After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

I have been reading a book by Jack Kornfield called "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry". Jack was the author of another book called "A Path with Heart" that was a huge influence on my spiritual path many years ago, and I'm finding this other book to be equally profound. He speaks to my early experiences with spiritual awakening, helping me better understand some of what I experienced in the past as well as my current spiritual path. After we have a profound, blissful, ecstatic spiritual experience, what next? His answer - do the laundry. The mundane affairs of life become our spiritual practice.

If we have felt the bliss of awakening to the way things really are, our next task is not to live in that state of bliss. It is to take the magic we have experienced and bring it into our lives. Having climbed the mountain and seen the view, we then need to come down the mountain to live our lives. But we can also share a bit of the light we've been given. That doesn't mean we have to preach it (though we can); it means we simply live and let that light shine through us. We embrace the mundane and live our lives with the fresh perspective we have been given.

There is so much I love about the book, but I'll just share a couple of pieces. In speaking about flexibility of mind and heart, Jack relates an experience he had with one of his early spiritual teachers:

The dogmatic and rigid qualities of religious fervor give way to the middle path, with a wise presence that is neither indulgent nor fearful.

My teacher Ajahn Chah demonstrated this flexibility when he was most inconsistent, contradicting things he had previously said, reversing teachings he had earlier emphasized. When this was pointed out to him by a frustrated student (me), Ajahn Chah laughed. "It's like this," he said. "There is a road I know well, but it can be foggy or dark. When I see someone traveling this road about to fall in a ditch or get lost in a sidetrack on the right-hand side, I call out, 'Go to the left.' Similarly, if I see someone about to fall in a ditch or get lost in a sidetrack on the left-hand side, I call out, 'Go to the right.' That's all I do when I teach. Whenever you get caught, I say, 'Let go of that too.' "

For years before I left the church of my childhood, I felt that church leaders painted with too broad a brush. At the time, I thought it was a necessary aspect of trying to teach so many people at once, but I think it also comes from a codified creed that begins to feel rigid as soon as it has been written down. Having the flexibility to change your teachings to suit the circumstances of your hearer(s) feels so liberating to me. I love how one yoga teacher handled that - from another part of the book:

Religious traditions often warn us about the dangers of entanglement with the senses, and it is true that we can become overly attached and identified with this body and its pleasures. Our culture has exploited this to an extreme. But in spiritual circles the opposite danger of aversion, fear, and unconsciousness is perhaps even more common. There is, as the Buddha suggests, a middle path to be found in each of our lives. One yoga teacher paused in the midst of teaching a difficult stretch to caution her students, "You strivers here, relax. And you sensualists, straighten up."

Speaking to an entire class, this woman recognized the diversity of personalities among her hearers and tailored her message to the specific tendencies of students. In my early religion, we often heard encouragements to do more, to be of greater service, to strive to be better, etc. Those of us who were already trying hard, sometimes at the edge of exhaustion, would hear these messages and feel burdened. But we kept trying. No doubt there are many who need to hear those messages, but I wasn't one of them. Or maybe I was when I was very young, but I reached a point where I didn't need those messages anymore. But they just kept coming. It would have been nice if we had had more flexibility to call out, "go left" or "go right" instead of "work harder".

Here's another gem from the book:

Zen teacher Edward Espe Brown is the author of many Zen-inspired cookbooks, beginning with The Tassajara Bread Book. Through describing his kitchen practice, he writes of the truths of the heart.

When I first started cooking at Tassajara, I had a problem. I couldn't get my biscuits to come out the way they were supposed to. I'd follow a recipe and try variations, but nothing worked. These biscuits just didn't measure up.

Growing up I had made two kinds of biscuits. One was from Bisquick and other from Pillsbury. For the Bisquick you added milk in the mix and then blobbed the dough in spoonfuls onto the pan - you didn't even need to roll them out. The biscuits from Pillsbury came in kind of a cardboard can. You rapped the can on the corner of the counter and it popped open. Then you twisted the can open more, put the premade biscuits on a pan, and baked them. I really liked those Pillsbury biscuits. Isn't that what biscuits should taste like? Mine weren't coming out right.

It's wonderful and amazing the ideas we get about what biscuits should taste like, or what a life should look like. Compared to what? Canned biscuits from Pillsbury? Leave It to Beaver? People who ate my biscuits would extoll their virtues, eating one after another, but to me these perfectly good biscuits just weren't right.

Finally one day came a shifting-into-place, an awakening. "Not right" compared to what? Oh, my word, I'd been trying to make canned Pillsbury biscuits! Then came an exquisite moment of actually tasting my biscuits without comparing them to some previously hidden standard. They were wheaty, flaky, buttery, sunny, earthy, real. They were incomparably alive - in fact, much more satisfying than any memory. 

These occasions can be so stunning, so liberating, these moments when you realize your life is just fine as it is, thank you. Only the insidious comparison to a beautifully prepared, beautifully packaged product made it seem insufficient. Trying to produce a biscuit - a life - with no dirty bowls, no messy feelings, no depression, no anger, was so frustrating. Then savoring, actually tasting the present moment of experience - how much more complex and multifaceted. How unfathomable.

As Zen students we spent years trying to make it look right, trying to cover the faults, conceal the messes. We knew what the Bisquick Zen student looked like: calm, buoyant, cheerful, energetic, deep, profound. Our motto, as one of my friends said, was, "looking good." We've all done it, trying to look good as a husband, a wife or parent. Trying to attain perfection. Trying to make Pillsbury biscuits.

Well, to heck with it, I say. Wake up and smell the coffee. How about some good old home cooking, the biscuits of today.

When we accept our place in the mandala of the whole, we come back to just where we are. And in this is found joy, ease, simplicity, and courage, and what T.S. Eliot calls the freedom "to care and not to care." 

Pretty cool, huh? That's just a small sample. This book is going to be another of my spiritual staples. I love Jack's perspective on life and his ability to convey its essence with simplicity and love.

