The Conclusion That Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Monday, February 9, 2009 at 07:00AM February 9, 2009
By Renee Payan Wong, Webmaster, Support4Change.com
Arlene will be on hiatus from the Support4Change Blog, while working on the Better Tomorrows Program. In the meantime, I will provide you with what I think of as Arlene’s “Greatest Hits.”
A perspective on evaluating faith and religion by noticing the effect they have on words and behavior.
This article was originally meant to be the last part of An Agnostic’s Encounter With God on Support4Change.com. After describing the experiences that eventually led me to decide there really is a transcendent Spirit with which I can be connected and of which I am a part, I wanted to set down my beliefs.
However, as I began to write down my spiritual philosophy, I realized a better word than “beliefs” was the term “conclusions.”
You see, one can have a belief without any personal experience. All one has to do is accept what someone else says is true and viola! you have a belief. Ready made. Assembled and complete. No experience necessary. But my perspectives have arisen from many years of questioning and experience.
Now before some of you become offended, let me assure you that accepting beliefs on faith alone isn’t a bad thing. For almost a third of my life I believed what I had been told and followed a faith that has given comfort and solace to many, many people. I also recognize that when people say “I believe such-and-such,” it doesn’t automatically indicate they haven’t arrived at that belief through experience. Often we accept something at first as a belief and later come to experience it as true.
In any case, tomorrow I may change my conclusions as the result of other experiences, but for today the following are some ideas of what I believe are true, or at least they make sense to me. I share them with you and invite you to share your conclusions with me.
1. Human beings are intrinsically multi-dimensional.
We are composed of a physical body that allows us to function in the world, a mind that can think and reason, an emotional component that allows us to experience pleasure, suffer pain, and understand the feelings of others, a social drive to connect with and share ideas with others, and what might be called a spiritual instinct to go beyond the ego and connect our individual lives with something greater and more long-lasting than the self.
2. There are no adequate words to describe what people refer to as “God.”
That which we call “God” is a mystery if we imagine Him-Her-It as a being who created the universe and all of life. If we refer to the essence that transcends human experience as a “no thing” because it (or, in this context, a “non it”) is beyond conceptualization, the whole business is still a mystery. Nevertheless, I use the word “God” to convey a small sense of what I experience when I feel in touch with that essence. (See Why Do I Believe I Am Connected With God or Spirit? and Explaining a Spiritual Experience at Support4Change.com)
To say “God wants this” or “God’s purpose is” or to make any statement that supposes the speaker claims to know what God thinks is, in my view, wishful thinking. Perhaps that person has an idea of what he or she believes God would want or think if God fit his or her image of a divine being. But we’ll never know the mind of God. If we did, we’d be that power we call God. And while there may be a sense of God that we believe resides in our hearts, it seems to me that if the essence of God is like a vast ocean, we are but a drop in that ocean. Pretending we know what the whole ocean is like or how it operates is a fair approximation of narcissism.
Another way I think of myself in relation to “God” or the essense of life is to compare myself with a cell in my body. Every cell is important. The white blood cells are no more essential than the skin cells that keep my insides from falling out. The brain cells may think they’re important, but they wouldn’t function without blood vessel cells that bring oxygen to keep them alive. And so on and so forth. If I am a “cell” of the body or essence of God, there are many ways I am connected with that being and I am as valuable as — but not more than — the next person.
3. How we live is far more important than what we say we believe.
Saying you believe in the tenets of any faith is like saying you believe you can swim. Okay. You either can swim or you can’t. Believing you can doesn’t count. What do you do with that belief? For example, believing that humans are at the top of the evolutionary ladder — OR — that humans have been created by God to be the caretaker of this earth is neither here nor there. These positions are simply beliefs, although they may be felt very strongly by persons on either side of the issue. The question in either case is, “What do we do with our superior position?” Do we trample on creatures we consider beneath us? Do we treat the world with reverence? Those are, for me, far more important matters than what we believe.
How we act is a direct expression of our core beliefs. What we say we believe is not important. So you can tell a person’s beliefs by their actions. “I am a Christian,” says the man who cheats on his wife and excuses his actions because his faith tells him he is “saved.”. “I will go to paradise,” says the suicidal terrorist who believes he is following Allah’s wishes and kills the innocent. For me the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. When someone claims to be religious, but does not express spiritual qualities such as peace, joy, acceptance, love, and generosity, I am not impressed with their beliefs, especially when they lack compassion for other human beings (even those with whom they strongly disagree).
4. I don’t understand prayer, but I pray.
Recent serious studies seem to suggest that prayer sometimes “works” in the sense that some people get better when they are prayed for. But no one has explained prayer to my satisfaction. And the statement that “God always answers prayer” doesn’t make sense if prayer is asking for something.. Either we get what we want or we don’t. If we do, we can say God granted our wish. If we don’t, we can say God’s answer was to not grant our wish. But in any case, I suspect an all-knowing God doesn’t need supplicants to tell Him what they want. He-She-It already knows.
The best way I can describe prayer, at least in the way I experience it, is to say that it is being open to Spirit and desiring to know the best that “the spiritual powers that be” can offer me in my limited ability to accept and understand. You see, when I am in “prayer” or “meditating,” it is as though I have chosen to enter a large sacred building or residence of a wise and loving being (or as the Buddists would say, a non-being). I begin that experience by sitting still and saying (sometimes aloud but quietly and sometimes just in my thoughts), “I am here. Here I am.” And then, mostly, I wait for the sense that I am in touch with something that is larger than myself, something I refer to as God, Spirit, transcendence.
When I am receptive to having my soul expand, to knowing what I need to know to be the person I want to be, to help me live by my highest ideals and to solve the puzzles and conflicts of my heart, something always happens. There is a crack in the veneer I present to the world and an awareness that my ego cuts me off from the very connections with others that I desire. My heart expands and answers I need come, sometimes softly and sometimes with great force, into my awareness. (See Why Do I Believe I Am Connected With God or Spirit?)
