Waving or Drowning?

Learning To See

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In reading through Seth Godin's book The Icarus Deception I came across this line:

The difficult part of seeing is setting aside what you are sure you already know.

That's a deeply profound and spiritual thought that stands on its own and is worthy of deep meditation. That being said, I want to expropriate it for my own purposes and say that the difficult part of evolving is setting aside what you're sure is permanent, unchanging reality.

As I've implied before, now that I am looking back along the arc of human history with an evolutionary worldview things look very different to me. In fact, many things make more sense.

Add to that my current fascination with the interconnectedness of all things, which is something that has really come to light for me since coming to China. If you track with my often rambling Facebook updates you'll know that this experience has been very profound for me. The act of coming to a place where I didn't know the culture or the language has given me a deep sense of being "the other" - something I have referred to as a sacred privilege.

Now I want to combine those two thoughts and take them further.

Lets go back in history to the Law. I want to suggest that the introduction of the Law ushered in a new era, identified by a couple of important principles:

• An eye for an eye, and
• Love your neighbour (and at least be civil to the strangers in your mix).

Because the bible doesn't spend a lot of time on the eons of human history prior to Israel, it can sometime be difficult to imagine that "an eye for an eye" was an improvement over the way things were. But it was.

Before the Law vengeance was swift, and it was not always commensurate. Poke my eye out and I'd likely kill you in retaliation. With the Law, vengeance was limited to some act of equal violence. This was new.

I summarize the situation like this:

First, we had to learn to see the Other.

 Fast forward one thousand to two thousand years when Jesus arrived on the scene and raised the game again. 

• An eye for an eye became turn the other cheek, and
• Love your neighbour became love your enemies. (In other words, love everyone.)

We could go on about how much of Jesus' ministry supported these two points, but let's sum it up like this:

Then, we had to learn to love the Other.

In no way do I mean to suggest that we have accomplished that little task. Two thousand years later we're still struggling with the assignment. As individuals and as a species we have our good days and bad days of course, but it's not easy.

Despite that ongoing struggle I want to push the envelope further and suggest that we are at the leading edge of what comes next for creation.

But how can that be? We're still having a tough time with loving our neighbours, never mind our enemies. Don't we need to pass the final exam at one level before we move on to the next?

I don't think so.

It seems to me that the Divine is always pulling us into the future from just inside of what's next.

Think about the state of Judaism when Jesus entered the story. Was The Law ticking along smoothly, perfectly executed by every adherent, every day? Not by my reading of the Bible. If anything it was starting to fracture, with different camps arguing over meaning and priorities. But there were apparently some who were ready to at least listen to the notion of loving their enemies, as evidenced by the fact that Jesus attracted followers. 

So don't let the fact that the world seems like a bit of a mess and we don't appear to be very good at loving enemies discourage you. As in Jesus' time, there are some who are ready to hear about what comes next.

And this is where it really gets interesting.

At this stage I hope you can see how we can overlay what I've said in previous posts about the evolution of human consciousness. After all, we're talking here about the same thing. There is no sacred/secular dichotomy, no distinction between the evolution of faith and the evolution of consciousness. There is only Divine reality.

Remember this pattern?

Create a problem
    Outgrow it
Create a problem
    Outgrow it

Now think of it this way:

Extreme violence among "our people"
    The Law, love your neighbour, an eye for an eye
Too insular (and still too violent) for a growing world
    Jesus, love your enemies, turn the other cheek
Too self-absorbed (and yes, still too violent) for an intimately interconnected world
    ???

Let me very briefly make some suggestions for how we fill in the line above.

Exhibit A: Empathy as an emergent human quality. Sympathy was feeling sorry for someone else's plight. Empathy is feeling it as if it is our plight.

Exhibit B: Breakthroughs in neuroscience that, among other things, support Exhibit A. Mirror neurons, neuroplasticity, etc.

We are not just connected.

Now, we have to learn that there is no Other. There is just us.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." What if poking your eye out leaves me blinded?

The Dalai Lama has said, "If you want to make others happy, practice compassion. If you want to make yourself happy, practice compassion." What if that's true?

