Taking Jesus Back

¡Hola! Everybody...
Okay, so pending confirmation from my sister, we might move the picnic over to her house. It’s closer to public transportation for those who don’t have cars. I’ll be sending an email later today, so stay tuned.

Today? I’m taking Jesus back!

* * *

-=[ Kidnapping the Baby Jesus ]=-

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

-- Matthew 5:1-12 (New Revised Standard Version)

I have a friend, let’s call him Thomas. Thomas curses like a sailor, smokes cigarettes, occasionally enjoys getting his drink on, and is one of the funniest people I know. His commitment to social justice and the work he has done has done more to ease suffering than most people you will ever meet. He doesn’t “give a shit” about whether you accept Jesus as you savior or not. His main concern is your problem and how he can help you solve it.

Aside from the great work Thomas does what sets him apart from most of my friends is that Thomas is actually Father Thomas. He’s a priest and one of the most spiritually evolved people I have ever had the good fortune to meet.

One day I was speaking on social justice at a law school in Manhattan. It’s considered the top law school in the land (it competes yearly with Harvard for that distinction). After, during the question/ answer section, a gentleman rose and identified himself as being from the “faith-based” community and his question was to the point: “What can we in the faith-based community do to help stop the madness of mass incarceration.” My response was equally to the point: “Get up and tell the politicians to stop justifying these unjust policies in your God’s name. Tell them, ‘not in our name.’” I went on to explain that though I don’t identify as a Christian, I do know that a major theme as articulated in the life of Jesus is the concept of redemption.

This gentleman insisted we meet so that we could collaborate, and I accepted the invitation. However, when I looked at the program he was running, I immediately realized that this man wasn’t working toward social justice, he was pushing religion. A large part of his program involved coercing program participants into accepting Jesus as their savior, regardless of their spiritual backgrounds. When I visited some of his facilities, I knew I wanted no part of their program and let him know.

Two people, two Christians, each having a different impact on their communities.

I have no problem with another person’s faith. It’s none of my business. I do have a problem with individuals who, though they may like me, or respect my work in social justice, will continue to see me as incomplete because I will not accept Jesus as my savior.

As far as I’m concerned, this preoccupation with conversion experiences is a pathology. It is a plague on our nation and world.

As a young man, I remember learning from a Hindu teacher that all paths are valid. He taught that -- although they use different names and different religious methods -- they all point to the same goal. The poet Gibran described religions as fingers from the same hand.

For too long, we have allowed the neoconservatives to kidnap Jesus and twist his teachings to suit their particular brand of intolerance, injustice, and bigotry. We need to take back Jesus, developing a wider view of Christianity that includes respect not only for other religions but also for science, logic, and reason.

Many of you would think that the two, science and religion, could never be reconciled, but I dispute that claim. I believe spirituality speaks truths that are different from the truths of science. The bible should never be read literally. If you believe in a higher power, then you must certainly believe that higher power created human minds that could think critically and unearth the mysteries of the universe. Only a demented fool would stick to an idea even after it has been irrefutably dismantled. Still, many spiritual stories have metaphysical lessons to teach us -- truths that have nothing to do with science. Let science be science and spirituality be spirituality.

Evolution is a scientific theory like gravity, which has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Leave the child’s understanding of a universe created in six days behind, people. Personally, I do to believe in a Divine Hierarchy that must be prayed to in order to curry favor and so many of you would consider me an atheist or an agnostic., I am neither. I quite literally don’t give a fuck. My spirituality is more closely aligned to what would be called an evolutionary spirituality and no -- please! -- don’t come at me with that bullshit Intelligent Design! That’s not what I’m speaking of when I say evolutionary spirituality.

But I digress. What I want to talk about is a Christianity where science and religion are compatible. A Christianity that allows one to read the bible metaphorically rather than literally and respects the scientific method. Doubt, my friends, is the handmaiden of faith and love is the primary Christian value, and it is directly related to the promotion of liberty and social justice. There are many valid paths to the spiritual mountain and Christianity is only one of them.

I will address three hot button issues in the coming days and make a case for Christianity for those who identify as progressives or liberals. I will say this much, if you think what I have written above to be a pipe dream, please know that there at least 60 million Christians who identify with what I have written here today.

There is, after all, hope....

Love,

Eddie

Don't Go and Talk About my Father/ Mother [God is Love]

¡Hola! Everybody...
It’s Monday...

I find RE-posting the following extremely difficult today. Especially considering that our home-grown terrorists, fringe right CHRISTIAN fundamentalists, are rejoicing that their ideology has resulted the cold-blooded murder of yet another human being. My heart goes out to Dr. Tiller and his family, who was gunned down while he was worshiping in front of his wife and community. Slaughtered like an animal.

His crime? Exercising his constitutional rights in the service of others. May their jealous and vengeful God have mercy on the rotted souls of this mass pathological movement.

* * *

-=[ God is Love ]=-

“God is Love.”

-- Marvin Gaye song

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”

-- Jesus of Nazareth

When will we accept the Divine within our selves? The idea that we are more than sack of flesh may trouble some individuals. Others may think this idea just more New Age bullshit.

