WillSpirit!

I’ll get back to the ‘spiritual series,’ probably. But at the moment I’m unsure about blogging as a pastime. The other day, reading online about blogging splashed me with cold reality. One article: ’10 Reasons Why Your Blog Sucks.’ My blog satisfies all ten. Other pieces discussed how AwStats overestimates traffic (a fact I’d already guessed, but somehow had deluded myself into ignoring until I saw it spelled out,) and how blogging is ‘so yesterday.’ Today, the trendy use Twitter and FaceBook. It figures that I didn’t start until blogging was already dying. No matter. In the past few days I’ve changed my outlook. The need for income presses, so I’m looking for what will pay off. Blogging let me try out different types of writing with little risk, and see if anything caught on, or motivated me to keep going. Nothing did catch on. But the writing all feels good to me, and I know there has to be some way to make it pay. In searching online for jobs, I see work in medical writing. Although many ads seek freelance writers of all sorts, some firms advertise for full time medical writers. Not that I want, or could even tolerate, full time employment. But if there are corporations hiring, there must be more work in medical writing than in some other arenas. It’s not what I most want to do. I’d rather share what I’ve experienced and learned in life. Recovering from child abuse and adult disappointments. Psychiatric fiascos, spiritual breakthroughs, and a few therapies that actually helped. But the field of self-help, motivational writing is saturated. Who doesn’t have a story to tell? My education gives me an ‘in’ to medical writing. Although many doctors are jumping ship and trying out writing and other pursuits, the field looks less competitive than those that don’t require a specialized background. So for the time being I’m investigating this route, and not blogging as much. By the way, if any one reading (if anyone is reading,) has suggestions for how to proceed, I would dearly love to hear them.

When younger, I never worried about success. If I applied myself, my grades stayed high. Scholastic achievements translated into acceptance to the next stage of training. Through a series of steps, education led to good jobs. Nothing to it.

Times have changed. A decade of unemployment and mental illness has stripped me of possibilities and confidence. How can someone with a medical degree from a top university worry about work? Easily. It boils down to the stock Hollywood question, “what have you done, lately?” I’ve been out of work for most of ten years. And how many ophthalmic plastic surgery skills can be used in other jobs? Not many.

Better than before, I understand the plight of the poor. Childhood abuse convinced me I’m nothing special, so it’s not like I was an arrogant surgeon who thought lowly of those ‘beneath’ me. But it’s one thing to understand that underachievement is not a reflection on worth when you look at it from the outside, and another when you have to face it in yourself. I find it impossible to separate my unemployment from my self-esteem.

Neck problems ended my surgical career at age forty-two. As I’ve said elsewhere, losing my job, status, and pay landed me in psychiatric wards. Afterwards, an incompetent psychiatrist pushed me to accept ‘retirement.’ There are few things worse for a middle-aged man than to be told he is too mentally ill to work. That message undermined the attempts I made at employment. I now see that my doctor was wrong, but it is hard to reconstruct a working life after years of inactivity.

I’ve been driving myself (even more) crazy with this problem. How will I support my wife? What can I possibly do to earn an income? How will we survive? Creative writing will not feed us. Maybe technical writing? But can get into that field at this age, without experience? Do I even want to? Should I teach biology in high school instead? Could I stand it? Would I be any good? Where do I begin? What should I do? There are hundreds of demoralizing questions.

The confusion tires me so much I can hardly imagine doing anything productive. I feel fury at myself for wasting youthful time and energy learning medicine, when I knew it wasn’t right for me. Trying to build a career in my fifties, after ten years of failure and sickness, feels overwhelming and impossible.

It must be worse for those who’ve never achieved at a high level. Success must look like a pipe dream. For those burdened with depression, failure snowballs into despair all-too-easily. How many people out there feel hopeless and uncertain about what to do?

The solution must be to do a little at a time. For me, it meant starting this blog. I know my writing is too wordy, my topics inconsistent. I know my promotion skills are poor, and the product amateurish. But it keeps me writing. I remain busy while I work things out. It’s a small step, but it’s a step. If I can write 150,000 words in six months, then I should be able to make an income as a writer. Maybe not with a memoir or spiritual text, but perhaps writing science articles or even medical editing. Who knows? At least I’ve proven that I like to sit at the computer, and fashion language.

For my Christmas Eve image, something I found on CreativeCommons fit my view of the Holiday that supposedly celebrates the birth of Jesus. As someone who never had a good Christmas growing up (the first of many disasters is briefly chronicled in the memoir fragment about my stepmother on this site,) I confess to lacking an elevated view of the occasion. But the picture I found conveys a lovely symbol of the true heart of the season. Because December 24th is the birthday of someone close to me, I wanted to put up an attractive image. Today, I can say what’s really on my mind.

Rockefeller Center portrays the dream of American capitalism, built as it was when the ultimate outcome remained unknown. Imposing in its elegance, the buildings and courtyards spoke at the time to the rising power of this nation. Even though the economy was wrecked, then as now, the rich still invested in this country, and there were reasons to hope for the future. The display today rings a little hollow, despite the gloriously optimistic angels, proclaiming the approach of something grand. They put on a good show.

This nation’s Christmas tradition revolves around the myth of abundance. We have so many material resources, our fantasy goes, that we can cut down a whole tree for decoration, burn electricity to decorate it, and (most importantly) give useless and expensive gifts. The gifts. Last in my sentence, but really the whole point. We need this event, the media tell us, in order to fuel our economy. How much we fail to spend this year, versus times past, gives a measure of our financial illness. It’s the ‘shopping season.’

I went shopping. A few days ago I found myself at WalMart, my least favorite store. It’s necessary for my wife and I, like many, to save on household goods and every other thing. So from time to time we go to WalMart, which exemplifies the current state of American capitalism in much the same way that Rockefeller Center reflects its long-past heyday.

