The Largest Boat Imaginable
Rev. Laurie Bushbaum
Headwaters UU Fellowship – Nov. 11, 2007
Reading # 1: excerpt from Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert
I believe all the world’s religions share, at their core, a desire to find a transporting metaphor. When you want to attain communion with God, what you’re really trying to do is move away from the worldly into the eternal. … and you need some kind of magnificent idea to convey you there. It has to be a big one… really big and magic and powerful, because it needs to carry you across a mighty distance. It has to be the largest boat imaginable.
Religious rituals often develop out of mystical experimentation. Some brave scout goes out looking for a new path to the divine, has a transcendent experience and returns home a prophet. He or she brings back to the community tales of heaven and maps of how to get there. Then others repeat the words, the works, the prayers, or the acts of this prophet, in order to cross over, too. ….Inevitably even the most original new ideas will eventually harden into dogma or stop working for everybody.
The Indians around here tell a cautionary fable about a great saint who was always surrounded in his Ashram by local devotees. For hours a day, the saint and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the saint had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the saint, in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours a day, only during meditation, so as not to disturb anyone. This became a habit – tying the cat to the pole…but as years passed, the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. Then one day the cat died. The saint’s followers were panic stricken. It was a major religious crisis – how could they meditate now, without a cat tied to the pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.”
Reading #2: (From Ordinarily Sacred) by Lynda Sexton
...Religious “boxes” are not to be considered literal containers, but psychic ones. The box is a space that folds other spaces into itself...
When I was three years old, we moved into a little house and my mother set about cleaning. I watched. Her broom disrupted seemingly animated toys that scuttled out from under the bed. I wanted to keep them.
“No,” said my mother. “They’re just dirt. Lint balls.”
“I could play with them. They look like animals.”
“No.”
Then something else slid out from under the bed by the force of my mother’s broom. It was a marvelously decrepit little book, wonderful enough to give pause to my mother’s purification ritual. She sat with me on the bed and showed me page by page, image by image, “Look, here is a picture drawn by a girl seven years old. It says this one is by a boy five years old...” They were all pictures of people, drawn by children, bound in a book.
It was an extraordinary moment. I suddenly had all of these friends to draw with; my mother had stopped sweeping and was talking about drawing, giving it moment and import; I was going to place my drawings with theirs. We reached the last page and I reached for the book.
“No, you can’t have it. It’s too dirty; I have to throw it away.”
And the taboo book joined the fuzz-ball animals. But the book (or the moment, the occasion of the book and my mother) stayed somewhere in me; and sometimes the most likely place to find religion is in an unlikely place - under the bed with the dust
mice.
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Why are you here this morning? Why not sleep in, stay home and read the paper? Why not take a walk in the woods, catch up on household chores? Or any one of the myriad things one could do with an extra hour or two?
Why are you here this morning?...........
I’m guessing that all of the ways that we might answer that question relate to the story about finding the dust bunnies and the magical box under the bed one day. As a child, the author has this magical moment with her mother – an experience when they see past the surface to something deeper. A moment when they join in communion with other children who have made drawings, who have recorded their own experience of life, to be discovered by another. This child and mother, while doing daily chores, are transported into another kind of time and space in which “ The mystery within us reaches out to the mystery beyond”… When “The window of the moment opens to the sky of the eternal.” I’m guessing that is why most of us are here… to ponder the Mystery and to look out the windows of our own beings at something larger….
And for me as a minister, what gives meaning and focus to my ministry is the belief that churches are primarily for worship. This may sound like a surprisingly traditional thing to say, so let me explain what I mean.
The origin of the word “Worship” is the Old English word “woerth-scippen” meaning, “TO SHAPE THINGS OF WORTH.” I like that. To shape things of worth. “We worship…, whenever we ascribe worth to some value, idea, object, person, experience, or activity; or whenever we give form or shape to that which we have already found to
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be of worth.” To worship, to ascribe worth, to shape things of worth... this is our central task.
As religious people, our task is to search for the truth in life, in ourselves, in others, in our experiences. We are like Russian nesting dolls; we need to keep opening and opening to knowing Truth, and Love, and Justice. We need to peel away the layers that prevent us from seeing, hearing, knowing, and liberating truth in a spirit of love. Worship calls us, then, to our task of shaping and re-shaping our lives and the world around us in accordance with the truth as we understand it. It is an unending task, a lifetime’s work. And this is why, inside each set of nesting dolls, there is one that does not open. This is Mystery, Or God, or Nature. This is what keeps us humble, knowing that we do not EVER know everything.
So, what does it mean to gather here and worship together? To me, we are simply doing what humans have always done: we are trying to figure out our place in the Mystery, our relationship to the Mystery. I return to our First Reading: “ I believe all the world’s religions share, at their core, a desire to find a transporting metaphor. When you want to attain communion with God, what you’re really trying to do is move away from the worldly into the eternal. … and you need some kind of magnificent idea to convey you there. It has to be a big one… really big and magic and powerful, because it needs to carry you across a mighty distance. It has to be the largest boat imaginable.”
Imagine Worship as a magical box, as a boat. It is a vessel we create together, here, now, to carry us deeper. I differ with the author above, a bit, when she says, that to seek God we must leave the worldly. For me, worship is more about using the very worldly things we know and love, to transport further, deeper, closer to the heart of the Mystery – and to be transformed. So, we gather together to sing, to speak, to light the primordial fire, to circle around those who are in need and to share our strength. We tell stories about our lives to inspire one another. There are no extraordinary materials here. It is our intention that carries us. We are building “the largest boat imaginable” because you have each decided that this journey matters, this journey from “me” to “us;” this journey from trivial to profound, this journey from material things, to essential meanings.
A colleague wrote this about worship: “Many have never learned to worship. The typical parishioner has spectator mentality. What can I “get” from the ritual? What can be done for me? What can I “receive” from the experience? It is a yuppie-like approach that emphasizes the consumption of a product and the passivity of the purchaser. The idea of worship as the responsibility of the individual has been replaced by the notion of entertainment. Yet what people bring to the church on Sunday morning is vitally important. When the service is viewed only as a performance, with the choir and the minister being critically appraised like a dog show, then the purpose of the hour is completely neglected. To a large extent, the posture, attitude, and prior preparation of
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the individual determines the worship experience. Worship is not a noun, but a verb - an action of intense concentration. What is required is a posture of humility, an attitude of openness, and a preparation for awareness. Worship is ‘seeing’ what is otherwise hidden.” (Rev. John Corrado)
So you see, we are all building this boat together, right now. The moment you walk through these doors, you are helping create the vessel not only for yourself, but for each person here today. We each bring our joys, sorrows, hopes, fears, successes and failures. It is all a part of the holy mix. And believe it or not, there is a deep theoligical statement in all of this. It goes back to the Protestant Reformation, which claimed that each and every one of us could have our own relationship with what we call Holy and Sacred. It is not true that we can only attain Insight and Revelation if a Holy Person does it for us. We are the priests for one another. This is a sacred tenet of our faith.
