Scary Religious Crazies

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Craig

I just figured out that I’m a religious hypocrite. Yes, me. Blargh. I hate religious hypocrites. And yet, here I am, a hypocrite with a capital R.

Here is my dilemma: I am uncomfortable with people who try to convince me that their religion is true, especially when they want me to switch over to the other side and accept their beliefs as my own. It feels icky, like an Amway presentation. They want me to believe that I will have all this health, wealth and happiness if only I believe their message, which I just can’t believe, because it feels so fake to me.

Yet here I am, spreading my own brand of spirituality (politically correct version of religion) to the world. Not only sharing my point of view, but hoping to have a positive impact on the hearts and minds of humanity.

I thought I was a blogger. Honestly, though, it seems I’m something of an evangelist. And since I’m broadcasting my evangelism, that makes me something of a televangelist.

Thinking of it that way kind of makes me hate myself. Which makes me a double hypocrite, since I’m always preaching the importance of loving and forgiving oneself.

Seriously, though, I don’t really hate myself. (There, I’m denying it now.) I do find it disconcerting, however. And, actually seriously (like, for real this time) I do have to wonder how many people feel uncomfortable or avoid my blog because I’m so overtly spiritual, and so unabashed about inviting others to share in my hopes and dreams for love and peace in the world.

But why should you feel uncomfortable with me, and why do I feel uncomfortable around evangelical religious people sharing their message?

It’s because I feel like they’re not entirely honest. That must be it. Like they are pretending to care about me, when really they just want to get something from me. Maybe they honestly believe what they are saying, but I don’t believe that it’s true, so I feel like they’re trying to convince me of something that isn’t true, which is sort of dishonest. And dishonesty make me uncomfortable.

I like being around people who are genuine and honest. I don’t always share their point of view, but if they live their message out loud, then they don’t need to convince me logically that they are correct or that I should agree with them. If it makes sense, it will be obvious from the way they live their lives.

But back to me again (because I love talking about me) – my message and my life don’t always match up. I’ll be honest about that. I talk about forgiveness and I hold grudges. I talk about peace and I start arguments. I talk about love and I avoid people I don’t like.

I’m sharing this with you in the attempt at being honest, even if I’m not honest with myself all the time.

But I’m trying.

Comments?

Posted in growth | 5 Comments

Baby Steps

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Craig

Today’s success gurus talk about “major breakthroughs” that will change your life forever, with one simple technique that only takes five minutes. And we believe them because we want it so desperately. We are so tired of working our butts off, day after day, making conscious choices and sacrifices without so much as a day off.

Once in a while, I am blessed with an extra helping of divine grace that propels me forward, or fixes a big problem that I had no idea how to fix. More often, though, I move forward in a life-long series of baby steps. And some days it’s one step forward and two steps back.

Unfortunately, buying that book from that self-help author will not solve all your problems overnight. Of course, go ahead and buy the book, and hopefully it will help you in some way. Spending $17 on a book is certainly wiser than blowing it on entertainment or fast food. But we need to release ourselves from the demand for immediate perfection without effort.

Don’t think of it as giving up. Think of it as getting out of jail. Our demands for perfection in ourselves and others, and our demands for magical solutions, act as prisons that keep us from appreciating the little bits of progress we make each day. Demanding perfection keeps us stuck in guilt and frustration. But when I let go of the need for one magical cure-all, I give myself permission to try, stumble, risk and succeed in little things every day.

I am allowed to take my time.

I have been through some life-changing personal-growth seminars and other helpful experiences. While my world-view sometimes seems to change overnight, I often drift back to old habits soon after the workshop is over. But the learning stays with me, somewhere, if I choose to apply it. My life does not change completely overnight, but rather in baby steps, as I remember what I’ve learned a week later, or a year later, or a decade later – often from learning it over and over again from various experiences.

I’m still learning, still experimenting, still screwing up, and still forgiving myself for being human. On the road to higher consciousness, I’m still waking up.

And that’s okay.

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Steady Drip

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Craig

My bathroom tap is dripping. I shut it off tightly and make sure that it is not dripping when I leave the bathroom, but when I come back a couple hours later, there it is: dripping.