I get depressed in WalMart because I see so many sad-looking and impoverished people spending their scarce resources on crummy junk, all of which is manufactured in other countries. Thanks to the ‘free market,’ few factories remain in the United States, and before long a large percentage of skilled work will also be outsourced. So the store brims with underpaid Americans, dutifully spending before Christmas, with all their money going to other nations, and (especially) the rich.

The United States has a crumbling tax base, and yet our government has borrowed obscene amounts of money. Despite the complaints leveled against Obama, the bulk of it went to pay for the Iraq war long before he got elected. Then the Wall Street bailout slapped our collective faces. After decades of insisting the ‘free market’ would assure our future, and decrying any attempt by ‘big government’ to protect American jobs, the fat cats who benefitted demanded that the government rescue them from the effects of their own stupidity and greed.

I’ve waited a long time for Congress to return to the idea that it’s healthy for a nation to spend money to benefit the average person. But the Iraq War and the bailout cost so much, and racked up so much debt, that it’s easy for the ‘usual suspects’ to argue we can’t afford to heal our society. Naturally, they brush aside the fact that the same right wing forces who insisted on a balanced budget back in the Clinton era (causing loss of many social supports,) soon after pushed for the Iraq war that cost vast sums and accomplished nothing besides enriching private contractors. And that these same narcissistic elements, having gotten the endless war they desired, now say we’re out of money and can’t spend the comparatively small amount needed to assist those who struggle within our borders.

Oh well. I don’t want to make this a political blog. It’s just that after an afternoon at WalMart, and following a visit with a mentally ill relative who can’t get healthcare, I feel disgusted by the way we’ve been cheated. I had to rant. Now I’ll shut up and get back to my usual content.

This post was altered in several places on 2009-12-25 @ 12:25 PST.

This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

A comment on the previous post reminded me to bring Jung into the discussion. I mentioned him once in the context of serendipity, but it is vital to emphasize that Jung’s ideas have influenced me greatly. I’m going to devote this post to a little background about how I came to this project, and what I can realistically claim to be original (here’s the short version: very little.) This entry adds nothing to my developing argument, and can be skipped without any loss of continuity.

My interest in spiritual issues began in 1987, when I attended my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Because the word ‘God’ seemed to pop up all over the place, I recognized a need to examine my philosophy. From the beginning, I decided my desire for sobriety outweighed my lifelong reluctance to believe in God. Raised as an atheist, faith in divine forces never seemed sensible to me. My father drummed into my head his opinion that religion encourages infantile fantasy, promulgates outdated mythology, and primarily serves to keep the ‘masses’ under control. As a counterweight, I had been partially raised by devout Christian grandparents. But my dad’s education and analytical skills convinced me. I tried to be respectful toward my grandparent’s views, but I considered them nonsense.

Coming into AA forced a change. I knew faith would help me. It would liberate me from substance abuse, and alleviate my despair. The problem was, I could not ‘buy’ religious notions. They seemed too unlikely in light of what science classes had taught me about the evolution of life and the formation of the universe. My prospects for finding a spiritual community seemed bleak. But by good fortune, I had just moved only four blocks from the Friends Center in Manhattan. My maternal ancestors were all Quakers/Friends so I had a natural interest in the group. Quakers worship in near total silence, and put forward no dogma. Although nominally Christian, modern Friends leave you free to believe anything you wish. That was just what I needed.

So I started going to weekly Quaker meetings. Because the Friends promote no creed, the onus was on me to find my spiritual path. That initiated a twenty-plus-year journey of reading, meditation, and spiritual exploration. I tried a bit of Buddhism. At one point I converted to Catholicism. In efforts to understand the cosmos and my place in it, I read many ‘popular’ books about the physics of the early universe, quantum mechanics, string theory, and so on. Continuing a habit that began in high school, I studied evolution, genetics, molecular biology, etc. I also took up Jung, Freud, and a few other prominent figures in psychology. Naturally, I read and reread William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience. Everything aided my urgent search for a spiritual philosophy that would protect me from self-destruction, and also make sense from a scientific standpoint. One of the first obstacles came from the tragedy and cruelty that floods our world. I felt convinced that a ‘God’ that was both loving and all-powerful would never permit such suffering. That species of deity dropped off the menu early on. Over the years I sculpted my concept of divine presence out of my accumulating mass of facts, using both reflection and insights gained through meditation. I tried to shape a faith that made scientific and personal sense to me.

In 2000 I experienced a series of religious ‘visions’ in the context of manic-depression. These amplified my spiritual awareness for several years. Over time the intensity of those psychic events faded, and the faith they generated was forced to accommodate an understanding that the ‘visions’ might just have been a kind of seizure in my brain. This did not rule out the possibility that divine forces had been active, but did entail weighing the value of subjective religious sensations. After all, dreams happen nightly and also stimulate emotional and sensory effects. The mind has the capacity to generate internal phenomena that lack reference to ‘reality.’ Had what I experienced brought me in contact with supernatural influences or not? It’s a difficult question, and I’ve been pondering it for almost a decade.

This post is meant to explain that because I’ve been contemplating these concepts for so long, and read so many different ideas about them, I cannot name all the influences on my philosophy. Jung is an obvious one, but there are many others, including some I’ve forgotten. My memory for names and sources is poor, and I worked only to find contentment, not to develop an academic treatise. One thing is certain: little of what I write is entirely original. I inserted a disclaimer into my first post in this series, but it went in after the entry had been up for several days. Few people probably saw it. I suggest you follow the link in the previous sentence, but the gist is that the only thing I can reasonably claim is that my way of organizing these thoughts is my own. To my knowledge, no one has used an identical set of principles to justify belief in a divine presence. But even that I need to say cautiously. It remains possible that someone else has already done this exact same thing, and my unbalanced reading program has missed it. Many brilliant and well-educated people currently write about spirituality and philosophy, and this has been true for centuries. However, most of my reading has been in biology, physics, and psychology, in that order. My education in religion and philosophy remains rudimentary by comparison. I am quite sure that my efforts look amateurish, and it would not surprise me to discover that my work is ‘reinventing the wheel.’ The only thing I can be absolutely sure of is that the text and phrasing are my own.