If you get a chance to read the book, let me know what you think. If it doesn't work for you, that's ok. I think it's beautiful, the work of a beautiful soul. Thanks, Jack, for casting a bit of light along my path.

Educated

I just finished reading "Educated: A Memoir" by Tara Westover. It's a story of the author's experiences as a girl raised in the mountains of Idaho by survivalist Mormon parents. It's a fascinating and psychologically penetrating account of some of her formative experiences, both beautiful and abusive, and her long journey to move beyond the confines of the subculture in which she was raised. It was difficult to read for many reasons, and I found myself crying multiple times, both for Tara and for myself.

Tara was raised by a father who sounds like he was mentally ill and a mother who supported and enabled his extreme views. They are not bad people. They are products of their biology and of the culture in which they were raised. Tara doesn't appear to blame them; in fact, she seems more open than I felt in allowing for some of the unhealthy behaviors they and others in her family exhibited. In reading her account, I found myself wondering how I could have a more forgiving attitude like her. And I found myself identifying with her experiences, both as a child who experienced less than ideal circumstances and was subjected to some extreme views, and also as the parent who inherited and/or learned some extreme views and passed them on to his children.

If you have read the book, you know that Tara's situation was pretty bad. There are people who suffer abuse much worse, and many who suffer much less. I suppose it's possible there are some children who do not feel they were abused at all. But I'm in the camp of those who suffered less than her. I'm not a martyr. My experiences were far less extreme than hers in almost every way. My parents were good people. They had their challenges, but they did the best they could with what they were given. But I still felt a connection to Tara as she described concepts and principles drilled into her by well-meaning parents and physical abuse suffered at the hand of someone who should have been (and sometimes was) her protector. I feared for her every time she went home, and by the end of the book, I wanted to scream at her NOT to go home. Those parts were hard to read.

But the hardest part for me was seeing myself in her parents. Being raised in a conservative religion pushed me to some pretty extreme views years ago, and I still don't really know what kind of damage I have done to my wife and children as a result. I bought into some conspiracy theories to explain discrepancies between what I saw in society and what I believed a "good" society should look like. My upbringing had taught me to avoid (and sometimes fear) the sinful ways of the world, which set up an us-vs-them mindset that cast me in the role of hero, armed with truth and right, fighting the evils in the world to make the world a better place. The black and white thinking that I inherited along with reverence for authority didn't mesh well with the critical thinking skills I learned later in college. Not that religion and open-mindedness are fundamentally incompatible, but eventually, my search for truth led me to another extreme view - of skepticism of our ability to know anything, which ultimately led me to question and dismantle the rest of my extreme views. And this letting go dissolved the boundaries, connecting me with a world that was more beautiful and loving than the one I had been taught to fear.

I can't comment on the truth of various conspiracy theories. Some are probably true. Most feel false. I can only definitively talk about how they affected me. I was not happy when I explored and embraced them. I was motivated by fear. Those ideas helped me find a mechanism for explaining the degradation of society that would ultimately lead to the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. This was driven in part by teachings from the Bible and church leaders and partly by my own experiences. From a young age, my relationships with people outside of my church had somewhat inoculated me against the us-vs-them mentality, but I couldn't reconcile a growing sense of the goodness of people with what the Bible said about society's future state leading to Armageddon. Conspiracies filled the gaps. But they left me with a feeling of us-vs-them in a different way. Fear and suspicion tended to crowd out love and acceptance, and my life was pretty dark. My final reconciliation came by letting go of the idea of the end of the world, among other things. Not that the world won't end someday - it will because everything does. It's just that my concept of the world's end is no longer colored by religious teachings. And there is no more division in my mind. We're all just people.

Some of what Tara talks about in her journey is a transition from a black/white mindset to an open and inquiring mindset. I started life the same way. Certainty, dogma, black/white, truth/lies, good/bad, right/wrong, in/out, us/them - these were fundamental to my world view. I can't say how much of this came from my religion, how much from my family, and how much from the larger society, but I'm pretty sure all three of them were instrumental for me. It was a long, slow process of maturing for me to move beyond this fundamental paradigm. To dissolve the boundaries that separate us. To step into the dark and realize the world is so much brighter than I had imagined.

And the process is ongoing. I realized recently that I am still driven by some psychological baggage that was buried at a very early age. Two ideas stand out to me: 1) There is never enough and 2) I am not enough. I think Tara's book helped me uncover those. My scarcity mindset has been challenging for me and my family, and I am getting better at letting those impulses go. I'm hopeful I can transcend that idea completely one day - hopefully soon. But the idea that I am somehow not worthy or good enough is deeply seated and bleeds into so many aspects of my life in subtle ways. I think that I may struggle with that one for quite some time - possibly the rest of my life.

Growing up is hard - whether on an individual level or as a society. I think segments of our society are on the verge of social adulthood and some are firmly stuck in the teenage years, or maybe even the toddler years. Hardline thinking and dogma are powerful forces in our society right now. It's hard to hear one another because we make enemies of anyone who disagrees with us. But what if we dissolved the boundaries? Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world with fewer (or no) boundaries? What if we could tear down the walls that separate us long enough to listen to one another without feeling the need to judge them or prove them wrong if they disagree with us? What if we sought out sources of information that challenged our world view? What if we let go of the need to be right, or even the need for certainty, and allowed the other view to be heard and validated? We don't have to agree with each other. We just need to listen with respect.

We don't see things the same, but we are all trying to do our best with what we have. Maybe we can open our minds, drop our judgment, and through kindness, respect, and compassion build a better world. Together.

Are Mormons Christians?

I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church). I studied and practiced that faith for nearly forty years. I'm not active in that church anymore. In fact, I don't believe in the doctrines of the church anymore, though I did for most of my life.

I was thinking about the claim that some people make that Mormons aren't Christians, and I thought I might tackle that today. Because of my background, I have some knowledge on the subject. And because I no longer believe in the church's teachings, I hope I may be seen as unbiased.

