A New Kind of New Year Resolutions
December 29, 2019
My belief that a New Year’s Resolution is going to allow me to lose 10 or 20 pounds is slim. HAHAHA. My belief about this is slim, not my body.
But resolving to try to do something useful for the dismal state of social justice. Now that might just inspire me to fail in a MEANINGFUL way. Because after 30+ years of carrying the extra 30 pounds, I am not going to be that shocked if I don’t lose it. But if I set myself a goal to do ONE specific act beyond just giving money to organizations fighting injustice, then maybe I’ll imagine myself feeling bad enough that I’ll make sure to do it. Remind me in November!
You might want to explore why it will be hard to do something like this if you are too big a fan of humility. Check out this other recording. It’s written in E Prime, a type of English that has no words based on the verb “To Be.” No be, is, was, will be, shall, isn’t, am, are, etc. Except I made a mistake and there is one “is.” :>(
There’s more commentary and the link to the same recording here.
What is the Consciousness without its Contents? (October 20, 2019)
That consciousness, without its contents, without our personalities, our bodies, our thoughts and feelings, without our perceptions, that WITNESS of all the rest of the material world…The witness that eventually tires of witnessing anything but pure consciousness itself… THAT is the eternal part of us. The Hindus call it purusha. Everything material, matter and energy, is prakriti. A sage named Kapila had figured out that both matter and energy are prakriti, or Nature. Consciousness is something else entirely, but it arises with matter and energy. The materialist reductionist scientists say consciousness is a result of matter. Many religious teachings say consciousness (God, God’s Word, etc.) is primary, came first. But Kapila, way back in 2600 BCE or so, said they arise together. That makes sense to me. Good can’t exist without Evil. One defines the other. Yin can’t exist without Yang. One defines the other. Prakriti and Purusha are just another pair of concepts that allow us to try to understand the world of which we are a part.
When we manage to MOVE our PRIMARY consciousness from our body, feelings, thoughts, to our witnessing consciousness, then worry evaporates and peace reigns over us. We have become eternal. And there is no longer a need to forgive or be forgiven. Although it might still be convenient…
The Gifts of the Religions of the World (July 21, 2019)
Last time (just below) I spoke about something new that each religion brought to the stage of the marketplace of ideas that humans have access to. In my view, one role religion plays for humans is to give us tools to manage the human condition, with all of its “toils and snares.”
This sermon was about something I like, find useful or uplifting, from each of the six major world religions.
The presentation starts out with a little bit of advice for smoothing dialogues between people from different faith traditions, who are trying to improve their mutual understanding.
The History of and Lessons from Comparative Religion (June 23, 2019)
Originally, I put the following file together for a little spirituality group I belong to in Ionia County, Michigan. My original thought was to find some short scriptural reading from “Page 1” of the teachings of each of the major world religions. But turned out to be way too overwhelming. So I ended up picking something that I felt represented something that was meaningful to ME that was first emphasized in the historical time frame by each religion. For example, the Jews are said by many historians to have created the idea of a linear time frame for history. This pdf file has many links to information on all six religions.
The Draw of India for the Western Spiritual Seeker
May 5, 2019
Is it worth going all the way around the world to see a different culture? Why have I spent my limited resources to make 5 trips to India, with a 6th planned for next year?? Here I give nine different reasons, ranging from the usual tourist types activities to the experience of the collective consciousness. I didn’t even really get to the food. Here’s the audio file.
Don’t Kill the Ego!
Jan. 20, 2019
Don’t Kill Your Ego
The ego has been part of the human psychological structure for longer than it’s carried the name “Ego.” There must be a good reason for its existence. However, the ego can get out of control. Learning to watch our thoughts is the path to empowering the Higher Self. The ego is meant to serve the Higher Self.
There are four more sermons below, from earlier dates.
100th Anniversary of the END of World War I
Please click below to hear the audio Recording of the actual sermon. Note content is an elaboration of some of the points discussed in the preparatory essay below…
Today is November 11, 2018.
It is the hundredth anniversary of the end of the first World War.