Not that it matters much at this time. My goal is to organize a system that works, and primarily one that works for me. I am not seeking to break new ground. Despite brief bouts of grandiosity, I am well aware of my limitations, and the unlikelihood that this project will amount to more than brief amusement for a few people.

If in the future I decide to organize my project into a book, I will need to know what others say about how to ‘believe’ without giving up rationality or common sense. A book would require attention to the history of spirituality as seen through the lens of science. At this time I have a cloud of information and ideas, but only vague notions about where it came from, or how it relates to preexisting work. That would need to be corrected if I took this to the stage of seeking publication.

However, I doubt that will happen. Unless I have reason to expect a real audience for my spiritual musings, I will take them to completion on this site and then move on. At this time, although the blog statistics are rising, they remain embarrassingly low. One day Google recorded one hundred and seventy entries to my site from searches on the phrase, ‘WillSpirit,’ tempting me with optimism. But the statistics dropped the next day, forcing the conclusion that the jump in numbers was a glitch. Since a book is unlikely, I feel comfortable with my lackadaisical attitude toward sources and citation. But please don’t mistake my laziness for any mistaken belief on my part that I am exploring radically new ground.

My goal is to organize what I have learned. First, it helps me find peace. Second, I feel a sense of obligation to help others. So I try. Perhaps my writing won’t make any difference to anyone, but by casting my thoughts into cyberspace, I’ll have done my best to fulfill the ‘calling’ that has nagged me since I had my spiritual ecstasies back in 2000. If they find traction with a readership, I will be wonderfully fulfilled. If they don’t, I’ll have the satisfaction of having given structure to the musings that started in 1987, when I found a way to escape my addictions. A way based on faith.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

Isolated and alone. Doesn’t that sound sad? The phrase makes me think of a frail and ancient man or woman, sitting in front of the TV by hirself (his- or herself,) day after day. No one visits, no one calls, no one cares. And yet, at heart, every one of us lives alone. We may be blessed with a large family and circle of friends. We may have a spouse who really cares, and with whom we spend most of our time. But deep down, we know that we must rely on ourselves. Those with a big social network are more fortunate than those without, but no one has the luxury of escaping the feeling of being an island unto oneself.

What if there were a consciousness that connected us? What if our personalities did not echo pointlessly within our skulls, unremarked by the cosmos, forgotten at the moment of our death? What if, instead, they formed a connection with every other mind in the universe? Instantly. No matter what the separation. Maybe even across the fields time. Would that help ease the pain of isolation?

I am not talking about thought transfer or telepathy. I do not believe in mind-reading or even ESP. I am not even saying the conscious network this post is postulating actually exists. But first of all, I think it’s a possibility. And secondly, I do believe it would help.

It could be real without our immediate awareness. The inner thought-stream that characterizes human life is a new phenomenon, probably unshared by all the animal species that preceded us. It may be a form of data processing that has separated itself from the primary stream. You might use the analogy of a personal computer and the Internet. You can perform many functions locally using your processor and local drive, without transferring information to or from the web. But the potential for connection remains, and for all you know there may be all kinds of electricity moving back and forth without your word processing software being affected. Our individual minds may function in isolation much of the time, but maintain a potential for connection. Or our verbal thoughts may click along without any awareness that a connection exists at deeper, more hidden levels.

Probably, this connection would not be the sort that transfers complex information. In fact, since I am postulating instantaneous connectedness, no data in the usual sense can be transferred at all, or the system would violate the fundamental principle that information cannot move through the universe faster than light. What gets connected is just presence, kinship, alikeness. What happens to me happens to you because we are one.

That’s enough for now. What I just did was spell out a little bit more of the sort of BIOPE the universe permits. I am not saying that such a connection is definitely present. I am only suggesting that it could be. And at this stage you’ll need to take my word for it. As I proceed the series will, I hope, justify these statements. But I need to introduce the idea here because I want to continue the theme of ‘Faith Works’.

The second in my list of three ways that Faith Works was: ‘by easing the pain of isolation.’ If a BIOPE functions in anything like the way I just described, we can take comfort that we are not alone. If there is a connection that ripples through the cosmos, which makes the traumas you suffer mine, and the triumphs I suffer yours, and vice versa, then we do not need to feel so isolated.

In fact, people accept connectedness all the time, without describing it in the way I’ve done. Heroes yield their lives for the benefit of others, because they know that in some way all fates are intertwined. The hero may die in body, but hir actions live on. Hir bravery gets remembered for a long time. The consequences, the lives saved, ripple outward indefinitely. One person’s sacrifice benefits the very person who seems to be giving up everything. How? The hero understands that all fates are one. S/he may not use the kind of ‘universal consciousness’ metaspeak I’m employing. But the connection is felt, is known.

Recently I finished reading a textbook about the evolution of behavior. Much if not all altruism can be explained as, in one way or another, increasing the odds of an organism passing its genes onward into subsequent generations. Does that change what I’m saying? Not really. Passing genes onward is just another way of passing on one’s effects, one’s existence. Just because altruistic behavior has evolved randomly, its impact remains the same. If anything, it shows the propensity of matter to connect to other matter through time.

These are very abstract concepts. I will try to explain them in more concrete language further on. Again, my point is just to suggest that connection between beings is real. On the physical level it cannot be denied. Whether there is a unifying and nonmaterial conscious network, a BIOPE, is speculative, to say the least. Either way, however, we can take comfort that our isolation is not as total as it seems. We are part of something grand. We are connected to all other matter and living things. Our actions, every one of them, have consequences. Even individual thoughts have a way of leaking outward. If I tell myself life sucks, I’m alone, and nothing good will ever happen to me, sooner or later I will communicate that sentiment to others. It might only be by revealing a momentary facial expression, or an unconscious sigh. Even if its effect is tiny, every action has physical consequences. The fact that all our actions affect the universe forever is a sign of our deep connectedness on the material plane. My suggestion is that the interaction continues beyond material frames, and through them, to something more mysterious. Something that lies at the very root of matter, at the level where physicists scratch their heads because the mathematics gets almost impossibly complicated, and the implications too strange to grasp.