We each have a voice in building the boat. We are each a set of nesting dolls, with our own Mysteries to unpack. And even though each of us chooses to take this journey of Truth Seeking we can take it together. We might build a faster boat alone. But it would not contain the complexity of vision brought by many.
As I see it, there is a fundamental assumption in this process of “worship” of “worth-shaping” of trying to transport ourselves deeper into the heart of Life. The fundamental assumption is that we consider our experience as significant; that we consider our bodies, our spirits, our selves, as sources of revelation. We are amazing boxes, nesting dolls, full of amazing stuff.
Henry David Thoreau wrote:
It is something to be able to paint a picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look....To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
What Thoreau is talking about here, is a worshipful attitude that shapes how we see and know life. It is a practice, a spiritual discipline. And there is an old religious word that describes what I think we do when we gather for worship. The word is “consecrate”. Consecrate means to dedicate something or someone as holy, to make it sacred, or to devote it to a higher purpose. To me, the church is the place we gather to consecrate our selves, our lives, our experiences. By acknowledging that we are raw, holy material, hopefully we acknowledge that every other person, too, is holy and sacred. That is why our UU Purposes and Principles begin by stating that we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Our real purpose is to consecrate our lives, to see the holiness of all life, and to dedicate ourselves to shaping the world so that holiness can live and move among us. And worship together in a community is one
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way that we can give form and shape to what we value in life.
But how do we do that? Well, to begin with, we test our wisdom and experience alongside one another’s. We come together and ask personal, yet universal questions. Questions like, “How have I failed? And succeeded? What is this gnawing discontent that keeps me awake at night? What is this exquisite joy that flames up in me? How am I hurt and healed? Where have I been and where am I going? How is my life connected to yours? And to the lives of the homeless on the streets as well as to those sitting at the heads of major corporations?” “What is the right thing to do?” And on and on...
All of these questions are religious questions. I hope you bring them here with you, to this place, to consecrate them, to bless them, to acknowledge their importance, to turn them inside out, to look beyond the surface of them and find the insight, wisdom, and compassion within you as individuals, and among you as a community.
The children, too, are doing this in their time here on Sunday.
One of my favorite religion writers, Lynda Sexton, writes, “Religion is the desire for depth.” Worship then is a seeking of the depths of our minds and hearts and the patterns of our lives, not randomly, but in a disciplined way. Worship is an ordered quest of the depths out of which wisdom comes. We gather here to continually learn to be worshipers, not just on Sunday morning, but in the whole of our lives. Our time on
Sunday is practice for all the other days.
I want to reread the words of my colleague:
“The idea of worship as the responsibility of the individual has been replaced by the notion of entertainment… We often fail to realize that worship is an inner concentration. What is required is a posture of humility, an attitude of openness, and a preparation of awareness. Worship is “seeing” what is otherwise hidden.”
WORSHIP IS NOT A NOUN, BUT A VERB. It is learning to see and learning to give shape to what is important. There is another traditional religious word that expresses this concept. It is the word “liturgy.” The word “liturgy” comes from the Greek and means “the work of the people.” Churches are sometimes classified as having a high liturgy or low liturgy. Catholic, and to some degree, Lutheran and Episcopal churches are high liturgy. What this means is that the emphasis of the worship service is not on a particular theme, as ours generally is, but on a familiar pattern of ritual. Much of the service is read or responded to by the congregation. Liturgical worship usually follows a pattern that attempts to touch certain human needs such as expressing gratitude for life, acknowledging errors and shortcomings, experiencing forgiveness and healing, connecting with the world-wide church community and rededication of one’s self to one’s faith and values.
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In contrast, UU worship tends to be low liturgy in form. As a denomination, we were born out of the left wing of the Reformation which had an educational view of worship. It’s main purpose was to proclaim and interpret the Word to the congregation. Central were Scripture reading and the sermon, the latter being an extended interpretation of a Biblical text.
To truly accomplish what I see as our task as religious people building a religious community, I think we need both ritual and word. We need in our Sunday worship services, as well as in our daily lives, to touch upon the basic human needs and emotions. We also need new information and a sharing of ourselves. In a favorite UU hymn we sing, “Roots hold me close, wings set me free.” Ritual and pattern in worship are the roots. The new, the challenging, the questions are the potential wings.
Every part of a Sunday Service should have a reason for being there, and you should know its role. Several of us spent 2 hours discussing this yesterday but I want to mention a few things about a Sunday Service. For example, nearly every UU congregation now begins Sunday services with the lighting of the Chalice. It has become a part of our collective UU liturgy. This was not always so. It started about 25 years ago, as an organic response by some who felt that our services had become so devoid of any ritual or symbol that they bordered on being cold and hard. For me, the Lighting of the Chalice is a powerful ritual that expresses in a tangible, material way, our belief in the light, in the search for truth, and in the possibilities of being together. This act of lighting the chalice links us to every other time we have lit the Chalice here, and to every other congregation in which it is also done. It links us to humanity’s discovery of fire, of our quest for knowledge. It also brings into our midst, a basic Cosmic power.
The Welcome is an important part of the Liturgy because in it you have a chance to clarify your very purpose for being here and to state your invitation to others to make this their home. To do a sloppy invitation suggests that you are not sure whether you really want others to join you, you don’t know who you are, or you are comfortable being a Liberal Social Club instead of a church that is part of a long history and tradition with a mission to serve and grow.
The morning Offering belongs in the service as part of the liturgy because it as a participatory reminder of what you are committed to, what your ideals are. The offering is another way of stating this church belongs to you, and with your contributions you bring it into being. This is true financially, but it is true in every other way, too. What you bring here, what you give and receive, creates the church. No one owns this church except you. However, you are also the inheritors of a long history… others have made the boat before you. It is your responsibility to pass this faith on to all who need it and seek it. Just serving one another is not enough.
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The Joys and Concerns are part of the Liturgy here. We acknowledge that each one of us is blessed with amazing beauty and joy. And that each human being will struggle with loss, and fear, and the dark night of the soul. In our joys and concerns, we celebrate the human condition common to us all. But joys and concerns are not for trivial matters or political announcements. Joys and Concerns need to stay in the realm of their intention: to make manifest the tender vulnerabilities of us all, and to be a circle of strength.
We need to remember that each of us will experience worship in different ways. The reading about the girl who found an experience of worship in a little book under the bed, covered with dust bunnies, reminds us that we will experience worship in many shapes and forms. For some that moment of worship will come easiest in silence, for another, in music. For some it is an artistic image, for others it will come mostly through words. And so, in your corporate worship here, you try and make room for them all, knowing that inspiration may surprise us from where it is least expected and that we each have different needs. Every minister has had the experience of delivering a sermon and at social hour one person says, with tears in his eyes, “Wow, that one hit home. Thank you.” And five minutes later someone else says, “You must have had a busy week. This sermon just really didn’t have it.” Same sermon. Same room. Two different people. Remember, we are here not just to float our own boat, but to create the largest boat imaginable………to share the journey.
