Awakening From Your Anger

Category: Important Concepts

  • Acedia and the Climate Lie, Part 2

    The desire to give up! Caught in despair.
    The desire to give up! Caught in despair.

    The Climate Lie

    I take this term from what I read in The Climate Mobilization website — it refers to:

    Our society is living within a massive lie. The lie says, “Everything is fine and we should proceed with business as usual. We are not destroying our climate and, with it, our stability and our civilization. We are not committing passive suicide.

    The lie says we are fine—that climate change isn’t real, or is uncertain, or is far away, or won’t be bad enough to threaten humanity. The lie says that small changes will solve the problem. That recycling, bicycling, or closing the Keystone Pipeline will solve the problem. The lie allows people to put climate change in the back of their minds. To view it as someone else’s issue—the domain of scientists or activists. The lie allows us to focus on other things. To proceed with business as usual. To be calm and complacent while our planet burns.

    … [The lie is] sustained by people living within the lies. Our lie is a lie co-created by the government, corporations, the media, and the people. These organizations encourage the lie, but it only exists because we, the people accept it and choose to live within it. The basic lie is “We should continue with business as usual, for everything is fine. There are three  major ways that the Climate Lie operates: intellectual denial, emotional denial, and environmental tokenism.

    I agree that all this is the climate lie, and I suggest the problem is even bigger — it should be called the Culture Lie, subsuming scientific materialism and consumerism.

    The Difficulty of the Climate Lie

    It is so hard to write about — it is so big, and so entangled, that I cannot do justice in this small space. Yet I strongly urge the reader to take the time to read the key documents on The Climate Mobilization site. They are well-written, but long, and require a lot to time to digest.

    And that is the weakness — the intricacy of the Climate/Culture Lie is such that the average person is likely to give up — it takes too much effort. Frequently I give up — I am forced by time and despair to accept descriptions that I cannot adequately validate nor can I understand their complexity, but yet the descriptions seem to make imminent sense in how they describe the complexity. Examples for me include my attempting to understand the older Keynesian economics and how they were replaced by neoliberalism, both of which have led to the destructive consumerism of modern culture.

    Acedia and the Lie

    It is this giving up that pushes me towards my own acedia, and I suspect underlies the vast acedia of our culture. In my PhD research, I proposed that the internal conflict that precedes acedia is a force field of many factors. On the positive side are the processes that could lead to resolution (phronesis): wisdom (sophia), discipline, hope and playfulness, all of which are disparaged in our present culture.

    A balance of forces, heavily weighted to acedia
    A balance of forces, heavily weighted to acedia

    On the acedia side are the ways in which we treat ourselves. Inherently we are pain avoiders (basic biology), but our cultural models generally push us to self-deprecation (especially self-criticism when we do not fit the cultural models of size, shape, success, etc.), familial trauma (as families struggle with many internal and external demands of success, personal satisfaction, finances, etc.), and cultural trauma (in the many subtle ways in which we struggle with the failed promises of technology and economic life). And from this stance, we treat the planet: we allow world hunger, the maltreatment of women and children, the subtle maltreatment of men (witness the farmer suicides of India), environmental disaster after disaster — the list goes on.

    What a mess! It is the mess that requires long-term correction to take us to a culture that intrinsically values all human life, and all of creation.

    But the first order of priority is to stop global warming, and its immediate antecedents, the fossil fuel industry in its many pervasive forms. If we do not do that, the rest doesn’t matter.

    I have therefore joined the Climate Mobilization in its pledge of action.

    Coming next: Acedia and Evil.

  • Acedia and the Climate Lie, Part 1

    The noon-day demon, blocking all joy!
    The noon-day demon, blocking all joy!

    If you are like me, you probably have never heard of the concept of acedia. I had not until I started my PhD, this despite more than 50 years of extensive reading. In this post, we look at the nature of acedia, and how it is the cultural norm; next post, I will tie it into how we maintain the Climate Lie.

    What is acedia?

    Why has no one heard of it? For one thing, the word has been in and out of the English language since its inception in ancient Greek, frequently labeled as archaic; its history is documented in my book Acedia. Originally it was a monastic term, and it did not survive the philosophic shift from religiosity to scientific materialism. Acedia described the condition of objecting to the effort of living, of being loving or charitable.