Let’s take a moment to avail ourselves of the auspicious numerological opportunity to pray not only for an end to war, but for an end to the causes of war.
Some wars, as the Hindu’s great scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, tells us, are justified. Sun Tzu of China also wrote a book held in longstanding honor that explains how to determine when war is justified. Sun Tsu’s classic, The Art of War, is still used today for its advice on how to gain a speedy end to any war that is justified.
We in the West have our own traditions justifying war. The Trojan War between the Achaeans (predecessors of the culture occupying what we now call Greece) was fought due to a pact between rich landowners to defend whichever of them took the most beautiful woman of the times as a wife, from anyone who tried to take her away. The Hebrew Bible documents many wars fought at the direction of God’s commands to cleanse the Promised Land of its supposedly sinful occupants.
At that time, people were led to believe that they were doing good by helping their God to annihilate offending peoples. I personally have a hard time deciding if this seems morally superior or inferior to the idea of preventing Helen from leaving her short, fat, ugly Achaean (Greek) husband and going off with the handsome Prince of Troy. I am also struggling to come to a conclusion about whether ethnic cleansing is superior or inferior as a supposedly legitimate cause of war, compared to one fought over the refusal of a king to return his cousin’s domain after the allotted time had elapsed since the dice gambling match forced him to go into a 13 year exile.
Are all of these reasons morally inferior or superior to the ones that Americans have used in recent times? (Securing our supply of oil? Liberating Afghan women from those who were forcing them to give up their right to education and liberty to walk about in town? Destroying what turned out to be non-existent weapons of mass destruction?)
Apparently, back in the Bronze age, in what we now call the Middle East, wars fought to perform ethnic cleansing were considered good deeds. The episodes of what today would be called ethnic cleansing, or genocide, were thought to endear the people to their god. Because of this, Israelite editors of the Bible made up the story of their ancestors’ destruction of the great city of Jericho. Historians and archeologists seem quite certain that the city of Jericho was already a pile of ruins at the time of the Israelites occupation of Canaan. But it was important to tell the story of the destruction of every resident of Jericho- man, woman (except the certified virgins of child bearing age), child, even the livestock. Important to remind God of the obedience of the people, and important to remind the Israelites of their fierce warrior natures.
Now, before you, dear reader, accuse me of being NEGATIVE, wallowing in the horrific deeds and attitudes of the past, I want to say that THE FACT that we now find these deeds HORRIFIC gives me some hope for future progress. As the great Rabbi Hillel said, what is hateful to you, do not do to others.
Sure, it’s great to give charity, and to smile as you go about your daily business. But destruction is so much swifter than construction, that you could be loving a kind 364 days a year, and on that one day of destruction, ruin more than you built. Perhaps that is likely if we try to suppress our negative aspects, rather than bringing them into the light of day to figure out how we can move beyond them.
So first, let’s avoid destruction of the beautiful, the useful, and the spiritually uplifting.
How much progress have we made in the last 3 or 4 thousand years?
The kings of Assyria and Babylon used to have their scribes count the enemy hands in the piles that the warriors made, so they could brag to their god of how many enemies his army had eradicated. Most of the armies of the day only killed men and children, sparing all women of child bearing age, and taking the livestock. Women were spared as the men of the day had an incorrect belief that THEY carried the complete genetic seeds of their offspring, and the females were merely incubators.
Getting back to more modern times, World War I resulted in 10 million civilian deaths and 6 million military personnel deaths. Another 20 million were injured. In the heat of the battle, many soldiers had been brainwashed as to the necessity of continuing to kill until the moment of cease-fire at 11 am on 11/11/1918. The last soldier was killed at 10:58 am. This was almost six hours after the announcement of the cease-fire. The combatant had become so filled with hatred that they did not want to waste a chance for a little more glory on the battlefield, a few more enemies killed.
But, as a result of this bloody, horrible war, many people did start to undertake organization building for the purposes of reducing the pain, suffering, and losses of war. Some people also worked to reduce the likelihood of war.