So it is with all the components in worship. The important thing to remember is that any particular form in religious life is just a vehicle of revelation, and not the absolute truth itself. Because the girl found a bit of life’s mystery in a box, she did not spend the rest of her life worshiping boxes. The writer of the 10 Commandments put it this way, “You shall not bow down to and serve graven images.” Yet many of us who came from other churches and left, left with a fear and mistrust of all religious boxes, of anything that smacks of the “religious.” Perhaps it comes from having recited words and creeds one no longer believed, communion taken without it being meaningful; loving the music in church but grimacing through the words. Remember our reading about the worshippers who got attached to having the cat tied to the pole. They forgot the original intent of the act. To be faithful worshippers we have to be willing to examine our own reactions and assumptions. We have to keep opening the nesting box and find what is at the heart ………
Religious boxes are just that; they are containers to help us give form and shape to our deepest longings and hopes and meanings. They are a material place to help us see and know and love what is precious. When they no longer work, we can change them. But some kind of form and pattern is essential to shaping who we are and what we strive for.
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A UU minister who was raised in a staunchly humanist UU congregation with a distaste for anything not entirely rational wrote these words while visiting a monastery.:
“The monks knelt and rose and bowed, the bodies bent forward from the waist, torsos almost horizontal. But I could not move. I was brought up in this church where no one kneels and no one bows. And when has it ever been suggested that I might kneel, even figuratively, before or to something? I wanted to kneel, that’s the important thing. But I could not. To kneel and to mean it would be frightening because there is a darkness in the kneeling and a darkness in us that we cannot reason about...
You teach fear of the form without meaning and that is right; but having avoided the forms, you have sometimes avoided the darkness, and it is from the darkness that real questions arise.”
And here is a story about the other extreme. It is a Zen story about a monk who carried a box with him always. He burned incense before it and offered holy salutations. The box contained a golden image of the Buddha and some religious relics. The Zen Master told the monk that the contents of the box would be of no use to him, to give it up. The monk objected. Then the master said it was the handiwork of demons and to get rid of it. The monk got angry and started to leave. The Zen master called out for the monk to open his box and look inside. The monk stopped, opened his box, and found, in place of the sacred treasures, a coiled, poisonous snake.
UUism has no permanent sacred “boxes.” We are well aware that religion is a process. We know that we are always rebuilding the boat that will carry us toward deeper truth, understanding, and compassion. Perhaps we have no permanent sacred boxes, but we need temporary ones; we need to give some shape to our own lives and the life of the religious community.
Worship is the shape making we do together, as separate, unique, and imperfect people, yet moved to a life with a certain shared vision. Our hearts and minds, our time and attention create the vessel to carry toward the heart of Truth, and Love, and Justice.
Blessed be.
Samhain, 2007, Neen Lillquist
OPENING--
Come into this place of peace and let its silence heal your spirit;
Come into this place of memory and let its history warm your soul;
Come into this place of prophecy and power and let its vision
change your heart. William F. Schultz
CHALICE LIGHTING
May this lighted chalice be a symbol of transformation. A transformation from darkness to light, from grief to hope, from death to life, from illness to health, as we ever expand our consciousness.
CHILDREN’S TIME--A Drop of Water named Higgins. Kerplunk & rain
Once upon a time there was a drop of water named Higgins. He was not an ordinary drop of water. He was a drop with a dream. He lived in a valley where it had not rained for a long time so all of the grass was turning brown, all the flowers and the vines for the gourds were wilting. He dreamed that one day the valley would be beautiful again, but what could he do? He was only a drop of water.
One day he decided to travel and tell others about his dream. All the other drops listened politely, but no one believed his dream would come true. They said, “Higgins, get your head out of the clouds.”
He still knew he had to do something so he started to think and think and think and one day as he was walking by a bucket, he got an idea. If enough of us drops get together in this bucket there will be enough to water a few flowers. Happily he told everyone, but they thought he was foolish and just a dreamer. He just had to do something so he said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting into the bucket! I hope some of you will join me, then there might be enough water to help at least some flowers be beautiful again and the gourds to grow.
So Higgens ran as hard as he could, hopped way up in the air and landed Kerplunk in the bottom of the bucket. And there he stayed---Just a drop in the bucket. He was very lonely and no one else joined him. But after awhile some other drops could see that the grass was dying and the flowers and gourd vines were wilting. They all agreed that something must be done. Suddenly, one drop shouted, “I’m going in the bucket with Higgins! And he leaped through the air and landed--Kerplunk--in the bucket. Then two drops yelled, “Wait for us!” And they hopped through the air and landed in the bucket--Kerplunk. Kerplunk. Then ten drops jumped through the air into the bucket. And all of the drops hopped into the bucket. Soon, the bucket was full, but still more drops wanted to join so they found another bucket and hopped in. Before long there were hundreds and thousands of buckets of water and along came the wind and blew over the buckets and blew the water up into the sky where the clouds formed to bring the rain. (finger tapping slow to fast, clap soft to loud and then on knees). Now everywhere the grass turned green, the flowers and the trees stood tall and straight again. All because Higgins had a dream and his dream came true. Even though he was just a drop in the bucket, enough drops make a bucketful, more drops make thousands of buckets and Mother Earth sends the wind to sweep the drops up to the sky and the rain comes down. (Rain sounds again.) Gourds to each family.
AMY AND LUKE
OFFERING-
Let there be an offering to sustain and strengthen our gathering together which is sacred to so many of us, a community of memory and of hope, for we are now the keepers of the dream.
RESP RDG--The Larger Circle, Wendall Berry #646
TRANSFORMATION--change, revolution, radical change, reorganization, reordering, rearrangement. A change in basic nature that seems almost miraculous.
Turn. To change in personality or character. Transmogrify--to alter completely
Metamorphosis--lasting change; a startling change produced as if by magic
conversion, evolution,
Integration--physical floating feeling,
We all experience many transformation of growth and expansion throughout our lives. Just a few of the many that are happening around me right now occur due to various reasons--physical in self, physical in others, social in self or family, self seeking/mystical.
Muriel--total change in personality and inner fear and peace due to a slow change in vision over years including terrifying nightmares and panic attacks suddenly changed when a massage therapist suggested she have her vision checked by Dr. Edwards who found her eyes were not focusing on the same level. She says she want to shout from the roof tops that she can now read and live with energy and happiness.
Karen--self focused with a difficult and raging hormonal chemical changes in her body when her husband had radical throat surgery, radiation and chemo therapy. She had begun her transformation with her study and teaching of yoga and practice of Buddhism and communing with nature which she now drew upon to transform from a wildly swinging dramatist to a calm, peaceful and supportive human.
Jane McKelvey--self growth through separation and divorce which included a new house and a new name. Now has mother living with her for further growth. I believe this involves both physical and mental health and sudden extreme growth. Seth discussions.
