Talking to Your Child about Spirituality

If you want your child to think exactly as you do then this article is not for you. All you have to do is tell them what to think. If however you wish to explore spirituality with your child and grow closer to him/her as a result, then herein lie a few suggestions.

Usually children are exposed to the religion of their parents through holidays, stories and religious practices and customs. Rarely, if ever are children asked for their own thoughts or spiritual experiences. Children however very often have their own thoughts about spirituality, questions or experiences they shy away from expressing because there is never a forum for that. It is my experience that thinking things through for one’s self and sharing one’s spiritual experiences is spiritually empowering. Far too often in practicing a religion we give our own power away to the priest, minister, rabbi or whoever. We want them to lead us to God or illuminate our minds. There is nothing wrong with seeking the council of those who dedicate their lives to spiritual pursuits, in fact it is usually necessary, but to expect someone else to do the work for us is counterproductive. It is a way of further separating ourselves from the truth we seek.

A way to open up a conversation with your child about God would be to ask: Have you ever thought about God? If your child’s answer is “no” then wait until he or she has begun to think about God. If the answer is yes, then proceed with a series of questions to draw out how your child thinks on this subject. The idea is to let your child know you are interested in listening to what he or she has to say. If your child asks you questions you can respond with: What do you think? If he or she really wants to know what you think he/she will ask again and at that time it would be appropriate to share your belief or experience. Children can ask questions that require us to think through our spiritual beliefs and grope to find words to express them. “What is God?” and “Why can’t we see God?” may need answers that use a metaphor or analogy. Above all if you don’t have an answer it’s best to say “I don’t know.” This leaves the door open for further exploration for both you and your child.

If your child expresses gratitude, wishes well to another, or feels sorry you can point out that these are spiritual experiences. Prayer is at heart a well-wishing as is the Buddhist practice of metta (compassion). These practices can be illustrated to children in very simple terms by giving concrete examples of how to apply well-wishing in your child’s life.

It is my opinion that there are no wrong answers to spiritual questions. At any given time there are only provisional answers which may change during the life long quest for spiritual knowledge. If your spiritual belief system has ever changed or evolved you know the truth of this.

The Universal Curriculum

That there are many religions and multiple variations within those religions is clear indeed. That there is a universal spiritual “curriculum” common to almost all religions is less apparent. This article will touch the tip of this iceberg of that commonality by comparing a five religions. Quite briefly it can be said that an underlying theme of learning to live harmoniously with others: how to respect others, share with others, and how to encourage others is the ethics embodied in almost all religions. That ethical goals are shared among religions is very significant because all of spirituality regardless of the different means to attain these goals, always comes back to them in the end. Each religion has its own vocabulary and belief system, and spiritual practices. These are the different means. Preparing a meal can be a helpful analogy. People have different food likes and dis-likes, some even have food allergies so of course the specific meal any one person would prepare would be different. However the nutritional requirements for any human body are basically the same. How one chooses to fulfill those nutritional needs through cuisine is a matter of choice. And so it is with religion, each religion can be seen as a different cuisine but the nutritional requirements, the spiritual nourishment needed is universal.

For the people of the Book, the children of Abraham, the Jewish-Christian-Islamic religions the last six of the ten commandments embody the ethics of those religions: honor father and mother, no murder, no adultery, no stealing, no false testimony (lying), no coveting. The five Buddhist precepts taken by lay people are to abstain from: taking life, from taking what is not given (stealing), from sexual misconduct, from false speech, from becoming intoxicated. Although the vocabulary is slightly different these two lists concur on four essential points, the intention to not kill, to not lie, to not steal, and to conduct one’s self appropriately in sexual relations. Finally let’s look at what the Yoga Sutras have to say: “The Laws of Life are five: nonviolence, truthfulness, integrity (which would include not stealing), chastity (correct sexual deportment), and nonattachment”. Again we find the same four ethical points in slightly different language.

It is interesting to compare the injunction of the Ten Commandment not to covet with the Yoga Sutra’s Law of Life of nonattachment. Both are mental states and they both refer to the same thing. Coveting is wanting something and being attached to something is also wanting it. One could say that nonattachment goes a step further than not coveting and if you limit not coveting to the list given in the Ten Commandments that would be so. However a broader definition of non-coveting could clearly be the same as nonattachment. I have always felt that because it is a mental state non-coveting actually covers the actions of not lying, not stealing, not killing and not committing adultery. If one is in a state free of coveting these negative actions are impossible.

