the flow is freer of the ego’s judgmental attitudes and assumptions.

Freedom turned out for me to be downstream, drainward and then out the drain into natural channels into which artificial drains arbitrarily dump their social outcasts. There are unflattering terms to use as labels for such outcasts. I became identified with them and their social exile. And I found myself in good company. What do I mean “good” in this sense? I mean spiritually free to rise up to become new lives without blaming anyone for our circumstances but ourselves.

Yes, I’m to blame for my going down the drain and being flushed out of the pools of social approval amid which I once swam. I think it helped me to slip readily down the drain that I never swelled with pride when I swam in such pools because secretly I knew in my heart that I did not belong there. Not swelled by pride, I did not clog the drain and readily slipped through. I did not belong in the pools, especially in the sense that no one owned me as their belonging. I was not bought and paid for and required to do my owner’s bidding no matter how degrading it might be, like some slave or prostitute or junior partner in a firm. I always had the option of dropping out and not participating in the pool. And I found that the option to drop out could also transform into the option to rise out.

Both dropping out and rising out diverge from conformity to social norms. To the extent that modern society embraces the norm of citizenry enslavement within the economy, I became abnormal to find freedom from our social institutions of slavery. To the extent that modern society imposes the norm of poor physical, emotional and mental health and loveless relationships upon its citizenry, I became abnormal to discover how to be progressively healthier to the point of wholeness and how to experience divinely defined love. I highly recommend exploring and engaging in such social abnormalities!

Yes, I’m to blame for what has happened in my life and for the decisions and actions that flowed from my life. I still am. By accepting the “blame,” I accepted and still accept full responsibility. And I discovered that with great responsibility comes great power. The converse of the Spiderman Principle is true! My life has proved it to my own satisfaction. If you don’t like being blamed for other people’s decisions and actions, try taking full responsibility for putting yourself in the position to be blamed and then consider exiting that position for higher ground. In the long run, drainward is not really as fun and rewarding at it looks. No addiction or dependency is. Just when you fear most falling ignominiously into utter failure in the pursuit of your highest ideals and most heartfelt dreams, let go, sink to the bottom and swim out the drain to freedom beyond the pools of social approval within which you fear being judged and condemned. Down there in the dark you may be surprised to find your way to the higher, more lighthearted ground you’re looking for.