As we look back in history on this hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I, we can’t celebrate the end of war. We can’t even celebrate the end of the desire for war. But we do have some progress to report. We have the knowledge of the Buddhist prayer that all beings be happy, and more importantly that all beings have the causes of happiness. Again, I’d like to suggest that we not pray for the currently unrealistic end to war, which would leave many people in untenable conditions. Rather, I pray for an end to the causes of war.
What are the causes of war? I am not a historian, so probably no historian would take my opinion into account. However, I think that injustice is the biggest. I will claim that I’m not the first to think along the lines of social structures contributing to war. Matthew O. Jackson and Massimo Morelli wrote (in 2007) an article called “Political Bias and War,” in the American Economic Review, 97 (4): 1353-1373. I haven’t read it because I don’t want to pay for the article at this point. From another article by these authors, which I found in its entirety, they apparently make the case that PEOPLE LIKE to CHOOSE those with belligerent tendencies as leaders to negotiate for them. They also provide information that led me to understand that in hierarchical societies (all human societies), the LEADERS actually tend to benefit from war more than the citizens. Let’s think about the rich Americans who benefit from selling arms. They are not the ones being shot at on the battlefields! Be that as it may, these two historians see war most frequently resulting from bargaining failures. To me, bargaining failures is a “HOW wars start” factor, while injustice is a “WHY wars start” factor.
If peace and justice prevailed everywhere on the face of the earth, and people LOVED peace and justice, I think that there would be a lower driving force for wars.
But injustice is the hardest thing to eradicate. Or perhaps I should say that the manifestations of injustice are very difficult to eradicate. When we start to try to disentangle a single strand of injustice, we find ourselves pulling on one end of what seems like an infinite spider web.
Two years ago I studied the Flint Water Crisis, in order to prepare a presentation for an engineering conference. The “ROOT CAUSE” of the children’s lead poisoning was eventually found by the American Civil Liberties Union to be a failure of democracy. Of course with any big failure, there are multiple points of view. From another vantage point, the Flint problem was economic in nature. The city had been a thriving center of manufacturing, but the losses of the automotive industry had left it as the home of one of the most poverty stricken populations in the country. But defining the situation in those terms is philosophically defeatist. It implies that poor people don’t have a right to safe drinking water. Or it leaves poor people waiting for charity.
Calling the situation a failure of democracy leads to more immediately actionable plans. The control of the government of Flint has now been returned to its elected mayor from the State appointed emergency manager, who took control after the bankruptcy of the city. Several years on, there are still a lot of lead pipes in Flint, and some people are still relying on bottled water to drink, although it’s been safe to wash even babies in the water for some time now.
There are still ongoing lawsuits over the actions taken by the officials appointed by the State, who abused their authority and ignored safety warnings from the employees of the water department. Some of these former authorities are facing criminal charges. (Feel free to contact me for a copy of my slide show or paper on the subject.)
Should all humans have safe drinking water? Is that a matter of justice? Lead in drinking water has been shown to cause irreversible brain damage in infants and young children. The brain damage leads to a higher incidence of behavioral problems, and even murder rates. (My previously mentioned paper has references to a scholarly article on this issue.) Of course “normal” people don’t want violent, brain damaged people in their neighborhoods.
What about toilets? Should all humans have toilets?
And education? Should all humans have access to basic education? Should they learn how to read, do arithmetic, and practice basic hygiene?
Are these issues of justice?
If we are able to envision a world of both peace and justice, we bring it closer to reality. Jesus’ teachings encouraged his followers to enter the Kingdom of Heaven within. Yet, as we leave the Halloween season, and approach the Thanksgiving Season, overshadowed as it now is in the American Retail environment, by a frenzy of Christmas capitalism, let’s rejoice that Christians have not totally given up the idea of the Old Testament prophet, that one day there would be Peace on Earth.
If all of us spread the word that our chances of Peace on Earth coming sooner will be improved once we start praying for an end to the CAUSES of war, we will be doing a small part to making it happen.
