Showing posts with label Principle 4 Seeking Truth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Principle 4 Seeking Truth. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Who can you accept as an authority figure?

Jeff, you wrote >>  In general, how is one supposed to distinguish an acceptable authority figure form those we are are to reject? <<.

Interestingly, Jesus has an answer when asked the same question. Jesus said, "By their fruit you will know them."

Or as I like to say, quoting my own authority, "The proof is in the pudding."

Another  quote you can take to the bank is "How is that working for ya?"

Unitarian Univeralists covenant together to affirm and promote seven principles the fourth of which is "the free and responsible search for truth and meaning."

The ultimate authority is, of course, one's own conscience assuming one's conscience is "informed" and authentic. People we have learned from cognitive science are subject to "confimation bias." So doubt is the spice of life even doubt of your own beliefs.

So when I suggest questioning authority, I am including one's own, but as Plutonius says in Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, "above all esle to thine own self be true."

As Socrates said, the hallmark of a wise person is knowing what they don't know. So, another one of my guiding principles is "Don't believe your own bullshit because it paves the well to hell."


GIPHY

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Lenten Reflections, topic ten, Embarking on the path to peace and bliss."


Topic ten, "Embarking on the path to peace and bliss," is available on Fipgrid. You can access it by clicking here.

This topic fits well for Unitarian Univeralists who are considering the application of principle 4, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Daily reflections, Day eighteen, The Road Less Traveled

Day eighteen
The road less traveled



“Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because they arise from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless and therefore destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of the mind.” ACIM, T-1.1.14:1-3

Truth is to be found in the realm of Spirit and never in the world of the ego.

The primary Truth, as taught in A Course In Miracles, is that we have separated ourselves from God and therefore seek truth in the external world, the world of the ego, rather than within, in the realm of the Spirit or as Jesus called it “the Kingdom.”

In the world of the ego, miracles are magic. It is a manipulation of physical perception to obtain the appearance of a supernatural phenomenon which delights our minds in the world of the ego, but which, at a deeper level, we understand is an illusion, a mirage.

The ego tricks us all the time, suggesting to us that money will make us happy, power will make us happy, status and prestige will make us happy, special relationships will make us happy, additional knowledge will make us happy, etc. The ego is constantly suggesting idols to us that will help us achieve salvation, that is, happiness.

As we become more mature, just as we no longer believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, we come to realize that the idols suggested to us by the ego, are not real and not the true source of our happiness. With this realization often comes discouragement, depression, frustration, anger, resentments, guilt, and fear. We exasperatedly cry, “Will I ever be happy? Will I ever find peace and contentment?”

The beginning steps on the path of salvation is to realize that there must be a better way and that we have been going down a blind alley which dead ends. The only thing that can save us is a miracle, that is, a shift in perception, a decision to change our minds.

With this realization that there must be a better way we begin to pursue the fourth principle of Unitarian Universalism which is the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This search takes us inward and not outward. When we turn in our search inwardly as, as Robert Frost noted, we have taken the road less traveled and this makes all the difference.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Where do Unitarian Universalists stand on truth telling in the age of Trumpism?


What do Unitarian Universalists teach about truth telling and bearing false witness? Is Donald Trump's lying and dissembling and his fellow Republicans just politics as usual?

I have heard people defend Donald Trump's lying by saying, "All politicians do it." Is that accurate and excuse for such behavior?

The moral and ethical deterioration of our society in the age of Trumpism seems significant and does not bode well for our future as a nation if it is allowed to continue and there is no accountability.

What do our UU principles and values have to teach us about how to function in our current society where the political discourse is so toxic and dysfunctional? Our fourth principle encourages us to search for a free and responsible understanding of truth and meaning. Currently, when it comes to politics in the United States, how is that working for you?

Unitarian Univeralists are attracted to rectifying social injustices in so many areas, but I have never heard them speak up about the integrity of truth telling. Is it time?


Friday, July 26, 2019

A Course In Miracles and Unitarian Universalism - where should I search for truth and meaning?


It is written in A Course In Miracles:

T-29.VII.5. Idols must fall because they have no life, and what is lifeless is a sign of death. You came to die, and what would you expect but to perceive the signs of death you seek? 

No sadness and no suffering proclaim a message other than an idol found that represents a parody of life which, in its lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given living form. Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death cannot be life, and what is sacrificed cannot be whole. 

T-29.VII.6. All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. 

It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself.

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. p. 618

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Where should they search? Where should they look for truth and meaning? A Course In Miracles which describes a metaphysical thought system, tells us it is a waste of time to look outside ourselves. Mystical traditions of all the major religions tell us the same thing.

Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is within you.

Buddha tells us that the source of suffering is from attachment to external things.