This, by itself, is not enough to set me off. It’s one of those little inconveniences in life. Each drip is only a tiny bit of water – nothing to worry about. But when I’m having a bad day, and everything else is going wrong as well, it can seem like the whole world is doing Chinese Water Torture on me. When the bills are piling up, my calls aren’t getting returned, I get stuck in traffic and my tap is dripping, that can make a bad mood really easy to fall into.

It’s not even the dripping itself that really counts. It’s my thoughts about the faucet, and about everything else that went wrong this week.

Each negative thought is a drip inside my head. One drip doesn’t do anything, but when the negative thoughts won’t stop dripping, the drip becomes a pattern that turns into a bad mood. Then the bad mood affects my actions, and I become more likely to act with selfishness or anger instead of with patience and compassion. The actions reinforce the negative patterns, and then the world reacts with a negative response. Pretty soon the drips are drowning me.

I can turn all that around any time I choose. I can fix the leak. It may take a few dollars and tools to fix the faucet, but it only takes a determined choice to fix my thought pattern.

But while one good repair job on a faucet can stop the dripping problem once and for all, I need to make positive choices each moment to fix my leaky brain. The more I make, the easier the habit becomes, but it’s still a new choice every time a thought comes up.

Whatever my circumstances are now, I can choose gratitude for the good things I have in my life, and I can choose an intention of even better things to come. I can choose compassionate thoughts and actions instead of self-indulgent or angry thoughts. I can choose forgiveness. I can choose hope. I can choose to laugh. I can choose to give.

I can choose my thoughts every moment of every day, and my choices create my life.

And now, please excuse me; I am going to a party.

Posted in consciousness | 1 Comment

Keeping anger on a leash

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Craig

This week, I’m fighting with an organization that coaches entrepreneurs online. I had signed up for a membership, and provided my credit card number, on the understanding that the first month was free and I could cancel before getting charged for the second month. If I do not cancel my membership, it will be automatically renewed.

Unfortunately, I cannot find the ‘Cancel’ button on their website, and they have not responded to my emails or online posts requesting assistance.

This is a trigger point for Ego, that fearful part of my human experience that wants to fight and cause suffering. “Red Alert!” it shouts, relishing the battle cry. “Someone is out to get me! Load the torpedo bays! Launch missiles! We must defend ourselves from this unwarranted attack!”

I have been through this kind of thing before. Often it turns out to be a misunderstanding that is quickly resolved – after I have embarrassed myself by making a public outcry and attacked someone who didn’t realize they had done anything wrong.

In this particular instance, it’s possible that the organization in question is just disorganized and having technical issues. It’s possible that a cancellation procedure is on the site and I have not been able to find it. It’s possible that I’m being manipulated by my Ego to launch an attack against my brother when my interests would be better served by peaceful communication.

Unfortunately, sometimes my Ego is “right” and people really do find ways to steal money online. If I want to find reasons to hate people, I can find them. But that’s not the goal of my spiritual growth.

Spirit knows that we are all children of God. We are all brothers and sisters. We are all blameless in the sight of God. We have our issues, certainly, but these are things that we make up because we listen to the battle cries of Ego, when we should be listening to Spirit’s desire for unconditional love and grace.

Whether we are reacting against scam artists, or running a dishonest scheme ourselves, these games come from the Ego’s desire to perpetuate illusions of fear and lack.

So, bringing it down to the practical level, what can I do to act lovingly and honestly when Ego is giving me lots of reasons to fight?

On days like today, when Ego is shouting so loud that I can hardly hear the case for love, I take the Gordon McClymont approach. Gordon was my boss when I worked in the oil patch. When a challenge came up that called for a “nasty-gram,” he would draft the email and save it in case the problem didn’t take care of itself. Nine times out of ten, it got sorted out, and there was no need to throw gas on the fire with another inflammatory message. He taught me to do the same.

I’m not sure if Gordon is a very spiritual man, but he taught me about keeping Ego on a leash. When I want to lash out, it is precisely the time when I need to watch myself carefully. It is time to take measured action, and keep the final goal in mind. In this case, I want to cancel my membership with an online coach. Attacking him might get me what I want, or it might not. Attack breeds more attack. I want peace. I want this to be over. I need to stop attacking.