To others, the idea that we are part of the Divine spark may sound like blasphemy, even though my own investigations into the world’s religions, including Christianity and Judaism, contain passages, often overlooked, which clearly emphasize this very perspective.

Think about it: different cultures across different eras have come to the same conclusion, more or less. In addition, modern physics is beginning to sound very “spiritual” lately. Especially when looking at the very essence of all matter. The conclusion is so: that we are not separate from the rest of creation. Therefore, our very thoughts and beliefs have a power to impact on ourselves, our world, and those around us in ways we never knew.

In the creation story of the Jews and Christians, for example, God is portrayed as being the Creator. God creates out of his mind’s spoken desire: “And God said, let there be light... water... firmament,” and so on. Finally, God concludes by the creation of humankind “in his own image and likeness.”

Let’s look a little further at the teachings of various religions where God is seen as Love, and that we are of the same creative essence or Spirit of God:

Judaism:

“Love is the beginning and end of the Torah.”

“God created man in his own image and likeness.”

“I AM that I AM.”

Christianity:

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

“I and my father are one... You can be as I... Greater things than I have done, ye shall do.”

“We are all sons of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.”

“I am the vine and you are the branch.”

Hinduism:

“The individual soul is nothing in essence than universal soul.”

“Deep within abides another life, not the life of the senses, escaping sight, unchanging. This endures when all created things have passed away.”

Buddhism:

“Be lamps unto yourselves. Be a refuge unto yourselves. Seek not for refuge from anything but the Self. Desires and tendencies pass away.”

Islam:

“On God's own nature has been molded man’s.”

Sikhism:

“God is concealed in every heat; his light is in every heart.”

It’s amazing how the same themes run through each of the world's major religions: that God is love, and that we are of the same creative essence, or spirit, as God.

Yet, our small ego-centered minds fight in every way the recognition of our divine inheritance. You see this expressed everywhere: In psychology or in religious thought you will find the tendency to preserve our sense of separateness, littleness, and powerlessness.

Who and what we are is so magnificent that it is more than we would ever dare dream. We are at our core spirit expressed through flesh. Our Divine inheritance, which we have disowned, gives us all those qualities we have projected onto some “up-in-the-sky” god that is separate from us and full of an endless supply of love.

Folks, we are powerful, knowing, and present in ways we have only begun to understand. We are Love itself. Since it is only an illusion that we are separate from all this, we have never lost any of the qualities -- we just think we have. Nothing limits us as much as our beliefs -- negative or positive.

What happens when we take this perspective and apply it to our relationships? Can such a way of seeing the divine in ourselves help change our relationships, helping us to let go of a limited and narrow concept of self?

If you accept the bigger reality of your True Self, you will become more and more aware of your beliefs, your thoughts, and the connection between the two. In touch with your divine essence, you will learn to use an untapped source of power within -- not only to transcend your own personal suffering, but also to heal those many relationships based on the small, narrow sense of self.

Love,

Eddie

HULIA

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Sunday Sermon (Uncovering the Heart)

¡Hola! Everybody...
It’s a little cool here in the north, but life is good...

* * *

-=[ Uncovering the Heart ]=-

Your Heart [A work in progress]

A rare and beautiful bird
resides in the
nucleus of your heart.

Occasionally...

when I listen
to your silent painful pauses,
I can heart its song...

faintly.

It struggles within
its bejeweled prison --
bars of gold
And though it flutters its wings,
longing to be set free,
it sings its song.

Just now, I find myself
drinking in your smile
and I wonder...

that bird...

to hold that precious bird,
gently caressing it in my hands,
to feel its rapid heartbeat...

what joy...

Would you... ?

Let me set it free,
so it could soar
to sing its song
of freedom and love?

* * *

What counts is to strip the soul naked. Painting or poetry is made as we make love; a total embrace, prudence thrown to the wind, nothing held back.

-- Joan Miro

Uncovering the heart means exposing the very core of the self. For many of us, this is a scary move into unknown territory, though it is a part of our inner selves that we are uncovering. The heart symbolizes feeling and intuition. Though we may be fearful, the true danger is in the death, not the exploration, of the heart.

Sometimes our hearts remember, better than our analytical minds, the times and places of our deepest felt experiences. During times of crisis or personal breakdown, the heart insists on revealing itself to us; we are forced to pay attention. These are times of deep personal pain that most of us would rather avoid, because we fear that the load will be too much to bear -- that it may be possible to feel too much.

Just as it is possible to close our eyes and not see the world around us, we can also close our hearts. We do so at a great price: we may choose to live in a world of flat surfaces, a clinically dry and angular world seemingly sterile until we peer under its surface.

To undress the heart is to reveal our inner history -- a history forgotten or hidden. We may be paying a price for relegating powerful forces to the shadow world for it is there they hold greater power. One of the aims of depth psychotherapies is to help us rediscover our lost selves gradually and integrate them again into our whole personalities.

