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Doing Things That Change You

Nov 6, 2008
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".....in most traditions, faith was not about belief but about practice. Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they conform to some metaphysical, scientific, or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice. The myths of the hero, for example, are not meant to give us historical information about Prometheus or Achilles -- or for that matter, about Jesus or the Buddha. Their purpose is to compel us to act in such a way that we bring out our own heroic potential.

Karen Armstrong
**
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot—air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

—William Stafford

In the course of my studies, I have discovered that the religious quest is not about discovering "the truth" or "the meaning of life" but about living as intensely as possible here and now. The idea is not to latch on to some superhuman personality or to "get to heaven" but to discover how to be fully human--- hence the images of the perfect or enlightened man, or the deified human being. Archetypal figures such as Muhammad, the Buddah, and Jesus became icons of fulfilled humanity. God or Nirvana is not an optional extra, tacked on to our human nature. Men and women have a potential for the divine, and are not complete unless they realize it within themselves."

---Karen Armstrong
*
"We see things not as they are but as we are." John Milton

“The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

—Matthew 6:22–23

*
As we mentioned in the May 19, 2004, issue Samurai and Mustard Seeds: Fealty’s Link to Faith, “We tend to become like the thing upon which we focus: if we lead a lie, our whole self becomes a little bit more lie-like; if we feed paranoia, the world becomes one giant conspiracy.”

To very large degree, we create the world in our own image. This realization now leaves a very interesting question: if then, we wish to see the world as we ought to see it, as the honest and sincere quest after truth, beauty, and goodness would dictate, both as it is and as it yet can and shall be, how then can we have any hope—much less certainty—of seeing it clearly? On the forum recently, Sara posted about the Quakers, or the Society of Friends as they are also known, and their central tenet of “the Inner Light.” According to this principle, we, as God’s creations, have within us “that of God in everyone” which on a very basic level gives us not only life but discerns between good and evil. It reveals the presence of both in human beings, and through its guidance, offers the alternative of choice. ... [T]he Inner Light [also] opens the unity of all human beings to our consciousness. Friends believe that the potential for good, as well as evil, are latent in everyone. (Why Do We Close Our Eyes...)

In sum, this “seed of Christ” in all persons is just that: a seed. And like all seeds, it must be watered if it is to grow: it must be “activated.” This tiny mustard seed is the basis by which we first stretch forth uncertain fingers toward the kingdom of heaven; it is the basis by which we answer the gentle yet persistent knocking on the door of our hearts to open up and allow the indwelling presence of God to enter in and fill us. The emphasis, as with all true spiritual pilgrims, is placed on the relational and experiential: “first-hand knowledge of God is only possible through that which is experienced or inwardly revealed to the individual human being through the working of God’s quickening Spirit.” The answer as to how we can have any hope of seeing the world as we ought to see it is found in whether or not we nourish and water the inner knowledge that we already have. If we know we are leading a lie, we cannot very well expect to have our vision undiluted: our vision, like our life, will become increasingly lie-like. Heaven does not stock spiritual fruit, as Samurai and Mustard Seeds reminds us, but rather spiritual seeds, and we are not yet who we were created to be: we are ever becoming and the spiritual life is progressive and teleological.

The reason my spiritual vision cleared on the morning I describe, is because I longed with every ounce of my being to “see clearly.” There have been times I have asked and not received, primarily because I did not ask with my whole heart and my whole being. One has to want the good gifts of God. It seems to be almost a cosmic law that we cannot receive any more than we are willing—on the deepest level—to receive. A half-hearted request lets in a little light, because a half-hearted request does at least have some beginnings of a seedling or a sprout. A half-hearted request, however, must itself be nurtured if it is to become throaty and full-hearted. A half-hearted request is a seed, and if we are of only half a heart, then let us nourish the half that is good, and, while we cannot exactly throw the other half away, we can let it bask in the blood of its better half until it is wholly won over. Further, a whole-hearted request is always painfully aware of its baser half, hence the basis of the request. Pride, by contrast, is a spiritual killer: when we think ourselves in no danger of falling and in no need of daily nourishment, we are then far, far from seeing clearly and are liable to the grossest distortions, all the while feeling inordinately pleased with ourselves, reveling in our blindness and calling the darkness light.

So then, I was lying in bed thinking I was thinking about Gandhi, but in reality thinking about Covey, and not about Covey, but about what Covey said, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.” And suddenly, as if in retrospect, the words of Christ as recounted in the gospels sprang to mind: “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22–23) or, the last sentence stated in the positive in Luke 11:36: “If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp [of the body] illumines you with its rays.”

[from Mr. Renaissance]

**
Summons

What would it look like?

To spread out love like a cloak over a puddle
Love offered like a lit cigarette
A warm hand
An antidote to poison,
Like a snake-bite kit
Like a last chance to drink before entering a dry country

Love the most breakable of objects
If it could be an object --
Tiny.
Fragile.
Or it’s a mustard seed
Existing in potential.
A maybe -- A maybe-not
Tossed off as as afterthought.
Not the end-all be-all at all.

But to see it as it really is
In its own light , not light reflected -
It shines;
A diamond
with no flaws or contradictions.
Without a seasonal emphasis.
With a way instead
Of saying --
'I never want to go away from you'

Even as the sea recedes.

If we think of ourselves out of nature --
Us in a window
Us under glass --
We miss that
what we see ‘out there’
Is also most intimately ‘in here.’
The weddedness of self to body
self to breath, to cell, to pulse
to the great pituitary watchtower.

Do I have enough peace in me to absorb peace?
Containing enough of the nature of peacefulness
inside me ?
Could my own essence
not have the sentinels of immunity destroy it?

Is there enough wisdom in me to attract wisdom?
Ample love, loving, loveliness
to harvest love from this world?

(June 2006)

**

"There are, then, two ways to confront or criticize another human being : with instinctive and spontaneous certainty that one is right, or with a belief that one is probably right arrived at through scrupulous self-doubting and self-examination. The first is the way of arrogance; it is the most common way of parents, spouses, teachers, and people generally in their day-to-day affairs; it is usually unsuccessful, producing more resentment than growth, and other effects that were not intended. The second is the way of humility; it is not common, requiring as it does a genuine extension of oneself; it is more likely to be successful, and it is never, in my experience, destructive."

- M. Scott Peck, *The Road Less Traveled* (Touchstone, 1978), p.152