Background

For as long as I can remember, I have heard people claim that Mormons are not Christians. As far as I can tell, the logic typically goes like this: Mormon doctrines and teachings are in direct opposition to the Bible, the Nicene creed, or something similar. Mormons therefore worship a Jesus who is not the Jesus of the Bible. Therefore, Mormons are not Christians.

An alternative argument says that Mormons worship something or someone other than Jesus. Some claim that Mormonism was founded by the devil, so Mormons worship the devil. Others say that Mormons worship Joseph Smith (the church's founder) and/or their current leaders. Any worship other than the worship of Jesus disqualifies them from being Christians.

These are two parallel chains of logic. Let's look at each one a little more closely.

Teachings in Opposition to the Bible, the Nicene creed, etc.

Some of the doctrines and teachings I have heard people use as justification for saying Mormons aren't Christians include the following:

1. Mormons deny salvation by grace alone
• Mormons tend to emphasize works more than many Protestant Christians
• Note that this accusation could be made against the Catholic church too
2. Mormons deny the inerrancy of the Bible
• If they deny the Bible is the perfect word of God, they are not true Christians
3. Mormons teach that they can become gods
• This denies the supremacy of God, Jesus Christ, etc
• There is nothing in the Bible that corroborates this teaching
• There are various other doctrinal differences that people may use to justify their claim, but this is one of the most powerful and compelling

Mormons Worship the Devil, Joseph Smith, etc.

Some of the attacks on Mormons in the last 40 years or so claim that the miraculous events associated with the early Mormon church were facilitated by the power of the devil. Thus, the Mormons follow and/or worship the devil.

The Mormon Church often emphasizes the priesthood authority held by its leaders. Hymns such as "Praise to the Man", a stirring song written in praise of Joseph Smith, seem to support the idea that Mormons worship their founder. If you watch General Conference, you can see that same reverence and respect directed toward the current leader of the Church, whoever he may be at the time. The respect that Mormons have for their leader(s) has often been taken as a sign that Mormons worship those men.

My Take on These Claims

The doctrinal differences can be disturbing for those who don't share the Mormon view on them. We could talk about each of them, but instead of trying to explain the Mormon teachings, I think I'll just point out the danger of the logic that says that a doctrinal difference justifies me in stripping someone else of their claim to be a Christian.

The Nicene creed is an important marker in the development of Christian theology, but is it the standard by which we should measure the Christianity of any person or group? The Bible is a more reasonable standard, but the different doctrines of various denominations (some of which openly conflict with one another) have all been founded on the Bible. These differences, all with biblical justification, have led Christians to persecute and kill each other at different times in history. So using the Bible as the standard by which we judge the Christianity of any movement is a bit dangerous. The Bible is broad enough that different people can find different meanings in the same passages. For every doctrine mentioned above, and many others taught by the Mormon church, I can find Biblical passages that could be construed as supporting it. You can disagree with the interpretation, but it's reasonable for someone who believes the principle to read the support of that principle in those passages. Yes, even the teaching that humans, as God's children, can grow up to be like Him, can be justified by the Bible. See Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34-36. Again, you can disagree with the interpretation, but if you read those with an open mind, I think you'll see my point.

As far as Mormons worshiping something or someone other than Christ, that is certainly possible. Just as possible as it is for any professing Christian to have someone or something in their life that takes precedence over the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Do Mormons worship the devil? Not as far as I can tell. It could be that some people have done so at different times in history. Who knows? But as an organization, the church is anything but satanic. Do Mormons worship their leaders? This is far more likely. There have been times in the church's history when the mission of Joseph Smith and the authority of a living prophet have been emphasized as a way to differentiate the church from other Christian churches. True Christianity may have waxed and waned in the church as a result of this and other doctrinal and cultural trends. But a study of the teachings and people in the church from the founding of the church in 1830 tells me that the major undercurrent of the entire religious movement is, and always has been, faith in Jesus Christ and His redemptive sacrifice. That seems like sufficient justification for claiming the title of Christian.

Christianity in Mormonism

Mormons pray to God in the name of Jesus Christ. They take the sacrament weekly in remembrance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. They believe in the Bible, though they have concerns about mis-translations, pedigree of manuscripts, etc. They also believe in other scripture, most notably the Book of Mormon, whose subtitle is "Another Testament of Jesus Christ". They are called Mormons because of the name of this book, but the official name of the church is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", which has been the church's name since 1838. Note how many times I mentioned the name of Jesus Christ in these few, simple statements about the Mormon church's faith and practices.

As a practicing Mormon, the Christianity of the faith was central to my spiritual practice. Though I do not believe in the foundations of the faith anymore, I believe that adherence to the faith has the potential to improve peoples' lives and connect them with God.

The Mormon church isn't flawless. It has its warts like any other organization. But Jesus Christ is central to the church's teachings, and I think it's extremely disrespectful to suggest that the Mormon church is not a legitimate Christian church.

Respect for All Religions

All religions have good in them. All have the potential to improve peoples' lives. While religion can have a dark side, in general, I think it is a force for good in the world. It is the arrogance in religion that makes it unhealthy. The kind of arrogance that makes us confident enough in our understanding of truth to strip someone else's religion of its claim to a faith that is central to its doctrine.

The Mormon Church is a Christian church. And it does a lot of good for its people and, by extension, the world. Let's have respect for other peoples' faith, and allow them the freedom, both politically and morally, to worship as they think best. This kind of acceptance and tolerance will do them, and us, a lot of good.

Spirituality without Religion

A few years ago, I left the church I grew up in. For a while afterward, I sometimes wondered what that would mean for me as far as religion goes. I never had a strong desire to join a new church, but I did sometimes wonder if I should join a community that practiced meditation. I went to a Zen Center nearby a few times, and while it was great in a lot of ways, it didn't really click for me.

I'm not against the idea of joining a group again at some point, but I'm pretty happy with my independent spiritual journey for now.

That probably seems weird to some of you. What does spirituality mean without religion?

Religion is a conduit for spirituality. A spiritual connection to something outside yourself is an individual experience. If many people make a connection in some joint exercise, that can be really cool. But it isn't necessary.