    It was replaced by terms ranging from ennui to depression — less depth and breadth though; acedia is a better choice for me. I came to regard acedia as any combination of laziness, fearfulness and self-righteousness, all terms that block the individual from authenticity or spiritual maturity. And even these terms are easily misunderstood, usually with scorn — as noted, acedia objects to the effort of being authentic.

    When people encounter a painful situation, they inherently want to resolve the pain; they want to authentically feel good and be satisfied with life. They ponder the issues, and if they have enough wisdom (as depth of understanding of universal truths, what the Greeks called sophia), they move to resolution (so-called practical wisdom, or phronesis) — and feel good. If not, they are usually in some kind of internal conflict — they want resolution, but they also want the pain to go away. If they have enough discipline, they work through the issues, again to resolution. If not, they shift to avoidance — still, if they have enough hope, they again find a way to move to resolution. In all of this, the skills of awareness (recognition) and of playfulness further aid in movement to resolution.

    AcediaEvolution

    If none of this occurs, they move into some means of numbing the pain, some form of acedia manifest as laziness, fearfulness, or self-righteousness so as to overwhelm or transmute the pain into something familiar, some way to avoid. Then they cycle back into the patterns, with a different kind of pain, but one that they can mask.

    It works! If it didn’t, we wouldn’t do it.

    The problem is that acedia does not lead to long-term resolution, just avoidance. And in our culture, it is not easily challenged; it is judged inappropriate, but not shifted. Nor do we as a culture give much value to any of the needed skills: wisdom (sophia or phronesis), discipline (except for engaging in sports), hope (wishful thinking, yes; authentic hope, no), or playfulness (when do you really authentically play?).

    Acedia as cultural norm.

    So how has this become the cultural norm? I suggest that since the beginning of civilization, we have traumatized ourselves and each other. In The Parable Of The Tribes, Schmookler links the inherent difficulties of domination with the very nature of civilization. Since the very beginning (about 12,000 years ago), civilization has been a two-edged sword, with empire as the foundation. To have an empire means winners (dominators) and losers (subjects). The Greeks developed democracy, but were a slave culture. Fast forward to the Renaissance with the development of science and the Industrial Revolution, and industrial slavery and the rise of alcoholism. The 20th century brought technology and the valuing of women, and consumerism. The 21st century has given us the valuing of diversity, and global warming.

    Look around. How many people do you know who are truly happy? How many alcoholics do you know? What about domestic violations? Or world hunger? Or the numerous political-economic betrayals of the past 50 years? We have a strange culture, certainly not a mature one.

    We live the Climate Lie, the Cultural Lie.

    Coming next: Acedia and the Climate Lie.

  • The Threshold of Anxiety in Global Warming

    As anxiety diminishes, people engage more.
    As anxiety diminishes, people engage more.

    So what are the factors that block engagement in global warming?

    In a recent podcast The Big Man Can’t Shoot, journalist Malcolm Gladwell identifies the need for social approval as a major factor in effective choice. Gladwell tells the story of a legendary basketball player with only one flaw: his success rate at free throws from the foul line was only about 40%. He was coached by a colleague whose success rate was 93%, and was able to improve himself to 87% — a huge advance and one that could make him almost unstoppable. The catch: he had to make “granny shots” — underhand throws rather than overhead shots, that are the standard of the league. And he wouldn’t do so — because he would look “silly.” Nor would other players, again because they would be breaking the unspoken norms of play — even though they would be better players!

    What Gladwell identified was what I call the threshold of anxiety that must be overcome when one’s behavior does not match the common deportment of the peer group, the so-called peer pressure that exists within any group, even when unspoken. The threshold level varies from person to person, but always is a factor in the decision to act. This means that for any individual, a certain number of their trusted peers have to act in a certain way before they themselves will undertake the action.

    Translating this to the need for massive mobilization in response to global warming, there is potentially a large body of the public waiting for others to act before they themselves will engage significantly. Many of these people will be those I identified in my last post as those people who are chronically overwhelmed by too much stuff. Salamon in Living In Climate Truth goes into more depth as to how individuals use intellectual denial, emotional denial, and tokenism to avoid action to maintain the Climate Lie that all is well, and someone else will resolve the issues. Or the individual believes that nothing can be done, and settles into low-grade cynicism, contaminating others in major ways.

    Potentially when enough others have shifted into effective action, there could then be a snowball effect in response. But when? Will it occur soon enough to forestall disastrous effect?