Candy and Mary--sudden parents to two boys greatly enlarged their world and will continue as they grown into young men.
Neen and John Rabel--sought spiritual/mind expansion by attending programs that promote mystical experience.
Nancy Baumgartner--going through the veil as we are studying and reading about it she is modeling for us.
Did any of the souls or things that you are honoring today bring any transformation into your life?
HONORING
Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends, Someplace where we can be free. Starhawk
Grief creates community. We are one with the dead and with each other as in this story:
It was her fourth birthday party. She and her friends had just bought ice cream from the ice cream man, but as she walked out from behind he ice cream truck, she walked under the rear wheels of an oncoming fully-loaded truck. If someone hadn’t yelled, he wouldn’t have known to stop. There was nothing that could be done because there was very little left of her at all. The children, the little girl’s mother, some other adults and the truck driver---a large overweight middle-aged man in a stained sweaty T-shirt--stood mutely in a circle. The little girl’s mother began to weep and scream and beat on her head and face with her fists. Everyone stood in frozen paralysis for a long time. There without uttering a word the truck driver opened his arms, turned his hands outward and looked at the woman. She walked slowly toward him into his embrace. He wept. She wept. The freeze was broken. The silence, the paralysis, was broken. We all wept. We wept We held hands. We hugged. The little girl was dead and with the simple motion of lifting up his hands and arms, the truck driver had offered us a ritual that gave us life and transformed us. Michael Dwinell in Fire Bearer
INVITE HONORINGS WITH PETALS OF FLOWERS INTO SALT WATER
AND JOYS AND CONCERNS CANDLES
CLOSE HONORINGS
We are one tribe. I cherish our unity. We are united by our suffering and by our joy. One life flows through all life. One heart holds every heart. The loss I sustain today is the beginning of a larger, wiser and kinder tomorrow. It is a part of the dignity of those we lose that we go forward bearing them as loving treasure in our hearts. I cherish those whom I carry in my heart. I honor their thoughts, their wisdom, their guidance, and their support. I bring them forward through my actions toward the future they empowered.
SONG--Soon the Day Will Arrive #146
CLOSE--Ministry is all that we do---together.
Ministry is that quality of being in community that affirms human dignity--beckons forth hidden possibilities, invites us into deeper, more constant, reverent relationships and carries forward our heritage of hope and liberation.
Ministry is what we do together as we celebrate triumphs of our human spirit.
Miracles of birth and life
Wonders of devotion and sacrifice.
Ministry is what we do together--with one another--its terror and torment--in grief, in misery and pain,
enabling us in the presence of death to say yes to life.
We who minister speak and live the best
we know with full knowledge
that it is never quite enough
And yet are reassured
by lostness found,
fragments reunited, wounds healed
and joy shared.
Ministry is what we all do---together. Gordon McKeeman
Self-interest and Selfishness
Paul Kivi, April 15, 2007
When I was 13, I went thru a John Stuart Mill’s phase, reading his works on Utilitarianism, and thought that I had stumbled into the definitive answer on how people should live their lives- people should act so as to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number; what is right is what makes the total happiness of all people as great as possible. Surely this is the guiding principle to how one ought to behave!
I was sympathetic to utilitarian Francis Edgeworth’s longing for an equation to calculate happiness (utility is a generic term for happiness, or well-being)-just plug in a few parameters, take a derivative, and calculate the total happiness of society for each option to find out what the government should do in every situation-whatever maximized the total utility of society. Easy. I even made a few attempts to create such a formula.
Unfortunately, no such equation has been (or likely will be) discovered, and so utilitarianism still leaves a lot of room for interpretation. I still think of utilitarianism as elegant and intuitively appealing, but it has some devils in the details: Whose happiness should we consider? How should happiness be measured? The utilitarians talked about happiness measured in utils, literally a unit of happiness. What is a util? I like my utils covered in tomato sauce with mushrooms and a little parmesan over the top. Honestly, I really don’t know what a util is. Do you? If not, how else could we measure happiness?
Money is used in economics and it has a huge advantage: it is easily measured, and to a point, money and happiness are correlated. Many studies have shown that on a Likehart scale on happiness (1-very unhappy to 5-very happy) shows that poorest 20% are least happy, but guess who is the the next least happy? The richest 20%. Moral of the story: if you are upper middle class and your boss offers you a raise, turn it down! Actually, the moral is that money is a poor approximation for happiness or well-being. These proved to be enormous challenges that derailed the 19th century utilitarians.
Into the void sprang Libertarians such as Ludwig von Mises, who argued that utilitarianism didn’t really need to measure happiness, since we already knew what governments ought to be doing: Governments should stay the hell out of people’s way and let Adam Smith’s invisible hand do its magic. Prices are wonderful organizational tools. If you go to a store and the good is worth enough to you, you buy it; if not, you don’t. Therefore, the goods wind up in the hands of those who value them most. If you are considering making a product, if the going price is high enough you will, and if it isn’t high enough, you let somebody else who make it more efficiently (that is, more cheaply) do it, ensuring that the people who make a good are the ones most suited to do so.
If everybody acts in their own self-interest, if they understand the consequences of their actions, and if markets are operating properly, society will be as well off as possible, since market prices will direct producers to make the most valuable goods, and will allocate goods to the people who value them most highly. Governments can only mess stuff up in this case. In the 18th Century this was a shocking advance, since it was assumed that government oversight was necessary and markets should operate only when the government lacked staffing to regulate all transactions.
Markets can be powerful and desirable. Unfortunately, this tenet has also been widely used to justify selfishness: attempting to maximize one’s material goods. I get to decide what is in my self-interest, and economics says that not only is it not wrong to act in my self-interest, but society is actually better off if I do so! This line of reasoning has made it OK for people to believe selfish things such as He who dies with the most toys wins.
One could argue that the blurring of the line between how one ought to act and selfishness is one of the more regrettable moral developments in the last 300 years, and that this blurring has been built squarely on the shoulders of utilitarianism thru my discipline, economics. As such, I have some guilt by association, which I hope to partially assuage thru this talk.
Selfishness is synonymous with self-interest, right? Consider this from the Ayn Rand Institute: Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life." Thus Objectivism rejects any form of altruism—the claim that morality consists in living for others or for society.
Well, bluntly, believing that selfishness is all matters is not in one’s self-interest, and anyone who postulates that is ignorant of the processes governing both the earth (of which we are a part) and social interactions. Virtually all moral systems put constraints on people’s behavior so that they behave less selfishly-that’s because the group as a whole (AND it’s individual members) are better off when people’s freedom to be selfish is curbed in various ways.
Examples abound of how acting selfishly is not in one’s self-interest. I read an article a couple years ago about a working poor middle aged couple in Kentucky who won the lottery, over $30 million in 2000. Good for them? Within 6 months divorced (since they couldn’t agree on how to spend the money), each bought a mansion. Within 3 years, both were dead, he from cirrhosis of the liver (he was already a part time alcoholic, and quit work to become a full time one) and she was found decomposed in her bed from a drug overdose. Was quitting work and indulging themselves in their self-interest?