And so here at the ethical beginning points of all these religions we find a universal curriculum. These religions begin with ethical injunctions and through their various practices they end with the embodiment of these ethical principles.

Overcoming the World

 

When Jesus said “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33) I really think he meant it. The way I understand this statement is that he was saying he was not ensnared by desires or aversions. He was complete within himself and needed nothing from the world for fulfillment. He was fulfilled in God. This is the only lasting fulfillment there it. This is the recipe for the end of suffering. The body may yet feel pleasure and pain but because the mind is released from desire and aversion suffering is absent.

 

The implications of overcoming the world are great. It would mean that God did not send His son to Earth to suffer the way we do. The rational for this kind of thinking is usually that suffering is necessary for compassion. But is this true? Let us hold this question open for a moment.  For Jesus to indulge in suffering would be dragging God down to our level.  And behind this thinking is a resistance to letting go of our suffering, a clinging to it as if it actually gave us something of value, perhaps the self-righteousness of victimhood. Instead let us consider that what Jesus did by overcoming the world was to open a door for us, that we too have the possibility of overcoming the world, so that we can aspire to live in a body without suffering. This would be lifting us up to God instead of dragging God down to us.

 

To understand how this is possible let’s look at a metaphor from physics called entrainment. The classic illustration of entrainment is the old clock-maker’s shop, filled with clocks whose pendulums are swinging. It was noticed that over time all pendulums adjusted their swings so that they all would swing together. This was called entrainment. Whichever clock had the strongest swing that was the one the others eventually followed. Likewise if the whole clock shop was already coordinated any new clock would fall into that pattern because the collective swing was so strong. This is similar to the tuning of a stringed instrument. A string which is plucked will set in vibration any other sting tuned to an octave apart. And so it is with humans. If there is a strong cultural frequency we will vibrate to it whether we are aware of that or not.

 

 

Enlightenment is when you have succeeded in tuning your frequency to divine Love and can hold that frequency no matter what other vibrations enter your field. You are no longer subject to the phenomena of entrainment. In this sense you have overcome the world as Jesus said. And when it is accomplished you stand as a beacon for others. By holding the frequency of Love, it is a boost to others, to their own efforts at accomplishing the same. This I believe is what Jesus did for us.

Ruler of Your Kingdom

 

Long ago and far away… not really but you’ll see…there lived a king who had three sons. He wanted to see which one of them would be the best ruler of the kingdom. He built each of them a McMansion in a different part of the kingdom. Then he called his sons to him. He explained that each of them had a new house and told each son of its location. He gave them each $10 and said he wanted them to fill their houses using ONLY that $10 and that he would be visiting each of them shortly. The sons set off each to his own house.

 

The first son arrived at his house. He wandered through its many empty rooms. He let out a sigh and sat down on the front doorstep head in hands. “It’s impossible.” He said. “I’ll never be able to fill this house using only $10.” The second son arrived at his house and had a similar reaction but not quite. He was a very busy, can-do person so he wandered toward the nearest town trying to figure it out. A truck passed him on the way to the landfill. “That’s it!” he cried. “All I have to do is persuade this truck driver to bring all the discarded furniture and appliances to my house for $10. Plus he’ll save on the landfill charges.” And that is what happened. The stuff that ended up there was broken and dirty and sitting in piles of disarray. The second son was not very happy with the result. In fact he decided to live in the pool house on a cot. “But” he said, “I have fulfilled my father’s requirement to the last penny.”

 

The third son arrived at his house and he too was impressed with its size. “This is far too big for one person” he thought. And then he thought, “I wonder who my neighbors are?” He too wandered to the nearest town. There he found a market in the village square. There were vendors of all sorts and musicians playing music. “Wow” he thought “I could invite all these great new neighbors to my house for a party to welcome my father when he arrives.” And so he set about introducing himself and inviting everyone to his house. Truth be told, he was so happy at the friends he was making, he forgot about the $10 and the requirement to fill his house. When his father arrived at the third son’s house he found it full of people eating food, full of children running through the house in laughter, full of the sounds of music and people singing.

 

Now which son would you want to be ruler of your kingdom, the one who gave up, the one who stuck to the letter of the law, or the one who made friends with his neighbors? We are the rulers of our own kingdoms, the rulers of our own minds. And in any given moment we have the opportunity to choose one of these three sons rule. We can give up, go through the motions of fulfilling our obligations, or reach out in joy to another person. And if perchance we find we’ve chosen a poor ruler for our kingdom, in any given moment, we have the chance to choose once again.

When an Ancient Hatred Becomes A Present Love

When an ancient hatred becomes a present love that is true forgiveness.

 

Untrue forgiveness is what most commonly falls under the notion of forgiveness. How often have we heard it said I have forgiven my X (my parents, my sister, my in-laws, etc.) for what they did to me. The “for what they did to me” is the tip-off that a grudge is still being held. A person who feels this way has pardoned a criminal in their eyes. This person is still a criminal  for what they did in the past and the past still binds them both because it is brought into the present. How many times have you heard this: “What happened in the past is completely irrelevant now”?  Anyone who says this has released themselves from the past and stepped into the freedom of the present. In fact the things we have truly forgiven are forgotten, not because we can’t remember them if we wanted but because we no longer have the need to remember them. There no longer is a grudge to keep alive by remembering.

 

True forgiveness is a kind of transmutation of hatred into love. This is the alchemy of greatest value. How is this alchemy accomplished? One way is to take yourself out of the center of your awareness. This is not so easy to do because almost all our thoughts flow in an effort to maintaining the centrality of a self-image that is inherently false. That is why it takes so much effort, so many thoughts. Spiritual practices of all religions address this very need to take one’s false self out of the center of awareness. This is why we do rosaries or do malas; this is why we meditate; this is why we dedicate merit or pray.

 

This false self hides in many guises. It can seem to be another person. In fact we carry around false images of people in our minds all the time. Because these images are in our minds they are us, not the other person. I will illustrate with a story from my own life. Growing up I was terrified of my own father and I was not the only one. My brother and 2 sisters were terrified as well. After we grew up and left home anytime 2 or more of us siblings got together the first and only topic of conversation was how awful our father was. In a certain sense it was a “survivors” mentality, a confirmation that this really happened because part of the experience of childhood was being blamed for things we hadn’t done. I had to carry around within my mind the image of an insane father in order to verify my own sanity, or so it seemed. At a certain point my own family life fell apart in divorce. Amazingly one outcome of this life’s “failure” was that I formed an intension to heal my relationship with my father. Very quickly after this I realized that the image I was carrying around of him did not jibe with who was standing in front of me in the present. With this realization I was able to be present instead of being “past” when I was around my father. It was not always easy to be present with him and I would stay until I could not tolerate it any more but I kept going back. I’d sit and listen to him, simply that. My tolerance for listening to him grew and almost as if by magic he began to soften. Until in tiny bits and pieces he began to be able to hear something that I would say. Finally this ancient hatred did indeed become a present love and I now count my own father among my dearest friends.   

The Power of Dedicating Merit

There is a Buddhist practice where the merit of a spiritual practice is dedicated to others. It is simply the intension that others may benefit as well as one’s self from the self-healing a spiritual practice has induced. In my experience the power of self-healing is so great that it extends by itself quite naturally and often mysteriously to others. It is not necessary to form an intension to do so however it is a further blessing to do so consciously. Knowing that others benefit from our positive actions can increase our joy and motivation for doing them. I will tell you a story related to me by a dear friend named Nan. She was at one time working and living at a Catholic parish house although she herself was not Catholic. One evening all the others living there went off to do some spiritual practices and left Nan alone. The gist of it was that she was excluded because she was not Catholic. This induced a state of jealousy in Nan that was so intense she finally sat in front of her picture of Jesus and prayed for release of this jealousy. She vowed not to get up from prayer until this had transpired. Nan had some psychic abilities and that evening she “heard” this, that her prayer for release from jealousy indeed was to be answered and not only that someone else in that same city would be released from jealousy that night ask well. Nan arose from her praying with a light heartedness and sense of well-being.

 

In a past article I described how my relationship with my father was healed. There is more to this story. The repercussions of that healing eventually extended to my sister. My sister’s solution to her feelings about our father was to cut him off, to have no contact what-so-ever. This ironically was my father’s own solution to his feelings about his mother and now he was to taste the other side of it. For some reason I began to attend Al Anon although there was no one in my immediate family who was an alcoholic, or so I thought. I personally gained a lot by attending meetings. I began the process of learning how to undo the sense of victimhood. But there were other aspects to attending that I could not fathom. I sometimes would come home from a meeting and cry my eyes out without knowing the reason, or the same thing would happen after reading some Al Anon literature. One night it seemed I had no way of stopping the tears. Then one day out of the blue I got a phone call from my sister. She said she had just checked in to an alcohol rehab center; she would be there for about a month and she was afraid of becoming sober but she was going to do it any way. I was shocked. She then went on to say she had been drinking since she was a teenager. She had hidden this so well no one in the family had a clue that she’d been drinking that much or for that long a time. I promised her my mental support of well-wishing as she underwent this treatment ( prayer was not in her belief system at that time).

 

Her treatment was successful but although she was working the 12 steps, including the eighth step of making amends she felt for her emotional safety she had to keep our father cut off. And so it was for over 10 years. Meanwhile I was making progress in reconciling with my father. My sister and I would talk from time to time as her busy schedule permitted and I described to her how I had become friends with our father. She was actually able to hear this. Slowly though her own self-healing, my-self-healing and our father’s self-healing she has been able not only to reconnect with him but now even enjoys the contact. And my father is still reeling with a sense of profound gratitude at the reconciliation. And so I offer this as a story of hope and as an example of how self-healing is contagious. May the merit of our collective healing ripple out across our planet and beyond!

Mind Fasting for Lent

 

Lent is a time for giving things up and what better practice is there than giving up things that are hurtful to us like negative mind states! During Lent I have been conducting a weekly mind fasting group for the members of the church I go to, the First Christian Church of Ukiah. I thought I’d share with you a little about what we’ve been doing.

 

There are some things in this world we have a choice about and others where we have no choice. The most important choice we have is where we direct our attention. It is the most important because it can lead us to freedom. Initially we may have no choice about what we think. Thoughts arise in the mind unbidden however we can chose to pay attention to them or not. Redirecting our attention away from a thought takes away its power. It may arise again, and again but if we consistently redirect our attention it will dissipate and leave us in peace. This is called mind fasting. If you think this sounds suspiciously like meditation, you’re right! Why then call it mind fasting?

 

I picked up the term mind fasting from Thomas Hora who was a psychiatrist in NCY. The term highlights the mind’s the need to feed. It’s need for constant thought and sensory stimulation. This is why we all have TVs, is it not? The TV is an unending supply of sensory stimulation for the mind to feed on. Many people keep the TV on in order to get away from their own thoughts. They prefer the TV to the unending stream of thoughts in their own minds. In my opinion this is like feeding the mind junk food. If we turn off the TV we can begin to learn to turn off the flow of unwanted thoughts in our minds. Then we won’t be dependent on television to get away from our own thoughts. Fasting cleanses the digestive tract; likewise mind fasting cleanses the mind stream. Through mind fasting the number of thoughts decreases. There is actually some breathing space between thoughts. And eventually the quality of our thoughts improves to something that is healthy and nourishing to us. 

 

In redirecting our thoughts we need an object of contemplation to keep returning our attention to. One of the best such objects is our own breath. It is constant. It maintains our life. It is always with us and so we can always redirect our attention to our breath. Directing our attention to our breath connects us to ourselves. It draws us inward.

 

This process of mind fasting slows our thoughts down. This is of great benefit to us. It allows for relaxation. Thinking takes a lot of energy. Thinking creates a lot of stress. And so we can relax in the evenness of our own breath.  This is called unwinding the mind. Initially this may be all we attain from mind fasting and it is a lot but you should know a consistent practice over years can lead to the ultimate freedom from unbidden thought, a relaxation so deep you have yet to experience it and the end of searching, the end of suffering. However to whatever degree our thought slows down, there we will experience a taste of relaxation, and a taste of freedom.