I think the piece below, by Jim Garrison, that prompted this post, is an excellent articulation about the realm of spirituality in which we are embedded. I don't know why conversation based on these ideas is so rare. Deepak and assorted clergy were on with Larry King last week, and much of their exchange was a dualistic argument about whether God is or isn't. Although we can bow down unabashedly and reverentially to whatever force or intelligence made this universe, what that is is unknown, and anything we say about the maker is story telling. I wonder why it is so typical for no attempt to be made, even by people like Chopra, to redress the simplistic nature of that kind of conversation. The Einsteinian idea is relevant here, about problems not being able to be solved at the level of awareness that created them. We won't fix this world via the outcome of arguments about whether God exists, or by anyone or any group insisting on their story being the real one about what's going on in God's realm. We've got to get outside of those separating strictures, to where we experience the one interconnected reality-structure that we are in together, to stand a real chance to solve the world's ills. Inspired by the clarity of my ally, the late John Mack, about a change of perspective that is so vital for us to come to grips with, I'm looking at doing a project, CHANGING THE WORLD’S CONVERSATION: A Conference Toward a New Worldview: “The scientific worldview is failing. It fails in a number of crucial ways. It doesn't tell us what really exists in the cosmos. It doesn't tell us about our own inner life. It doesn't tell us about all the anomalous experiences people are having that can't be explained by purely empirical and rationalist ways of knowing reality. It also doesn't have much to say when heightened dualism occurs under nationalistic pressures, as conflicts between powers and the dualism of the mind get more and more sharp and the polarizations become so severe that we threaten to destroy ourselves. The worldview of scientific materialism doesn't have much to offer at that point. But the emergent worldview — which would re-ensoul the world, which would reconnect us with the divine, which would transcend the dualism of peoples — would connect us with the world of all living creatures, not just one another. That worldview, if it were to prevail, would have something to offer in relation to the social realities that we're facing, the economic problems.” John Mack
http://johnemackinstitute.org
The intention of the event would be to try to get conversation about humanity's worldview on everyone's lips — like on Larry King's show. If we get the idea that we need a change of worldview into play, people would be exposed to this kind of cogent thinking:
THE IMPORTANCE OF WISDOM IN AN INTEGRATING WORLD
From About Us — by Jim Garrison, President of Matthew Fox's Wisdom University
…What challenges global integration as the twenty first century unfolds is not so much a clash of civilizations as a clash of fundamentalisms.
In all of the world’s major religions, which so dramatically influence political ideologies and social affairs, there is a tension between fundamentalists who emphasize a sectarian aspect and others who emphasize a wisdom aspect. It is between these two poles — fundamentalism and wisdom — that worldviews are formulated, political action motivated, and the great conversation concerning what it means to be human in an unfathomable universe takes shape.
Fundamentalism divides the world into “us” and “them.” It is concerned with how to belong to an “in” group separated from other groups by certain commonly held beliefs and rituals. The Abrahamic religions in particular -– Judaism, Christianity and Islam — are to a significant extent currently gripped by the divisiveness and sectarianism inherent in their fundamentalist traditions. There are, of course, myriad differentiations and permutations between them, but what they share in common is a dogmatism that precludes meaningful debate with contrary voices.
These three fundamentalist traditions are absolutely sure of their theological correctness, are inserting themselves aggressively in the political process, and are convinced of their ultimate earthly as well as cosmic triumph. Their interaction is contributing to the spiral of destruction and hate that is threatening the entire Middle East with conflagration. Religious and ethnic fundamentalism is also present in parts of Africa, in Hinduism, and in Japan. Its divisive dogmatism upsets the moral and socio-political equilibrium of the world.
Against this fundamentalist trend stands wisdom. In the wisdom traditions, the issue is not how to be “saved” or how to defeat the “infidel.” The focus of wisdom is how to live in harmony with nature and all other sentient beings. Wisdom in all the great religious traditions concerns the process by which one comes to identify with the whole human community and to understand values common to all humanity. It is that aspect of human reflection that emphasizes the process of personal and communal transformation within a divine presence that encompasses all life and is available to all who seek its transformative power. In Judaism, for instance, this understanding is expressed as “Sophia.” In Christianity, it is expressed as the “Cosmic Christ.” In Islam, Sufism has refined this awareness…
As the twenty first century unfolds, we bear witness to a great struggle between nation states and armed groups intent on conflict and destruction. This struggle has many social, political and environmental causes and repercussions. Undergirding and shaping this complexity lies a religious and cultural tension between those who emphasize the exclusivity of sect and those who embrace the inclusivity of wisdom. It is between literalist and non-literalist, between the fundamentalists and the universalists, between those who seek distinctions in order to divide and those who seek commonalities in order to unite.