Spirituality without religion is a bit like education without school. It would be ridiculous to suppose that education can't occur outside of school. I don't go to school anymore, but I learn new things all the time. And while I don't associate myself with a religion anymore, I often feel a spiritual connection to something outside myself.

Maybe that's ok. And maybe someday, I'll join a community of like-minded practitioners and see if that can help me progress even more. Or maybe not. We'll see.

The Problematic Ideal

As a practicing Mormon, I sometimes found myself weighed down with heaviness, a symptom of a self-burdening syndrome. Sometimes the syndrome manifests as a form of guilt and self-recrimination. But more often, it's just a feeling of heaviness. A burden we carry by maintaining a set of unrealizable objectives. As an example, I have sometimes tried to add up all the time it would take to do everything that Mormon church leaders tell us we are supposed to be doing. There simply isn't time in the day to do it all.

As I've recently looked at the church from a more neutral perspective, I've come to see the self-burdening syndrome as a natural outgrowth of some of the church's teachings. I'm not trying to slam the LDS Church. I respect it as an organization for what it does for its members and others. But as its teachings hold up an ideal of perfection, we're going to have a lot of people embracing guilt and judgment on some level.

On the other hand, there are many teachings in the church that tend to reduce the effects of the self-burdening syndrome. There are several scriptures I collected years ago that I called the "chill out Gospel". One of my favorites is Matthew 11:30, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” I have seen some church leaders who recognized that there is a time and a season for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) and have preached a lighter gospel that sounds something like, “do what you can and enjoy the ride.” Unfortunately, there is also a core set of teachings, and plenty of talks by current church leaders, that feed right into the guilt and judgment.

This syndrome isn't limited to the LDS church. I only talked about that church because it's part of my background; it's what I know best. I think the syndrome is a natural outgrowth of any religion or school of thought that teaches an ideal of perfection, a concept of evil, and a conflict between those two things. In western religion and philosophy, these ideas are deeply entrenched. So deep, I never saw them clearly until I began to step out of them. In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islaam), there is an ideal good (God/Allah) and an opposing evil (Satan/Shaitan) except, I believe, in Judaism, which doesn't necessarily believe in a devil/tempter. There are numerous scriptures in these religions that speak of a conflict that began before, or at the time of, creation and will last until some promised time of peace. In Mormon/Christian theology, this is the promised millennium of peace following Armageddon.

In western philosophy, I see idealism first cropping up with Plato's forms, a concept of an abstract ideal of which all manifestations are imperfect reflections. Early Christian writers found they had a lot in common with Plato's teachings, and C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors, had quite a bit to say about them. As a beautiful example, take a look at Lewis' culmination of the Narnia series, "The Last Battle". The ideal is the spiritual, the unmanifested, the perfect. The manifested will never achieve the ideal, but is only a crude reflection of it. One day, after we die, we will see the ideal in all its glory. This is a Christian idea, not a philosophic one, but, when framed that way, you can probably see why Plato’s philosophy of forms has had great appeal in some Christian circles.

I think the concept of Plato's ideal forms is beautiful in a way, but also problematic. By imagining that the ideal is beyond our reach, those who strive for perfection in this life will never achieve their goals. Perfection and ultimate happiness must be saved for later. An echo of this is the end-time prophecies, which say we must wait for the ideal form of government and human society (the coming millennium I referred to earlier). Our current forms are corrupt and less than ideal. But the ideal will come.

What I find unfortunate about this line of thinking is that we're always waiting for something to be perfect. Perfection is always just outside our reach. Being forced to wait makes some of us give up on the life we're living right now. We begin to see our life on this earth as dirty, unhealthy, suboptimal.

But I don't see life that way. At least, not anymore. I look at the "imperfection" all around me and I think it's perfect. I've never seen a perfect triangle according to the rules of geometry (one example of Plato's forms), but the triangles I do see are each unique ... and beautiful in their own way.

I live in a pretty nice house, but it’s a typical family home. It's often a mess. The "ideal" home would have everything in its proper place. But the "ideal," could it ever be achieved, would be sterile and death-like. Life is messy. And messy can be beautiful.

In my living room, I have some cracks in the walls. They weren't there when we bought the house, but the foundation has shifted a little, and they appeared a few years ago. That kind of thing used to bother me (OCD personality that I am), and I would want to fix it. But now I look at it as a beautiful reflection of a home that has been lived in and loved. Every mark on the walls is a reflection and reminder of memories, many of them chaotic, loud, hyper, sometimes even combative, but always beautiful. We're planning to paint the walls soon because it's nice to have things clean and sparkly (and that will be beautiful too), but while we have the cracks and the marks, I'll enjoy them.

These realities, these messy things that never measure up to anyone's version of "ideal" are, in my mind, perfect. It is the ideal forms, which have never existed in the real world, that are unhealthy. 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
  -- Anthem by Leonard Cohen

The idealistic mode of thinking manifests itself in some form, to some degree, in the conscious or subconscious thoughts of many of us. It causes people to compare themselves, their lives, their habits, their thoughts, or whatever to a perfect ideal that simply does not exist. Perfection is right here, in this life, right now. And happiness is best found when life is embraced and loved, not in spite of its imperfections, but because of them.

The Problem of Evil

In Christianity, and any monotheistic religion that worships an all-powerful God, there is a philosophical problem known as The Problem of Evil. It asks the question: if God is benevolent, all-knowing, and all-powerful, how can there be evil in the world? The debate calls into question the existence of such a God.

It's an old question, and I don't have anything new to add, so I'm not going to argue either for or against the existence of an omnipotent God. But I do have a slightly different take on the Problem of Evil as it's typically formulated.

The Problem of Evil

I used to see things almost entirely in terms of good and evil. Everything was colored by that paradigm. Running beneath everything I experienced, felt, or thought, was an ever-present conflict between good and evil. Naturally, I pictured myself on the side of good most of the time. Occasionally, I would recognize that I had done something wrong, feel a bit guilty, and try to get myself back on the good side as quickly as possible. Everything outside the little bubble of what I defined as good was tainted with a twinge of evil. And a few things were just purely evil. Deeply dark and horrific.

