spirituality and the 'broken spirit'

Continued from my examiner column . . . http://www.examiner.com/interfaith-spirituality-in-columbus/spirituality-and-broken-spirit

Events in our lives such as losses- jobs, financial position, love relationships, torn associations & affiliations, and death of loved ones can cause us to have a broken spirit. Culturally, poverty, accidents, homelessness, acrimonious divorce, natural disasters, bankruptcy, custody battles, lawsuits, substance abuse, alcoholism, physical abuse and neglect, and prejudice/racism result in ‘broken spirits’, a sense of defeat co-mingled with deep seated pain. Fractures in our religious and spiritual beliefs can also have this effect. In a body-mind-spirit approach, one has to consider the totality of impact on each being, and our interdependent collective being.

Dealing with disappointment, doubt and disillusionment from the behavior of religious figures or institutions can result in a ‘broken spirit’. (I'm sure you can think of plenty of examples.) Finding the whole religious–ritual experience to be a tedious obligation rather than an uplifting, spirit-building, healing and highly relevant hour or two that includes positive relationship building is also indicative of a ‘broken spirit’.

Many people hide this and pretend everything is okay until they face a crisis in meaning: ‘What’s it really all about?’ ‘Where is the meaning in my life?’ ‘What good am I anyway?’ ‘Who cares if I live or die?’ It’s easy in a desperate state to fall prey to cults, hucksters and false promises of charismatic people with little real spiritual substance and a whole lot of flash. This can later lead to a complete lack of faith and downright negative rejection of anyone and anything associated with any tradition, or a wholesale change of religion. Healing is about coming in touch with one’s soul, with who you really are, grasping what is authentic, and finding resilience for this moment.

The effects of a ‘broken spirit’ show up in declining membership in congregations that have experienced turmoil. Folks can and do just walk away. Many abandon childhood faith or parental faith traditions. In my chaplaincy internship sabbaticals with large trauma hospitals, I’d guess roughly 1/3 of the patient census had any active current affiliation with any religious institution.

In the face of physical illness, emotional and spiritual considerations are very real. A high percentage of patients had experienced a loss or other traumatic event within the previous year or two. For many, vague memories of religious stories or events simply did not offer enough to connect them with a vibrant living, intellectually meaningful faith or a heart-centered compassion building approach. Most did not meditate, though many did pray and consider themselves to have a belief in ‘God’. This is not unlike findings the large Pew Research surveys on religion reports.

Its important to realize we’re all on this life journey together. Maybe you feel like you’re in a lifeboat right now . . . but there is a captain and you’ve got a life-preserver, and you’re on your way to safety and home. It often helps to think symbolically through difficult times. Symbolism through color, art, collections, nature, movement, writing, music helps express deeply important meaning, non-verbally.

On my desk is a bright pink butterfly shaped box. Inside I keep the sayings from Yogi tea bags for a shot of instant inspiration. There are sea shells, a smooth stone to remind me of Dad from his hospice experience, a blue jay feather from the pergola covered with fragrant wisteria, rose petals from mom’s favorite colored roses, a tiny rubber horse my brother bought me the day we went for Chinese lunch, a last lunch together . . . nothing valuable and everything valuable because they’re great and meaningful memories. The important things in life usually aren’t monetary, consumer or status related.

Life contains difficult and painful memories and nostalgic and sweet memories. All are the stuff of meaning. All define and express what we’ve come through and who we are in a given moment. We hold the painful things like dark birds in our hands, and release them. Take a deep breath and watch them fly away. Though you see them in the tree, they no longer have the power to affect you as they did when you held them. You are whole, and valuable for who you are, where you are, and you’re going to be okay.

This photo came out this way on its own of grieving dad who lost 2 sons. Note the 2 trees in the hole of light. Slightly accentuated with Photoshop. The Dad died of cancer within a few years of this photo.

Spirituality and what is non-duality

Continued from my examiner post: http://www.blogger.com/www.examiner.com/interfaith-spirituality-in-columbus/spirituality-and-what-is-non-duality-101

The non-duality website explains further that the understanding of ‘non-locality’ moves from the cosmic to the microscopic, eventually arriving at atoms. Atoms, it turns out have protons and neutrons in a central nucleus with electrons spinning around this core of particles and these are made up of even smaller ‘particles’ in the form of waves which can exist in other points of space.

Advaita author and scholar, Dennis Waite describes it like this, "Still more recently, science claimed that all of the different particles are themselves made out of different combinations of just a few particles called quarks and that those are the ultimately existing things. But they have not yet progressed far enough. The simple fact of the matter is that every ‘thing' is ultimately only an attribute, a name and form superimposed upon a more fundamental substantive.'