Illuminating wisdom in this time of intolerance, terrorism and conflict, will not be an easy process. The endeavor will be fraught with difficulties and dangers. There are many forces, institutions and leaders who are motivated by the acquisition of power and have much invested in sectarian divisions and the politics of fear. We are in a time of overweening pride and the willingness to use force, and a time of competition, exclusion and degradation of community and the environment.
What is needed more than anything is a sense of interdependence, of proportion, of humility in the face of life’s complexities and human diversity. It is not an overstatement to say that in this time of crisis and opportunity, wisdom can illuminate the way. Wisdom may, in the end, be humanity’s only source of peace and hope…
Using wisdom to fashion the future harks back to the earliest days of human reflection on how to live with intelligence and compassion. In antiquity, the Greek schools of Parmenides and Empedocles, and the academies of Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle were wisdom schools. Indeed, the meaning of philosopher, a Greek word, is “lover of wisdom.” Wisdom schools also flourished in ancient Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and among the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans in the Americas.
These schools were the precursors to what came into full bloom in twelfth century Islam and in Europe: the “university,” from the Latin universitas, meaning cosmic order or harmony. When the great scholastic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, gave his inaugural lecture at the first such school, the University of Paris, he chose wisdom as his topic. In that first university, as in antiquity, wisdom was considered the queen of the sciences.
In the ancient wisdom schools as well as in the earliest universities, the quest for cosmic order, expressed as justice, was at their center. Thus, the “isness” and the “oughtness” of life were understood as integral to one another. Virtue was inherent in and inseparable from truth, beauty and goodness. Compassion without intelligence was seen as little more than sentiment, and often divisive. Intelligence without compassion was seen as cold and indifferent, and often cruel. The integration of compassion and intelligence was seen as the wellspring of wisdom…Such dimensionality lies at the heart of the wisdom civilization for which humanity has yearned since the beginning of its earthly journey.
From Gary Sinclair [Celbr8life@aol.com]
Loved your post… THANKS again Suzanne…. Bless you.
From: Julia Tyack [jhtyack45@hotmail.com]
Those participating in this new story come from different viewing points but share a common view of emerging humanity and the power of the human spirit. Buckminster Fuller's comment has stuck with me that nothing is illuminated by fighting it but making it redundant. As Brian Swimme has shown us, the universal energy is one of unconditional love. We are one with the power that energized the universe into existence. Imagine if all human's lived in love.
Wendell Krossa was well into the environmental movement after escaping religious fundamentalism. His article reflects this and his new optimism for an improved world as humanity emerges to live a new story.
First a few comments by Bob Brinsmead: “The authority of being human has been regarded as blasphemous and sacrilegious by world religions. When it comes to research such as ‘stem cell’, ‘genetic engineering,’ and other issues of science and ethics, the religious cry is, “It is blasphemy for man to play God.” But that is exactly what we as humans are supposed to play. This is the freedom and power of being human. There is no going back. Humanity must emerge to claim the awesome power and freedom that is the human birthright. Being human taken seriously is a radical lifestyle. It is in forgetting who we are, that fear paralyses us. Emerging humanity claims its birthright of freedom to live in love and unconditional acceptance.
), that the historical Jesus is entirely different from the Christian Christ. And, with the Seminar, I believe that it is necessary to remove the distorting layers of religious myth to get at the core teaching of Jesus. That teaching reveals a person who did not promote religion, who did not promote devotion to God, and who did not promote an otherworldly focus. He was very much focused on people, this life and this world. As Jacques Ellul has said, Christianity is a contradiction on all points to what Jesus intended (The Subversion of Christianity, p.3).Rethinking The Spiritual: A Guide to an Alternative View of Spirituality
by Wendell Krossa
We are living through the greatest transition ever in the history of human thought. The old mythical/religious viewpoint has lost its credibility and millions of people no longer believe that their religion expresses reality as they know it to be. Consequently, many baby boomers left their parents' religion during the Sixties and Seventies, but, later in life, concerned about the spiritual health of their children, they began to return to those churches. Or at least they sent their children packing off to Sunday School.
On abandoning religion as their system of meaning, many people find themselves wandering in a kind of no man’s land. Where do they go? What will take the place of religion? What about the sense that perhaps they have left something good? And what about those threats that to leave Christianity is to go over to the Devil’s side? Hence many people suffer a sense of guilt. How do you disentangle yourself from something that has been viewed as the source of all good, and still function as a full-orbed human being?