Moses tells us in giving us the Ten Commandments that we are not worship idols and not make anything other than Godliness our god.

How do we search then? We close our eyes, take three deep breaths, and watch our monkey mind of thoughts and feelings until they evaporate and disappear.

Sunday, July 21, 2019

A Course In Miracles and Unitarian Universalism - What am I denying?




Do I really want to see what I denied?

If you say “yes”, it means giving up the ego and many people find this hard to do wholeheartedly.

Are you really willing to have your identity obliterated?

If you say “Yes,” then eternal happiness and bliss is yours. If you say “No,” you will continue to live in purgatory if not hell.

As it is written in A Course In Miracles, T-29.VII.1. 

Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls. 

Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there. Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place. 

There is no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness His answer brings. Seek not outside yourself. For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. What if it is not there? 

Do you prefer that you be right or happy? 

Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. You will fail. But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it outside yourself.

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. P.617

Unitarian Univeralists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Where is that truth and meaning to be found? Many of us are afraid to look within. It is much less scary and comfortable to look without. It distracts us from what we fear lurks in our unconscious.

What is in our unconscious, our Oneness with our creator from Whom we have separated, we deny. Some say that “denial is a river in Egypt” and laugh. Some of us with a sense of adventure and stage fright decide to look within and we are richly rewarded discovering our Holiness and the Tao of which we are a part.


Friday, May 31, 2019

Osho and the UU fourth principle


The fourth principle of Unitarian Universalism is to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Having adopted the principle, how does one apply it to their life?

Monday, March 18, 2019

UUs are fourth principle people


"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

Thomas Pynchon

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Without a fear of hell and punishment, and the greed of heaven and its luxuries, where does this search take us?

Friday, March 1, 2019

Today's lesson - There has to be a better way.


Today's lesson is lesson 55 in A Course In Miracles and is a review lesson of lessons 21 - 25 which are: "I am determined to see things differently;" "What I see is a form of vengeance;" "I can escape from this world by giving up attack thoughts;" "I do not perceive my own best interests." "I do not know what anything is for."

As was mentioned yesterday, we can be in our wrong mind or our right mind, and we have a decision making mind. In the review today, we begin to realize that the attack thoughts that populate our special relationships on the path of the ego involve the wrong mind. We have come to understand that we don't need to live this way and that there is a better way. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous in the first step, "we have to come to admit that our lives are unmangeable." As Bill Thetford said to Helen Schucman, the scrib of A Course In Miracles, "There has to be a better way."

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning in their fourth principle. In other words, UUs affirm and promote the search for a better way. The need for this principle cannot arise until it dawns on us that the life of separation from the Divine based on illusions and idols of the ego is a life of pain, anguish, suffering, and sometimes dispair.

The dawning, as we call it at UU A Way Of Life ministries, contributes to the initiation of the search. And this search requires a request for help. We cannot do it on our own. Jesus tells us that where two or more are gathered in my name there I will be. Jesus tells us that Spirit is to be found in covenantal relationships.

The lesson today teaches us that we can find a better way and encourages us to recognize and acknowledge this fact. The lesson today reminds us that attack thoughts and seeking vengeance will not bring us the peace and Love we seek. The lesson today is hinting that we have decisions to make now that we are beginning to understand that we have a choice. UUs are encouraged to engage in the implementation of their fourth principle the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. However, we are reminded that truth and meaning are not to be found on the path of the ego.


 

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Today's lesson - God's Voice speaks to me all through the day.


Today's lesson, number 49 in A Course In Miracles, is "God's Voice speaks to me all through the day."

I remember seeing the church sign at the Christmas holidays which said, "You too can hear the angels song if you tune into the right channel."

The Christmas song's lyric is "Do you hear what I hear?"

We can tune in and get on the resonance of the Universe. That tuning in and experiencing the resonance is God's voice.

The opposite is all the drama and nonsense of the ego plane which distracts us, titillate us, arouses us, and pulls us from our peace and bliss.

It takes conscious intention, usually, to hear God's voice, but we can do it if we desire. Unitarian Univeralists covenant together to affirmn and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This can mean that we seek out an awareness of the Spirit of Life and our Higher Power as we understand It.

Today, pay attention, close your eyes, and get centered. Remind yourself to return to this place in your mind and heart several times today. Can you function from this place as you go about your daily affairs? Yes, you can with practice.


Thursday, February 14, 2019

Today's lesson - God is the Mind with which I think.


Today's lesson, number 45, from A Course In Miracles is "God is the Mind with which I think."

Decartes famously said, "Cogito, ergo sum," I think, therefore I am.

Decartes got it wrong. We are not our thoughts. Our throughts change constantly. We change our minds all the time, and in our humility, admit that most of our thoughts are wrong.