Recently, I've discovered a new problem of evil. One that doesn't have anything to do with God. One that simply recognizes that the concept of evil itself is problematic. Not that evil is a problem. The concept that evil exists is a problem.

In recent years, I've begun to see the world through a different lens. One that doesn't require the existence of evil. This probably seems crazy. It did to me for a while. And sometimes, I still think I'm a bit nuts. But I'll try to explain my thinking, and you can decide if it makes any sense.

When I try to imagine the most evil thing possible, I think of acts of hate. Murder, whether on an individual or a massive scale, seems pretty horrific. I can't think of anything darker than that, so let's use that as an example.

Murder

When someone kills someone else, my tendency used to be to judge that person. I would wish for justice and its associated pain so the murderer couldn't be said to have gotten away with it, and so he/she could feel just a bit of what his/her victim(s) and their friends and family must have felt or are still feeling. That seems just.

But now when I think of a murder, I think less of judgment. My tendency is to ask why.

Why did they kill that person?

• It could be rage. There could be a history between the murderer and the victim. That history could be complicated, but rivalries and grudges are rarely one-sided. Perhaps there was some offense given by the victim that would allow us to make some sense of the rage.
• It could be mental illness. The murderer might be psychologically unhinged. How did that happen? Mental illness is complicated, but it likely comes in some measure from some painful experience(s) in the person's past.
• Or maybe the act came about through some twisted philosophy. Some belief system that justified the act in the murderer's mind. How did that philosophy get stuck in their head? Were they the victim of some intellectual abuse or cultural momentum that was itself a product of abuse or pain?

Maybe there are other reasons, but in all of my musing, I fail to find any motivation for murder that I can properly call evil. Maybe I'm just missing something, but I'm inclined to think that the murderer must have suffered in order to bring them to the point where they were willing to take someone else's life. I'm pretty confident that no one is born with the inclination to kill. And if that's true, that the murderer suffered, then the appropriate response is compassion, not judgment.

Of course, it's natural to feel compassion for the victim and their friends and family. That's where the suffering is the most obvious. And perhaps that's why it's easy to judge the murderer. Clearly, that suffering wouldn't exist if the murderer hadn't acted. But perhaps there is hidden suffering in the murderer's past that could evoke some compassion if only we understood it.

Judgment

Feeling compassion for a murderer doesn't mean I condone the act. Society has a right and a duty to hold people accountable for actions that take away the rights and freedoms of others. So I'm not saying there shouldn't be justice or accountability. The proper response is likely to imprison or otherwise punish the crime. If nothing else, this should hopefully deter future crime of a similar nature.

Lady Justice holding the Scales of Justice

Unfortunately, our punitive system of justice doesn't seem to do much good for the criminal. Shutting them out from society and placing them in a prison subculture typically doesn't do much to reform an individual. They often feel justified in further acts of crime as they probably feel that society has cast them out. Maybe there is a better way of dealing with crime, but I don't know what it is. Until we find a better way, I think society must step in to stop and/or punish such acts as best it can.

But as an individual, I don't see any value in judging the criminal. To label someone, or even the action they took, as evil seems unnecessary. There is pain. There is stupidity. There is horror. But I don't think there is such a thing as evil.

Stopping the War

The biggest problem I see with the concept of evil is judgment. For me, judgment naturally follows evil. When I label something as evil, I can't help but judge it. If that evil wasn't here, things would be better. But when I judge anything, a person, a situation, or something inside of me like a thought or a feeling, I quickly become exhausted by the mental conflict that ensues.

Because all judgment implies conflict. When I judge something, I find myself thinking things like: I don't like that. I wish it were different. Why does it have to be that way? And eventually, I find myself in the unhappy position of fighting my reality. And guess who wins that fight ...

In my opinion, the problem of evil isn't that it potentially disproves the existence of an all-powerful God. The problem of evil is that it exists only in our minds. As Hamlet said, "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". Allowing the concept of evil to occupy our minds and remain a part of our reality is unhealthy, both for the individual and for the larger society.

Religious Humility

All religions have good in them.

Unfortunately, they can also cause a lot of harm and suffering. History, both ancient and recent, is a witness to this fact.

Like anything else, religion is a mixed bag. It has both light and dark in it. But I don't think the dark is a necessary part of religion. And perhaps by understanding it better, we can avoid becoming part of the dark ourselves.

The Good

Here's some of the good that I see in religion. Religion can give us ...

1. A conduit to a spiritual connection with something greater than ourselves.
2. A social structure that offers us a sense of community and belonging.
3. A philosophical structure for understanding the world, including a sense of our place in it and our duty.
4. A set of ethics, a moral code that enables us to bring light into the world, both for ourselves and for others around us.
5. A sense of purpose in life.

I'm sure there are other benefits we could list, but this seems like a good starting point. So we can get a lot of value from religion, including some very practical (non-spiritual) benefits.

The Bad

So what is the dark side?

I think the dark side of religion is all about arrogance. Arrogance breeds conflict, self-righteousness, insular communities, shaming, shunning, and many other things. Of all of the children of arrogance, conflict is perhaps the darkest. Let's look at these two things a bit closer.

Arrogance - religion can make people so sure of themselves that everyone who disagrees with them is, at best, misguided and, at worst, an enemy of God. This can lead people to think they are special or chosen. While that can have some psychological benefit, it is also quite dangerous. It leads them to draw lines separating themselves from others. Individuals and organizations tend to draw boundaries around themselves. You are then either in or out. You are for us or against us. And once the battle lines are drawn, the conflict begins.

There's no official declaration of war, of course. The conflict begins with subtlety. We speak out against other points of view. We denigrate other people and organizations that disagree with us. We engage in social and psychological warfare. And in extreme cases, we engage in physical violence. We make the Other into the Enemy.