Let’s back up. Imagine an alcoholic enters AA, and soon after has a spiritual experience of some kind that makes hir think that a higher power exists. S/he gets a feeling of universal love that thrills hir heart for just a moment. The feeling passes, but leaves the alcoholic with the belief that s/he has connection with a loving presence that is never far. Suddenly, the heart feels less alone. There is a sense that the universe is less scary. And this lucky person realizes that if this ‘presence’ loves hir, the s/he could learn to love hirself. In fact s/he should do so out of respect.

That is a major benefit of faith. The person who enjoys that kind of spiritual enlightenment might write it off as a momentary dream-like state, or a hallucination. In fact, s/he probably will wonder about that often. But if s/he maintains belief, s/he will feel better. Isolation will melt away. Maybe just for a moment now and then, but enough to ease the drumming pain of loneliness. Enough for the suffering person to have hope. Enough to make another day in this cosmos bearable without a chemical to numb away the sorrow of feeling isolated from others.

Note that this benefit accrues even if the BIOPE does not exist. Just the belief that love spreads its perfume through the universe, sweetening the days of everyone, is enough. The scent could be imaginary. The universe could be heartless and uncaring. But if I believe otherwise, I feel lifted up. Thus, the second fruit of faith, the easing of the pain of loneliness, comes even if no mystical threads exist. Belief alone is enough.

Once again, I have to suggest that if faith can make one feel better in this way, then perhaps it does not matter whether the BIOPE, or ‘God,’ exists. Maybe we would do well to allow ourselves a little leeway, and have faith knowing full well it could be based on nothing more ‘mystical’ than the fact we share this universe with others whose welfare is intertwined with our own. What would be the harm?

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

This post will discuss why faith leads to more effective choices in life. First, lets do a little review and clarification of what’s been said so far.

You’ll recall that we’re taking on the first of what I initially called ‘cornerstones,’ but then changed to ‘keys.’ They are facts that I believe can be established with no violence to science or common sense. Some are even demanded by both. If one is so inclined, these keys lead one to a place where belief in a divine presence becomes possible. They do not create faith, they just remove the sorts of blockages that keep rational people from enjoying the benefits of belief. They open a door, but it is up to us to walk through.

I did not like ‘cornerstones’ because the term hazarded suggesting my aim is to build a theology. To attempt that would be silly. I can’t tell anyone what ‘God’ is, because I don’t and can’t know. BIOPE, my clumsy acronym, serves as a list of qualities that a spiritual entity probably should possess to warrant our embracing it as a guiding force. They also happen to be qualities I believe science and common sense allow. But they should not be construed as a description of ‘God.’

It’s like saying, ‘I want to know if whales might exist. For the purposes of making that determination, I will define a whale as a mammal that lives its entire life in water, and most of its time beneath the surface. Because of this definition, I know that what I’m considering must be able to hold its breath for long periods, bear live young underwater, and nurse its offspring with milk while submerged. My goal is to decide if such a creature could exist, using known facts about mammals, the properties of air and water, etc. Even if I demonstrate that such an animal might exist, I won’t know if it actually does. And although I can put some constraints on the animal’s shape and a few other features, I can’t know exactly what it looks like or how it’s constructed.’

The ‘keys’ are truths that one can use to see how a divine presence might exist. They do not prove the existence of anything like a BIOPE, they just allow you to believe in one if you wish. Same as with the whale example, the known facts put some constraints on the nature of any divine presence, but they do not describe this putative entity beyond those limits. By the way, they also allow one to formulate a couple of testable predictions that should hold true if the hypothetical BIOPE is real. Some of these have been tested in other contexts, and provide (weak) evidentiary support for divine forces. It cannot be overemphasized that the keys are only permissive. They say a BIOPE might exist, but do not prove it. We can compare them to the facts one might use to prove the possibility of whales: mammals have the ability to close off their air passage and hold their breath; fur and/or fat would permit maintenance of body temperature even in cold water; provided the baby whale could be brought to the surface promptly, there is nothing in the birthing process that would be prevented by submersion; and so on. With enough of these, one can be pretty sure that whales are not impossible, but that does not prove their existence. The ‘keys‘ for the BIOPE function in exactly this way.

The first on the list of keys is ‘Faith Works.’ Last time I started describing the ways that faith works, and I listed three that immediately come to mind:

• By motivating effective behavior.
• By easing the pain of isolation.
• By providing meaning.

The list is not meant to be exhaustive; it would not be hard to come up with a long column of benefits that arise from faith. My list simply organizes those rewards into three large groups for the sake of discussion. The last post started off with the first item on the list: spiritual faith helps people run their lives in a way that benefits all. I used Alcoholics Anonymous as an example. In AA, the alcoholic is encouraged to seek a relationship with a ‘higher power.’ The first three of the famous twelve steps deal with accepting the existence and acceding to the care of ‘God.’ Countless AA members attest that following these guidelines has helped them make choices that were good for the course of their own lives, and for the well-being of others. It can hardly be argued that ceasing the abuse of alcohol represents a good decision by an alcoholic. Further, the decision to forgo intoxication brings emotional relief to those who care about hir (him or her.) Even more, the spiritual awakening enjoyed by AA members comes with the proviso that they ‘help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.’ Better choices abound after one embraces this ‘spiritual program of recovery.’

