The Pageless Book

Photo Above by Richard Rutter. Photo Below by Lee Chisholm.

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts. When his work is done, the people say, “Amazing, we did it all by ourselves!” - Tao Te Ching, verse 17, Mitchell Translation.

At work, I’ve been trying to foster people-management skills within myself to further my career and in preparation to go into ministry. Too often I’ve heard that being a minister for a Unitarian Universalist Congregation is like herding cats, so I figured management-skills would be an important asset. What I’ve found interesting, though, is how much management philosophy has in common with my spiritual philosophy.

A great deal of emphasis is placed on achieving success through indirect means. For example, although managers have power and privilege above that of a normal employee, the point of those benefits is not to enjoy them for yourself, but to use them in accomplishing your job. The training material that I’ve read suggests using that power and privilege to reward employees and ensure they have the tools needed to succeed.

For those who’ve never been in a position of management before, it is quite a paradigm shift. Instead of doing something as a means to accomplishing an end, you are influencing people as a means to accomplish an end. Each manager is given the authority to make demands, force results, and discipline employees, but the power that a manager has isn’t derived from using his authority - rather it is from having the authority yet not using it that he is able to get things done. It is through mutual trust, respect, and communication that a manager achieves results.

What is perhaps even more interesting is how a manager finds job satisfaction in the achievement of others. They are like engine grease; it is their job to make sure all of the parts are running smoothly and aren’t causing friction. A manager knows he has done a good job when he is no longer needed to get the job done. It requires a sense of the larger picture - a manager needs to be able to see how all the parts of the business fit together.

How are these thinks like spirituality? The same panoramic understanding of business, when applied to life, helps us see our place in the grand scheme of things. We know that we are but a small part of a whole, greater than the sum of its parts. Power is not within money or fame, but in the trust and respect of others. People are the ultimate power source; they create authority. The trick is to understand that power and authority is most effective when given back to that source of power and authority. Using the trust people place within you against the better interests of those people results in diminished respect… diminished authority.

The lessons are clear - pay attention, respect and be respected, do good unto each other. Moral teaching of the great religions have found a home within effective management philosophy. Of course, that doesn’t mean that learning how to manage people is easy. Then again, neither is religion.

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written by John \\ tags: Career, Lessons, Life, Religion, Spirituality, Work

Photo Above by J. Samuel B. Photo Below by Srsly Guys. Final Photo by Patrick David.

There are a wide range of moral and ethical issues that challenge Western Society today - so many that our attention is strained between those issues we most care about, and the issues that are the most sensational. Issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and terrorism so aptly distract us from the serious moral and ethical issues of poverty, corporate/political corruption, and human-rights violations simply because they are more controversial. However, there is one moral issue that is pushed so far into the background that it seldom is even considered a moral issue.

Despite being so often ignored, education is a serious moral issue. At first blush, it seems like a stretch to claim that education is just as important as the eradication of poverty or crime, but please hear me out. Education is the key to resolving many of the challenges we face as a society; it’s the key to unlocking the greatness of which our human family is capable.

Why do I believe that education is so important to the future of our society? There is the obvious answer… Future economic prosperity and scientific advancement both hinge on the intellectual prowess of the children we raise. Sometimes that is all we see when it comes to education. We must be willing to pass on more than technical knowledge because that is nothing more than the bare minimum. Companies and politicians have pushed this paradigm of education that best fits the agenda of economic progress while ignoring other aspects of education.

The reason I think that education is of the utmost importance is due to the freedom and individuality that an education can provide. A proper curriculum teaches a child how to think critically, make decisions for themselves, understand views that may not be their own, encourage them to question authority in a constructive manner, and express themselves both in a practical manner as well as artistically. This is the type of education that makes for a strong society and gives us the back-bone to confront the other moral issues in a serious manner. However, this type of education makes the job of politicians that much harder and seemingly provides no profit on an economic level.

How can this different education lead to the resolution of other issues such as poverty, crime, and war? When the majority of individuals in our society are no longer willing to simply follow without question, more presumptions that we have held as a society will come into question. People will demand that politicians and corporations be held accountable for their misdeeds. We will no longer be bound by what is best for our economic development, because the paradigm that supported that way of thinking will have been dismantled. Without being dominated by the question of cost and financial benefit, we will finally be able to have an honest conversation about problems that plague humanity.

Ironically enough, the reason why we are so divided in our goals is because we are so easily led. If each individual was educated to think for themselves and question leadership, I strongly believe we could confront the moral and ethical issues in a mature and productive manner. Because there are so many people vying for power, and so few people willing to seriously question those in control, what we end up with is childish name calling at best and needless violence at the very worse.

However, all of this is easier said than done. In order to administer such an education program, the political-corporate complex would have to be convinced that a new education program is in their best interests. We would also have to convince them to pay to bring together the brightest child psychologists and education specialists to create an education program geared toward social, emotional, and intellectual development. Finally, the political-corporate complex would have to be persuaded to fully fund that education program without having had the chance to change or censor any part of that education program. While all politicians say that they are for better education standards, very few of them are truly willing to give up that much control. That, my friends, is the great dilemma of education.

