TRUST IN WHAT IS FAR LARGER...January 12, 2021

As unpopular and misunderstood as the word 'religion' is in our USA culture it is the large world religions which have in all historic time given cohesive, however imperfct and eventually after a few thousand years becoming irrelevant, form to human affairs.

So should a 'new religion' spontanelusly yet in continuity with the past arise out of our present chaos it would bring into our world a new,  not yet imagined, cultural perspective with new norms for the cooperative affairs of humankind. That is the potential power of the religious instinct that is a part of our collective human make up. That is why it is dangerous, and perhaps absurd, to succumb to the idea of 'getting rid of religion', as if we could. 

So it may be that 'religion', in this psychological/spiritual sense, is the only possible way for a truly relevant and compassionate 'new and better' world order to come into existence.  

This way, when it happens, it would be commonly and humbly known, 'this has come from God '- not primarily from our personal or collective ego strength, ingenuity and brain power. (As important as  these are.)

Presently most Americans are of either the practical secular view that our best mortal intelligence can find a way to a new evolutionary world epoch or the many very conservative religious folks who think their God will force itself on the whole world.

Neither of these attitudes trust in the power of the more authentic timeless religious one of doing what one can, loving as best one knows how, while full heartedly trusting that something in us all is at play which is far larger than our mortal ego efforts.

THE POWER OF LIVING SYMBOL FOR GOOD OR BAD...January 3, 2021

 A Reflection: To be deeply and irreversibly moved by a living symbol(compared to an object which has become only a  socially approved 'sign'  to say be worn as jewelry) is to become 'religious' minded in the richest meaning of the word. This change can begin from either inner or outer experience and it becomes both.

This is how the human psyche is moved to a higher consciousness. And if such transforming is not balanced by the grace of genuine compassion it risks  becoming horribly heartless and ruthless. 

Living symbols, which arrive spontaneously in the human collective mind as needed, have the power to alter the human point of view and values, even against the human conscious will.  They can stimulate the highest or lowest human  motivations and behaviors. 

Human consciousness of these spiritual/deeply psychological dynamics is what makes the difference in the living symbol being the catalyst for good or evil.  On the dangerous side they can definitely create a collective movement that has the same one-mindedness as a religious cult. Only increased human consciousness, psychological awareness of what is happening,  can provide what's needed for persons to 'see' the difference.

US PRESIDENCY AT POINT OF MORAL COLLAPSE..November 20, 2020..

I don't make this statement with any wish or joy that our sitting President's character has not been morally up to the task of being President of the United States of America. I so wish he had been able, like others, to grow into it. So much horrendous loss, now and to come, would have been averted.

Sadly. This symbolic cartoon image is not much of an exaggeration, in my best judgment,  of what is happening  in very high positions of our country,  especially  the presidency.  

This is hard for me to admit.  These are high positions in  which before most of us have been able to respect the moral decency and truth telling of the office holder. 

But never has it been more like this abandon to  self gorging power image in my lifetime. Thankfully  we can still  see some individuals in office, if not  already fired for doing right, who sustain, by their manner of operating,  our respect and confidence. 

And for the health and well being of the nation this state of federal government  needs to be personally and sadly  acknowledged by as many citizens who see it this way in their most honest hearts, even many of those who have before put their hopes in Mr. Trump.  

It has not gone well  or honorably by any definition.  I see no rational way out of our most serious problems other than this sad open recognition by most individual  American citizens. This may be now impossible? 

Perhaps some national spiritual awakening, beyond our rational capacities,  is another possible way for such a recognition of our morally deteriorated state of affairs to  dawn on such a necessary majority..

And , make no mistake, every day until that confidence can be something genuine and practiced in the Presidency our country is not in good, safe or honest hands. This is truthfully how it is now in my opinion.

OUR GASLIGHTING PRESIDENT MAY AWAKEN US... October 11, 2020

This is another example of our President being  intentionally untruthful and misleading to the nation. The majority of Americans have learned this and do not any longer count on him as having our best and honest interest at heart. 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-fauci/fauci-says-his-remarks-were-taken-out-of-context-in-trump-ad-idUSKBN26W0XM?fbclid=IwAR0hpucipdnlzyQW5PLyiAWAv8hgyz8iSdXVpppFiodAB44RxGWIwXrGEOM

Don't forget our gaslighting, it has all the characteristics of this kind of psychological abuse of its victims, president has taught his devotees to not listen to ordinary responsible,  even if imperfect, news sources. So they only hear what he wants them to hear and as relayed by his own one TV network, such as Fox's Hannity, and talk radio like Limbaugh. So persons  who listen with only one ear, maybe a third of us, never hear the corrections and truth calling out of his false claims and misleading efforts. 