St. Paul in his letter to Corinthians tells us that if God is with us who can be against us?

The mystics tell us that we human beings are a thought in God's mind and if we revert back to that peace and bliss arises.

My favorite bar card says, Don't believe everything you think.

Today we are encouraged to rest and allow our monkey mind to receed from our awareness. We are encouraged to seek the Mind of God and think with that. This requires forgiveness which means rising above the bull shit.

As Unitarian Universalists we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This truth and meaning is to be found in the Mind of God not in the insane world of the ego.

Thursday, February 7, 2019

Do you have the integrity and courage to take the road less taken?

Had a discussion Monday with a 30 year old client who has been struggling to discern his calling in life. He told me how he had started down a path the last couple of months and decided last Friday that it wasn't for him.

He shared with me the relief he felt in deciding not to continue to struggle with something that just didn't seem right for him. His major fear, he told me, was disappointing the people who had been cheering him on.

Well, "to thine own self be true" and if one lives one's life for others, life is very short, but if one lives one's life listening to a different drummer than the one society wants him to listen to, it can be very long and fulfilling.

And then this evening I stubbled across this beautiful TED - ED rendition of  Robert Frost's wonderful poem, "The Road Not Taken".

Rilke said, "We should live the question." It takes integrity and courage and requires, sometimes, that we take the road not taken and it can make all the difference to our life.

The client and I talked about discerning God's will for us. "Living the question" with integrity is done with a willingness to discern who it is that God is calling us to become and what it is that God is calling us to do with our lives. Responding to God's will often takes faith and courage.

Unitarian Univeralists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This search  often leads in unexpected directions.


Sunday, February 3, 2019

Is the garden of your mind one of beautiful flowers or prickers, weeds, and thorns?

To what extent is the "garden of your mind" the land of illusions?

 In A Course Of Miracles it describes "right minded" and "wrong minded" understandings.

So often the  aimless wandering in the "garden of our minds" leads us astray.

 As the bumper sticker says, "Don't believe everything you think."

 Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and reponsible search for truth and meaning. What gardens does that search take us to? Are we searching in beautiful flower gardens or in the prickers, weeds, and thorns?

 

If all the world's a stage where am I to search for truth and meaning?

A Course In Miracles tells us that the world we see on the path of the ego is made up of illusions. It is not real. The only thing that is real is the Love of God on the path of the Spirit. The introduction of A Course In Miracles ends with the statement, "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

These three sentences are hard to wrap your mind around because we are so attached to our illusions.

And then along comes William Shakespeare who is thought of as great play write and poet, but he also could be called a mystic. He gives us "All The World's a Stage" from his play,  As You Like It.

Unitarian Univeralists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Looking for truth and meaning on the path of the ego without realizing what you are doing leads to further demoralization and failure. Realizing that all the world's a stage can lead to a decision to search on a different path, the path of the spirit instead of the path of the ego.

In A Course In Miracles the paths we search on are called wrong minded and right minded. Searching on the wrong minded path, when we know better, is insane. So, as the Course says, "choose again." We can choose to search on the right minded path and that path shows us that Love is all there is.


Monday, January 28, 2019

Today's lesson, 32, "I have invented the world I see."


Psychologists call it a "self fulfilling prophecy," meaning that we see what we expect. The placebo effect is another example of this same idea of projection.

When we realize that we do this on the path of the ego, we realize that we make up our own reality. The bumper sticker reads, "Reality is when it happens to you."

What we think we see on the path of the ego is different from the peace on the path of the spirit in our inner vision.

Unitarian Univeralists know this when they covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Truth and meaning lies within not without.

Spend some time today going within even if just for a few minutes, or even seconds, to remind yourself that you invent the external world you think you see when you interpret your experiences and attempt to make meaning from them.

These interpretations and meanings can be changed, diminished, and eliminated. All it takes is your decision about the path you want to walk on: the path of the ego or the path of the spirit.

Saturday, January 26, 2019

On The Shortness of Life - "Life is long enough" if it is well lived.



At church two weeks ago an acquaintance shared with me that he is a student of stoic philosophy. I was delighted to learn this, because it is an interest of mine as well.

I have noticed that Seneca's essay entitled, "On The Shortness Of Life" has become popular again over the last couple of years so I thought it is worth a discussion here on UU A Way of Life Ministries blog. Over the next few weeks, there will be posts describing ideas from this work. Please share your ideas and comments.

Seneca's idea that life is long enough is based on the presumption that it is well lived. As a kid, I found myself mildly depressed and I would reassure myself by muttering, "It's not a bad life if you know how to live it."

I was probably 10 years old when I realized this and could articulate it. Where I got the idea from I do not know. It was long before I learned about Seneca and the stoic philosophy.