He continues, 'We make the mistake of thinking that there really is a table, when actually there is only wood. We make the mistake of thinking that there is really wood, when actually there is only cellulose and sugars and proteins. We make the mistake of thinking there is protein when this is only a particular combination of atoms. Ultimately, everything in the universe is seen to be only name and form of a single substantive." (endless-satsang.com/advaita-nonduality-oneness.htm)

His book, ‘The Book of One’ expounds upon what he has derived from studying the Vedas and Sanscrit. The Advaita website says a central problem we all face in the science-religion discussion is this: ‘Whichever religion might be under consideration, it has to be acknowledged that writers of major scriptural texts have attempted to record important information for posterity. There are many reasons why such attempts might seem to fail. The historical context in which they were written is now often poorly understood. Truths are often couched in obscure terms or hidden in the depths of seeming irrelevancies (which were probably not irrelevant to the culture which originated them). Vague or ambiguous presentation may have been used because writers at that time were persecuted for attempting to communicate ideas considered heretical by the prevailing society. Translations, too, inevitably lose something in the process – often their essential meaning! And stories written down only after many generations have communicated them verbally, with varying degrees of artistic license, may not be altogether factual.’

The author http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/thebook/scripturesSecondEdition.htm describes why this is less true of ancient Hindu philosophy in his view, ‘Ishvara is everywhere, in and through everything. The IshopaniShad is effectively a meditation on Ishvara. It begins: 'The Lord pervades everything – whatever exists in this universe of ceaseless movement. . . . everything can be regarded as a form of Ishvara, in the way that a wave is a form of the water constituting the ocean. Ishvara is the sum total of all things, in the way that the ocean is the sum total of all waves, representing the macrocosm, whereas the individual jIva is the microcosm.’ Essentially, very ancient and very modern, both in the resonance with the findings of theoretical physics. Can one have it both ways in a marriage of religion and science? Conservative Christians are very uncomfortable with this notion.

Authors Mather and Nichols (Dictionary of Cults, Sects, Religions and the Occult-Zondervan) sharply disagree with Vedanta and the concepts here, ‘Traditional Christology does not allow for the spiritualizing of Christ . . . In classic Christian thought, humankind’s goal is not to achieve God-consciousness (although this is certainly an idea close to the nineteenth-century Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher), but rather to receive atonement for sin, become spiritually reborn through faith in Christ, and at death, remain forever alive to worship and serve the triune God who has created, redeemed, and sanctified him. Human beings do not ultimately become God, but by virtue of the divine image (Gen 1:26) are destined to become like God (1 John 3:2).’ P 301 In this, it is to establish 'the truth' as through one pair of glasses in an entire store-full, to correct/clarify one's vision. Yet, we each have a unique prescription . . . for who we are. In the bigger schema, some don't even need correction; their vision is perfectly 20/20.

The authors Mather and Nichols address the notion of freedom from karma and attainment of knowledge of the absolute: ‘Christianity does not share these ideas. Salvation is centered around the person and work of Jesus Christ as confessed by the church in its Apostles’ and Nicene creeds. Salvation is not escape from ignorance. It is release from the bondage of sin.’ p 301 ibid This then, negates the idea of wrong-doing resulting from ignorance of our true nature and the effects of our actions on the interdependent other/whole, and choses instead to call it by classical Christian definitions of 'sin' or 'evil'- deliberate, intentional bad, from which we need to be rescued/saved.

There is simply lots to think about. In her article 'The Paradox of Consciousness, The Individual Is the Collective' from Light of Consciousness Spring 2011, Debra Greene, PhD applies the idea of non-duality to consciousness- beyond the micro-scopic and beyond the cosmic to a more personal view through psychological underpinnings. She says, 'consciousness is collective. It is much more than an individual state of mind. Consciousness is a dynamic field of all awareness. Everyone contributes to and draws from the composite collectivity of consciousness. . . . the collective consciousness appears to be an ultra-high frequency energy/information structure that we are tuned into. It exists as a universal field that we simultaneously contribute to and are conditioned by.' p 56 She explains that problems of the world are problems of the mind-as former Czech President Vaclav Havel said. She synthesizes what it means: 'Good, in this light, is anything that takes us in the direction of unity, of essential wholeness and profound interconnection.'

Perhaps the mystics in all faith traditions ‘get it’ most easily and the rest just write the rules of belief, which may or may not be embraced, ritualized, taught/handed down or practiced. In the end, as the species faces a 50% or higher probability of widespread starvation and extinction by 2050, what really matters most?