What is it about faith that helps baffled and frustrated alcoholics, who sometimes come into AA on the brink of bankruptcy or death, turn everything around? How is it that after trying all manner of solutions to the problem, including ‘controlled drinking,’ periods of abstinence, and promises to everyone in sight, the alcoholic who enters AA and ‘works the steps,’ can go on to stay sober for decades? Lives get rebuilt. Relationships healed. Careers reestablished. It does not work for everyone, of course, but it works for many. After 22 years in AA (I do not claim that many years of continuous sobriety, only that much exposure,) I agree with this statement from the AA ‘big book:’ “rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” The person who goes to meetings, works hard to develop a ‘spiritual program,’ and helps others, typically stays sober.

The centrality of spirituality to Alcoholics Anonymous is no accident. To a large extent, sobriety depends on developing faith that the universe cares and will help one survive. With that assurance, there is less fear, less self-hatred, and less materialistic obsession. One becomes calmer and more accepting. Obviously, the conviction that there is something very big and powerful that loves us goes a long way toward helping one settle down. I will come back to the importance of feeling loved in my next entry. But the idea that the universe wants us to thrive, and helps us, is both radical and lifesaving. And it underlies much of the improved decision-making that follows.

This kind of thinking can promote nuttiness. I’ve been in more than one AA meeting where someone claimed that ‘God’ helped them find a parking space. Belief in ‘God’ might lead to such benefits, but I doubt it. What it does do, however, is allow one to quit trying to figure everything out. The rational thought process works overtime in many of us, calculating odds, deciding amongst options, and predicting the future. Once you believe there is a ‘higher power’ assuming some of the burden, you don’t have to think so strenuously. You can relax, pray, meditate, and wait for guidance. Many good decisions come from this process.

Does there need to be an actual ‘power’ out there for this to work? ‘Trust your intuition.’ ‘What does your heart tell you?’ ‘Make a gut decision.’ We use these phrases often because letting go of strict logic and listening to the deeper, nonverbal music of the mind leads to choices that work better. If you decide who to marry solely on the basis of money, looks, and profession, you may end up in a big house with your picture in the paper, the envy of your friends. Those are the qualities the logical, egoistic self craves. Your ego will thank you. But there is no reason to expect you will be spending your life with someone you adore. The decisions that end up ‘feeling’ the best, are often the ones that linear thought scorns. It could be that the act of believing in a ‘higher power,’ the act of faith, allows the ego to take a little break, and brings the preferences of the unconscious mind to the fore. Whatever works. If it requires belief in ‘God,’ which might be nothing more than instinct, for our higher principles to have their say, then why not? (Provided our belief system does not involve condemning others, or in any way creating havoc for our companions on this planet.)

One could just listen to the heart and leave the whole ‘God’ thing out of it, right? Not really. There are so many subterranean influences in the human mind, that just listening to the ‘gut’ can be hazardous. Freud would trot out the ‘id’ at this point. How do you avoid being driven by hormonal influences that have little to do with your best interest, and much more to do with biology’s imperative to pass genes on to a succeeding generation? Do gonads care if your marriage and reputation get ruined? Not in the slightest. All they want is to make babies. Does your complex system of hormones controlling appetite care about heart disease? No. It just wants you to have abundant energy reserves in order to procreate. God, or even just the idea of it, serves to keep us on track, attending to the most elevated influences. The ones that promote health, love, and society.

The sort of ‘God’ that many westerners think vital is not necessary. We don’t need to believe in a controlling, fearsome creator. We just need guidance. Numerous Buddhist monks manage to live exemplary lives based on a spirituality that completely lacks such a God-concept. (Buddhism will need to be addressed in a future post, since it is highly relevant to my task. For now, I’ll point out that Buddhists have an expansive concept of mind, including the belief that mind transcends body and passes from one sentient being to the next free of any material vessel to carry it. This is an interesting perspective that science argues against, and that goes beyond the minimal criteria of BIOPE. However, if you leave reincarnation out of the picture, then Buddhism’s spirituality is quite supportable. The Dalai Lama obviously understands this, with his frequent forums that gather scientists and monks together for interchange and education.)

No doubt one can meditate from a secular stance, but with sincerity and solemnity, and manage to pick out the most elevated chords in the brain’s symphony. I am sure the convinced atheist can develop methods for bypassing hir ego’s base grasping, and hir hormonal appetites, and make choices from healthy frames of being. But a spiritual sense of ‘higher power’ works well as a shortcut for those who want guidance, and don’t mind believing in something mystical. For some reason, the mere belief that a transcendent consciousness is listening helps drown out the hormonal din, and guides us to our better principles. One can think of a few reasons why this might be. Perhaps it causes resonance in those buried infantile memories of wanting to please our parents. Perhaps it causes the third rail of guilt to amp up (in other words, awakens Freud’s superego.) Could it also be because there actually is a universal consciousness that helps us winnow the body’s appetites from the mind’s priorities? It could. Might it be the case that a BIOPE runs between and through us, and by listening as it vibrates our thoughts and feelings we find guidance? I think it might.

At the risk of irritating those who insist on a secular view, it is also possible that when one meditates with no belief in any higher influence whatsoever, one still gets massaged by mystical forces. Perhaps the act of sitting still and listening to the body’s hum also connects one with the harmony of the spheres. This would be as difficult to disprove as to prove.

Whether or not a BIOPE is involved, opening decision-making to forces larger than the ‘self’ brings people to good places. We don’t need the example of AA to teach us this. Long before the twelve steps, humankind knew that from time to time struggling people get in touch with something mystical, or at least mysterious, and find a better path. They find the soul’s nutrition, the fruits of faith.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

Maybe this time I will finally get to the first of the keys to faith I listed earlier: Faith Works.

It works in several ways. The following list gives three examples or categories of the benefits of faith.

How Faith Works:

• By motivating effective behavior.
• By easing the pain of isolation.
• By providing meaning.

Let’s take these one by one.

