Ecumenical Mysticism

&amp;amp;quot;A God-Fearing People&amp;amp;quot;

tim — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 02:06:39 +0000

Today, I came across the phrase “a god-fearing people”, and it struck a chord, almost as if I were hearing it for the first time. I should clarify that it struck a dissonant chord. It felt immediately “off”. Wrong, or at least problematic. So I began to ponder the phrase and my intuitive rejection of it.

I think it comes down to this: When you turn your attention toward god, the infinite, the eternal, or whatever symbol you utilize when you consider ultimate truth, do you consistently experience one emotion more than others? I do: Mine is a sort of benevolence mixed with awe and a feeling of gratitude or appreciation. “Love” feels pretty similar, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s what I mean; maybe I feel love when I focus on the infinite.

But guess what? “Fear” doesn’t even come close to the feeling I experience. I’m going to make an assertion here that some readers may find inflammatory. I apologize if my conclusion offends you, but not if it challenges you; that’s the point. So here it is:

If the most prominent feeling you experience when you ponder god is fear, you’re doing something wrong.

Somehow, you’ve been misled, or you’ve misinterpreted what you were taught. You may be resisting god, either by choice or because you just didn’t realize there was another way you could integrate god into your experience.

It doesn’t really matter how you got where you are, but if you feel it’s time to move your relationship with the divine beyond fear, I think I can help. First, let me explain two steps that you will need to take. I’m generalizing and simplifying, and every person’s path to god is a unique experience. I’m just suggesting that most people who want to integrate universal truth into their experience will probably experience something corresponding to these two steps. See for yourself if they sound productive to you.

First, accept your fear. No matter what you’re experiencing, the first step in transcending it is to accept it without judgment. Say it out loud: “I fear god.” Forgive yourself for fearing god. Forgive god for being the object of your fear. Seriously, it’s completely OK that this is how you’ve lived your life so far. Maybe you can experience a deeper relationship with god if you let go of the fear, but first you’ve got to consent to reality as you’ve experienced and understood it thus far.

Second, even while you accept your fear, try to let go of your resistance to god. You’re an ice cube in the ocean of god’s compassion: Stop trying not to melt! Melt into god. Acquiesce to your path, your situation, your destiny. Let god’s will manifest itself through you, knowing that it’s correct and could not be otherwise. You may dislike aspects of your life situation, but accept that everything, even your pain, has unfolded precisely as it was meant to. It all fits, and it’s all necessary. Don’t resist anymore; let go of your fear and your need to control and your need to be right. Surrender to god. God loves you, god has a plan for you, and it’s all going to be fine.

If this just seems hopeless, or it’s too hard, or you want to do it but you just can’t get the process going in a way that feels profound and authentic to you, it may be time to embrace your death.

I’m being glib, but I’m absolutely serious. You will die, and you know this. You probably fear your death, or you just avoid thinking about it at all. You will die. Maybe today, maybe in thirty years, maybe a century from now. But it’s coming. So never mind your fear of god for the moment; it’s time to transcend your fear of death.

Oh, me? Have I done this? Actually, I think I have, to my surprise. I fear pain. I fear injury and illness. I fear being helpless. But I accept these fears; I figure my mind creates these fears to help me avoid threats and dangerous situations. These fears don’t feel dysfunctional. Fearing death itself, the one destiny we all share, feels dysfunctional. I accept death. I accept that I will die, that all my beloved friends and family members will eventually die. It’s OK.

Some mornings, I wake up, get my day started, and then during some quiet moment I ask myself this question: “If this is the last day of my life, is that OK?” I ponder this a moment, let it sink in, and then I answer: “Yes. It will have been enough. It will be OK.” And I feel GREAT! Ready for the day, whatever it has in store for me. How do I know it will be OK? I seem to intuit that it will be OK. This is the point where I seem to experience something like “faith”. I just know it will be fine. I’m not sure I can explain it, but that’s how it is.

That doesn’t mean I won’t act to protect myself or prolong my life. I don’t WANT to die. I’m just saying that if I die tomorrow, today, in twenty minutes, I know it’s going to be OK. It doesn’t mean that I have no plans or dreams or goals, and I’m not saying I think I’ve accomplished everything I can with this life. It just means that if I depart without completing everything, I accept that this will have been necessary and appropriate. I don’t know what god’s plan for me is, but I consent to it anyway.