Jesus has told us to "turn the other cheek." What if he said that because in his enlightened state he knew that striking out in anger at someone else is actually striking at ourselves? He also said, "whatever you do to the least of these you do to me." What if that's true? What if whatever I do for or to someone else, I do for or to Jesus? And for or to you? And for or to my Chinese neighbour? And for or to every other soul on this planet?

Finally, Jesus also said, "Do to others what you would have them do to you." It seems every major religion has it's own version of The Golden Rule. What if that isn't just a nice coincidence or just a decent way to behave? What if it's because doing unto others is doing to ourselves?

I'm obviously painting with some very broad strokes here and just roughly outlining my current thoughts. I'd like to know what you think about all this.

Pray Without Ceasing

The past few days I've been thinking about St. Paul's admonition to pray without ceasing.

It occurs to me that in a world where everything is sacred we already do this, whether we realize it or not. Our every thought, every word, every action (or non-action) is indeed a prayer.

The important questions then become

• Who are we praying to, and 
• What are we saying? 

If we can figure that out then we'll know who our god really is.

Being Ready and Peeling Potatoes

It is not for us to know who or how many or in what way our actions will make a difference. If you need to know that, then as the great Saint Teresa of Avila would often say to her nuns, "You are not ready for the task. Go back to the kitchen and peel potatoes." To truly be of service, you must never judge what life asks you to do. Rather, see the sacred in all things and in the smallest detail of your life.

Andrew Harvey, The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism

The Birds, Or... The Great Cosmic Plan III

Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, ‘Have no care for tomorrow. Don’t worry about whether you’re going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect care of them. Don’t you think he’ll do the same for you?’ In our culture the overwhelming answer to that question is, ‘Hell no!’

This quote, based on Matthew 6:25-26, comes from the fascinating book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I've been ruminating on this one since reading the book a couple weeks ago.

Several thoughts have come to mind.

First, and perhaps most disturbing, is the nagging feeling that based on those two verses alone most of us who claim to "believe in Jesus" may actually be atheists without knowing it. For years I've been toying with the label functional atheism. I define a functional atheist as "one who claims to believe in Jesus but lives as if he doesn't". In that sense those two verses are a bit of a punch in the gut. 

Another thought: What happens if we try to eliminate the anthropomorphic basis of the passage? I realize I'm taking liberties here, but lets take ourselves out of the story for a moment. What are we left with?

God cares for the birds.

God cares about birds.

Keeping in mind that I no longer see God as an old man on a cloud, allow me to slip back into old habits for a moment  and ironically ponder just how pissed he's going to be when he notices we've been killing off his creations at an alarming rate. More to the point, and more in keeping with the way I currently see life, the universe, and everything, I wonder what happens to this finely balanced work of art that is the cosmos when we arbitrarily and carelessly destroy what was apparently important enough to create and care for.

One last thought for you. I've been reading those verses over in the context of a recent article by the Guardian's inimitable George Monbiot on consumption. Talk about a one-two punch. What Monbiot says shouldn't surprise us, but we still don't want to talk about it. Recycling is a nice idea, and it might be slowing environmental degradation marginally, but the fact remains, we are consuming too much. Of everything. Including those of us who have been told to consider the birds of the air. 

Remember what I said in the original post. We create a problem, we outgrow a problem. More than ever I'm convinced that 2000 years ago one of the things Jesus was doing was tutoring us on how to survive as a species.

Thoughts?

(Image from carbonomissions.org.uk and their sobering video)

The Great Cosmic Plan II

This morning I was contemplating events of the past week both around the globe and in my own little world, as well as what I'm coming to see as the neurological elements of salvation, which I briefly touched on in the previous post.

Out of all that came this brief thought:

LOVE is a choice, then
LOVE is a habit, then
LOVE is who you are.