At the root of it all is arrogance. We begin the conflict by believing we know something that others don't. And even if we desire to share that knowledge with them, there is still the potential for us to engage in conflict. Sometimes it's as simple as feeling superior. But it can be much more heinous than that.

Not that all people will engage in conflict, but we're all susceptible to it in some form. And given enough people in a given religious tradition, we're bound to find some in positions of power who are predisposed to fight. In an environment in which faith has become rigid, we're going to have conflict.

Rigidity of faith seems to come about because we codify our creed. We write it down, and it becomes inflexible. Our faith, which probably began as a beautiful, fluid motion, full of life and excitement, begins to fossilize. And in the soil of certainty, nourished by a codified creed, our faith ossifies into a rigid, cold, lifeless structure, giving us no room for further learning or growth.

The Solution

The antidote to arrogance, of course, is humility. And humility is a necessary ingredient of true faith. Faith isn't knowledge. Faith isn't certainty. In fact, it's somewhat the opposite. Faith is powerful because it seeks knowledge, but it's even more powerful because it falls short. At the root of faith is uncertainty. And because we don't know with certainty the things we believe on a spiritual level (or perhaps on any level), we have room to grow, and room to allow others to grow.

This humility is fundamental in good science as well as good religion. And in any discipline that seeks truth. We should always be willing to re-examine our assumptions, test our theories, and discover new truth. In this kind of environment, truth tends to win eventually.

I think individual and organizational humility is the key to avoiding the conflict that gives religion a bad name. Rather than tearing down someone else's faith, perhaps we can each become the change we want to see in the world by dismantling our own arrogance. This is true whether we believe in a Higher Power or not. The lack of such a belief is also a type of faith.

As we introduce humility into our hearts, we will naturally allow each person, including ourselves, the freedom to find their own path. That freedom, devoid of the chains of certainty, leads to a beautiful state of peace, both internally and externally.

Psychology and Religion

I recently finished reading extracts from several of Carl Jung's works. The following is a rather long quote from his book "Psychology and Religion". I think it's profound in what it says about mass psychology and the history of religion. I don't know that I agree with the cultural and psychological reasons he gives for the Protestant Reformation. But for the rest of it, I think he has some excellent points. The emphasis below is mine.

It is rather astonishing ... that the Protestant schism could not have been avoided. But since Protestantism became the creed of the adventurous Germanic tribes with their characteristic curiosity, acquistiveness, and recklessness, it seems possible that their peculiar nature was unable to endure the peace of the Church, at least not for any length of time. It looks as if they were not yet advanced enough to suffer a process of salvation and to submit to a deity who was made visible in the magnificent structure of the church. There was, perhaps, too much of the Imperium Romanum or of the Pax Romana in the church - too much, at least, for their energies, which were and still are insufficiently domesticated. It is quite likely that they needed an unmitigated and less controlled experience of God, as often happens to adventurous and restless people who are too youthful for any form of conservatism or domestication. They therefore did away with the intercession of the Church between God and man, some more and some less. With the demolition of protective walls, the Protestant lost the sacred images that expressed important unconscious factors, together with the ritual which, from time immemorial, has been a safe way of dealing with the unpredictable forces of the unconscious. A vast amount of energy was thus liberated and instantly went into the old channels of curiosity and acquisitvieness. In this way, Europe became the mother of dragons that devoured the greater part of the earth.

Since those days Protestantism has become a hotbed of schisms and, at the same time, of rapid advances in science and technics which cast such a spell over man's conscious mind that it forgot the unpredictable forces of the unconscious. The catastrophe of the first World War and the extraordinary manifestations of profound spiritual malaise that came afterwards were needed to arouse a doubt as to whether all was well with the white man's mind. Before the war broke out in 1914 we were all quite certain that the world could be righted by rational means. Now we behold the amazing spectacle of states taking over the age-old totalitarian claims of theocracy, which are inevitably accompanied by suppression of free opinion. Once more we see people cutting each other's throats in support of childish theories of how to create paradise on earth. It is not very difficult to see that the powers of the underworld - not to say of hell - which in former times were more or less successfully chained up in a gigantic spiritual edifice where they could be of some use, are now creating, or trying to create, a State slavery and a State prison devoid of any mental or spiritual charm. There are not a few people nowadays who are convinced that mere human reason is not entirely up to the enormous task of putting a lid on the volcano.

This whole development is fate. I would not lay the blame either on Protestantism or on the Renaissance. But one thing is certain - that modern man, Protestant or otherwise, has lost the protection of the ecclesiastical walls erected and reinforced so carefully since Roman days, and because of this loss has approached the zone of world-destroying and world-creating fire. Life has become quickened and intensified. Our world is shot through with waves of uneasiness and fear.

Protestantism was, and still is, a great risk and at the same time a great opportunity. If it goes on disintegrating as a church, it must have the effect of stripping man of all his spiritual safeguards and means of defense against immediate experience of the forces waiting for liberation in the unconscious. Look at all the incredible savagery going on in our so-called civilized world: it all comes from human beings and the spiritual condition they are in! Look at the devilish engines of destruction! They are invented by completely innocuous gentlemen, reasonable, respectable citizens who are everything we could wish. And when the whole thing blows up and an indescribable hell of destruction is let loose, nobody seems to be responsible. It simply happens, and yet it is all man-made. But since everybody is blindly convinced that he is nothing more than his own extremely unassuming and insignificant conscious self, which performs its duties decently and earns a moderate living, nobody is aware that this whole rationalistically organized conglomeration we call a state or a nation is driven on by a seemingly impersonal, invisible but terrifying power which nobody and nothing can check. This ghastly power is mostly explained as fear of the neighboring nation, which is supposed to be possessed by a malevolent fiend. Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas. The worst of it is that he is quite right. All one's neighbors are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear, just like oneself. In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.

I love how he talks about the collective insanity of the human race. I visited Auschwitz about a month ago. I am still working through the pain of that experience, having seen so much tangible evidence of our collective insanity and the violence and suffering that it can engender. The quotes in this blog post come from a series of lectures Jung gave in 1937, so he does not refer to the second World War and the holocaust. But his analysis seems very prescient of those later events.