If you can accept this one certain inevitability; your own death; it becomes a lot easier to accept the many events in our lives that we experience as tragedies, setbacks, and failures. Again, it doesn’t mean you ENJOY them; it just means that you accept the reality of whatever your situation happens to be. The moment you give up resisting, needing to be right, indulging in “this shouldn’t be happening!” thoughts, you free yourself to engage with the world, with god, in a more positive way. If you can free yourself from your fear of death, you may find that you can deal with the challenges you face in your life a lot more proactively. You may even find that your fear of god has left the building while you weren’t watching.

I know, I make it sound so simple. But the funny thing is, it IS simple. It is simple, and yet it’s the most difficult transition I’ve ever undertaken. I was very much stuck in being right, for years and years, and then something happened that kicked the legs out from under my worldview. Otherwise, I don’t think I would ever have gotten to this point.

It’s easy to transcend your fear of death, but it requires a willingness to reassess your assumptions at a very basic, fundamental level. An ability to “step outside” your mind for a moment and view your life from on high; to view your life as if you were an observer possessing infinite compassion, patience, and love. You know…as if you were god. And then do it again the next day. Oh, and forgive yourself for falling back into your old habits from time to time; just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

Responding to the skeptics

tim — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 06:32:53 +0000

I saw a post in the forums over at StevePavlina.com: “How do you nicely deal with skeptics?” And before I even read it, I thought to myself “What is there to be skeptical about?” Immediately, I tried to understand my response, because I wasn’t really sure what I meant. I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon.

Here’s the best I’ve come up with so far: I can’t imagine skepticism about Ecumenical Mysticism because (a) no specific interpretation of the nature of universal truth is being advanced, and (b) I’m not really interested in human interpretations of universal truth…I’m only interested in the reality of universal truth, whatever that happens to be.

Whuh-huh? Bear with me for a minute.

Some people express skepticism when somebody asserts as true something that can not be proven to their satisfaction. If I say “we were all created by Flying Spaghetti Monster“, you might experience skepticism, and you might express it. Fair enough. If I say “human beings are the result of a long, slow, accident-prone process of genetic trial-and-error called evolution”, you might experience skepticism. Fine.

But…who cares? I’m not interested in what you believe. Heck, I’m not even interested in what I believe! Human beliefs are, at best, mental constructs we create that assist us in our attempts to reach out toward the infinite and eternal truth. At worst, they are delusions we wrap around ourselves in order to… Well, in order to do all sorts of evil, mostly by avoiding Universal Truth, one way or another. Beliefs can be useful. But they’re just beliefs…they aren’t “real”, even if they tend to be reasonably accurate. Don’t confuse a belief about something with the reality of the actual thing.

Pretend we were walking along a canal and we came upon a sealed shipping container; one of those rectangular metal boxes they load onto ships and train cars and semitruck trailers. It’s locked, and we haven’t got the key. It’s on the other side of the canal anyway, so we can’t even bang on the outside. What’s in it? The truth of what’s inside may be important, but at this point, we can only guess. If I say “It’s full of sneakers”, you would probably be skeptical about that, because I’m asserting something I have no evidence for and which we have no way to verify. So skepticism might be an appropriate response. However, we also have no way to verify that my guess is not correct. Essentially, my guess has no value. It isn’t really worth discussing.

And you know, my guess has no value EVEN IF the shipping container IS full of sneakers! I made a completely unqualified guess without anything remotely similar to plausible evidence.

That’s pretty much how I feel about human beliefs. I used to think this made me an atheist, and for years I believed I was an atheist. I looked down my nose at agnostics…”atheists who lack the conviction of their beliefs”, to paraphrase a character in Carl Sagan’s Contact.

And then I realized that Sagan’s joke was true. Literally true. Atheists do NOT doubt their beliefs, despite the complete lack of any definitive evidence. Atheists make a completely unqualified guess about the nature of universal truth. Just like the other religions!

Let’s return to our shipping container parable: If I assert that it’s full of sneakers, the absolute most bizarre response you could make would be to assert that it was empty, and then begin arguing with me about it! If our discussion became heated, and we came to blows about it, an onlooker might be forgiven for concluding that we were both off our rockers. Why would people argue or fight about guesses they’ve made about something they cannot possibly know, the truth of which is most probably something completely distinct from either of their guesses? It’s absolutely irrational.