Loving Your Neighbour, Empathy, and The Great Cosmic Plan (UPDATED)

First, this quote from Bill McKibben, which my friend Mike Morrell posted on Facebook:

We are never going to see this planet in a more intact and beautiful state and one of our jobs in this age is to bear witness to that beauty. And so that's my excuse anywhere to try and get outdoors any way I can and it helps me along. Look, there is going to be a lot of inescapable tragedy in the years ahead. We are going to see, as we've seen in the past year, record numbers of what we used to call natural disasters, what we no longer call that. Disasters where our thumb is very much on the scale, that aren't acts of God, they are acts of us. Things are going to be trying and difficult and horrible in many ways but are also going to be a constant reminder of the need to get away from the hyperindividualism that has marked our culture and the very practical urgent utilitarian need to discover neighbourliness, because it is neighbourliness that gets us out of fixes and lets us deal with those kinds of things.

Some days I end up spending time explaining different English expressions to my Chinese friends. That's when you start to understand just how crazy a language English is, but that's a discussion for another day.

Right now I'm thinking of this one:

All in good time.

Reading the McKibben quote prompted one of those mystical moments where everything clicks into place and you can see the big picture. Let me try to explain to you what I'm seeing.

First let me say that Bill McKibben is nothing short of a 21st century prophet. And yes, I mean that in the biblical sense, whatever that is.

Next, here's what I see, and why I say that about McKibben.

Take Jesus' admonition to love your neighbour, love your enemies - Let's just call it what it is: Love everyone.

It's a nice sentiment of course. Warm and fuzzy, a quaint notion from the land of unicorns and rainbows. Not that we would ever be expected to actually do it.

So for centuries the Christian world paid lip service to the idea, while we advocated burning at the stake, stabbing, shooting, bombing, and electrocuting those we didn't care for. Killing them, in other words.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the current era. Empathy appeared as an emergent human quality.

The English word empathy has only been around since 1909, when British psychologist Edward Titchener coined it in an attempt to translate the German word Einfühlungsvermögen. That's a mouthful. That word in turn had appeared at the end of the 19th century to represent this new phenomenon being explored by German philosophers.

On the subject of empathy let me once again pound the table for Jeremy Rifkin's excellent book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis.

 

 

The above is one of those great RSA Animate videos giving a short summary (10:40) of a longer presentation by Rifkin. (51:45). Watch the short one at least. Quite simply if you can get your head around the long view of Jesus' message it will blow you away, as it did me.

So 2000 years ago Jesus told us to love everyone. Certainly a handful of people since then have managed the feat, at least on their best days. But as a species we have found it virtually impossible, so much so that we generally write off this command as one of those strange things Jesus tended to say but we need not feel compelled to do. 

Let me suggest an alternative theory. Of course this might require us to push out the walls of our theological box a little. 

When Jesus set us on this path of loving everyone, he was doing just that - setting us on a path, a curve, a trajectory. He knew where we as a species were heading, and he was giving us a head start. He was signifying a major point of transition on the curve of human history. A moral, ethical, and as it turns out, a neurological one too. 

There is a plan. That to me is astounding.

Of course, I no longer use the word plan as I once did - in the evangelical, chess-piece sense of the word. I use it now to represent an evolutionary intention, a potentiality, which is every bit as sacred and wondrous as the notion that "God has a plan for your life." It's more than that. It's better than that. God has a plan for our species. God has a plan for our planet. And, I have to believe, God has a plan for the cosmos.

So following in the way of Jesus is getting in front of this thing. It's being on the front end of the curve, leading, as opposed to hanging on to the back end, being dragged kicking and screaming into the future.

It is not only a plan of personal salvation, which I no longer define as saving us from eternal punishment later but from living a pointless life now. It is also a plan of cosmic salvation. And that is good news indeed.

I've been working with the pieces of this idea for a while now, but they fell into place when I read the quote from McKibben. 

There's a dark side to all this too of course.

The timing of the events along this curve are not coincidental. The reason Jesus prepared us, and the reason empathy is emerging now, is because we need it now. Desperately.

If we do not love each other we are not going to make it.

To paraphrase the great physicist Max Plank, problems are not solved, they are outgrown. And as Albert Einstein said, you can't solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it. (It sounds to me like one of them stole the idea from the other, but we will never know.)