Libertarian / standard economics answer is: yes, otherwise they wouldn’t have done it.
My take: self-interest is hard to know, and people can and do often make mistakes-they act counter to their long-term interest all the time. How many people are addicted to something? Is indulging their addictions in their self-interest? No. Do we make mistakes? Yes. It requires a good deal of truth seeking to find out what your self-interest really is. Often short-term thinking results n decisions that are NOT in one’s long-term self-interest, especially when driven by emotions or addictions. Addictions are especially useful to show how one can undertake behaviors that are not in one’s self-interest. Consider a heroin addict (or more mundanely, someone addicted to surfing the internet)-in either case they have long-term goals for themselves that their short-term behavior is preventing them from reaching. Are they acting in their own self-interest?
There are also many examples of how it can be self-interested to make even enormous sacrifices.
Millions of people contribute to charity, and undertake efforts to recycle (and get quite upset if they are not allowed to recycle) despite no obvious selfish benefit.
I had a friend in my hometown with whom I carpooled with 20 minutes each way to work for a few months. He was very opinionated about matters of right and wrong; he believed in doing the right thing. I only won one argument with him-I convinced him to stop emptying the ashtray in the parking lot at the gas station, but to instead walk over to the dumpster. He lived next to the Fox River; 2 kids who fell into the river and were drowning, he managed to get them up on to the shore, but he was swept away down river and drowned. Both girls were unable to be revived. The nearby bridge is now named for him.
I strongly suspect that if he had it to do over again, even knowing the outcome, he would do the same thing- he held his convictions so tightly, that if he had stood and watched them drown he would have never forgiven himself. I believe that his actions were in his self-interest, even though the results were tragic, because his choice was between: take a chance and do the right thing, or do the wrong thing and live with the knowledge that he was a coward (a very grave moral defect in his world view) every day for the rest of his life. Given THAT choice, and knowing how strongly he held his convictions, I believe jumping in the river was in his self-interest at the moment he made the decision to jump in.
While extreme, I doubt his behavior was especially unusual. People go out of their way to help others all the time.
In putting this talk together, it gave me pause to think how much more wonderful my life is because of the various groups who I interact with, and how the more you share, help, volunteer and assist others, the more accepted and integral a part of the group you become. If you sit on the outside, you can benefit from group associations, but once you jump in and sacrifice, that’s when you really start to see the great benefits. Let me give some personal examples.
This spring, we have been greatly assisted by Dee’s folks. They bought our old house. We benefited in 3 ways-no showings (with 3 children underneath our feet), it made our offer more attractive due to no contingency, probably made sale possible and saved us thousands at the same time. This is an obvious benefit to us and we are very grateful. Last week, at my dad’s, I found out my sister couldn’t go to her best friends’ wedding in Seattle. She’s 8 months pregnant, and toilet backed-up flooding 3 rooms and depleting savings. My dad and I chipped in and bought her airline tickets.
I feel tremendously blessed to be in both positions: recipient and giver. This is the way families are supposed to work! That’s when it ‘s great to be part of a group. It is very comforting to be part of a family like that, to know that someone else has your backside when things go wrong. Of course, that means you need to be there for them-maybe that’s part of why it feels so good to give, because you are securing your social standing for the future.
Or consider this example. I’m sitting at the dinner table, we finish grace, it’s 4:57 pm. I begin to raise my fork with the first bite of dinner to my mouth; phone rings. Not wanting to answer with my mouth full, I set the fork down and answer it-it’s my friend Robert, on Coyote Club day at Schoolcraft (he volunteered his time to teach kids wilderness skills, including my kids). One kid’s mother is late (again), and Robert can’t leave until all kids are picked up. Robert’s own kids are at campus childcare, where they charge $1 per minute for anyone later than 5 pm. What do I do?
I certainly had the right to say no, but I didn’t. I quick throw on some shoes, drive over, get Charlie and Louis, bring them home, and feed them a bit of supper while they wait. Happily. Why? Is this in my self-interest? Hell yeah. Think of all the things they do for us-teaching our kids, reassuring doctor calls, dinners, darn near everyone we asked to help us move, did-in fact, Robert’s wife Suzy was downstairs putting my kids’ beds together afterwards while I was outside “entertaining” with a beer in my hand. Life is so much better when you can find ways to help others, when there is a give and take. What I’m saying is that doing the right thing and self-interest ARE the same thing -you are better off being part of groups of people who give and take for each other than you are standing alone.
Hopefully I’ve established that it is in one’s self-interest to help people who can help you back. What about helping people who aren’t likely to reciprocate? Can that be in your self-interest? I saw some movie where a guy cuts off some other guy in traffic and gives him the bird, because he was running late for a job interview. The guy he flipped off, of course, turns out to be the guy who interviews him.
Conversely, looking out for others can lead to great benefits to oneself. In ‘06, a woman was saved from choking by an 18-year old who did the Heimlich on her. Turns out, he was a boy she saved from drowning 10 years earlier.
Most of the time, kindnesses to strangers are not immediately rewarded and bad deeds to others are rarely directly punished. But, does what comes around go around? In a statistical sense, I would argue yes: self-sacrifice is a form of insurance, an unwritten social contract we are all contributing to, what I would call “There but for the Grace of God coverage”. People routinely have a great urge to donate after crises, both huge (Hurricane Katrina) and small (cancer benefit in Solway).
I happened to have an appointment to give blood on September 12th, 2001 in Laramie, WY. When I showed up, 150 people were waiting, hoping to donate blood. I was lucky, I only had to wait half an hour, since I had already secured a time, but some of these people waited hours. Why? You could argue that people perceived a need for blood in the wake of the tragedy, and we did, but I think the bigger component was that we all realized something horrible had happened and felt a tremendous need to DO SOMETHING; donating blood was one of the few options we had.
Now Laramie is 2500 miles from New York City, and there are 300 million people in the US-what are the odds that the person receiving your blood is someone you know? Is this sort of giving, for people we don’t know, in our self-interest?
Well, imagine a world without it! How awful, how close to the edge, one stroke of bad luck away from ruin.
Consider aid to promote development and alleviate poverty for the world’s poor. 20,000 to 30,000 children die everyday due to complications from malnutrition. Are we obligated to do something about it? Could it be in our self-interest to do so? Again, what happens if we don’t? Poverty is a primary driver of crime, health crises, and environmental degradation such as rain forest loss. When I heard bird flu made its way to Africa last year, I was concerned. Why? Conditions for jumping from human to human: poverty, so birds aren’t destroyed; minimal health care system; lack of info transfer, so farmers don’t understand risk. Sounds like Sub-Saharan Africa to me. If we could eliminate dire poverty (we collectively can, but we haven’t chosen to do so) we could easily be solving the next big pandemic (last: 1918 killed tens of millions) before it happens, by making the ground less fertile and an appropriate health care response more likely. So, non-selfish behavior toward people we will never meet can be in our self-interest, too, since we are all interrelated, and increasingly so, too-world trade has tripled in the last 30 years, and the spread of nonnative species and diseases appears to have increased along with trade.
