Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Coping with death and the fear of non-existence

I got an email from someone who'd read my "Death and the primal fear of non-existence." She said: I completely understand where you are coming from. I have been having the very similar thoughts more recently. It completely numbs me up. I often need to choke/scream out aloud to bring myself back to sanity. These days I sometimes fear the thought of having that feeling even. I was wondering whether you have developed a coping mechanism? Or can share anything else with me about how it is/has been affecting you. I am very much looking forward to your response. I…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Keeping it real: facing death without God

You'd seen most of your family killed with machetes and guns. You'd been taken away, marched to the edge of a pit with some other abductees, and left for dead after bullets missed you. You'd spent hours trying to climb out of the pit, stumbling through blood and guts. Somehow you survived. You made it from Rwanda to England. Now you want to tell your tale. You can't write in English very well. You need the help of a writer who works with refugees. Last night I saw Sonja Linden's "I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me…
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Posted inGod

God-shaped hole is as big as our beliefs

It's a poetic notion: there's a God-shaped hole at the heart of my being. That's why I'm always restless, continually looking for something more, ceaselessly trying to find the very thing that will fill my cup of happiness to the brim. Catholic theologian John F. Haught speaks about this supposed urge for the infinite in a What is Enlightenment? interview (January-March 2007 issue). Sometimes people ask, "What is the evidence that the infinite exists?" For Augustine and for many religious people throughout the ages, the best evidence is the utter restlessness of the human heart. You could extend that also…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Lost Tomb of Jesus story shows shakiness of Christianity

Sunday the Discovery Channel will broadcast a documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus." James Cameron claims to have found evidence that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered a son named Judah. And that he didn't ascend bodily to heaven, since his body was buried. Lots of Christians and scholars are in an uproar, for different reasons. Scholarly types are critical of how the archaeological evidence has been interpreted. True believers are offended that anyone would try to demolish the foundation on which Christianity is built. For the bodily resurrection is one of the essential doctrines of the Christian Faith. Here's…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Seven secret sayings of God

Just as I was sitting down to dash out a Church of the Churchless post before leaving for an Academy Awards potluck, where I will selflessly share one of the last Now & Zen Unturkey's left on earth, I got an email from a friend, Joelle. I liked it so much, I'll share her words today instead of mine. Which leaves me free to see more of the Red Carpet arrivals. From Joelle to me to you, Alan Watts' "Seven Secret Sayings of God." I like them. ---------------------------------------------------From Joelle Martin Leath: You know when a verse or lyric or book pops…
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Posted inHumor

Demotivation heals my overly positive soul

After watching "The Secret," which urged me to frolic in an orgy of positivity, I felt unbalanced. So I prescribed myself fifteen minutes of negative rehab and headed over to Despair, Inc. for some demotivation. Reading the slogan on The Pessimist's Mug got me started on the road of recovery: "This glass is now half empty." Ah, truth simply spoken. I was sorry that, being retired, I didn't have any employee morale to crush, as "The Art of Demotivation" looked like an appealing book. What really got me back to feeling my normal uninspired self, though, was a terrific line…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Universe

My review of “The Secret” DVD points to a super-secret

Yesterday I found a free way of watching "The Secret," so immersed myself for 90 minutes in an ocean of New Age platitudes. On a pad of paper I jotted down such pearls of positive thinking wisdom as: Thoughts become thingsThe Law of Attraction will give you what you want every timeWhat you think about, you bring aboutYou are the designer of your destinyLife is meant to be abundant The universe must have wanted me to see "The Secret." (A hugely popular book and DVD, as noted in this TIME article). But not spend $4.95 to watch online. Which raises…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Servitude, sand, and satguru

Catherine's questioning of Sant Mat, including the possibly detrimental consequences of "mitti seva" (volunteers moving dirt by hand at India's Dera Baba Jaimal Singh), brought to mind the two weeks I spent at the Dera in December 1977. "Seva" means service. Serving the guru was a big part of the daily routine both for Western visitors and Indians. While I was there, mitti seva was in full swing from about 3:30 to 5:00 in the afternoon. In Radhasoami Reality, Mark Juergensmeyer describes the scene: One of the most dramatic examples of ritual humiliation in Radhasoami is mitti seva, the service…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Some South African Sant Mat questioning

Here’s some thoughts from Catherine, all the way from South Africa. Like me, she’s a Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) initiate. Also like me, she’s come to look upon this faith with fresh eyes.

I’ve shared several of her email messages below. They’ve been mildly edited, mostly to correct a few typos and inject some explanatory links. I’ve also generally Americanized her English, to keep my spell checker happy.

Many people who read this blog are familiar with the RSSB philosophy and practices. Many others aren’t. I realize that some of what Catherine writes about will elicit a huh? from the latter group.

But the broad issues she addresses should be of interest to everybody concerned with being churched vs. churchless; with accepting religious authority vs. choosing for oneself; with remaining firm on a chosen path vs. meandering off to greener pastures.

Click on the continuation link to read Catherine.