    I suspect not. To use myself as example, I started hearing about environmental issues in the 1960s and 1970s, and had enough background in science (degrees in physics and biophysics by that point) to know that we humans were doing significant damage to the environment. But I was “too busy with other issues” in my life. Fast forward to the 1990s when I had a small acreage in Ontario, land that I actually regarded as sacred — I knew “activists” who were challenging government regulations, but “I wasn’t an activist.” Then in 2009 when I finally got it, I was in deep despair for months, and only in the past year did my resolve crystallize. So if it has taken me this long, what chance do we have as a species?

    Yet, if I accept this line of reasoning, it is likely that nothing effective will happen. I must act into the assumption that many are waiting in the wings simply for the snowball effect.

    There is no question in my own mind that I am angry at the complexity and frequent ineffectiveness of my culture. I am not angry at individuals; I am angry at the systemic morass we have created — but if I allow my anger to take over, I will burnout. It’s a no-win situation. I’m very good at anger management, including my own. So, often I fall back on simple affirmations such as “Let Go; Let God,” or “High Intention, Low Attachment.”

    What I don’t know how to do is how to get people to engage. Currently, I am reading Joe Romm’s Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga for some hints. Many days I’m convinced I am a slow learner.

    Coming next: The nature of acedia.

  • Difficulties: solvable or resolvable?

    A magnet always has two poles.
    A magnet always has two poles.

    When you have a difficulty, is it solvable? Is global warming solvable?

    In this post, I want to explore the distinction between solvable and resolvable. To solve something means that the difficulty it represents goes away — you are complete with it. To resolve something means you are at peace with it — it may still be a difficulty, but you are satisfied that you know what to do about it. (In the last post, I’ll indicated why I talk about difficulties, and the distinction between difficulties and problems, another important distinction.)

    The distinction is important — global warming is not solvable; it is resolvable. The underlying factors of global warming, the acedia of our species, is not solvable; it is resolvable. Both issues likely require ongoing life-long attention to our own growth as individuals and as a society so to be at peace with what life offers.

    An excellent description of the distinction is found in Polarity Management by Barry Johnson — what follows is principally my summary of his paper. I use slightly different language from Barry — solvable instead of right/wrong, and resolvable instead of polarity.

    Solvable (right/wrong): one “right” answer, or two (or more) answers that are “right,” and independent of each other.

    • Right/wrong distinctions are the essential means of transmitting knowledge from one generation to another, e.g., 4 + 4 = 8.
    • Or they contain the cultural messages of right and wrong: “In this culture, we value . . .”
      • Note that if the question is phrased as “Should I value X or Y?” there is the implication that both values are somehow important, and also they are somehow related to each other — they are part of the same dilemma (they are not independent). This is a polarity difficulty, not a right/wrong difficulty (see below) — another example of sloppy language.
    • Solving difficulties creates closure, and eliminates the searching through numerous “wrong” answers.
      • Often the difficulty is phrased: a or b, but only if a and b are independent of each other. Here a and b are facts, such that one is right and the other wrong.
    • >95% of the teachings in formal education are based on solvable (right/wrong) distinctions.
      • Because virtually all our educational experience is in solvable (right/wrong) difficulties, we automatically lock into the possibility of solving difficulties, rather than resolving them.

    Resolvable (polarity): two or more answers that are interdependent on each other.

    • These distinctions are essential in passing the socialization elements of culture from one generation to another, e.g., “In my relationship with my friend, should I be concerned about her, or should I be concerned about myself?”
      • Often the difficulty is phrased as or, even though both a and b are right, and there is possibly a choice to be made.

    Knowing the distinction between solvable and resolvable, and when to apply appropriate tools to each, is very important to the changing of systems. A major difficulty is that, on first glance, solvable (right/wrong) and resolvable (polarity) difficulties look alike. Because we are so attuned to solvable (right/wrong) difficulties, we tend to approach all difficulties looking for solutions. Then we find a solution — but wonder why we are getting resistance from others for our wonderful solution! Well, we have likely found ½ of a polarity difficulty; the resistance represents the other half!

    Polarity-Breathing

    To better identify the character of resolvable (polarity) difficulties, Johnson suggests the metaphor of breathing. Breathing requires the intake of oxygen (inhalation) and the removal of carbon dioxide (exhalation); both are essential, and are obviously interdependent. There are eight components of importance, in pairs: inhalation and exhalation (neutral, the interdependent processes), death and life (outcomes), why we breath (the need for oxygen intake and carbon dioxide removal — the higher purpose), and the consequences of not breathing (too little oxygen or too much carbon dioxide — the deepest fear). In breathing, you cannot just choose to breath in, or to breath out — both have significant negative consequences; they are interdependent.