And that’s why my gut reaction to the question “How do you nicely deal with skeptics?” was “What it there to be skeptical about?” What I really meant was “why would you deal with skeptics?” Even more specifically, I meant “why would arguing with a skeptic represent a worthwhile use of your time and energy?”

Heck, I’m a skeptic. My doctor does cranio-sacral therapy, and I’m not sure I “believe in it”. But I recognize my skepticism, accept it, and choose to be open to the benefits I may receive despite it. I still don’t really “believe” in cranio-sacral therapy, but guess what: I feel better when I get it done. If it’s real, I don’t have to believe in it.

That’s what’s so great about god. Or universal truth, if the word “god” throws you off: You don’t have to believe in it. It’s OK if you don’t. Completely unimportant. That which is true remains true regardless of your failure to believe. That’s why it doesn’t matter what you believe.

You don’t need to believe in antibiotics for them to work. But you do have to let them work. You have to allow the healing to happen. You have to acquiesce to the truth. But to fully open yourself to the truth, you must first accept that you may not really know what it is. Ah…NOW we’re getting somewhere, but that’s a discussion for another day.

The point here is that it isn’t really worthwhile to engage in discussions with people who aren’t yet ready to accept the truth you’ve discovered. Not because you can’t convince them; but because it doesn’t matter whether or not you convince them. If it’s real, they don’t need to believe in it.

What I Mean When I Use the Word “God”

tim — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:44:45 +0000

I mean universal truth as described in The Tenets of Ecumencial Mysticism. I don’t claim to know what that is…I’m just using the word “god” as a label, a kind of abbreviation. I could call it UT for “universal truth”, or OAE for “the origin of all of existence”, but using words like that would detract from readability in a way that might create obstacles to understanding.

Of course, the counter-argument, and it’s a good one, is that using the word “god” is likely to create obstacles to understanding, because people already have strong associations with that word. Some think the very concept is ridiculous because it requires belief in the supernatural, some think the word should be capitalized, some think it means a man with a long grey beard sitting on a cloudy mountain top, etc. I’m willing to take this risk, though, in part BECAUSE this tiny word has become so overburdened with images and interpretations. I use it because it’s short, and everybody understands it to mean “the power that created everything”, even if they claim not to believe in that power, or they have a lot of additional concepts like judgement or wrathfullness built in as well. It’s OK, because it doesn’t matter what you believe…remember?

So when you see the word “god” here, just substitute “the absolute truth regarding the origin of all existence”, and you ought to be good to go, regardless of your background or personal beliefs.

Stop Needing To Be Right!

tim — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:26:37 +0000

Last time, in Why It Doesn’t Matter What You Believe, we began to examine the human need to be right. I concluded with a question directed at intollerant fundamentalists everywhere: “If you really believe it’s all absolutely true, why the insecurity?”

Because the need to be right IS insecurity. It’s a human response to a sense of uncertainty, a fear of ignorance and powerlessness. Being right evokes feelings of mastery, of power; and let’s face it, these feel better than feeling stupid and impotent.

But it has been my experience that I gain a lot when I let go of my need to be right. The more completely I am able to let it go, the more peace and serenity I seem to experience. More compassion, more generosity, more patience, more love. And after a while, I don’t even miss the intoxicating sensation that accompanies being right.

So when I give up being right, I come out feeling MORE confident about myself and about the universe. That’s either some form of insanity, or else, just maybe, letting go of the need to be right (and the associated needs to control things and to get my way) somehow creates the opportunity for some subtler, but ultimately more powerful, experience to occur.

Indulging in “being right” is like being an ice cube in the ocean, and desperately trying to prevent yourself from melting. It’s pointless, but you can spend all your time and energy resisting the melting. When you just let it go, and let yourself melt, you join with the ocean, and everything’s fine.

So try this, just as an experiment: Notice your tendency to want to be right as it emerges during the day. It will. While you’re driving, at work, in line at the bank, reading the op-ed section in the newspaper. Just notice it. Say “hey, I really want to be right about this.” Feel how that need to be right affects you. Notice how it causes your body to release chemicals into your bloodstream…feel that little charge of energy, of purpose, of aggressiveness. It feels good, doesn’t it? Hey, admit it…it feels good! It feels like power and action and victory. You can almost taste it. Can’t you? I can. I know this feeling very, very well. And I’ve learned that it is a lie.