Others find some new avenue for expressing their sense of the spiritual, but also find that the new is similar to the old. They may have traded a pastor or priest for a guru, only to find themselves in a situation not unlike the one they left. Others get involved in causes like environmentalism and find the same themes dominate there as in their old religions. The past was always better (original paradise), fallen people have screwed things up (humanity as a cancer on the globe), and judgment is coming (Mother Nature will take her revenge with some imminent catastrophe). It’s just more of the same old Fall/apocalyptic mythology that's at the core of many world religions.
Others never found a way to redirect their understanding of the spiritual and continued to hang onto the fundamental themes of God above in Heaven, God demanding payback for sin, bloody atonement through a sacrifice, and threats of coming judgment and of hell. Note that 70% of Americans still believe in hell. And how many still believe that payback justice (getting even with the bad guys) is the humane view of justice? I suspect it would be similar. Also many have not been able to find a way around the assumption that the Bible is the word of God and the ultimate authority. They have not yet recognized that the Bible is a very human product containing borrowed mythology intermixed with history.
Still others have not been able to think around the claim that religion is from God and the only alternative is Satan. Truth was presented to them as a simple choice between right and wrong. As Jerry Falwell once asked a man on Larry King's show: “Do you believe that salvation is only through Jesus? Yes or no?” Don’t discuss it. Just answer my question, yes or no.
What we need isn't a simple opposing dualism, but a radical rethinking of God, the spiritual, and what it means to be human. And this points to the primacy of love, which levels the playing field to include all humanity. At the heart of this transition is an entirely new story, where we rethink all areas of human understanding based on new information about the universe and life.
The ancients believed, for instance, that the gods had created the world out of chaos, they were behind the forces of nature and, as those forces were often destructive, they assumed the gods were angry and punishing people through storms, lightning, floods and disease. Some innovative ancient concluded that the angry gods could be placated with blood sacrifice, so then we have the creation of salvation religions. The ancients also believed that people were created to serve the gods. The shaman and priests then claimed that they alone knew what the gods wanted and would mediate for the rest. They would tell the common people how to serve the gods. And so religion developed as a mediating agency in human society.
Historically, the world religions have all promoted the same basic themes. These include the idea of separation (the spiritual is separate from evil humanity and people are separated from one another in opposing groups), exclusion and opposition (people compete with one another as enemies), domination (the powerful rule the weak), and eventual retaliation and destruction (the bad guys are will be gotten rid of). These foundational themes shaped animal existence and they were later adapted to human existence.
Also central to the old mythical/religious viewpoint was the idea the life was once better (an original paradise), but after people committed the original error or sin, life had regressed to something imperfect and was on a descending trajectory heading for eventual catastrophe. But the new view of the universe and life shows the opposite to be true. Life, since the beginning, has been on an ascending trajectory of growth, development, progress and advance. Life is fundamentally about hope, not despair.
Unfortunately, in excessive zeal for the new rational approach, an extremist element promoted the dogma of meaninglessness. In doing this, they have denied the most fundamental of all human drives — the drive for meaning. I accept the centrality of this drive but I believe that the scientific approach and the mythical/religious viewpoint have both distorted the impulse for meaning.
Whatever people believe about God, Intelligent Design or meaninglessness, it is evident that life moves along a progressing trajectory. It has moved from chaos to increasing order and more complex organisms and systems. Most impressively, humanity has progressed from the brutality of primitive life to modern societies which recognize basic human freedoms and rights.
We need to take the human impulse for meaning and rethink it in light of our new understanding of the universe and life. And what we are discovering about life will help us find new directions for thinking about spirituality.
We will find, for instance, that God has disappeared. No, not died, as in the theology of Bultman. But, as Thomas Sheehan argues, God has disappeared into humanity. God did not incarnate into just one special person, but rather, incarnated into all of humanity. So we can now forget about focusing on God (searching for, serving, being devoted to) and busy ourselves with focusing on this life, this world and people around us.
I take the position of the Jesus Seminar (
http://westarinstitute.org
And most important, Jesus never advocated the concept of a separation of sinful humanity from a pure God which is central to the Western religious traditions. This belief led ancient people to create religions to provide salvation. But these salvation religions were established on a profound error in ancient thinking, that a separation or rupture had occurred. This simply never happened, and we now have evidence of this. Note, for instance, that separation in Christian theology supposedly led to the introduction of death (the original sin of Adam led God to curse humanity with death, and to abandon the world). But the fossil records show that death has been around since the beginning, long before humans arrived. This means there never was any rupture with God and therefore there is no need to seek something that was not lost.