Is utilitarianism BS then? Well, if you define self-interest as selfishness, then self-interest will miss much of human behavior, since people behave counter to this principle all the time. But utilitarianism can be saved here, since while the layperson’s definition of self-interest implies greediness, the general form of self-interest in utilitarianism is broader-it allows for mutually beneficial relationships and for caring about the welfare of others, including plants, animals, and species. You get to decide what things make you better off, not limited to market goods, but also things like clean air, a scenic view, leisure time, sleep, giving to charity (people voluntarily do it all the time, so economics says it must be making them better off). If wetlands or the rights of other people matter to you and yield long-term benefits for you, it can be in your self-interest to sacrifice time and money to protect them.
It is easy to see that if you find a $10 lying on the sidewalk and pick it up you are acting in your self-interest, but less easy to see that if you give money to savethechildren.com or the Nature Conservancy or volunteer your time at the Soup Kitchen, that you are acting in your self-interest just as much. Consider Ron Springs and Everson Walls; Walls donated his kidney for his friend. Self-interest? I think it definitely is.
I propose to create a new definition of self-interest that more closely resembles the actions of real people (who are frequently NOT selfish) and that can provide guidance in how one should live one’s life if things besides selfishness are important (such as fairness and the well-being of other things besides oneself). To act in one’s self-interest is to act consistently with one’s deeply held beliefs, your core principles. Acting in your own self-interest means that you are better off in terms of happiness, in terms of self-satisfaction; you may be short a kidney, you assume a small chance of dying, but you ARE BETTER OFF because doing the right thing means so much to you. If you were not better off according to your value system, you would not do it.
What I’m saying is that the choice between selfishness and altruism is a false one. Sometimes selfishness and self-interest overlap, but sometimes they don’t. Actions taken out of short-term emotional decision-making that conflict with one’s values and long-term goals are selfish and NOT in your self-interest. Actions taken to benefit others that are consistent with your values ARE, since they promote the well-being of the world you that sustains you.
So a way to judge one’s own behavior is to see if what you are choosing to do today is really consistent with the principles you hold; if not, you could improve your lot (and likely the lot of others) by behaving more consistently with the beliefs you profess to hold. And if you are unwilling to change your behavior, perhaps this says the beliefs you claim to hold are not the ones you really hold, and some soul searching (some truth seeking) is in order. BTW: Since I’m a professor, this is your homework!
A person who understands their long-term self-interest will not only frequently behave in an unselfish manner, but will voluntarily abide by codes of ethics, allowing their freedoms to be curbed. In fact, this is what evolution intended for social species such as ours.
Aldo Leopold describes ethics as a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence, as a means of differentiation of social from antisocial conduct. Leopold’s key question: Why do ethics exist?
His answer: the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. If this is so, ethics will lead to better outcomes-greater chance of the survival of offspring. If not so, ruthless self-interest would dominate.
Consider: ants, bees, primates, dogs, lions, humans, etc. All have numerous examples of individuals subordinating their short term self-interest to group interests. Since ethics exist, they must lead to better outcomes, otherwise altruistic people would have been out-competed by those looking out for #1.
Social conventions (such as “thou-shalt-nots”, a list of antisocial conduct) are the logical product of evolution, since they help the members of such a society ensure a greater chance of survival for their offspring. So, any system that advocates for ignoring ethical considerations and being selfish will see its adherents out competed over time.
Violating ethical norms by being selfish is not acting in one’s self-interest, since it puts one’s social standing (and one’s internal emotions) in jeopardy, hurting one’s long-term well-being.
What ethic does our economic system lead us toward?
Basics follow Descartes “I think therefore I am” hence, am inherently valuable. Therefore, my interests ought to be considered by others whose actions impact me. I’m valuable since I can think & feel- I have psychological capacity.
Of course, if others should consider me, fairness implies that others like me should be considered by me- a sort of moral contract of sorts. What is like me? Aristotle’s “men of Athens” as the only group with moral standing to the “global village” of today is an example of the expansion of universal human rights, which seems natural to us raised in this period, but has not always (or even usually) been regarded as a natural or good thing. Trade has led to contact with others, which has led to greater mutual dependence, and a changing of the views of “others” and “us”, with us becoming more inclusive.
Leopold notes one trend of history is a shifting of things from the category of property into the category of things with rights and/or inherent worth. J. Baird Callicott: “Civil rights, humans rights, women’s liberation, animal liberation provide evidence that ethical consciousness has recently accelerated.” Just 100 years ago, one of the major political debates was whether women should be allowed to vote (no longer controversial), blacks were commonly lynched by white mobs, and we were just beginning to believe there was something wrong with 8 year olds working 80 hour work weeks.
From the perspective of human history, this is rapid change. Leopold sees these changes as “ecological evolution”
Specific instances and counterexamples abound, yet the culture as a whole has changed.
Callicott’s evidence of evolution leading to ethics-Social system led to language led to reason. Social came first, due to evolution, not reason led to social system. Reason came later. Callicott: The boundaries of ethical conduct correspond to the perceived boundaries of society, whose members’ welfare is interconnected. Since this is ever expanding, so is the definition of “we”. Who are we? We are everyone, and there is growing evidence that we should include more than just humans, too. Callicott: we are in transition from nation-state to global village in terms of who “us” is, & there’s tension between competing ideas of who is our community. We are in a violent transition from national citizens to global ones.
One could argue for the inclusion of non-humans, although it is not clear how they could reciprocate in a contract.
I believe what Leopold is saying is that non-humans are already acting to benefit us, and that as our scientific knowledge makes clear those benefits they provide clear we are morally obligated to reciprocate, for our own sake as well as theirs. What is our scientific knowledge of our dependence on other creatures? Study in the journal Nature, March 2007, shows decline of scallops in Atlantic is due to loss of sharks, since the sharks ate the cownose ray, and the cownose ray has the unfortunate habit of eating scallops just before they are sexually mature (drastically reducing reproduction). Ultimately, the scallops may come up with some type of defense, or the ray population may crash, but right now our scallop fishery is collapsing.
We are part of the interdependent web of life. If we sacrifice our time, money, or comfort to act so as to maintain this web, we are acting in our self-interest by building up natural capital for ourselves, other people, and other species with whom we interact. Think of the material, health, and spiritual gifts we receive from ecosystems. If an ecosystem is threatened, and you take action to correct it, then you are acting in your self-interest.
Conclusion: So, I leave you with questions: Who are the communities you depend on, and how can you improve your lot in life by making those communities stronger?