Until you’ve gotten some practice, it can be difficult to actually turn away from it. Heck, I still have difficulty turning away sometimes, especially when I’m very tired or very agitated about something. I value the periods of freedom in between a great deal, and I will continue to expend effort to transcend my need to be right. Let me explain how I resist it.

I don’t. I don’t resist it. You can’t resist it. Your brain is just doing its job; identifying perceived potential or actual threats and coming up with contingency plans to combat them. That’s what your mind does, and it does a very good job. That’s why you’re still alive. You can’t stop your mind from doing its job. But you can choose whether or not to embrace the plan your mind comes up with. You get to decide whether to wear the armor and wield the weaponry your mind has prepared for you. Or not.

That’s how I do it, anyway: Something occurs, I observe it, I perceive the hurt or the wrong or the injustice or the cheating, my mind reacts, forms a plan, and begins preparing for combat. But I NOTICE this occurring…it all starts with being able to stand “outside” your mind a little bit, and watching your mind do its thing. And then I CHOOSE not to engage, not to indulge, not to succumb. I say “not just now, thanks.”

As long as you remain enslaved by your need to be right, you will not be able to experience god directly. Well, not until you die, anyway, but that’s a topic for another conversation.

Why It Doesn’t Matter What You Believe.

tim — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:25:01 +0000

I’m interested in mysticism, a direct experience of god.

So it might seem strange to hear me say that it doesn’t matter what I believe. But that’s what I’m saying. It doesn’t matter what I believe, and it doesn’t matter what you believe. It doesn’t matter if we’re right, and it doesn’t matter if we’re wrong.

Because, and get this, the point is not to “be right”. The point is to experience god. And it’s a lot easier to experience god if you give up your need to be right about things. A lot easier.

The need to be right is a human invention. No other animal, plant, piece of matter, or force we know expresses this need. A tsunami or earthquake doesn’t need to be right; it just is what it is. But we like to be right. We REALLY like it. It’s an addiction with most of us.

Watch people discuss politics. Watch them discuss religion. In politics, perhaps, the need to be right, to come out on top, is understandable; the outcomes can actually affect these apparently powerful human institutions we’ve created. So OK, go ahead: Argue. Fight. Go to war. Win. Be right.

Religion is where humanity’s addiction to being right really shows how misguided and pointless it is. Remember, god doesn’t need you to believe in it…god already is, was, and ever shall be. You’re a component of the universe, and you can’t get along without the universe, but the universe can get along fine with or without you, with or without your belief. You need universal truth a lot more than universal truth needs you.

The universal truth of creation is not affected by your belief or failure to believe. God doesn’t become more or less real the more or less you believe. The natural events and processes that govern developments in the universe don’t become more or less real depending on how many people believe in them, or whether they are properly understood by scientists or not. The complex, powerful organizations we create to defend our various orthodoxies are completely purposeless. Ultimate universal truth needs no defense. It needs no army of devotees. It is already the source of all power, of all everything. It lacks for nothing. You may need to believe in god, but god does not need your faith.

So that’s why it doesn’t matter what you believe. Lots of people act as if it matters. They act like it’s important to pick the right religion. Some behave as if the validity of their own beliefs is undermined by the existence of doubters or nonbelievers anywhere in the world; these folks seem to lack faith in their…um…faith. If you really believe it’s all absolutely true, why the insecurity?

The Tenets of Ecumenical Mysticism

tim — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 01:26:01 +0000

I accept the following statements as true, inasmuch as statements about eternal, infinite, immutable truth can be true when cast in the crude languages we humans are obliged to utilize.

I expect you to accept them as well. I’ve got some nerve, haven’t I?

Not really. I believe that these statements are consistent with our observations of the universe we know, and consistent with rational logic. None of these statements requires “faith” in the conventional sense. In another sense, however, they do require a kind of faith: Faith that the universe operates rationally. The kind of faith that allows you to generalize about the way dropped objects fall toward the ground; you don’t generally entertain the notion that dropped objects might fall upwards, or sideways, in the absence of some intervening force opposing the rational, predictable behavior of gravity as you experience it (whether or not you live in a culture that has developed a theory explaining how gravity works). We’ll discuss faith more later.