Our nation is in peril as an experiment in democracy where the will of the people is sincerely sought and guides us collectively and where each citizen has a protected voice. 

But It's not enough now to want to return to how we were. Our awful chaotic situation now should teach us that we must expect and help build something better: more ethical, more compassionate, more transparent than what we had before most of us ever heard about Mr Trump. 

To stir us to this new awareness in the end can mean that the Trumpism psychological phenomenon has been evolutionarily just what we needed, to wake us up and to own our opportunity and responsibility to become a better, more just and honest country than we have ever yet been.

GOOD AND EVIL, SO FAR, REMAIN EQUALLY FOUNDATIONAL IN OUR KNOWN UNIVERSE...September 23, 2020

 

I wish this were not the case but it is and in the extreme. Truly opposites in quality of character. Yet no one can in honesty say why two humans can be so different. It may not be to either's personal striving and willing but unconscious factors far deeper.  

I've come  to believe that, at this stage of human evolution, both kinds of character need to be present and seen ever more clearly by the discriminating human public consciousness. We must urgently need to see these presently necessary differences as they are and how they clash and generate very different human attitudes and goals. Such a time of collective consciousness development involves much psychological human stretching and suffering which is now being experienced.

One opposing attitude is grounded in seeing humanity as a divided whole that needs to be drawn together, united, for human survival. The other sees humanity as necessarily permanently split and that one side needs to win and irradicate the other.(These opposing attitudes can openly or secretly exist in any individual, political party or religion)

My present most realistic hope is that a 'new' transformed humanity, where the nature of evil is not irradicated but in unanticipated and necessary ways is channeled to contribute creatively to the whole, is being forged through suffering. Creative suffering  in hope sadly acknowledges the necessary place of good and evil in the present state of the world's unfolding. 

My hope is that good will now be strengthened yet, because it is good, will not strive to irradicate the evil by force. But instead it is a good which restrains itself while humanity further evolves to the authentically, not coerced, higher good. Such evolved good would be a natural state of active love and valuing of all creation and its incalculable interdependent participating parts, each aspect humanly embraced as essential .

We seem to be at the epicenter of such epochal possibilities and changes. There is no guarantee which way this will go.  We can be yet another dead end in evolution's, as the imperfect mind of God, determined suffering trudge to some new optimum state of Divine/Human consciousness. 

Truly it seems to depend on the level of consciousness humans, in significant enough numbers, can by strong effort and much grace achieve. 

Individual humans, from a cleared-eyed grasp of the situation, can intentionally yearn as their primary purpose in a brief life, to make their very unique contribution to this now urgent cosmic plea for increased consciousness.

DREAM: BE KIND, TENDER HEARTED AND FORGIVING ...Sept 17, 2020

I do not carelessly share dreams.  For I think they reveal our most inimate personal selves and often need to be protected.  They are, imo, primarily for personal learning. However they sometimes touch on what is going in our collective life as a community, even as a nation. This one seems to have both of these elements. 

That is why I reluctantly post it here as an example of how a dream can significantly change how one is presently viewing an important life situation or problem. Since one's truthful dream is not created by one's personal thinking consciousness it need not be offensive to one's self and hopefully not to others. It is simply there as a psychological or spiritually subjective fact.  It arrives not through one's will. It really should not be attacked like one's conscious arguments might. So I'll not defend my or any other person's dreams. They are simply objectively what they are.  And they are generally a surprise, like this one, to the dreamer.

What a dream means is a matter of interpretative opinion. I'll share my initial thoughts about this one. That should help expand the dream. After all the dream came from or through me. So it's right I try to learn from it more than anyone else initially would. I have that responsibility to it.

 DREAM: My former white Counseling mentor, Dick D., invited me to preach at an all black church. I arrived and was warmly greeted by enthusiastic worshipers. But I had no words prepared. They gathered round me giving me songs and smiles of encouragment. I was being built up by them to a moment of hopefully having an important message. I was sweating, hoping for words to come. But nothing significant came to my mind or from my lips. I was talking  between breaks in the singing but was only thanking and praising them for their goodness toward me. This went on and on. They had unlimited patience.  They did not rush me. 

