Open out a way

This morning as I was remembering that I have been given a significant hiatus from my Sunday speaking duties I felt something unfamiliar and wonderful.  I recognized the care and love that was behind the decision to support my request for this time away. I actually did what I normally don't do, and that is I opened my heart to feel the love of the gift and then let it flow from me to our trustees and all those who have extended their support.  Up until this moment, I had been aware of the privilege and grateful for it but I hadn't let it in to feel the care, feel the compassion and feel the love. As I've shared before it's been a challenge for me to open my heart and let the love in. Of course if I can't let it in then I can't let it out either. There is a singular ventricle to the sharing and receiving of love. A blockage in one direction restricts the other. 
This insight recalls Robert Browning's observation "to know rather consists in opening out a way...than in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without."

- L

Embracing Doubt: An Act of Faith

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

According to a famous Zen Patriarch, “the Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.”  Yet I do have preferences!  In this moment my preference is that I be filled with new-found spiritual insight and a palpable sense of Divine Presence.  But alas that is not my current reality, or at least not my experience of my current reality.

Lacking an abiding faith as a minister is a challenging conundrum. It’s difficult for me not to feel like a disappointment; like I’m letting my community down.  Not that any of you have given me any reason to feel that way; you’ve been amazingly understanding and supportive. That speaks well of your spiritual capacity to embrace the human and offer compassion to the less than perfect in others, even the spiritual leader. I however, have been less than generous with myself, feeling like a traffic cop who has lost his sense of direction and no longer reliable in his ability to lead others on their way.

Despite my personal doubts about my leadership capacity, I remain convicted that staying with the questions is good medicine for spiritual growth. As observed by Hosea Balbou, “doubt is an incentive to truth, and patient inquiry leadeth the way.” I believe that anything substantial ought to hold up to scrutiny and withstand the abrading effects of inquiry and doubt.  I believe that true faith must come out of uncertainty. The scriptures are rife with paradox and seeming contradictions. Just this morning I discovered the contradiction in adjacent scriptures, with Psalms 22 (My God why have you forsaken me) immediately followed by Psalms 23 (The Lord is my Shepherd).

Ultimately what I’m after, what I suspect we’re all after, is not just a set of concepts about a higher Power but a living faith, a relationship with a living God. And we all know that relationships have their ups and downs, times of real closeness and profound intimacy and times of feeling separate and doubtful. So I continue to live these doubts, though I am equally willing to doubt my doubts as my faith; trusting that in due course and time, Truth will emerge and its purity and true voice will rise above the rest and be my touchstone once more.

What Have You Got to Lose?

"God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction."
– Meister Eckhart

In a world that judges by appearances it can be risky to let others see the less attractive parts of ourselves. I speak not only of the physical appearance such as a bad hairdo, but those revelations of what is going on with us that suggest we really don’t "have it all together."

As a spiritual leader I have been reluctant to be completely transparent with the congregation I serve.  When my own faith has faltered and my resolve to believe what I preach has fallen like a seed upon a barren rock I've wanted to keep my inner struggle under wraps.  My concern was that I would be judged as incompetent or unworthy and that people would vote with their feet!

Recently however I decided differently. Despite feeling profound disconnection and deep doubts I decided I would stand and deliver nonetheless and openly share with our community exactly what I was going through.  And so over the last few Sundays I have mustered the chutzpah to chronicle my spiritual foray that was marked by many more questions than answers. I’ve reported on a painful emptiness that I had felt as I sincerely sought to reestablish a baseline of truth, self-worth and a sense of home where my searching mind and yearning heart might find respite.  

It felt like I was in some kind of spiritual free fall and I really did not know where, or how, or even if I would settle on anything resembling solid ground. Because of the discomfort, I was tempted to take on an affirmative cloak that in the past would have served to wrap my doubts in the appearance of faithfulness.  As I pondered this strategy there was the voice of reason suggesting that a borrowed faith is better than none at all, and it would give me something to lean on and operate from until the real thing showed up for me. However, when I would feel deeply into this idea, it felt wrong, inauthentic and my truer sense encouraged me to wait it out until that which was really true for me awakened on its own.