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written by John \\ tags: Education, Freedom, Humanity, Individuality, Politics

The following is a guest post by Evan Hadkins from WellbeingandHealth.net, a friend and frequent visitor to this blog. The genesis of this post was a comment he left in response to my article on The Nature of Reality that I posted a few weeks ago. I was so impressed by his comment, that I asked him to expand his thoughts here as a guest poster.

Above Photo by Laura. Photo Below by Lian Xiaoxiao. Final Photo by Alexandre Dulaunoy.

In the modern west, reality is split into with-in-my-skin and beyond-my-skin. I find this a useful distinction - building a house of bricks is very different to the building of a philosophy. The problem, as I see it, has been assigning priority to within-the-skin or beyond-the-skin. One of these is taken to be “the really real” and the other to be its effect. Both these views are prevalent.

Some people (usually advocating science and objectivity) think that it is the beyond-the-skin that is the important reality. They advocate psychology as the study of behaviour. Or see behaviour as the outcome of brain chemicals. There are those who believe that the within the skin is most real. They will assert that “it is with our thoughts that we make the world” and say that the difference between success and failure is motivation or attitude. Perhaps the most famous advocate of this approach is Louise Hay who believes that physical diseases are the manifestation of (and can be fixed by) our thoughts or “affirmations”.

Both of these approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. My point is that both are partial. I do not wish to advocate for either side of this dilemma. My approach is that reality is the experience of the meeting between me and this other stuff. Reality is a human experience.

In the west there has been the attempt to ‘filter out’ the subjective element; to somehow stand outside ourselves. This project is doomed. If I stand outside myself it is still the “I” doing the observing. Objectivity in this sense is not possible. Subjectivity in the sense of “what is can be whatever I make it” is just silly. However, seeing that my experience and action is affected by my past experience, my current thoughts, beliefs and feelings is entirely verifiable.

The search for the nature of reality is one part of reality investigating another. Thus my teeth, tongue and taste buds investigate a piece of food. My enjoyment doesn’t mean that the food isn’t objectively real. Neither does the objectively real atomic structure of the food invalidate my enjoyment. Reality is this: meeting of the me and not-me. Reality is the meeting, not one part of the story.

When it comes to discussion of god the split between the within-the-skin and the beyond-the-skin parties is very much in evidence. There is a rash at the moment of books by militant atheists of the Chris Hitchens’ school saying that science and objectivity tell us what is so and that belief in god is ’subjective’ or ‘mythical’ and so forth. In contrast, there are also those who assert that their own thoughts and feelings mean that god (objectively) exists. This is hardly helpful. Those who attack the claim for god’s reality are often attacking the wrong ‘god’. In Christian theology, the field I know best, the “objectively real god” who sits somewhere outside physical reality, has not been taken seriously for decades. The serious theologians see that god is in the process, not outside “it”.

My suggestion is that we take seriously the experience of those who speak of god. “God” is a human experience - just as are the equations describing the behaviour of sub-atomic particles. This means that the attack on ‘belief in God’ is beside the point. It is not belief that is at issue but experience.

This makes it essential for those who are ‘believers’ to be able to say what their experience of God is. A central question is the what counts as evidence. Does what occurs in the lab judge the rest of our lives? Much of what we find personally convincing is unlikely to be duplicated in a lab. A personal anecdote to make the point: A friend of mine would greet whoever picked up the phone by name before they had spoken. (This was before the days of caller ID.) He would do this consistently and reliably. This I find personally convincing. Could it be replicated in a lab, perhaps. Could it be replicated by others randomly chosen? Almost certainly not. But this doesn’t make it less convincing to me.

To have a fruitful discussion of the nature of reality and of the existence of god we need to move beyond the objective (beyond-the-skin-is-real) and subjective (within-the-skin-is-real) dispute. We need to begin speaking to each other about our experience. We need to be able to say what our experience of ‘god’ is or why we see the ’scientific’ account as more convincing. When we can start talking about what our words describe I think this discussion will be able to move forward in a fruitful way.

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written by John \\ tags: God, Information, Philosophy, Reality, Science

One of the things that some of the more hard-core atheists pride themselves on is being firmly placed in reality. The argument is that because theists choose to believe in something not verifiable by modern science, they are delusional. A delusional person is not in touch with reality. There are atheists who use this as a reason to argue that they are superior to theists. If by reality they mean “only that which is verifiable by modern science,” it would seem that they are correct. However, reality is more than just what is observable.

There is a great deal that can be experienced in the natural world that cannot be measured or verified by the scientific method. Just as much as the ground under you feet, your dreams, thoughts, and feelings are aspects of reality. Artwork, fiction, poetry, music, and acting each can illuminate truth that cannot be defined empirically, but can be felt. In our dreams and within any works of artistic endeavors there is a sense of “realness” that is immeasurable.