I was even given a folded bundle of bills in thanks for coming. These looked like foreign money but I was not sure. They were a bright glistening green color.

Finally these words came clear, simple  and repeatedly from me and nothing more: "Be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving each other." End of dream. 

THOUGHTS: I think dreams nearly always seek to balance and make more healthy and true one's present conscious and always somewhat blind attitudes and beliefs regarding highly emotional matters.

My conscious reaction was to think this is what white people need to be told, not blacks...to be kind to people of color for their suffering mistreatment from our deeply ingrained systemic racism. But that is not the dream's message to me. It was to black persons not whites. It is significantly counter nuanced from what I'd expect.

IMPORTANT. It needs remembered that when a human family or group has been systematically  abused and traumatized they most likely at first trun much of their sorrow, hurt and anger toward each other rather than to their abuser. For one reason it is much safer. But that use of energy  may only make them less fortified at transcending the abuse and somehow most helping to stop it. And of disarming the actual nature of the enemy, in this case the harsh victimizing  racism built into our American social and legal systems.

So the sermon is shown being primarily for persons of color. Black teachers and leaders I believe have said for decades that our minority people of color are wise to come together and galvanize themselves with acceptance of each other and with creative consciousness of their mutual wounds. Then, the dream seems to say, no outer injustice like racism or bigotry will be able to keep standing against the strong and righteous appeals for American equal justice under the law. 

So, the dream implies black persons are strengthening themselves at the very core by "being generously kind to each other, tender hearted and forgiving each other."

The dream is saying that as discriminated against minorities keep making this spiritually courageous movement within themselves, which I trust is happening more strongly than ever before in our present moment, a growing mountain of white persons of good and honest will will finally 'see' and join them in their insistence for justice. And in the goal of finally overcoming the strong forces of bigoted racism that have plagued our nation. And have hurt the souls of us all from the very start. And which sadly are now being even more overtly  expressed in highest places of national power. 

This I think this is the social/spiritual message of the dream to me.

This perhaps is more than a personal dream for my own learning but one that could speak to the collective consciousness of both American whites and of color. This dream image, as I see it, potentially  attempts to break into the one sided opposing polarities which divide us. This points toward a 'union of opposites' instead of the historical stalemate of cruel harsh divisions.

AMAZING GRACE.. September 9 2020

I suspect there can be extreme unplanned stress situations in human life that set things up for uncommon experiences of grace.  Such grace, like any transforming personal experience, is never a rational one eventually reached by reason, thought or study. It comes after those efforts of the ego will have been tried and found wanting.

A God comes when the human has exhausted every mindful resource, has done so honestly with oneself and has reserved no social or material backup plan. That coming of a God( I say  'a God' for our human 'idea' of God necessarily is a feeble, incomplete, uncertain and inaccurate one.) whether by dream, vision or what seems at first to be an external unnatural  'miracle' carries an authority like one has not imagined or experienced. It simply transforms ones point of view about self, others and the world. That change teaches in one way or another that 'all that is or can be is one' and so nothing inner or outer is to be rejected as having no value or purpose. 

Everything, including as in the pictured quote, the most serious 'error and sins' is to be considered retrospectively as not only important but necessary for the unfolding of grace in the world.  

This transforming of the human, and likely of the Sacred, is not a matter of rational reason. So it is profoundly a matter of the heart or soul, of inner awakening. This is the ineffable nature of grace and the 'insatiable love of all that is or can be' which surely must be its foundation.

I suspect that the nation and the world can now only be set on course for a good and loving/compassionate future, or any future at all, by such grace experiences.

A latest Cosmology of Physics (https://www.npr.org/2020/09/03/909423906/how-everything-will-end-according-to-a-cosmologist) points to the rational necessity of an eventual end of the universe. That, I suspect, would be only if grace is not able to find it's way to humanity so that what can be called God and Human are in union such as has not yet generally ever happened before.

So because of the Human's and God's yearning and need, whether primarily conscious or unconscious, for grace; such transformed humans now, wherever they live across the globe, rightly live in excruciating honesty with themselves. And in a Sacred respect for the role of all others and an intense caring for the Earth.