Throughout human history we have been playing a game of "crisis leapfrog."
Create a problem.
Outgrow it.
Create a problem.
Outgrow it.

This hasn't been a simple linear progression though, it's been exponential. As we have grown the scope and magnitude of the problems we have managed to create have grown too. For the first time in human history we have created crises that are potential world killers. The solution to these problems will need to be equally dramatic and global. 

And it is.

Love everyone.

It turns out it wasn't just a nice idea. Jesus was starting the process of saving us. 

That's what I think, and it becomes more and more clear as I learn to really see.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Over the past few days I've been reading accounts of extreme weather events from Facebook friends. It seems Bill McKibben's book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet is an absolute must-read.

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No Disassembly Required (UPDATED)

I'm a little late to the discussion surrounding Tim Keller's recent comments around the issue of Evangelicals, homosexuality and gay marriage. I actually was prompted by my friend Andrew's post, which pointed me to Peter Enns' post, and down the rabbit hole I went.

It turns out the same lines caught all of our attention.

"You're going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You're basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door."

Here's the thing: I've given this some thought, and I'm no longer asking anyone to do anything.

The gospel of Jesus is meant to be lived out. Instead, there's a danger that we turn it into an exercise in navel-gazing, and we couch such self-aggrandizing behaviour in vacuous calls for "unity", which are usually nothing more than thinly veiled demands for others to think the same way we do.

I'm a follower of Jesus with an evolutionary worldview. Simply put, I believe everything is changing, all the time. I'm vitally interested in the evolution of human consciousness as depicted by some of the current development psychology models--Spiral Dynamics, Integral Theory and the amazing work of Ken Wilber, etc.--and I do not believe that religious unity is a possibility at current levels of consciousness. Oh, it's coming, and some are already there, but there aren't enough yet to carry the day. We are in a period of transition.

Earlier I stated that I thought the gospel--the good news-- was meant to be lived out. To expand on that a little here is my current "statement of faith", marking where I am at the moment on my own journey. I shared this for the first time yesterday with the class from Bakke.

"The message of Jesus is predominantly about how to be a better human, and about how we live now, as opposed to how to be a better religionist, and where we go when we die, and why."

Trying to be a better human is tough enough. Trust me, I need a lot of work. I don't have the time to argue these points of religion that no longer strike me as important or relevant.

I have opinions, of course. The current debate over this particular issue saddens me. But going forward I'm going to spend my precious, limited time and energy on trying to live an ever-increasingly inclusive life, as opposed to trying to convince others that they should do the same. And even as I write those sentences it strikes me that the former exercise honours my LGBT friends for who they are - beautiful creations carrying the spark of the divine just like me, while the latter treats them as Exhibit A in an argument which was never about them in the first place.

So, no more.

And there's something else. Something in the quote that I started with caught my eye for another reason.

Lets take another look.

"You're going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You're basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door."

And again, he's right. But here's the problem, as I see it.

The metaphor of disassembly is unfortunately appropriate. What kinds of things require disassembly? Things welded, or glued, or put together with nails and screws and nuts and bolts. Things that are fixed, that were never meant to bend, to shift, to move.

I said earlier that I hold to an evolutionary worldview, that everything is constantly changing. Not least of which, we as a species continue to evolve. Perhaps not so much biologically anymore, but certainly consciously. And as we grow, our capacity to grasp the enormity and mystery of the Divine expands, even just a little.

At the same time, science also continues to grow, to develop, to expand our knowledge base. Dark corners slowly get illuminated.

And as this happens, certain course corrections will most certainly be required. If religion is a map of the territory of the Divine, then that map will need correcting, updating, and refining as we come to understand more about the territory.

The potential problem here is an obvious one: Over time we have come to mistake the map for the territory. Or to throw another metaphor at you, we now stare enamoured at the finger, and have lost sight of the beautiful moon it is pointing to.

Take a look at this quote from the Dalai Lama, and as a mental exercise where he has used the word "Buddhism" insert "Christianity" in its place.