Reality is fluid - it takes the shape of the container in which you place it. The shape of your reality’s “container” is dictated by your paradigm. A paradigm is a filter through which you experience reality; it is the accumulation of preferences, prejudices, and protocol shaped both by physical ability and experience. Language is a key factor to an individual paradigm, as is childhood memories.

In the same way your paradigm shapes your reality, it also limits your reality. One bucket full of water is not an accurate representative of all the forms which water can take; in the same way your paradigm is not representative of the fullness of reality. Every paradigm is flawed or missing some aspect of reality. However, this does not mean that every paradigm is equal. To continue my metaphor, Lake Michigan is a lot closer to representing all the forms of water than a bucket of water. Broader paradigms, although still limited, are more accurate than narrow paradigms.

Science attempts to utilize one of the broadest paradigm possible by including only those ideas which can be tested and verified by a community of peers. However, this is still a paradigm, as it is limited to the scope of our ability to perceive the physical world, and does not include those phenomena that are immeasurable. One day science may progress so far as to be able to measure and understand even those phenomena which are currently outside its paradigm. However, to reject the fundamental reality of those things which remain untestable simply due to one paradigm’s limitations is short sighted.

The Divine is one of those aspects of reality which does not fit so neatly into every paradigm. It is so often reinterpreted and misunderstood as a result of our individual paradigms that no single broad paradigm can reach consensus with a majority of people. As a result, it is often easier to exclude that concept from our mutual paradigm. Could this be because the Divine truly does not exist? Is the Divine nothing more than myth?

It is true that one of the reasons why the concept of the Divine has not reached consensus could be due to the Divine not being real in a universal sense, but rather be real a limited individual sense. If this were the case, non-theists would have a valid argument against theism in all forms. Still, when the whole of human history is looked at in an honest manner, you cannot help but notice the consistency in which the Divine manifests itself in every culture. There is another possible reason why the Divine remains so consistent in human cultures, yet is so subject to individual opinion; it could be that when we talk about God or the Divine, we are really referencing to the ultimate reality which no single paradigm can adequately explain.

Might I be wrong? Of course, but I don’t think that is adequate reason to not expand my own paradigm beyond that provided by modern science. Albert Einstein had once said “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.” Limiting our paradigm to one branch of reality or another limits us as individual human beings and as a species. It is worth risking being wrong.

Temple Photo by Neal McQuaid. Blue Liquid Photo by Anticline. Bar Plaque Photo by Bruno Girin.

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written by John \\ tags: Art, Atheism, God, Myth, Reason, Religion, Science

Photo above by Stefan. Photo below by Karen Eliot.

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

- Buddha Gautama Siddharta (563-483 B.C.)

Every spiritual teacher worth listening to has offered themselves up to be questioned. All of the great spiritual teachers have said to their followers, “Don’t take my word for it; go see for yourself.” Jesus suggested that we should know the truth by its results the same way we know a tree by its fruit. The Prophet Mohammad had said that “The search of knowledge is an obligation laid on every Muslim.” Yet, when we look at the organizations that promote the teachings of one particular teacher, we come against resistance to questioning. Why should it be that way?

When we surround ourselves only with those who agree with our ideas and beliefs, we start taking those ideas and beliefs for granted. Relying on these notions as being true, our faith becomes blind and misguided. Without regular challenge, a spiritual journey becomes a religious institution and stagnates like standing water. Religious institutions become resistant to external questioning because of lack constant of internal questioning.

Inconsistency in the texts of major religions are actually beneficial in that they challenge each individual to think beyond the text. However, the mechanism for unity is so strong in institutions, that these inconsistencies are overlooked, glossed over, or justified with poor reasoning. In contrast, when faced with someone else’s religion, members of these organizations cannot help seeing contradictions and flaws in reason. Truth be told, institutions train its members to see nothing but the problems inherent in other views while blinding them to the problems within their own.

This is probably the biggest hurtle that religious tolerance faces; the mentality that allows for questioning of other faiths, but not of one’s own. It is so much easier to question the beliefs of another person than to question your own. I always try to remember that, whether I am writing about my own faith or the beliefs of others. And yet that isn’t enough - we must each be willing to be questioned.

What I write here is controversial by its nature, but more importantly, by its design. I want to challenge and be challenged. I question your beliefs to spur you into questioning mine. If you learn nothing else from what is written here, learn to think for yourself and question authority. It is true that no one religion can be founded on that principle, but a community where every individual is a philosopher-prophet-priest demands it.

My question for you is whether or not Unitarian Universalism is that community. Do we follow Timothy Leary’s creed to think for ourselves and question authority? Can we say we live up to the Buddha’s denial of rumored wisdom? Are we taking a good long look at the fruit our trees bear? I ask this because there is a very strong current against mystic or divine experiences within our religion and I believe even this needs to be questioned.

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written by John \\ tags: Faith, Individuality, Questions, Reason, Religion, Religious Tolerance, Timothy Leary, Unitarian Universalism