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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

When pushing hands, or minds, relax the tension

There's a lot of pushing on this blog, as elsewhere on the Internet. People read something they don't like. They push back. The pushed take affront and return the favor. And so it goes. That's life. It's natural to resist having our psychological space invaded. Nestled comfortably in the four walls of my beliefs, someone bursts in and starts sledge hammering. Hey! Stop, you stupid fuckhead! Got to defend the territory. Some recent Church of the Churchless comments have been directed at seemingly overly aggressive language by a blog visitor who would go unnamed if I didn't mention that his…
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Posted inMorality

Morality isn’t what God wants

Here's a thought-provoking passage from Plato's "Euthyphro" that you can throw into your next coffeehouse conversation about the meaning of life (you do have them, don't you?). Socrates says: The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods. This is the Euthyphro dilemma. I ran across it for the first time while reading "The Top 10 Myths About Evolution." The authors, Cameron M. Smith and Charles Sullivan, were making the point that morality is a natural…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi Wu Project

Beneath buckets of thought, a formless thinking pool

Taoism shuns thoughts, while adoring thinking. Flowing along further with Thomas Cleary’s Taoist Meditation, a focus of my previous post, here’s some additional Taoist sentiments. Thinking about the Way is correct; thinking about things is error. The Way is inherent in us; when you think about the Way inherent within us, thinking itself is the Way…Thinking is a door of entry into the Way, whereas thoughts are roots of obstruction of the Way. “I think, therefore I am.” Cogito ergo sum. As noted before, Descartes had this much right. If he’d stopped with his Meditations at this point in his…
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Posted inHumor Taoism/Tai Chi

Comic strip and a Chinese sage both say: “Do it!”

When in doubt, don’t doubt. Unless you’re sure you want to doubt. Then doubt ferociously. Life is meant to be lived full throttle. Which can mean being absolutely still. Or, rocketing across the salt flats. Turning to one of my favorite sources of inspiration, Funny Times, I came across this “Maxine” comic in the February 2007 issue. My heart said, yes. (click on the image to enlarge) Confusion, indecision, uncertainty: that’s part of life. But we magnify that part when we fail to recognize what we already know. In the sphere of spirituality, that counts for a lot. Indeed, it…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Sant Mat looks like a religion

Sam emailed me today from the United Kingdom. He has an interesting perspective on Sant Mat and Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), looking as he does from the outside rather than as a true believer. Myself, I’m sort of in the middle. I used to be a true believer and so can’t say that I’m able to view Sant Mat and RSSB from as detached a position as Sam can. So I found his ideas interesting. He left them as a comment to a post, which I’ve copied (and mildly edited) below. He makes some excellent points. Even in the…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

The metaphysics of a really shitty job

I spent six hours this weekend pulling disintegrated insulation out of the crawl space above our garage. There are difficult jobs. There are nasty jobs. And then there are really shitty jobs. Like what I just did. Serendipity is perusing the comments on your blog and finding just what you need to give a boost of profundity to the post you were planning to write. Thank you, Edward, for the Richard Feynman quote: "A poet once said "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do…
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Posted inScience

Global warming and God’s will

The science is settled. Global warming is happening. Humans are very likely the cause. “Very likely” means with 90 percent certainty, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That’s up from “likely” in the panel’s 2001 report. You can bet that the next report will say “extremely likely.” Unfortunately, scientific near-certainties get muddied up when theological guesses are thrown in. I like to listen to conservative talk radio. Hearing gibberish makes me appreciate truth more, just as a string of cloudy Oregon days produces an Ah! when the sun finally comes out. This week I’ve heard both Michael…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Be natural

Got some sort of Mr. Natural theme going on. Recently I ran across David Lane’s right-on musings about the problem with “perfection” when it comes to gurus. Or, anyone else. David says: "If we say something like the guru is infinite, then if we see something that is finite, something that is limited, then if we subtract that finite aspect from Infinity we end up with something infinitely less. There isn't apparently degrees of infinity here. So any thing that appears less than Perfect is going to become a point of contention, whether it is reactions about photos or internet…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas Science

Does God exist? Science says no.

Proving (sort of) that no-god has a plan for my life, on Friday the mailman delivered two ungodly packages that I’d been anticipating for quite a while: Victor Stenger’s new book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis,” and the free DVD, “The God Who Wasn’t There,” I got for sending myself to hell via the blasphemy challenge. Back in August I wrote about an advance description of Stenger’s book that led me to pre-order it. Good decision. I’m several chapters into “God: The Failed Hypothesis” and am enjoying a physicist’s scientific demolishing of the God hypothesis. Stenger’s central thesis is that if…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Meditation teaches the brain new tricks

Okay, so nobody knows what consciousness is. Doesn’t really matter, so long as we use the consciousness that we have—whatever the heck it is—wisely. Which includes training the brain. In TIME’s “How the Brain Rewires Itself,” Sharon Begley presents some encouraging research that overthrows the depressing notion that “the adult human brain is essentially immutable, hardwired, fixed in form and function, so that by the time we reach adulthood we are pretty much stuck with what we are.” She goes on to say: But research in the past few years has overthrown the dogma. In its place has come the…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Digging into the hard problem of consciousness

Want to tackle one of the most intractable mysteries in science? You’ve got a hold on it right now: consciousness. Nobody knows what it is, though everybody uses it to think, “What is it?” Steven Pinker has a terrific article in this week’s TIME magazine, a special issue devoted to the mind and brain. In “The Mystery of Consciousness” he talks about the Easy Problem of consciousness, which basically concerns how mental processes function and are correlated with neural goings-on in the brain. Tough enough, certainly, but researchers are making good progress delving into this area. However, barely a scratch…
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