Talking with my daughter 60 years later, we both commiserated that this idea is not studied in our schools. It is a basic existential question which is not overtly asked and studied by the young.

In our society, young people are fed a steady diet of materialism, consumerism, competitiveness, and violence. Competitiveness and regenerative violence is the basis of our American society. Based on these egotistical values, life seems very short indeed with young people dying from gun violence and drug overdoses. The death rate from drug overdoses, gun violence (2/3rds suicide), and DWI fatalities are leading causes of death.

Life, indeed, can be short for many, even if they have lived for years. As Osho has said, growing old, and growing up are two different things.

What is the good life? What does the well lived life consist of? If we are to die well, we have to live well.

Unitarian Univeralists covenant together to affirm and promote seven principles implying that this covenant and the application of these principles are the basis of a well lived life.

The fourth principle, to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, is something which it seems Seneca would heartily approve of and, in fact, seems to at the end of his essay as we shall see.

Will you join me in reading and reflecting along as we study On The Shortness of Life?


Book - Why Religion by Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels, a scholor of religion at Princeton University, became famous with her first book, Gnostic Gospels in 1979. Since that book she has written several more on religious texts. Her latest book is quite different from her others in that it is a memoir of her personal faith journey.

Growing up in an agnostic scholarly family, Elaine, as a teenager, went to a Billy Graham crusade and became born again at age 15. A few years later, her friend, Paul, died in a car crash and she lost her faith. This traumatic loss precipitated her search for truth and meaning which continues to this day.

She and her husband struggled with infertility and then conceived a son, Mark, who had many physical disabilities and died at age 6. She and Heinz then adopted two children and a year after that Heinz died suddenly in a hiking accident when he fell off a cliff.

Elaine experienced years of grief and loss and while she returned to the agnostic faith of her family of origin, she found strength and comfort in many religious texts she focused on in her scholarly study. This experience of scholarly study seems to lead her to the conclusion that while belief in a personal deity does not make much sense, religion has played an important function in her life and the texts she has studied has contributed to her resilience in dealing with the tragic losses in her life.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. There can be, perhaps, no better example of the application of this principle in one's life, than the life of Elaine Pagels.

Unitarian Univeralism thinks of itself as a "living tradition" based on several sources one of which is the words and deeds of prophetic women and men. Elaine Pagels is one such woman.


 


Thursday, January 24, 2019

Today's lesson - I want to see things differently.


Lesson 28 in A Course In Miracles states, "Above all else I want to see things differently." What the lesson seems to want to teach us is to see things nonjudgmentally.

We come with our biases, our preconceptions, our histories, and based  on these we project what we think we are going to see.

The old saying about "assume" is that it makes an ass out of you and me.

So, it seems that this lesson is asking us to deliberately approach our perceptions in a nonjudgmental way with a touch of curiousity and a big helping of "not knowing" humility.

Before we can turn our certainty over to our Higher Power we have to admit our lack of knowledge and recognize our biases and preconceptions.

UUs covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and at a deeper level of application this requires us to humbly and nonjudgmentally approach the things in our lives with curiosity and a desire to see things not as we have been conditioned to see them on the path of the ego, but as the Divine sees them with unconditional love.

Monday, January 21, 2019

Is your life in balance?


Osho tells us, "The truth of life is found through balance and harmony. Those who go to the extreme in any direction wander away from the path."

Sounds like Aristole's "golden mean" doesn't it?

Sounds like the Tao of the Tao Te Ching doesn't it?

Sounds like the free and responsible search for truth and meaning in the fourth principle of Unitarian Univeralism doesn't it?

Unitarian Univeralism describes itself as a "living tradition" which is based on many sources with at least six identified.

There are many roads to Rome, many ways to skin a cat, many trails up the mountain to enlightenment. The perennial psychology tells us the middle path is best; avoid the extremes. In Alcoholic Anonymous they say, "Easy does it."

At UU A Way Of Life Ministries we encourage people to keep their balance.


Wednesday, January 16, 2019

If you don't find what you are looking for, choose again.


Osho says, "Truth is one, but the doors to find it can be many. And if you become attached to the door itself, you will stop at the door. Then the door of truth will never open for you."

Osho's statement reminds me of the bar card which says, "If you think you know what you are talking about you are full of shit."

Unitarian Universalists know that truth does not reside in a creed or a book or a tradition. These things can point to the truth, but they are not the truth. That's why UUs covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

Many UUs, if not most, were raised in different faiths and in searching in UU, they did not lose their faith but someone else's. They are searching for their own, maybe for the first time in their lives.

Unitarian Univeralism is a faith of second chances. Unitarian Univeralism supports our search wherever it may take us and if we wind up going down a blind alley which becomes a dead end, UU encourages us to choose again.


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