    The skill of management of polarity difficulties is to find the optimal balance of achieving the positive benefits of both poles (inhalation and exhalation), without the negative consequences of excess of either. With the issue of breathing, the body-mind system does this automatically, generally without our needing to consciously think about the choices or consequences. However most polarity difficulties require careful attention and integration of the benefits of each pole, while minimizing the undesirable consequences of each.

    In this blog, I simply want to make the distinction, principally because global warming, and the deeper management of cultural acedia, are both resolvable (polarity) difficulties — they are not solvable. Global warming is especially complex —we have both caused it, in our unconscious behaviors as a species, and there are many interdependent aspects to be considered. It is possible that, as the consequences of global warming become more apparent, we might stumble into a more mature management of the issues, but to bet on this happening is like buying a lottery ticket with the expectation of winning. Not likely!

  • Digression: difficulties versus problems?

    Problems1

    When you encounter issues that trouble you, are they difficulties or are they problems? Is global warming a difficulty, or is it a problem?

    In this post, I want to clarify the distinction between difficulties and problems — I think it is an important distinction in the issues of cultural maturity. I explain it clearly in my book Acedia, and I am simply going to quote it here:

    In Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution, Watzlawick et al (1974) note difficulties simply as an undesirable state of affairs, and problems as issues created and maintained [my emphasis] by the mishandling of difficulties. Difficulties can either be 1) resolved through some common-sense action, or 2) they are “undesirable but usually quite common life situations for which there exists no known solution and which—at least for the time being—must simply be lived with” (pp. 38-39). As example, “death” is a difficulty; there is no solution, only resolution. I also propose that acedia is a difficulty—whereas one can repeatedly choose the path of health, this choice is always between health and acedia (otherwise there would never be internal conflict).

    Watzlawick et al (1974, p. 39) also note that there are basically three ways in which problems arise: 1) denial of the difficulty; 2) change is attempted when, for all practical purposes, the difficulty is unchangeable; and 3) action occurs in a way that sustains the difficulty. I propose that climate change is both a difficulty and a problem. We have not yet reached a resolution, yet alone a solution, and there is great denial, as well as a predominant focus simply on economics and technological change as a solution to climate issues. Technological resolutions may resolve the immediate situation, but I cannot foresee how it will lead to significant change in the underlying issue of acedia, or the fundamental deficits of our society that have promoted climate change.

    To solve something means that the difficulty it represents goes away — you are complete with it. To resolve something means you are at peace with it — it may still be a difficulty, but you are satisfied that you know what to do about it.

    An example. At one point in my careers, I was a specialist anaesthetist, a physician skilled in both caring for patients in the operating room, and also in the intensive care unit. One of the difficulties of intensive care, especially with more prolonged disorders of health, is that death is a frequent outcome, despite good care. Death is a natural outcome of life (a difficulty), sometimes sad but always inevitable for every person — it is just not clear when. What used to amaze me was the number of physicians who were angry that patients died; these physicians somehow were attempting to solve death (death was a problem), rather than be at peace that, despite their best efforts, patients died.

    I also knew that there was a huge financial investment in stopping death — I vaguely recall (~1985) that almost 50% of medical costs (American, but also likely Canadian) occurred within the last three months of life, i.e., preventing death. Much of this cost may have been appropriate; some was not. I knew the factors involved in the choices to continue care in these difficult situations. Broad brushstrokes — patients with failure of more than two organ systems did not survive; patients with life-threatening blunt trauma (car accidents, for example) did not survive.

    So my standard, part of my personal living will, is that if I am unconscious and have more than two systems in failure (e.g., stroke and kidney failure, on a respirator), I do not wish ongoing treatment. Let death be the natural outcome; I do not wish to be a problem.

    Tomorrow:

    Solvable (right/wrong) problems and resolvable (polarity) problems.

  • The factors that determine change

    Math is just a way to represent relationships.
    Math is just a way to represent relationships.

    My second digression — a mathematical formula, perhaps scary to some (or many). Bear with me; this formula is actually quite easy to grasp. And appropriate for envisioning a mature society.