Closing Words: Hopi Prophecy:
The moment of the lone wolf is over
Gather yourselves together as we are today
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration
We are the ones we have been waiting for
Let us go forth together and Seek truth, Practice Love, and Celebrate Life
Responsive reading #531--The Oversoul, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thoughts; that the Highest dwells within us, that the sources of nature are in our own minds.
As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins.
I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.
There is deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is accessible to us.
Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable.
It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whosoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur.
The soul’s health consists in the fullness of its reception.
For ever and ever the influx of this better and more universal self is new and unsearchable.
Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.
When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius, when it breathes through our will, it is virtue, when it flows through our affections it is love.
CONSCIOUSNESS EVOLUTION
Neen Lillquist, April 8, 2007
Responsive reading #531--The Oversoul, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thoughts; that the Highest dwells within us, that the sources of nature are in our own minds.
As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins.
I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.
There is deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is accessible to us.
Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable.
It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whosoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur.
The soul’s health consists in the fullness of its reception.
For ever and ever the influx of this better and more universal self is new and unsearchable.
Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.
When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius, when it breathes through our will, it is virtue, when it flows through our affections it is love.
I received these two emails on the same day.
>> Hi Neen,
>> Are you interested in coming to speak in Willmar I was thinking of something along the line of New Beginnings. Mary Lou Werner
>>> >>> Hi Neen,
I am on the program committee for the UU Church in Willmar , MN. I saw your name on the Stonetree Speakers Bureau and am wonder if you would be willing to speak to our group? The topic would be of your choice and we are quite flexible. Jeff Vetsch
About a week later, answering my inquiry, Mary Lou Werner wrote:
Neen, I had no idea Jeff was communicating with you.
I'm anxious to hear about the drumming tour. Drumming is intriguing. Mary Lou
Or Larry Shutte incident--manifestation of meeting him after more than 20 years.
And what synchronicities have you had? Did you call them coincidences or weird or strange or telepathy? Have you had more than usual? Have you paid attention to them? Do you believe that they have a purpose?
Ask audience.
If we have time, I will share some of mine as we are all in the midst of a colossal cosmic evolution of consciousness which was defined in 2000 by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson in their book, “The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. They found that 25% of the population (UUs) belonged to this group who were disenchanted with materialism. These people also were admittedly spiritual and embraced the practice of spiritual values in daily life without the necessity of formal religion. Many tended to become familiar with a variety of religions. Their intention was to search for universal, practical spiritual principles that have intrinsic value and do not depend on ecclesiastical authority.
So now in 2007, we are immersed as co-creators in a consciousness evolution. At an ever accelerating rate we can tune into the resonance of energy to end 5000 years of duality and enter into a unitary mind on oneness and connectedness. We are so fortunate to live in this most exciting time. Yes, expanded consciousness with its multiple synchronicities is speeding up and moving beyond the idea that is strange or weird or remarkable. In fact, telepathy and intuition are most important. Do not deny them when you experience them as they will help you move smoothly through this great transition. Some will experience them visually and some by senses or ideas popping into your head out of context. Pay attention!!!
We have now reached the point in time where we can accept things that we know or have heard and many of us are ready to accept the weighty responsibility that our thoughts have power. You all know about the experiments on plants proved In 1966, by Cleve Backster on the effect of human thought and intention on life forms. Tell experiment--(connected plant to detect changes and recorded when watered and put leaf in hot water, but when thought about burning leaf there was an instant huge reaction. ) Our cells can pick up emotions of other people. This perceptional communication goes on all of the time as an invisible, unrecognized field that interconnects all species. This is the now called Quantum mechanics/physics which includes nonlocality, noncontinuity, noncausality --particles
and instantaneous occurrence ---mother and child happenings--when mother wakes up or instantly knows that something has happened to her child.
How did I discover this widely recognized happening? On Christmas Day, I viewed “What the Bleep?” at my daughter’s Karen’s home. As the film closed, I realized that I knew about the content mainly from reading the Seth/Jane Robert's books during the 60’s which lead us to starting our Seth discussion group which any of you are welcome to attend.
Since I can only barely introduce you to some of the vast information that I have learned in this too short talk, I strongly encourage you can do a search for any of the topics that I am covering today. There are lots of sites and discussion groups on each topic e.g. Seth, What the Bleep?, Consciousness Evolution including The Journal of Consciousness Evolution and The Foundation for Conscious Evolution, the Mayan calendar, Galactic Alignment, and indigo and crystal children.
The next step in my breakneck journey was my recent Mayan/drum tour to the Yucatan during which I had repeated intense experiences to convince me that I am one of the announcers of this time and the need to teach shielding. So, synchronically , my hands picked up (just like you always find the right book to read at the right time) an old copy of Shift, The Institute of Noetic Sciences, founded by Edward Mitchell, one of the astronauts after returning from seeing earth from space (another big change in our worldwide perceptions.) In 2004, 3 years ago already, Barbara Marx Hubbard wrote an article entitled, “Conscious Evolutionaries: A New Breed of Global Citizen” and I subsequently bought her book "Conscious Evolution where she says, “The necessity to learn how to evolve and to choose consciously is an evolutionary imperative that has taken me and us by surprise!!” Then, of course, I noted that in our very own UU Rowe Camp, a workshop: “Awake and Aware: Lessons in Higher Consciousness: ancient wisdom now being revealed to empower people to become Conscious Creators.
In the 1940’s, the Mayan calendar was found to record 16.4 billion years of history, beginning with the big bang, ending December 21, 2012. And why is the Mayan calendar important? In the book “The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness” Johan Calleman states “Rather than being based on the physical movements of the earth, sun and planets, the Mayan calendar is a spiritual device that charts the evolution of consciousness driving human history and the steps we can take to align ourselves with the cosmic evolution toward enlightenment,” The Bible begins with The Fall whose meaning could be the advent of dual consciousness or halfness of mind. We are now in the age when rt. brain consciousness is rapidly developing creating wholeness and inclusion of the missing Native American knowledge. You have all heard that the Native American say that now is the time to reveal their wisdom.
We have now reached the point where creation is moving faster than our thinking mind’s capacity. This explains the massive amounts of stress we presently experience as time really is speeding up. Our survival, once dependent upon the thinking mind, now requires INTUITION and knowledge of shielding methods to help us cope with our increasing sensitivity, the increasing energy flows and our evolution to a higher frequency.
This being Easter Sunday, it is interesting to note that on Easter Sunday, April 21, 1519, Hernando Cortez arrived in Mexico. A new era began just as the Maya had anticipated through their calendars-- the nine Hells of 52 years each when their land and freedom were taken and disease and disrespect dominated. This lasted until August 16, 1987 - the date of the Harmonic Convergence when millions of people did ceremonies in sacred sites, praying for a smooth transition to a new era. From that 1987 date until now, we have been in a time when the focus on the materialistic world is slowly disappearing. We are at the cusp of the era when peace begins and people live in harmony with Mother Earth. This is the time in-between, a time of transition. As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global environmental destruction, social chaos and war.