"My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism. Understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."

That, my friends, is spiritual courage. That is faith in every sense of the word. Finally, for at least one practitioner, that is a religion that will never require disassembly.

So, I'm done trying to change anyone's mind. Instead I will concentrate my efforts on changing my own heart, and see where that gets us.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
~ Richard Buckminster Fuller

UPDATE: I'm reading through Alan Watts' The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. I have no doubt I'll be quoting him a lot, but here's something that speaks directly to what I've been talking about here.

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide, it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is above all, open-ness--an act of trust in the unknown.

 I love that definition of faith.

Globalization and Cross Cultural Engagement

An eclectic list of resources for my friends from this morning's online BGU online class. And anybody else.

Walmart Articles

Are Walmart's Chinese Factories As Bad As Apple's? - Mother Jones, March/April 2012

WalMart Empire Clashes with China - The Progressive, January 8, 2013

China & The Environment

China admits pollution has caused 'cancer villages' - The Telegraph, February 22, 2013

Beijing Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index (AQI)

Why China's Leaders Should Worry About Climate Change - CNN, April 9, 2013

Theology, etc.

What We Talk About When We Talk About God (Rob Bell)

The End of Religion: Encountering the Subversive Spirituality of Jesus (Bruxey Cavey)

The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (Richard Rohr)

A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (Brian McLaren)

Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World (Brian McLaren)

Economics, Evolution, and Everything Else

When Corporations Rule the World (David Korten)

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (Jeremy Rifkin)

RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation (Video, 10:40 - Animated, edited presentation)

Jeremy Rifkin - The Empathic Civilisation (Video, 51:45 - Full presentation)

Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change (Don Beck & Chris Cowan) 

Downside Up (Music Video - Peter Gabriel & The New Blood Orchestra / lyrics)

Window In The Skies (Music Video - U2 / lyrics)

Amahoro Africa website

Non-Human Consciousness - How Then Shall We Live?

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This is quick and dirty... I wanted to direct you to a couple of links while I'm thinking of it. The post may be haphazard, but I think this is one of the most important issues we as a species will be dealing with in the next several years. 

Let me make a crude connection here, and leave it for you to investigate if you wish.

First, here's One of Us, a very good article on what's being done in the area of animal consciousness research.

Next, I want to direct you back once again to Food and Consciousness: An Interview with Erin Wilson, wherein our good friend shares with us her insights on food and eating.

Finally, here is a fascinating interview between Andrew Cohen and Dr. Melanie Joy, author of Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. Dr. Joy has done "pioneering research into the deeper cultural and psychological dimensions of our food choices. In her groundbreaking book, Dr. Joy explores the invisible system that shapes our perception of the meat we eat, so that we love some animals and eat others without knowing why. She calls this system “carnism,” which she defines as the belief system, or ideology, that allows us to eat some animals while having deep and loving relationships with others."

This to me is particularly interesting given the recent uproar over the horse/beef issues in Europe. It's OK to eat a cow, but not a horse. Why? Is it just that we thought it was beef and found out it wasn't, so the deception is the issue? I don't think that's it. 

In my pre-ramble to Erin's interview I had this to say (and now you know where I came up with this line):

I'm coming to think that we're all connected. Not just all people, but all Creation. I'm also starting to think that just about everything has some level of consciousness. Something that connects us all to the Source. If that is the case, then why do we eat some animals, clothe ourselves in the skin of others, and let yet others kiss us on the lips and live in our houses? That strikes me as blatantly inconsistent, to say the least.

Here, in a nutshell, is my theory:

Animals have consciousness. If this is true, I need to rethink my attitudes toward them, and my eating habits. I believe we as human beings had to get to a certain point in our own evolution of consciousness to recognize that other creatures are conscious too. And most interesting to me, we are arriving at that point now, when we have so many other nutritional options, and also when our "need for meat" is contributing to climate change and other potentially catastrophic problems on the planet.

One last thought: This question of "How then shall we live?" just keeps coming up...

Carry on, and let me know what you think of all this.