OK, here goes. We hold these truths to be self-evident:

1. The universe exists. Even if it’s all “a dream within a dream”, it exists with sufficient reality that we seem to perceive ourselves, our thoughts, and our surroundings as having some degree of actuality. Essentially, we agree that we’re here.

See? Not too difficult, so far.

2. There is one truth about the origin and fate of the universe. For short, we’ll call this “universal truth”. There are not multiple truths about how or why the universe came into existence, how it operates, and how it will end, assuming it will end.

All I’m saying is that the universe (which exists) somehow came into existence, and however it was that this occurred, it occurred that way, not one way here, and another way some other place, not one way now, and another way 2,000 years ago. There’s one ultimate truth about how the universe was created and why its here. Still with me?

3. As far as we are concerned or have any capacity to conceive, universal truth is infinite, immutable, and eternal. The cause of the universe doesn’t change over time (since time is part of the universe that has been created). Universal truth cannot be altered, or damaged, or destroyed. There is nothing that exists outside, or separate from, whatever the universal truth of all of existence happens to be.

This is pretty straightforward, but let’s just clarify one thing: Even if there’s something elsewhere, outside of the totality of all of existence (i.e. everything that has ever or will ever exist), it doesn’t matter; it might as well not exist at all. If that “other” existence were ever to come into contact with or affect our existence in any way, then it would automatically become part of this existence (”everything”) and would automatically be subsumed within the universal truth.

4. Because we have been created by, and are constrained to live within, this universe, we can never fully “know” the universal truth. In other words, the universal truth cannot be “contained” within the boundaries of a mortal human mind, a mere component within all of existence. Not only are we mortal, finite, and subject to our own prejudices and flaws, but we just can’t ever get “outside” reality in order to get an objective look at it. When you’re locked in the ship’s hold, it’s difficult to know which ocean you’re sailing on.

OK, you might be balking about now, but if so, it’s only because you’ve failed to understand the scale of the universal truth I’m talking about. To clarify, let me put it in different terms: If god (whatever this means to you) created the universe, than god is essentially the universal truth I’m talking about. You can’t understand god. Heck, you can’t understand your fellow human beings, can you? Know everything they know, know how they will respond in any situation? Know how they have lived every moment and how they will die? Heck, can you know YOURSELF this well? Even if you can, that knowledge is a grain of sand compared to knowing god. Accept it: your human brain CAN’T know all there is to know about god. That’s all I’m saying.

5. Universal truth is not dependent upon human thought or belief. Whatever the truth is, it would be the truth even if no human being were ever born, and no sentient being had ever bothered to ponder universal truth.

This seems really obvious, but lots of people seem to act as if what human beings think or believe about universal truth can have an effect on universal truth. So just to clarify that this is not so, let’s use a metaphor scaled down to the realm of human conception: Did infrared light exist before human beings theorized its existence or developed instruments capable of detecting it? Did Jupiter have moons before Galileo observed them with his remarkable telescope? The answer, in case you aren’t sure, it “yes, these things did exist.” By the way, this is all the “faith” I’m asking of you…just basic faith that the universe is rational. Human beings “discover” infrared light or moons orbiting Jupiter; they don’t “create” them in the same instant they seem to observe them (let’s just leave quantum physics aside for the moment:-)). All the various components of the universe exist whether or not human beings observe them or believe in them. So, to, with universal truth. It exists whether or not we conceive of it or believe in it.

That’s it. It might not seem like we’ve made much progress toward knowing god, and heck, it might feel pretty pointless, since I’ve just asked you to accept that you can’t know god. But actually, we’ve made a lot of progress, and I think I can convince you that seeking ultimate truth is worthwhile despite the fact that it’s impossible! Heck, maybe BECAUSE it’s impossible.

Welcome, fellow human being.

tim — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 21:28:57 +0000

Welcome to Ecumenical Mysticism. I am your host. Your guide, perhaps, although I don’t claim to possess any special mastery of this terrain.

Let’s just agree that we’ll be partners on a journey. Let’s acknowledge that we’ll each find our own path, and that we’ll walk it at our own pace. I don’t expect you to follow me. I just want to share the things I learn along the way, in hopes that you may benefit from them.