According to the Mayan calendar, at sunrise on December 21, 2012 for the first time in 26,000 years!! (solstice alignments) the Sun will rise to conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way. Mayan Daykeepers view this as a rebirth. The start of a new era resulting from the earth aligning itself with the center of our Milky Way galaxy. This is known as the Galactic Alignment which happens every 13,000 years during equinoxes and solstices and would take another service to describe. --John Major Jenkins. This creates what is knows as the cosmic cross considered to be an embodiment of the Sacred Tree or the Tree of Life as remembered in most of the world's spiritual traditions. Some observers say this alignment with the heart of the galaxy will open a channel for cosmic energy to flow through the earth raising all to a higher level of vibration and create changes in DNA--increase in autistic and ADD children?
These creation cycles were written in clay tablets by Sumerian and Mesopotamian and in the ancient Vedic texts, that are the basis of Buddhism, Hinduism as the Kali Yuga, Sufism and Taoism. Now is a time of ascension, going from one level to the next higher level. Even the Internet creates a planetary consciousness as well as cell phones.
HOPI PROPHECY
There is a river flowing very fast
It is so swift there are those who will be afraid
They will try to hold onto the shore
They will feel they are being torn apart
And will suffer greatly
Know that the river has a destination
The elders say we must let go of the shore
Push off into the middle of the river
And I say see who in in there with you and celebrate
At this time in history we are to take nothing personally
Least of all ourselves
For the moment we do, our spiritual growth comes to a halt
The moment of the lone wolf is over
Gather yourselves together, as we are tonight
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration
We are the ones we have been waiting for
Ahoy!
Hans Selye defined stress in 1946 as the shift in consciousness began By 1999 it was moving much faster. For people who cannot shield themselves (cenote experience) from high frequency pulses such as compassion (such as over concern for the Iraq war) this is a wake-up call. A new world view is rising combining every field of study-quantum physics, cosmology, philosophy, anthropology, futurism, transpersonal psychology, the arrival of the indigo and crystal children, this is conscious evolution. We need to learn how to be responsible for the ethical guidance of evolution.
What are the signs of the this great change?
1. slavery ending
2. hippie movement, have a good day, I love you
3. democracy spreading
4. less hierarchy
5. needs and protection of children, balance of men and women in family, girls sports, child abuse, domestic violence, rape
6. women as political force,
8. respect for the diversity and many paths and absence of violence-- Jainism
10. information technology-IT--strong element of magic, appeals to young and born into, indigo/crystal children
11. understand sacred geometry and symbology
13. indigenous culture appreciation-
15. recent use of wholistic alternative medicine
16. Increasing Oneness--We Are All One and Life Has Purpose,
18. evil is created in the beholder by external projection of dualistic frames of consciousness, wars are people of different energies and levels of consciousness, need unitary mind. left brain reading and written scripture, Ben Ladin and Talaban do not embrace global unity or equality of gender,
19. decrease of US dominance, Iraq war--forgiveness instead of “eye for an eye” revenge
20. Conflict resolution and responsible communication could alter the social pattern of war. It is not the avoidance of conflict that leads to peace, it is the responsible and respectful handling of differences that establishes peaceful principles--STAR team
23. Buddhism planted seed of attaining enlightenment as life’s ultimate purpose, present in the moment, radiate joy, highly developed cosmic wisdom, free from inner conflict and ego, interested in promoting happiness and enlightenment
26. NDE is unconscious so how do remember? awareness occurs without a functioning brain
9. A single generation has witnessed a shift in perspective and awareness so fundamental that to look back is to recall a world of the blind. This alone represents a reorientation of human priorities that is and profoundly hopeful
WHAT TO DO
1. recognition of thought power, Cleve Backster plant experiment in 1966
2. intuition to be in the right place at the right time and believe that
3. You will want to include as many people as possible in sharing the news
4. energy shifts have to be experienced so be alert and aware of your own
5. Help is needed by broader groups to recognize the subconscious oneness and to teach shielding
6. accept that the amount of change in 1 year equals 20 years or 400 years before
7. 20” of meditation 2 x a day produces a thermostatic effect allowing the stressed nervous system to self-regulate. Meditation, yoga, tai chi, chanting, drumming
8. Recognize that a single generation has witnessed a shift in perspective and awareness so fundamental that o look back is to recall a world of the blind. This alone represents a reorientation of human priorities that is profoundly hopeful.
11. synchronicity can offer a new understanding of the role of consciousness in the physical universe
13. Use pronoia as an antidote for paranoia--universe is fundamentally friendly, life gives you exactly what you need when you need it. Know that being alive on the rough green and brown earth is the highest honor and privilege
14. ego is not consistent with unitary field of light, slay the ego to survive
15. thinking develops through resonance with evolving cosmic consciousness, Akashic Field or noosphere is thinking layer of the Earth maturing rapidly as a super organism combining our collective consciousness and capacities--CA Inst. of Integral Studies engages in collective spiritual practices to energetically shift the collective consciousness
Everyone is needed. You are not here without reason. Everyone has an important purpose. If you are living in this era, you have spiritual work to do. We live in a world of energy. An important task at this time is to learn to sense OR see the energy of everyone and everything.
If there is fear or doubt
That is not your intuition
Intuition is knowing
There is no fear. Only certainty.
You know what to do without thinking.
Message from Miguel, the Mayan shaman who taught us in the Yucatan--I
1. It is important to adjust vibration/frequency especially those connected with the mind/thoughts
2. Reharmonize body, soul and spirit as One because body is manifested at a different will.
3. Begin planet changes. There is a day in the future of big changes in planet. Will begin when we see a black dot in the sun--Venus transit, June, 2004
4. Now important to tell in a loud voice to Mother Earth that we love her, respect Her, our love is true, is from the heart. Say it out loud as She is listening for her children.
5. Invoke the name of the divinity everyday. Pray, make mantras, sing, (chant the vowels, do ritual, drum, write poetry, muse media/technology, participate in community events to share vision with the tribe, spiritual cinema reflects our evolution) because this is going to help us raise our vibrational frequency.
6. What is happening now, is something that is not the first time. The teachers who have been on earth announced this is coming and was the reason for their coming/messages.
Bruce Lipton---the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. --R. C. Henry
Everything vibrates and is in relation to everything else
The aboriginals tell us that knowledge is seeking us.
we live in exciting times when science and religion is meeting, a time of noetic consciousness or what Emerson called Oversoul
If you believe you can create, if you can create you can manifest.
Learn about the Law of Attraction and use it to manifest cosmic knowledge
quote from Marlee Matlin the deaf actress in "What the Bleep" who says this is the greatest thing that she learned from doing the film.
--"I’ve learned to eliminate things that don’t give me good energy."
Take courage friends,
The way is often hard, the path is never clear,
And the stakes are high.
Take courage
For deep down, there in another truth;
You are not alone---Wayne B Arnason, #698