    First, math is nothing more than a way to describe relationships between ideas. The ideas may refer to numbers, shapes, automobiles, or any group of ideas that change in predictable fashion. (It can get complex, but in general people have been scared by the complexity when the simplicity was not explained.) But we do need to grasp the relationships.

    When I first went to university (more than 55 years ago — yikes), I intended to become a theoretical astrophysicist (envision me and Steven Hawking) — my first degree is in maths and physics; little did I realize I would end up studying the inner cosmos rather than the outer.

    I still have an interest in math. About twenty years ago, attempting to grasp the nature of change, I devised the above formula to describe the factors involved in change. It has proven very useful to me in working with people.

    As you read further, think about how changes have occurred in your life. What precipitated the change? What was happening around you?

    Change (the upside triangle) is a continuous process; it takes time. Specific aspects can appear rapidly, and re-organization of the emotional system can happen abruptly, but integration requires time. The change must start from where the individual is (the dot in the middle), not from where they want or should be; these latter locales are wish statements, not reality.

    The individual (p) is always part of a system (Z) of individuals and concepts, of interlocking emotional triangles, usually of great complexity. This complexity can provide support and safety for the individual, and it can also inhibit transformation of the individual, via the “togetherness” factor.

    The individual must have some sense of pain (H), and not be overwhelmed by it — if the pain is too intense, the individual will collapse. He or she must also have some sense of safety (s), as provided by the community or perhaps provided by maturity within the individual. If no pain, the motivation to change is likely to be minimal, and if overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness in the face of trauma, the individual is likely to move to acedia. The risk of acedia is always present — to an unknown degree (X), depending on the background trauma, and how it is triggered by the current circumstances.

    The individual must also have a sense of vision (V), a vision that fits (f) the circumstances, and provides authentic hope for the future. If the vision does not fit, the individual cannot draw energy from it to move towards the future. This vision can be a simple desire, or it can be a complex myth that provides hope.

    Tools (T) of some kind must be available — this is the primary role of therapy. And there is always risk (r) — some therapists are better than others; some tools have risks greater than their benefits. I suggest that the better tools (both people and concepts) draw upon the skills of playfulness, wisdom, hope, and discipline, allowing the possibility of shifting the balance within the force field of acedia towards that of practical judgment, phronesis.

    Finally, change ultimately depends on grace (g), the synchronicity offered by the universe, God by another language. Panpsychism (my preferred mode of understanding the nature of reality) suggests that God exists (as the totality of sentient beings), and that (as a component of this totality) each individual sentient being possesses free will. We each makes choices about how we live. In addition, God provides the opportunity (e.g., possibilities) for us to live well. Even if God does not exist or even if the universe is eventually found to be meaningless, each individual still has the option to act as if it is meaningful, and to create a myth that will allow him or her to live within what life offers—in a stance of love, in contrast to acedia.

    Each one of these factors will be part of the development of a maturing society.

    Tomorrow: the differences between difficulties and problems.

  • The Force Field of Change

    ChangeFF

    I woke up this morning aware that, for me to continue this discussion of envisioning a mature society, there are a number of digressions that I need to introduce. I want my writing to emphasize useful process, rather than utopian ideas. So —

    • the Force Field of Change,
    • the factors that determine change,
    • the differences between difficulties and problems. and
    • the differences between solvable and resolvable difficulties.

    I need to explore these so as to have clarity of language — clarity of language is so important to me. If I am to make my musings meaningful, I need to write about them in a way that communicates what I want to say.

    One of the difficulties of life is that it is a miracle that human beings are able to communicate at all — there are so many nuances to be overcome. A couple of statements emphasize this for me:

    “I believe you understand what you think I said but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I said,”

    and (this time with emphasis)

    “I believe you understand what you think I said but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I said.”

    Onwards and upwards — the Force Field of Change.

    Force Fields are way to indicate that factors that come into a problem, in this case: change. (I’ve described them in a different context in an earlier post.) Effective change requires:

    • honesty as to where I am in the present (best with a sensory-grounded description of what is actually occurring,
    • a detailed vision of what I want in the future (essentially the scenery on the road),
    • a description of the forces that are assisting me in moving forward (the motivating factors), and
    • a description of the forces that are stopping my progress (the deterrent forces).

    Together, all of this determines where I am in the present, balanced within the various forces. But I am not in the future. If I am to get to the future, I need to augment the motivating forWarmingFFces, the driving forces, and diminish the deterrent forces, the restraining forces. From my perspective as therapist, I suggest that diminishing the deterrent forces is more powerful than augment the motivators. But it is more painful to do so, and therefore people often focus on the augmentors.