So, with Ego on a leash, I let myself write down a plan of attack, and set it aside. Then I write down some careful, deliberate actions to sort out this misunderstanding that needs to be resolved. I try to fix the misunderstanding and leave the battle for later. (And hopefully the battle never comes.)

To satisfy my Ego, I have not tried to deny my Ego or deny the problem, or deny the possibility of ever expressing my anger fully. I have simply postponed my Ego’s response. I’m sitting on my fists. I’m waiting out the storm. As we learn in meditation: “Don’t just do something – sit there!”

Ego will always be with us. But like a guard dog, we do not have to let it off the leash, or else it will attack anyone and everyone that it’s scared of. And that may include our family.

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The Game

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Craig

Once upon a time, there was a group of Very Powerful People. They lived in a place where everything was beautiful and perfect, and everyone loved everyone. In fact, it was so perfect, that they started to get a little bored with it. So they decided to play a game.

The Game, they decided, would have to be Difficult, so that it would challenge these very powerful people. They would make tough Rules and Gigantic Obstacles. But they were still very powerful, so they decided to go one step further: on top of it all, they would hide their true powers from themselves and each other, and go into the game with Limitations. This would make the game very interesting, and would provide a unique Experience for everyone.

As the game progressed, the people forgot their true identities, and became the characters that they created for themselves. Stripped of their powers, they became very frustrated with the Gigantic Obstacles, and most of the people could not keep all the Rules. So they created Penalties for the people that broke the rules. They judged each other, and punished each other, and soon, Hate was born.

Strangely, Hate was one of the things that they were not allowed to do according to the Rules of the game, but it was also an inevitable result of trying to keep the impossible rules they had made, given the Limitations they were under. As the game progressed, and got more and more insane, some people started to realize that something was very Wrong. The feeling that something was Wrong meant that something else, beyond their world, must be Right. Soon, some of the players even figured out the Truth – that their true identities were not just these little characters in the game, but that they originally came from somewhere else that was perfect and beautiful. It was the only way to explain the homesick feelings they had, and the feeling that this crazy game could not be the Ultimate Reality.

When these players “woke up” and started talking about the Perfect World “out there” that they had come from, the other characters got very scared. By this time, they had set up complicated Systems to keep the Rules and keep everything Under Control. A lot was invested in these Systems. They did not want to find out that they were Wrong about their Reality because then the Systems would become obsolete and they would lose their Investments. So, the scared characters attacked the waking players, and “killed” their characters. (Unbeknownst to the characters in the game, “killing” a character only kicked the player out of the game.) One character named “Socrates” was forced to drink poison if he did not give up his theories about the “ideal world.” Another named “Jesus,” who talked about being a powerful player and not just a character, was nailed to a wooden beam. Still others were exiled, beheaded, imprisoned or shot to death, sending them out of the game.

After a long, long time, more and more players started to “wake up.” It got to the point that they could no longer ignore this idea of being Real People with powers beyond what they could see within the Game. But they also could not give up their Investments in the Systems. So, most people tried to integrate these new ideas into the small reality they had designed for themselves, keeping the limitations and rules of the game, with the fringe benefit of believing that there was a Perfect World waiting for them after the game was over – as long as they managed to keep the Rules. This created a requirement that there be an alternate “world” of pain and suffering for those who did not support the Systems, because obviously, the rule-breakers could not be allowed to go back to the Perfect World.

But some people continued to play outside the Systems. And when they realized that their big, scary obstacles were only creations of their own design, and that they were the ones who had made up the Rules, everything looked different. Thus, Forgiveness became possible like never before. Because, if these were only limited characters in a game that was impossible to win, then should they not have Compassion for each other? Should they not try to help each other overcome the pain and dismantle the obstacles?

And then the players discovered something even greater: that the purpose of this painful game was to experience themselves as Compassionate Beings of Light in the middle of a Great Darkness. Not in the Perfect World of light, where it was easy to love, but in a world where misery and anguish and fear had made Love almost impossible. And in the midst of that dark world of terror, the players started waking up to powers beyond anything they had ever known – the powers of Compassion for the people they had feared the most.

Themselves.

Posted in compassion, consciousness, Ego | 2 Comments