Eastern Religions: Sermon 9 – 16 – 2018
Years ago, after meditating on the Yin Yang, I had a deep insight, and wrote the following poem:
Without darkness to dispel,
light has no value.
Without suffering to assuage,
compassion has no task.
Without the female,
what defines the male?
Without evil,
who can recognize good?
I will add now, today, Monday, that is why compassion demands that we have compassion for the evil as well as the good. Practicing compassion for OUR SELVES is the foundation that makes that possible (Yezidi teaching!). This is why both the Old Testament prophets AND Jesus told people to be kind to their enemies. It’s a powerful spiritual practice. If you can be kind to your enemies, how much easier to be kind to everyone else! But if you are unkind to yourself, your foundation of kindness is rotten, and you can never be truly kind to anyone else. This is going against traditional Christian, but not Jewish, teachings. This is a problem for Christianity in general. You must be KIND to yourself in order to KNOW yourself. Otherwise, your true self will HIDE in fear of your mean aspects. Only by KNOWING yourself can you know and understand, and then better help, others.
BANG BANG. That was important. Hope you pay attention! 🙂
I will try to post a summary of my notes for the sermon, but in the meantime, here is a link to the a translation of the Dao (or Tao) Te (or De) Ching, the poetic, profound, beautiful and wise book written by one of the greatest Daoist masters.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Tao_Te_Ching
This traditional Chinese way of life has some of its practice origins in pre-history, but it is eminently practical and modern.
We Are All the Chosen People
August 19, 2018
Here are scribbles and notes that I made to prepare to give the message on Sunday, and the actual message as delivered in church. They have related content, but there’s more history of religion, especially the Eastern religions, Hinduism, in the written version. I kindof ran out of time during the service.
Please click on this link to read the pdf file version, or on the audio file below.
Hope you enjoy.
Rebalancing the Feminine Divinity
July 22, 2018
This sermon was precipitated by my recent reading of Leonard Schlain’s The Alphabet Versus The Goddess, Merlin Stone’s classic “When God was a Woman,“ and the final work of the great archeologist, Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses.
(Click on the above underlined titles to see more about the named books)
Humanity is living in a brief nightmare, only around four thousand years old, which was brought on (in my amateur ancient historian viewpoint) when humans crossed the line of plenty of land for all to the defensive position required to hold on to particular pieces of fertile land, where we could use the new technology of agriculture to ensure our survival. Standing armies meant men got killed off in greater numbers than females, and the protector men were suddenly (relatively speaking that is) seen as being more valuable than the life giving and nurturing women. Since men were often away at war, they couldn’t know what their women were doing in their absence, and started insisting on owning their wives, instead of sharing respect equally as adult members of the community. With life now a struggle against others, the last thing a man wanted to do was support another man’s offspring. Suddenly the father was more important than the mother.
In fact, humans had felt for millennia that the female was the almighty life giver and nurturer, and had used symbols of eggs and the birds that laid them, the same birds who could defy gravity, as representations of the Divine Mother Goddess.
Here are a few images I found on the internet showing the female (breasts, triangular pubic mound) merged with stumpy arms that look more like folded wings, noses that look more like beaks, and one that integrates the above into an oval shape that clearly shows the egg, which unfortunately won’t show up here, so you will have to click this link, and scroll down to the items from Yemen, the land of the Queen of Sheba: http://www.frru2.altervista.org/ARCH/VEP/VEP_PP/pp3.htm
Or click on this link which is a pdf that I made up with additional links and images. Bird and Egg Goddesses
Jews and Christians still use the egg as a religious symbol, but it is no longer the primary religious symbol. It was long forbidden as these patriarchal religions banned all symbols honoring the Goddess. The Jews have an egg on the Sedar Plate for the Passover meal, and Christians decorate eggs for Easter. Both are regarded as simple symbols of renewal. Modern Jews and Christians are not told of their history as symbols of the Mother Eve, from before she was considered disobedient and sinful by the patriarchy.
This sermon, or message as we call it, is about 24 minutes long. Hope you enjoy.