    Applied to the issues of seeking a mature culture, global warming is only one of the restraining forces. For the most part, climate change is a technological issue, but the underlying forces driving it are emotional. In my PhD, I identified these forces as the acedia of our culture; the force field thus became:

    • diminishing the many ways in which we traumatize ourselves, and
    • increasing the factors that move us to maturity: wisdom, discipline, hope, and playfulness.

    AcediaDeterminants

    Appropriately modifying all of these forces must become intentional parts of daily living in a maturing society.

    Tomorrow: the factors that determine change.

  • Read the fine print!

    Diablo Nuclear Plant to be closed --- maybe?
    Diablo Nuclear Plant to be closed — maybe?

    I am so tired of the duplicity of our culture!

    A colleague Paul Ray sends me lots of information about climate change issues, for which I am very grateful — not only are they usually pertinent, but he often highlights the significant components in the emails he sends.

    Such is the case here, referring to the Diablo Nuclear Plant in California: Diablo Shutdown Marks End of Atomic Era . If you scan the article (fairly long), it looks fairly good, but if you read the last dozen paragraphs (all of which Paul highlights), beginning with “But … then listen to the rest of the news …,” it includes closure not until approximately 2025, ongoing environmental violations, possibly no money for the closure and the necessary safety measures, and the possibility that the “closed” plant could continue to operate in an unlicensed fashion.

    This duplicity is one of the reasons I push the ideas of my blog (www.thehumansideofglobalwarming.com) and website (www.aplacetwobe.ca): we need emotional maturing of our culture, and essentially the only way in which this will occur is when huge numbers of individuals risk the work of emotional maturity.

    In the meantime, we sort through stuff that sounds good, but has many difficulties hidden within (the fine print!).

  • Are you spiritual? What is spirituality? (Part 2 of 2)

    Spirituality1

    In the first part of this post, I discussed religion; I suggest here that spirituality refers to something broader than religion, but includes religion. If we think of religion as expressed as one dimension (belief systems), spirituality has three dimensions: that of

    • belief systems,
    • value systems (faith development over time), and
    • transformative experience (mystical experience).

    An individual’s religion varies from belief in God to a belief that God is a figment of imagination; his/her spirituality can vary anywhere within this three dimensional structure.

    Cultural maturity: a framework for spirituality
    Cultural maturity: a framework for spirituality

    John Fowler, in Stages of Faith, suggested that human beings undergo a hierarchical staging of faith development, expressed largely as an evolving locus of authority and a value system. A locus of authority identifies to what aspect of life I give authority, outward to the rules of others (the Bible, the Koran, etc.), or inwards to my own searching for wisdom. Values are very different from beliefs; values express what I (or others) consider important (and are often hidden within beliefs).

    Fowler suggested that, during their lives, people move from relative rigidity and a focus on external authority (fundamentalism), through conventionality and questioning, to an deep acceptance and compassion, eventually living their own truths with profound authenticity. At these latter stages, people live the rules, not just follow them. It is important to note here that the rules they live are the principles that would generally be considered wise and compassionate, and they often live them fiercely, and passionately. Examples for me include Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Pope Francis, and others; on the surface, many of these individuals are religious, but fundamentally I suggest they are deeply spiritual. The process is age-dependent, and only a small number of people proceed through all stages.

    I am also reminded here of an adage: “Good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment;” the development of faith often requires much work. Part of this work is the work that occurs in therapy. A number of sources I know have noted that individuals in therapy often become less religious and more spiritual, less focused on beliefs and more focused on value systems.

    The third aspect of spirituality is that some individuals have profound experiences that transform their lives. Examples range from the awe of sunrises to those of near-death experiences and other occurrences. I myself have had a number of experiences that have dramatically transformed my life.

    For some individuals, the experiences have been so profound that the impact is strongly felt by those around them. The stories of Jesus, Mohamed, and Buddha express this clearly, and are the basic foundation of these religions. I would also suggest that these individuals are at the high end of Fowler’s scale of faith development, having had profound experiences, subsequently radically living their own authenticity.

    Thus I consider spirituality as having three inter-related dimensions, all of which can be transformative, and give meaning and purpose to life:

    • belief systems (faith tradition or religion)
    • value systems of authenticity (faith development of values and locus of authority)
    • direct experience (mystery)

    Personally, I have been deeply affected by each of these.