Perhaps the most significant part of prayer for me is an underlying sense of gratitude for all I have that I don’t deserve and that is given freely for my use, such as air and life itself. When I sit down for breakfast with food and newspaper in front of me, I close my eyes and give thanks for the thousands of people who have made my breakfast possible, from the guy who pumps gas for the man who delivers the paper to my door to the film maker who creates the camera that allows the photographer to take the pictures that tell the stories I will read in the paper. (This line of gratitude is one I plan someday to write more about, because I find it fascinating to notice how widely my gratitude can extend.)
Sometimes I ask for help for someone, although I suspect “the powers that be” already know that my friend or family member could use a little assistance. Although the clinical evidence does indicate there can be a real physical benefit when a person prays for someone else, I rather suspect the primary benefit is to the one doing the praying. Why? Because expressing qualities of the human spirit seems to improve our over-all well-being and, as I’ve often said, compassion is definitely the top of the list of qualities.
In any case, when I pray for others, my prayer is often similar to one I learned recently at a Kundalini Yoga class. I will say the names of those about whom I’m concerned and then will say something like, “May the long-time sun shine upon them. May all love surround them. And may the pure light within them guide them on their way.” Sometimes I’ll add, “I’m not sure if that’s the way prayer works, but whoever or whatever is taking requests, this is mine.”
My approach to prayer will change, of course, as my understanding expands. But for the moment, this brief explanation is the best I can do.
5. Forgiveness is a cleansing quality, a spiritual tonic, a relief for resentment, and a gift you give yourself as well as others.
I don’t always put into practice what I preach. I miss the mark as often as the next guy and my ego can get me in a lot of trouble. So I know a bit about guilt and regrets. But I’ve also learned about forgiveness. This is what I believe on that topic. Since I don’t believe we are born in sin, I don’t believe we require God’s forgiveness to make us clean. However, our ego invests a great deal of effort in being right and in defending our position, so it can take a long time to learn how to forgive, how to apologize, and how to accept forgiveness and apologies.
6. Many New Age beliefs seem far too simplistic and also far more convoluted than necessary.
What benefit is there to believing I “chose” my parents before I was born, that I cause everything that happens, or that all experiences are “designed to teach me a lesson?” I may learn from what happens and I am responsible for my reaction to the hand I’m dealt, but there’s a certain narcissism in wanting to believe I set up or co-created the world. And I wonder how such a philosophy feels to slaves and those who live their entire lives under tyranical rulers. Why would they set up their lives that way?
Also, I see no need for reincarnation. There is enough misery AND joy in this life-time to more than fill my time and energy. I don’t have to borrow from the past or the future. I do good deeds not because I want to create good “karma,” but because it’s the right thing to do. By the same token, I believe it is wrong to kill because I want my actions to affirm life — not because I want to avoid the wrath of God, as more traditional religions would affirm.
Now, if you have accepted New Age as an alternative to the religion in which you were raised, I imagine you have a perfectly good reason why you feel your beliefs are true. It’s just that these ideas wouldn’t help me be a better person. And, I must confess, I don’t think they particularly help those who ascribe to New Age ideas either. I’ve had several good friends who accept these beliefs and I notice they aren’t any happier or well adjusted or kinder than are relatives and friends who ascribe to Christian fundamentalist beliefs.
Again, I come back to the idea that it’s how you live, how you treat your fellow human beings that makes the difference. To the extent that beliefs help you become more compassionate and express other spiritual qualities, those beliefs can be extremely valuable. To the extent that they offer an excuse for self-centered actions or elevate one group of people over another, they only add to the problems of the world.
7. I don’t know what happens after death.
As I have said before, I’m not impressed with a creator who designs the world in such a way that it’s difficult to figure out what He wants from those he creates — and then throws his creation into a pit of eternal pain and suffering because they weren’t smart enough or fortunate enough to figure out his rules. Even when hell is depicted as a condition in which men and women aren’t physically tormented but are unable to experience the love and mercy of God because He turns his back on non-believers, the whole concept assumes we mortals know far more than we possibly can about such matters. All I know is that I don’t believe the God I experience would act that way. Of course, I don’t pretend to know very much about what God will do with any of us after we’re dead.
Nevertheless, I believe the soul of the individual somehow lives on. Perhaps we all meld into a great mass of spirit that has a purpose in the universe we can’t yet understand. Is that because I want it to be so? Maybe. But studies of near-death experience in which people report meeting a family member on “the other side” — one whom they didn’t know existed — have pretty much convinced me that we exist in some form. Further, I am interested in the fact that so many of them, when talking about a “being of light” they meet after going through a tunnel of some kind, say they were not asked if they were members of a particular religion. They weren’t asked if they had a lot of money in the bank. They weren’t asked how much power and authority they yielded. Rather, they were simply asked two questions. Did you learn? Did you love? Not a bad basic for a belief system.
Nevertheless, I don’t have any more idea what an individual person’s experience will be like than an unborn baby floating in his mother’s womb could fathom about the world into which he will be born.
8. What I hope is true but probably isn’t.
I wonder if the powers that got the universe started, and may or may not still have a hand in how things are run, understand how difficult it is to figure out this life, this mystery, we’ve been given on this planet. Wouldn’t it be a great idea if, in appreciation for how hard we have to struggle for understanding, that He-She-It, this concept-beyond-conceptualization, at least gave us a break when we arrive in the hereafter? Wouldn’t it be nice if this entity fixed it so that for the first two weeks after we die we could attend an orientation coure and ask all the questions we want?
I suspect we’ll be very surprised at the answers.
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