Now there may be discomfort or even fear over leaving things that are familiar. But the end goal is the full liberation of human consciousness and the human spirit. Ultimately, the transition to a new view of the spiritual is about a fresh vision of hope.
From Suzanne to Julia:What you've sent is the substance of the conversation I'd want the event to popularize.
“emerging humanity and the power of the human spirit” is a good title.
And I like this, of Bob's: “…the religious cry is, 'It is blasphemy for man to play God.' But that is exactly what we as humans are supposed to play.”
From Julia to Suzanne:
Buckminster Fuller would have agreed with your conference proposals: “Humanity now has the historically unprecedented option to produce a high standard of living for all people on an ecologically sustainable basis…Well-informed debate concerning this unparalleled opportunity for comprehensive planetary success must take its place on center stage…The decisive challenge is to generate a critical mass of awareness, matched by cohesive effort, focused on implementing our option for success before it expires…We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all, to feed everybody, clothe everybody, give every human on earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before—that we now have an option for all humanity to 'make it.'”
You are so right, first must come a new conversation (very meaningful expression) providing a new way of thinking that then changes experience. This thinking, as we know, is a new sacred story within the scientific world view. This is where Brian's work is so unique and I agree should be the foundational lecture.
From Jim Dreaver@aol.com [Jdreaver@aol.com]
Great commentary….maybe you should organize your conference around the theme of 'wisdom,' if you're not doing so already….
From Michael Olson [maolson@erols.com]
http://mightycompanions.org/suzanne is a good start. I have often thought that changing the conversation will not be a major political movement but that it will come, here and there, from the personal and small group experiences of those succeeding in knowing how and where to find peace, hope, love, energy and effectiveness. The internet gives us the opportunity to “link up” with those who already doing this.“Recognizing Spirit as what we are expressing and not what we are looking for is the alchemy that transforms. We are of God, here to do the things of God; we come together to out picture divine energy into the plane of matter. I am devoted to helping that occur.”
This last sentence on your bio page
Some related thoughts:
Our attention, directed by our will, puts us in the middle of whatever “reality” we choose to attend to and with which we choose to identify.
What we are attending to is, by no means, the totality of our life's potential any more than one TV program is the total capacity of a TV set. We can produce and play other programs for ourselves (even non-dual programs); we can be living a much different life, a life of health, happiness, ability and effectiveness. We need to be aware and believe that we have this potential.
Our goals and motivations change as we grow in experience.
If our primary goal is to “sell” our experience we are (still very much) a part of the problem! Money is a medium of exchange; the exchange should be fair and just.
Love (Oneness, Source, Unity…pick a name that works!) is whole, total, perfect, immediate, infinite and eternal. We don't put it together; we express it in the time/space experience. Realizing this is acting from the Source abiding within.
Ego concepts and ego projects have their uses, but they are not in themselves productive and they always require maintenance. Awareness does not require maintenance, but, when we focus it on the finite realm, we must accept the limitations of any finite experience: everything changes and has a beginning, a middle and an end. Yet, in this context, expressing love is always meaningful, never insignificant. Love is whole and eternal, never completely expressed in the finite realm. Our life experience in the finite realm may be like a visit to Disney Land/World/Cosmos. There is always something else. We live in both the spiritual and material realms, but most tend to concentrate on one or the other.
From Suzanne to Michael:
http://www.LeonardJacobson.com. Being with him entrained everyone in his vibration. He was of it, and it was a learning for the audience at a performance piece he did, which was followed by a hangout with him. The person in my life who vibed that way was Lex Hixon. Poking around my pages for him will be a treat for you: http://mightycompanions.org/lexhixonWe speak the same language. I like all those things you say (yours?). And, I do think the way for others to wake up to this reality is for it to become a topic for consideration — global warming, AIDS, spiritual awakening. If we're talking about it everywhere, it will work its way into a clarity where people will understand the game of life we are playing. Getting that conversation popularized would be the objective of an event I'd do.
I was with someone last night who was an exemplar of this new-speak — Leonard Jacobson
From M&D Thuney [mdthuney@email.msn.com]
Thanks again, Suzanne. This, very loudly and clearly, speaks for itself. Yours in the Quest…
From: Monika Roleff [monr@smartchat.net.au]
I LOVE the piece by Jim Garrison – still don't get why people think God exists according to their say so. The God energy is there regardless of what we think!!
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