I am grateful that I held out.  Last Saturday I received an insight which felt so very true and brought me a sense of peace that had eluded me for weeks.  The insight was simple but profound, a line from A Course in Miracles which says, “Nothing real can be threatened.” This was the assurance that I was seeking in my process that had felt like a terrible loss of a sense of self and precious beliefs that undergirded my faith.  Like a breath of rarified air I was struck by the beautiful realization that whatever I may have lost could not be the Truth of me; that my essence is untouchable, neither vulnerable to loss or limitation. In my vulnerable state it was more than a nice concept. I received it as a core, essential truth that penetrated my mind and heart and resonated deeply.  From that realization it was just a moment later that the implications for what I had been experiencing became clear. Whatever I may have “lost” must have been the temporal aspects of my self, not my essential self. Under the refining fire of deep inquiry my precious beliefs and concepts were consumed as layers of a false self.

As painful as it has been, my sense today is that this process was a good and necessary part of my spiritual growth. As St. Paul observed, we “die daily” and as Meister Eckhart noted, growth is really about subtraction.

Perhaps you are facing the risk of losing something precious in your life right now. (We all have and will) Perhaps you have become identified with something that can be lost or damaged.  You might ask yourself this question. Is it possible that your life in God (true self) can survive, and even thrive, through this loss?  Such a question, sincerely pondered with vulnerability and a little chutzpah, may lead you, as it has for me, to a deeper realization of your true Self.

Rebuilding the Temple

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Psalms 127

As those of you know, who’ve attended service at UCOD the last two Sundays I have been going through a brutal examination of my faith and literally every concept, platitude and affirmation that has been the lexicon of my weekly talks and writings is up for review, and if necessary, dismissal. This is the uncomfortable raw and vulnerable stage of the spiritual journey.

WARNING: If you don’t have the stomach for a minister in deep search mode, please don’t read the following piece which is an unfiltered window into my current stage of enlightenment.

What I want to know, and not just believe, is that there is an ally that is constantly watching out for me, a reliable, albeit invisible, partner in my life who I can absolutely trust with my life. I yearn for some sense of realization that I do not navigate these dark and mysterious waters of life by my lonesome self. I want to feel the presence of love that enfolds my heart like a mother's hug and extends its care deep into the sinews of my awareness, and perpetually reminds me that I’m more than the sum of my fears and doubts and imaginings of how life appears to be.

I have spent a lifetime trying to figure out the curriculum that would avail me some modicum of safety, happiness or at least a moment of peace. The machinations of my thinking mind have conjured of endless schemes and plans and ways to mold the clay of possible scenarios that I desperately hoped, and sometime believed, would bring a state of calm and self-acceptance. I long to be in an eddy of rest, where I can let go and trust that without my struggling, worrying and strategizing I’ll still somehow find my way to a good and peaceful life; a life of enough.

Enough, what moving target in my search of satisfaction! Achieving a sense of enough is a merciless drive that has me grasping and thirsting and hungering in every direction to feel and satisfy a vague, persistent emptiness that never quite defines its nature or reveals its capacity other than its constancy which yawns and demands more even after a great feast.

Jesus said do not worry about the needs of this world and God knows what I need but I’m doubting that God knows anything of these needs that claw and crave inside me. Because God is not in this dream of separation from all of Life. The Divine is not subject to hunger or thirst or the need for acknowledgment, acceptance or loving approval. God is the fulfillment of all needs in which here can be no lack.

I am asked to remember that I am an offspring of this needless Fulfillment and thus beyond or beneath this endlessly wanting self is a truer self, in which all that the Father hath is mine and whose pleasure it is to share it unconditionally with me. I still believe in this part of my nature that knows this fulfillment. My problem is that I am not realizing that truth right now. I’m in a far country seemingly far from my Source trying to find the balm for this inner ache that the world cannot provide. I must find a way to return home to my true self where I live in complete harmony and joy with the Father/Mother God. I must be mindful of my steps on this journey toward satisfaction and question the direction that my search takes me. Either I’m moving closer to Truth or closer to the illusory world of seek but not find.

How am I doing with this whole process you may wonder? I am not deeply depressed. It is quite uncomfortable but not intolerable. When the itch gets really strong I’m tempted to pull out some time tested affirmative prayers to scratch away the uncertainty but I’m resisting the inauthentic leap into a false faithfulness. This process feels too primal, too vital, too rich with possibility for rebuilding the temple of my spiritual understanding to cave into quick fixes. If this is to be an authentic makeover I need to personally approve the plans, touch and feel the materials and consult the Architect on every aspect of the reconstruction.

It will take discernment, it will take courage, it will take patience but it is worth my every effort for there is nothing that I want or need more than to return to the state where my soul rests in its true home.

I do pray that my journey, openly shared with you, will bring light to your path and encourage your own authentic journey.