Jung continues:

The Protestant is left to God alone. For him there is no confession, no absolution, no possibility of an expiatory opus divinum of any kind. He has to digest his sins by himself; and, because the absence of a suitable ritual has put it beyond his reach, he is none too sure of divine grace. Hence the present alertness of the Protestant conscience - and this bad conscience has all the disagreeable characteristics of a lingering illness which makes people chronically uncomfortable. But, for this very reason, the Protestant has a unique chance to make himself conscious of sin to a degree that is hardly possible for a Catholic mentality, as confession and absolution are always at hand to ease excess of tension. The Protestant, however, is left to his tensions, which can go on sharpening his conscience. Conscience, and particularly a bad conscience, can be a gift from heaven, a veritable grace if used in the interests of the higher self-criticism. And self-criticism, in the sense of an introspective, discriminating activity, is indispensable in any attempt to understand your own psychology. If you have done something that puzzles you and you ask yourself what could have prompted you to such an action, you need the sting of a bad conscience and its discriminating faculty in order to discover the real motive of your behavior. It is only then that you can see what motives are governing your actions. The sting of a bad conscience even spurs you on to discover things that were unconscious before, and in this way you may be able to cross the threshold of the unconscious and take cognizance of those impersonal forces which make you an unconscious instrument of the wholesale murderer in man. If a Protestant survives the complete loss of his church and still remains a Protestant, that is to say a man who is defenseless against God and no longer shielded by walls or communities, he has a unique spiritual opportunity for immediate religious experience.

I feel like Jung is saying that we have an opportunity to wake up, to bring into conscious awareness the unconscious forces that drive us. If we have stripped away the ritual, the symbolism, and the dogma, we have a risk and an opportunity of facing our unconscious demons head-on. This could drive us insane or it could be the catalyst for a spiritual experience, a profound awakening, and a deep transformation.

I think that's worth thinking about. And worth experiencing.

A New Path

Imagine you have lived your whole life searching for something. Something magical. A spiritual experience. A connection to something. You’ve had a taste of it now and then. Once in a while, you’re sure you’ve had a rich taste. A taste that goes so deep, it changes your entire perspective on life. It changes you. And you’re so sure of the experiences, that they set you on a path that dramatically alters the way you live your life, influencing everything you do. Creating for you a powerful identity that forms the basis of your thoughts, words, and actions.

But no matter how powerful the taste these experiences give you, it always feels like it’s just a hint of the real thing. Like the real thing might not be accessible, at least not in this life.

Now imagine that your world is turned upside down. And the method by which you were seeking for that spiritual connection is seriously called into question. And you stumble onto something that delivers the spiritual experiences you seek more powerfully and more consistently than ever before. And imagine that instead of feeling like a hint or a shadow of the real thing, this new path you’ve stumbled on seems more real than anything that came before.

What would you do in a situation like that? Would you follow your heart and continue along this new path? Could you abandon what you had known and loved, knowing it would hurt friends and family? That you would lose friendships? That you would be misunderstood? That you would be judged? Or would you stay with what was comfortable and familiar, knowing that your heart wasn't quite in line with it anymore?

I found myself in this position a few years ago. And as my journey unfolded, for me, the choice was clear. Although it would be painful, I knew I had to follow my heart. I didn't feel like I could do otherwise and maintain my integrity.

I was raised in the LDS Church. From the time I was young, I had had a number of powerful experiences that seemed to point to the possibility that the LDS Church was the true church of God on the earth. And that through its teachings, priesthood authority, and ordinances, I could draw nearer to God than by any other method. The logical chain ran on to many other beliefs that shaped my worldview, but I think that’s the core of it. The LDS Church was it. I had found the pinnacle of religion and spirituality. All that remained was for me to stay on the path and become the man God wanted me to be.

And I was on that path for several decades. I served a full-time, 2-year mission for my church. I was married in an LDS temple. My wife and I started a family, trying our best to teach our children to live by the principles that were taught by the church through its scriptures, leaders, and most importantly, through what we called the Spirit of God – a direct connection to God from which we could receive inspiration.

I served in many different volunteer positions in the church. I lived my life according to the church’s teachings the best I knew how. And I was consistently striving to better understand those teachings and underlying principles so I could become more and more the man I believed God wanted me to be.

Then I entered a period of darkness that refused to be dissipated by the teachings and principles of my church. And I stumbled onto some teachings from eastern traditions that led me to a powerful practice of meditation that turned my entire world upside down. This practice rapidly dissipated the darkness, bringing a powerful sense of light and peace into my life that rivaled anything I had experienced previously.

I began to experience a connection with something that felt very familiar. Previously, I would have called it the Spirit of God. But these connections weren’t precipitated by prayer, scripture study, ordinances, or anything directly related to an external Deity. At least, not that I could tell. They were precipitated by meditation and a series of teachings, independent of God, that I gradually internalized, leading me to let go of all judgment, clinging, aversion, self-loathing, and a whole host of other unhealthy thoughts and emotions. The experiences were completely self-driven. No reference to God. No calling upon Him for Grace. Just a simple looking inward and a consistent, powerful healing process. And, independent of God, these experiences were more powerful and consistent than anything I had ever experienced during those many years where I was directly calling upon God.

How was it possible to have deeper spiritual experiences outside the church than I had ever had in decades of searching for them inside? Was it possible that I was using the wrong method? I can’t adequately describe the torturous path I embarked on as I began to question my deepest, most cherished beliefs. But as I began to truly open my mind to the possibility that the church was not the right path for me, the light began to pour into my soul even more. If there is a God, I must conclude that He led me away from the faith of my childhood.

But why? The short answer is: I have no idea. And I’m not sure it matters. What I do know is that the path I’m on is good. But my experience has taught me that I don’t need to cling to it. Maybe my path will change again. I would be fine with that. I’ll follow wherever the light leads.