Healthy faith motivates effective behavior: On the personal level, faith helps people get past the petty and materialistic priorities of the ego, and make their choices on the basis of deeper stirrings. The way I said it before was, “The act of faith…allows instinct, intuition, and deep parts of the mind to step into the fray. They are often more competent when it comes to making choices…” This, of course, is a prosaic portrayal of faith, and leaves out any benefit that might come from contact with a ‘higher power,’ ‘God,’ or BIOPE. We’ll get to the loftier views of faith before long, but let’s start with the fruits of faith that one might derive even if it happens that no mystical forces actually exist. I’d like to show that contrary to the views of militant atheists, embracing a mystical stance can be beneficial even if it turns out there is no God-like entity at play.

One of the best arguments for the efficacy of faith is Alcoholics Anonymous. Founded during the Great Depresssion, AA is a ‘spiritual program of recovery,’ according to its own literature. One of its founders, the revered Bill W., broke free from the stranglehold of alcoholism after an awe-inspiring spiritual experience. Here is one description he gave of it:

The place seemed to light up, blinding white. I knew only ecstasy and seemed on a mountain. A great wind blew, enveloping and penetrating me. To me, it was not of air but of Spirit. Blazing, there came the tremendous thought, “you are a free man.” Then the ecstasy subsided. Still on the bed, I now found myself in a new world of consciousness which was suffused by a Presence. One with the Universe, a great peace came over me. (N.Y. Med. Soc©. Alcsm., April 28,1958

In its fundamentals, this episode sounds a lot like something I went through in 2000, which I’ve described briefly in my About section. I’ll be coming back to this kind of experience in later posts. For Bill W., the lightning bolt of spiritual ecstasy changed both his relationship with intoxication, and his future. He learned that he could parlay his newfound faith into sobriety, provided he ‘carried the message to other alcoholics.’ He and others devised a series of ‘steps’ one can take to break free of dependence on alcohol, which addicts of all sorts have subsequently found useful. By finding a spiritual basis for living, Bill W. found a remedy for an affliction that had destroyed his life many times over, and also found a way to convey the same salvation to millions. In his case, at least, faith proved quite effective.

By the way, the 12 Steps have often been criticized, perhaps most cogently and extensively by Charlotte Davis Kasl in the book ‘Many Roads, One Journey, Moving Beyond the 12 Steps‘ (the link to Amazon is for the reader’s convenience; I derive no revenue from purchases.) The critiques possess a lot of validity, in that some of the ‘Steps’ skirt close to encouraging self-condemnation. This can be a real problem for people who came from abusive childhoods, among others.

However, regardless of that criticism, the 12 steps have benefitted countless men and women, in large part by helping those who suffer from substance abuse find spiritual faith. The sense of hopelessness, terror, and guilt get replaced by trust in a ‘higher power.’ The person ‘in recovery’ turns to this higher power for support and inner strength, rather than turning to intoxication for relief. With the underlying angst relieved, and within the context of a support group, the person in 12-step recovery can escape the daily demoralization of addiction. As someone with a history of substance problems, I can attest to the tremendous improvement in life that follows. Every day, new people enter AA and enjoy these benefits. Whether or not there actually is a transcendent higher power, relaxing into the belief that one exists helps addicts get well. This is established fact.

Say what you will about the childishness of religious sentiment; if belief in ‘God’ can help an addict to freedom, it’s worth it. Better to be a little ungrounded and unrealistic than to spend one’s life in an endless and futile pursuit of chemically-induced sunshine in the brain. Better to reach a hand out to something that only might exist, than watch helplessly as love, social standing, friendship, and financial security drain out of your life.

From PostSecret

Throughout history, numerous saints, prophets, and ordinary people have found similar benefits. Faith changes lives. For whatever reason, religious belief and the emotional currents it stirs motivate people to act in ways more consistent with their own welfare, and the well-being of those around them. Faith motivates effective behavior.

I realize my posts often run far too long. The next step as I develop this series will be to explore in more depth why faith has these helpful effects. We will consider the benefits first psychologically, i.e., from the stance that no divine force is actually ‘out there,’ and then from the perspective that a BIOPE actually exists to assist us. In order to provide the material in bite-sized chunks, I’ll put that off until next time.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

My series of spirituality posts is a work-in-progress. Each entry is essentially a second draft, and even after posting I reserve the right to revise the documents. I know doing so is frowned upon, but I am trying to offer something effective for others who share my desire for faith, but who insist on respecting the bounds of science and common sense. Naturally, as I get comments, or think further, or reread, I see ways to make the text better. Rather than posting a series of versions, or showing my corrections, I will update on the fly. What you read today may change tomorrow. If anyone wants to see an older draft, I will do my best to find it if you ask.

The reason I bring this up now is that late yesterday I ended my post with the acronym BUCCUA—Benign Universal Consciousness that Connects Us All. It came to me in a rush, and I did not spend time thinking of alternatives. This morning I looked up ‘buccua’ in the dictionary. The word is absent, but ‘buccula’ is close, and it refers to a double chin. Not exactly an elevated concept. I kind of like the look and sound of BUCCUA. It echoes the adjective buccal, which refers to mouth, like the ‘mouth of God.’ It sounds a bit like bacchanalia, which is lighthearted and pagan. But it can’t be said to have an attractive pronunciation, and does not quite roll off the tongue. It also reminds me of bocce ball. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, since it conjures up unpredictable collisions and leisure time. But it isn’t exactly lofty.

So this morning I got busy with alternatives. Here are a few:

• Transcendent Universal Mind that Encompasses Everything–TUMEE
• Pervasive and Universal Spirit that Holds You—PUSHY
• Benevolent Integrating Omniscience, Present and Eternal–BIOPE

Would it surprise you that I prefer the last? It brings in ‘bio’ for life, sounds a bit like ‘hope,’ and captures all the elements that I think BUCCUA (oops BIOPE) should possess:

The BIOPE list of ‘divine’ qualities:

• Benvolent–This is important, because I do not believe this entity to be neutral and dispassionate (or even worse: stern and judgmental,) but instead forms a current of love.
• Integrating–It connects everything and everyone.
• Omniscience–If only because it interweaves all minds and all matter/energy/time, it is both aware, and aware of everything.
• Present–It has presence in the metaphysical sense. It is accessible and with us.
• Eternal–It has always been and will always be. It may evolve along with the universe, but it has roots that anchor it outside the stream of time.

I welcome suggestions, and will continue to think about this. In the end, poor BUCCUA may get axed.

BIOPE goes beyond my initial promise. I said my goal was to show how a universal consciousness might exist within the constraints of what we know to be true and reasonable. By invoking BIOPE, I am not just saying that something might exist, I am beginning to spell out what it is. This skates dangerously close to devising a theology. On the other hand, an entity without the qualities of BIOPE might not be worthy of faith. If it was not benvolent, and just stood by without real concern and love, it would offer scant comfort. If it did not integrate everything, then it would not awaken us to our connection with others. If it were not omniscient, then our hearts could hide from it, and it might fail to motivate us. If it were not present and accessible, we could not get any real benefit from it. And if it were not eternal, then it would lack one of the prime characteristics we expect of a divinity.

There may be qualities I should include that BIOPE fails to capture. And you might argue with one or another of these characteristics. But I think BIOPE pretty well captures the pieces that are both necessary and sufficient if we are to have effective faith.

Which brings me to the question of effectiveness. The first ‘Cornerstone‘ (I may change this to ‘key’ by the way–to highlight that my goal is to open a door, not build a theology) of my program for showing that we can reasonably enjoy faith, was that ‘Faith Works.’ What does this mean?

At the end of the last entry, I said that my next post would “show how belief in [BIOPE] can be beneficial to individuals and society.” Because I woke up worrying about acronyms, I just spent this space proposing a better set of letters, and in the process listed the criteria a ‘God-like’ entity should satisfy. Having given a better picture of what it is we can allow ourselves a leap of faith toward, I am now in a position to show how such a leap helps. But I’ll beg your forbearance, and put that step off until the next entry.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

Does anyone need to be told that spiritual faith makes people feel better? One of the arguments of the modern, hard-line atheist is that the religious tendency serves as candy for the weak-hearted. Sweet and enticing, it gives one the illusion of being loved, of having a God in your corner. Who wouldn’t want that? Of course, they also contend religion numbs the mind and undermines civilization. But they always start with the premise that people believe in God because it makes them feel better. If even the atheists argue that faith improves comfort, then there would seem to be little reason for me to address the question.

Not so fast. In deciding to make a case for reasoned belief in mystical currents, I followed a ‘calling’ that said this would be good for the world. Setting the grandiosity of such a viewpoint aside, in order to pursue this project I must be sure that faith is indeed a good thing. If all it did were make people more comfortable, I would question its value. So much evil has been perpetrated in the name of what the culprits label ‘faith,’ that caution must be exercised before sensible people promote it. Perhaps there is more than one kind of religious sensibility.

It is pretty easy to show that a certain kind of faith not only makes people feel better; it makes them into better people. It is not just candy, but nourishment. Most of us have known someone possessed of a true and balanced spiritualism, and who seemed both deeply empathic and profoundly at peace. This is not merely the ‘opiate’ of living in a pretend world of superstitions and superheroes. It is a solid foundation for a meaningful and valuable life. More of us should live from such fertile ground. But what kind of faith leads to these benefits? Is it belief in a God who created the universe in seven days? Being convinced of the reality of ESP? Yes, faith helps build strong lives, but not all faith is equally nutritious. We need to find the kind of faith that improves individuals and societies.

We don’t need to look far to see examples of ‘faith’ that lacks such positive effects. I met a woman not long ago who was ‘born again.’ I am not saying that she is typical of those who undergo this transformation. There are many, I am sure, who get to exactly the place I described in the last paragraph: sympathetic, embracing, and kind. This woman, sadly, did not seem like that at all. She looked happy, to be sure, almost giddy. She was convinced Jesus had entered in her life. She knew beyond doubt that all her sins were forgiven. And here is the key point: she believed that this wonderful deity would also accept all her future sins. As a result, she told me she no longer tried to be good. This attitude made me uncomfortable, so I probed further. “So what you mean is that having Jesus in your life makes it easy to be nice to people, and do good things? You no longer need to try, it just happens naturally?” I asked these questions fearing she would answer exactly as she did: She no longer needed to try to be good because even if she hurt others, she knew she would be forgiven by Jesus. That kind of faith frightens me.

If so, then we who promote belief in divine energies must ensure we are working toward a spirituality that fosters love, acceptance and connection, and not the sort that promotes divisiveness, intolerance, and hate.

Nice work if you can get it. How do we encourage people to have faith, without pushing them into a religious stance that leads to harm? How do we promote belief that helps people understand how closely connected they are to all that surrounds them, and doesn’t give them the sense that ‘God’ believes they are better than those who disagree? How do we keep from doing more harm than good? (I’m imagining here that what I write actually has an effect, and is not just lost in the terabytes of data that flow into the Internet moment by moment.) How can we be sure that it would not be better to encourage blanket cynicism than risk conjuring a hateful and self-righteous belief system?

I started this series of blog entries to refute the poisonous conclusion that our universe is empty and uncaring. Even though there is danger in religious zealotry, there is just as much to fear from worldviews that lead to selfishness and lack of concern for others. This project was launched because I am convinced that belief in mystery helps people better appreciate life, themselves, and their surroundings. I am not saying that spiritualism is necessary to a satisfying and upright life. Nor, by itself, does belief in a ‘God’ suffice to make one feel adjusted to the world. All I can say is that it helps, and that I’d rather live in a world where many people believed in transcendence than in one where such mystery was embraced by only a few. But we still have to contend with healthy versus unhealthy faith.

Definitions are important in any discussion. In a previous entry I delineated the kind of faith that the universe accommodates after one takes modern scientific understanding into account. That description explained the door I’m trying to open. I am hoping to widen the portal to belief in a benevolent, pervasive, and omniscient consciousness that connects us all. Not coincidentally, this is the kind of belief that fosters human kindness.

There are those who insist there must be more to ‘God’ than this. They don’t feel comforted by anything short of belief in a God that has ‘His’ fingers in the pie, building and changing the universe on the fly. They insist on a God that judges, and punishes those who do wrong. I don’t argue for the existence of a God that designed, constructed, and controls the universe in a deliberate way, because the evidence leans strongly against the existence of such an entity. Furthermore, I think belief in that kind of divinity can lead to shirking of responsibility. If people decide they are controlled by such a power, and owe obedience to it, and if the wrong sort of leader offers to tell them the desires of that deity, there is grave danger.

So I need to make a distinction between faith in a benevolent, encompassing consciousness on the one hand, and a controlling deity on the other. Accepting the possibility of a pervasive presence flowing throughout the cosmos does not require belief in a God who built and manages everything we see. Because of the history of western religion, this is a difficult point for many in our culture to grasp. This is part of the reason why the ‘Intelligent Design‘ movement refuses to die. Too many people think letting go of the concept of a controlling God means acceding to a Godless universe. It does not. There is no a priori reason, for instance, why a universal consciousness could not have evolved right along with matter and life as the universe unfolded. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

For now, I just want to deal once and for all with the concept of a creating and controlling God, so I can set it aside in the remainder of my discussion. In past centuries, and continuing with diminishing force up into the present day, the ‘argument from design’ has been used to ‘prove’ the existence of a divine genius who built the universe. (Since I could not find a truly balanced discussion of this concept, I am going to give to links to essays discussing it from opposite sides. One is from Catholic Education Resource Center and the other from the Skeptics Dictionary.) There have been many other lines of argument, but the question of ‘design’ seems to me to get to the core issue: we see a very complicated cosmos, and an even more complicated biosphere. Does this mean someone must have built everything we see? A deity that could create, molecule by molecule, the overwhelming complexity that surrounds and runs through us, would be a very powerful being. We would do well to honor and obey such a God. We should get Him on our side. He would help us in our battles with sadness, confusion, and hopelessness. He would also help us fight those nasty neighbors who keep throwing trash over the fence.

The eye has been a favorite foil in the argument by design: the eyeball is such a remarkable organ, so intricate and perfectly suited to its task, that some argue it must have been the work of a conscious creator. They claim it could not have arisen by ‘mere chance.’ As a former ophthalmologist, I feel qualified to talk about the eye, and I can state with considerable enthusiasm that the eye is indeed delicate, complex, and marvelous. However, it is not a perfectly designed instrument, and there are many aspects of it that seem a little cockamamie from the standpoint of engineering. Furthermore, working from comparative anatomy and evolutionary genetics, it is now possible to sketch a plausible route by which the eye might have evolved incrementally through random mutation and natural selection. So the eye no longer works to support the ‘argument from design.’ (That has not killed the issue, obviously, or there would not be ongoing battles to keep explanations of natural selection and evolution in science classes.)

My point is that fidelity to facts deals body blows to any kind of creator-controller God. There are other arguments for a deity that has His fingers pushing all the buttons, but they all do poorly when confronted with scientific facts. Darwin threw one of the strongest early punches, and the attacks have been coming in fast and furious ever since.

Not only does such a deity fare poorly against the evidence, but it is also exactly that kind of belief that scares me. First, spritualism based on such concepts separates people from God. People obviously did not make the universe, so if God did, then God must be very different from us. Second, controlling Gods have the kind of power that people crave, and belief in such an entity invites us to seek favoritism in order to avoid punishment, win favors, or just get an edge on our siblings. It is too easy for unscrupulous leaders to manipulate people who believe this way.

So I eschew the controller-creator kind of deity both on evidential and prudential grounds.

The issue is not, however, black and white. There is a more subtle point to be considered, that I will return to later but introduce now. Would a universal consciousness of the sort I argue for have consequence in addition to significance? That is, if there is a spiritual presence surrounding and infusing us, then it is obviously very significant to our opinions about what it means to be a human. But is it at all consequential? Do events unfold any differently because of this interconnecting consciousness? Or is a universe that has such a presence absolutely the same as one without this kind of ‘God,’ from the standpoint of people who don’t care about philosophy? It really comes down to the question of serendipity, a subject dear to Jung and central to most New Age spiritualism. Do all events, including odd ‘coincidences,’ happen purely randomly? Or do influences that we could call ‘spiritual’ sometimes nudge physical circumstances. Perhaps there is no creator/controller-God, but there is a kind of subtle presence that sometimes sends eddies into the stream of otherwise random events. You can see which side I take on this question, but for now it is not central. I hope to discuss it in a dispassionate way further on, and say how I think it could work. I will also need to show how it is not the same thing as a controlling God.

(As an aside: I really do not want to come across as a New Age aficionado. I think the movement has some valid ideas, but its tendency toward vagueness, its breezy distortion of ecology and quantum mechanics, and its sweeping appropriation of aboriginal religions puts me off. If we are going to promote spiritualism in this contemporary world, I believe it needs to be both accurate and modern. For instance, looking to quantum mechanics is essential, but the poster I’ve seen that says, ‘Quantum Mechanics, the Dream that Stuff Is Made Of’ is only laughable. And it’s fine to mine ancient traditions for inspiration, but trying to use religions that worked for hunter/gatherer societies as a salve for modern cynicism strikes me as misguided.)

To sum up today’s post and all I’ve said to date: I am offering the thesis that there might exist a benevolent universal consciousness that connects us all. For the moment, let’s use the acronym BUCCUA instead of the loaded and manifoldly defined word, ‘God.’ A BUCCUA is distinct from a controller-creator God in that it is both more supportable scientifically, and less susceptible to human misuse. On the other hand, a BUCCUA does not necessarily imply a divine presence that has no consequence in the physical world.

My next post will show how belief in a BUCCUA can be beneficial to individuals and society.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.