    Furthermore I suggest that every human being has a spiritual life, some more enriching than others; every human being exists somewhere within these three dimension of beliefs, authenticity, and direct experience.

    My questions ultimately to everyone are:

    • What gives meaning to your life?, and
    • Is the universe friendly?

  • Are you spiritual? What is spirituality? (Part 1 of 2)

    Spirituality1

    A science that does not incorporate spirituality is dehumanizing;                     a spirituality that does not include science is delusional.

    I indicated in my last few posts that I would clarify what I mean by spiritual. When I was a therapist, many of my clients struggled with finding a sense of meaning or purpose in life; for some, it is a profound dilemma. In seeking resolution, I would often ask these clients if they were religious, or if they were spiritual. Most of the time the answer I would receive would be “I’m spiritual; I’m not religious.” If I then asked “What do you mean by spiritual,” the answer I received was somewhat vague. I want here to clarify what I personally mean, as I believe the distinctions are vital to understanding and contributing to a maturing world.

    Before you read on, I invite you to consider a number of questions:

    • What do you believe regarding the nature of the universe and its relationship, if any, to a creative principle called God, Creator, or some other name?
    • What are the important principles that guide how you live your life? How do you decide if something is right or wrong?
    • When, if ever, have you had experiences of profound indescribable awe?

    First, what is religion? My best understanding is that a religion is a faith tradition, i.e., a set of beliefs (often including values) that attempt to explain how we should function during our lives. At some time in the past, a compassionate and/or wise individual so impressed his or her group that an extended community developed around this individual, a community that endured long after the death of the original individual (this certainly happened with Jesus, Mohamed, and Buddha). Usually the originating individual had had some kind of mystical experience that was deeply transformative for this individual. The set of beliefs and traditions about the individual and/or his/her actions became part of the community, and over centuries as the community expanded, the process came to be known as a religion.

    In religion, the beliefs generally range from God, at one end of a spectrum, to no God, at the other end. On the God end, there are many traditions (Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, etc.), whereas at the other end, the traditions are limited — there is agnostic (not knowing, still seeking) and atheist (no God). (Contrary to what most people think, I consider atheism to be a religion, albeit one in which the principle belief is that of no God.) Depending on tradition (and literal interpretation of tradition), the God character ranges from a being of central authority to that of a less well-defined searching by the individual. In Buddhism for the most part, there is no God, and the Buddhist path is principally a seeking of what does it mean to be human in a spiritual dimension.

    Generally religions also present some kind of ethics, a set of beliefs about how one should act in the difficulties of living. Often the ethics are very appropriate, but they are usually tied to (perhaps lost within) the proscribed beliefs of the religion.

    Religions have propagated over hundreds or thousands of years, and seem to be a fundamental need for human beings. I suggest that the mechanism by which they have propagated is that we humans:

    • search for meaning, and
    • do not like “not knowing;” we want certainty so as to be safe within our communities — if we know the rules, and follow them, our lives will be peaceful.

    Religions, thus, are faith traditions, the beliefs and values that have arisen over time in association with significant past experience. Essentially, religions allow us to follow the rules and keep safe. One of the Indian saints, Vivekananda is noted as saying: “It is wonderful to have been born in a church; it is terrible to die there.” I believe he was referring to the distinction between religion and spirituality.

    I do not wish to disparage religions, but I do note a number of problems. In particular, there have been two problems of the 20th and 21st centuries, likely as a response to the meaningless projected by scientific materialism and its associated consumerism:

    • many people have given up on religious systems, shifting either to some form of atheism or some form of non-religious spirituality (sometimes remaining within a church system, attempting to transform the system from within).
    • other people have become more rigid in defense of their belief systems, and thus we have seen a major rise in religious fundamentalism, both within Christianity and within Islam. Both groups have contributed in major ways to the turmoil of modern life.

    Most important to me is that the emotional maturity — the spirituality— of people who claim to be religious can vary tremendously, from those who are convinced that they have the absolute truth about life (and often insist that others do not) to those who have deep compassion for the whole of humanity. Unfortunately most religious individuals become branded with the tar of the least mature. Such individuals sometimes use the title of religion as an excuse for reprehensible acts. In North America, most Muslims have been inappropriately labeled with this tar; in so doing, those who do the tarring demonstrate their own immaturity.

    To be continued.