I appreciate my religious background. The LDS Church is a really good organization. It helped prepare me to live a good life and to embark on this new stage in my journey. I have no bad feelings about my past. Some things could have been better. Some ideas that were pounded into my head as a child might not have been the healthiest. But that accusation could be brought against my scholastic education as well as my religious education. That’s just life. Everyone was trying their best to help me along the way. It wasn’t perfect? Bummer. As my perspective broadens, I shed the unhealthy over time. No big deal.

I have no idea where my path will lead. But I am grateful for my past and my present. I think the future will be wonderful too. I have many friends and family whose faith still lies with the church I left. For them, I’ll offer up the possibility that my future will bring me back to the church. I personally don’t think that’s likely, but … if the church is what it claims to be, I’m sure the light will lead me back. Maybe God just wanted to take me on a different path for a while to teach me some things He couldn’t teach me in any other way. And when I’m done, I’ll find my way back.

But maybe I’ve simply found something better. At least for me. For right now. By soaking in the concepts and practices of eastern traditions, I think I’m becoming a more well-rounded man with a broader, more open, more inclusive perspective than I had before. I was raised in a very western culture. Balancing that with a bit of the east has been really good for me. I don’t think either culture has all the answers. But as the concept of yin and yang shows how to bring together what seem to be complete opposites, perhaps the way to peace is to raise our perspective, to see the unity among what appears to be dichotomy, and to find light and joy amidst the chaos.

My Spiritual Journey

I have been a Mormon all my life. Being a member of the LDS church has been great for me. It has given me a set of morals and values and a community of good people to identify with, to associate with, and to look to for examples of how to live a good life.

In the last two or three years, I have begun to distance myself from the church and, though my transition has been very obvious to people close to our family and many people have been concerned about what they perceive to be my falling away from the truth, I have had very few conversations with others about what this journey has meant to me. I think this is due, in some part, to people trying to give me space, which I appreciate. But I also think there is some fear associated with a transition that seems incomprehensible to the faithful. For my part, I find it difficult to initiate a conversation that might seem like an attack on someone else's faith. Partly to help overcome those barriers to communication, this post is my initial attempt to document my recent journey to share with those who haven't asked, to inform those who didn't know there was anything to ask, and to solidify my own thinking about what this journey has meant to me.

About eight or ten years ago, I went through a period of deep questioning that shook the foundation of my faith. Ultimately, I largely came back to the Mormon faith, but with a more open mind and what I considered to be a more pure faith, less cluttered with prejudices and traditions, and more founded on raw spiritual power.

Two or three years ago, I found myself questioning even more deeply than before, something I hadn't thought possible. This most recent spiritual crisis stemmed, at least in part, from a very challenging time at work, a very stressful situation in my church calling, and some challenging things going on in my family, particularly in the lives of three of my children. It was a very dark time, something I have come to believe is a necessary part of life, as these dark times often serve as catalysts for new awakening, enlightenment, greater understanding, empathy, etc.

Introduction to Meditation

I was eventually able to secure a change in my work environment within the same company and, to help me reset from the stress of what I had been experiencing, I took a month off work. As I was on my way out, I was introduced to a book that sparked a deeper interest in Buddhism. I am not a Buddhist and don't imagine I ever will be, but I have had an interest in that religion for some time and, during my month off, I dove into a set of books on Buddhist and other forms of meditation. I spent hours practicing what I was learning and, in meditation, I found peace and solace like I had never before experienced. Though I have always been a Christian, I suppose I had never really experienced what Paul describes as "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) until I was instructed by principles of Buddhism and related disciplines.

Prior Spiritual Experiences

I don't want to minimize the impact of my religious upbringing. At various times in my life, I have felt a deep sense of peace and spiritual enlightenment. Beginning with my teenage years, I had several spiritual experiences that I interpreted as evidence the Mormon church was true because church youth activities served as catalysts for them. One such experience was extremely powerful and the feeling of peace and balance that came stayed with me for months. But even as it faded, I was able, for a very long time, to call it back by simply quieting my mind. But eventually the stresses of life seemed to crowd out my ability to do that ... until recently.

More on Meditation

The deep peace I began to find in meditation was only a part of the transformational power I experienced during that time. Through meditation, I began to develop a deeper understanding of myself and began to extend forgiveness and compassion to myself on a very deep level, a level so deep I had never been consciously aware of it before. I began to let go of past events that had colored my worldview and had developed inside of me some automatic, unhealthy responses to various stimuli, though prior to meditation I hadn't even been aware of such connections. I began to give myself therapy that seemed to me infinitely more effective than anything a licensed therapist could ever do for me.

I also slowly became more aware of connections outside myself. Over time, I felt like my mind became sharper and I could see more clearly why things happened in the physical world as well as connections and causal relationships in the social/psychological world. I began, in many different ways, to experience what I believe ancient eastern traditions term "enlightenment." I was becoming more awake. 

All of this was wonderful, but, considering the darkness I had been experiencing previously, and the bursting forth of light in my new spiritual practice, my questioning of my own faith became more urgent. By clinging to the faith I had inherited, I seemed to only be delving deeper into darkness. The light only came by letting go. I have had a difficult time explaining that phenomenon intellectually, but here's my best attempt based on my current knowledge.

As a Mormon, I had been taught, among other things, to view the world through the paradigm of good vs. evil, that a battle was being waged for the souls of men, and that through diligent effort and relying on the grace of Christ, I could overcome evil, both within and without. This worldview involved kindness and mercy, but also sin, judgment, and guilt. The former ideas were great, but the fruits of the latter including judgment and condemnation, a constant war with evil, and a set of expectations based on duty to God, which led to an ever-present internal pressure to work and keep up (a feeling familiar to many Mormons), seemed to solidify the darkness in my life.

When I began to let go of my old worldview and, as Buddhism and other eastern traditions encouraged, to let go of ... well, everything, I found the peace and other blessings that Christianity promised, but that I was rarely able to fully realize as a practicing Christian. Peace. Understanding. Enlightenment. