Thanks to Bill Reichart, pastor of the Provocative Church at Big Creek, for responding to my article, “The Loss of Soul.” You can find Bill on www.provocativechurch.com.
Bill ’s blog includes the first talk in a series entitled “False Self” which I thought you might want to check out for yourself, you men in particular.
As you know, I’m running a series called “Quest For The Soul,” which explores the same theme. I enjoyed the first talk in the series at Bill’s church, however, because (a) it was given by a man who’s obviously experienced his own spiritual awakening (you could tell this because he’d dropped his masks!) and (b) it was a talk given by a man for men, and consequently had that unique male perspective and focus. It also got me thinking about the issue of masculine identity in today’s world.
I found this quote which I felt gave good advice.
“If you want to know yourself, slow down. Stop what you are doing. But if you want to grow, if you want to form yourself, you must actively express yourself.” (Keleman 1975)
This article was supposed to be about healing our body through healing our soul. The article was also to include how the body can help us in our journey to enlightenment, if we learn to understand how it is always trying to communicate with us. Then I realized I should really tell you why I believe so completely that the body can be healed through healing our soul.
So, here it is . . . I’ll post the “other” article on the body and its’ wisdom in a day or two.
Some years ago I was in constant physical discomfort and pain. Now I’m not. It’s been a miracle; I now have a new life.
To be truthful, I didn’t emerge from a pain-filled life by listening to my doctors. While they were sympathetic and supportive, their attitude towards my condition ( I had a spine operation from which I never fully recovered and later developed osteo-arthritis and a rare form of rheumatoid arthritis) was one of resignation. The problem was, I just couldn’t see myself as some kind of disabled person, and I wanted to live a full and enjoyable life. I knew I had to do something. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the most common mistakes people make when they embark on a path of spiritual progress is to believe that they have embarked on a journey of self-improvement. The reason for the misunderstanding, in my experience, is that in most of us, there seems to be a deeply held, though often unconscious conviction, that who we are now, right at this minute, is a defective, inferior version of who we ought to be, or should be. In fact, many people on the spiritual path seem to think their task is to become saintly or “perfect.”
In other words, there’s a belief that if they aren’t completely unselfish, self-sacrificing, and caring all of the time, aren’t always wise, patient, peaceful, compassionate and understanding (to mention but a few of the virtues many people imagine an enlightened being possesses) then enlightenment will forever elude them. This insistence on becoming perfect, however, is one of the biggest hurdles we need to overcome if we are ever to attain spiritual maturity.
“To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.”
Carlos Casteneda
In this article, I want to concentrate on the lost sense of innocence many of us have had taken away from us when we were children due to the style of parenting we were subject to (ie. unconscious parenting.) What was ”given” to us in place of our inborn sense of innocence, tragically, was a firm conviction in our intrinsic “badness” or “wrongness.” By re-claiming our lost innocence now, however, we can begin clearing up our personal family karma, and that of our parents and ancestors, so bringing to a halt the endless passing on of “the sins of the fathers” down through the generations.
It’s important to understand that none of us are born with the belief that we are bad, unworthy or wrong . As innocent children we all believe we are a delight - and so we are. Unhappily, many of us then begin to form the wrong idea about who we are and come to believe it is the incontrovertible truth.
Most of us have manufactured a false self to replace our original, true self: our soul. We begin to build this false self from an early age as we learn from those who take care of us - in particular our mother, or primary caretaker - that some of our behaviour is unacceptable, wrong or bad. By a system of reward and withdrawal of what we want and need, or reward and punishment, we are conditioned to adjust, or completely change, our natural, instinctive way of behaving and responding. In this way, we gradually replace all of the “unacceptable” parts of our original identity, with a false, but acceptable, identity.
As infants, for example, our instinct is to cry when we want something, and to keep on crying until our needs and desires are satisfied. If our crying is rewarded by us getting what we want, then we’ll carry on with this behaviour because it’s successful from our point of view. If we are chastised or punished when we cry, or simply endure a withdrawal of attention and affection, then we learn not to cry, it’s as simple as that. We change our behaviour, change who we are, in order to get what we need.
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