The language of the heart may seem illogical. But if we listen to it -- really listen to it without losing our heads -- we just might find the faintly shimmering message in it that what lies ahead is a new and better way of living. It is in this aspect that there is strength in living with a naked heart.

However, there is that fearful vulnerability also. We take a chance when we open to others. We can be hurt. We may ask ourselves if we are risking too much. Who wants to be open and vulnerable?

I have found that in my own life, some of the most rewarding examples of creativity have been those moments when my heart was uncovered, when I was able to emerge and address those unique yet universal experiences that bind us together in the human condition.

I have learned that the uncovered heart contains both vulnerability and strength. Its strength perhaps lies precisely in that ability to open itself to itself with an exquisite grace that invites the hearts of others to do so too.

Love,

Eddie

Relationship Thursdays (The Experiment)

¡Hola! Everybody...
The weather here lately has been fantastic! Now, the weather is apart from our estimation of the day, right.

Right?

Today: more jacked up shit about relationships from someone who isn’t in one! LOL

* * *

-=[ The Joyful Experiment ]=-

The Seven Factors of Awakening are mindfulness, investigation of phenomena, diligence, joy, ease, concentration, and letting go.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

People think I’m kidding when I tell them that if they come to my workshop they may very likely leave their relationships.

It never fails. I have yet to hold a workshop where someone doesn’t tell me they left a relationship as a result of what they experienced in my workshop... this is true.

My workshops have nothing to do with relationships per se, but I used to think that part of the reason was that if you hold yourself to certain standards, you begin to hold others to the same standards and those that refuse or cannot be accountable, naturally fall by the wayside. I now realize that’s only part of the reason.

The other part is love. This is where it gets tricky, however. I hear people all the time say, “Today I love myself,” implying a past in which that wasn’t true. That’s cool, I can dig that. However, what I often find with such individuals is that they’re in love with their egos -- especially the dysfunctional parts of their ego. This is not cool. Let me put it this way: if what you love is the dysfunction, then how does that change anything for the better? I see a lot of angry people walking around these days, irreversibly in love with their anger. LOL!

Actually, loving in that way is not really love, it’s a form of clinging, something many of us (myself included) mistake for love. Loving yourself is important, but the real skill lies in exploring what you consider your self to be. For me (and this is part of my theoretical orientation <-- smart-sounding phrase), coming back to love meant that my sense of self changed as I let go of limiting beliefs about my self. How I perceive that mess of entanglements, coincidences, and floating pieces of conditioned debris I call “my self” today is very different from how I saw that nineteen years ago. For one thing, it includes more of my world: there’s me, my loved ones, my community, my state, my nation -- the world! I am not separate from all that.

Therefore, part of genuinely loving yourself is letting go of those parts that bring you unnecessary pain. When you love, there’s no clinging, there’s only freedom -- pure consciouness. We don’t see love in that way. We love somebody only if they agree to love us back. Or if we have someone that loves us, we guard that love as if it were a rare commodity. The upshot being that we sometimes live in fear of losing that love. For me, that’s not love, that’s a form of psychosis. If your relationship is based on mutual need, eventually that relationship will fail. any relationship not based on love is on shaky ground to begin with.

I’m sure by now someone reading this will be shaking his or head and thinking that I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about and they may be right. However, how has it worked for you otherwise? I am aware of the internet phenomenon in which people who respond are sometimes perfect beings, were raised without hang-ups, are in perfect relationships, or used to be in “bad” relationships, but no longer are, and are well-adjusted, highly realized human beings. If you’re one of these individuals, then you shouldn’t read my blog, this is for the rest of us deeply fragmented, clueless, and mistake-prone mere mortals.

Life, for me, is an experiment; joy its intended result.

You can approach life as an artist/ scientist. Scientists take action and then observe the results. If that action does not bring the desired effect, they keep changing the actions until they find one that brings the results that are wanted. With an approach like this, you can observe the results of your actions and in that way move toward the desired result.

Let’s assume the desired result is joy. If you are experiencing pain, you can change what you do. You can also note which actions result in joy and expand on that expression.

As an artist, you can paint the picture of your life. If there are some elements, colors, or textures that do not fit your artistic vision of life, then it’s probably not working for you. Artists take risks and experiment in order to get in touch with their inner expression. Take the artistic risk and get in touch inside.

How?

Well, what ways have you tried in the past? How has going from one marriage to another, one relationship to another, worked for you? If your approach is to place the power of your vision externally (blaming others, God, etc.), the results -- joy -- will be limited by those outside factors. If your mood is dependent on whether it rains or not, for example, then it is safe to say that you’re going to be a crabby biatche a significant amount of the time.

Let's take loneliness. Oftentimes, we look for and stay in otherwise unrewarding relationships because we ant to avoid feeling lonely. Many people have confided in me that being with someone beats being lonely even if the relationship brings a lot of pain. My question then is: is that really true? How many times have you held someone in your arms and still feel a profound loneliness? Take a moment and look at everything you do and ask the question, “Does this bring me joy?” That is the only criteria to use, as you look at your life as an artistic scientist.

Love,

Eddie

AFFAIR

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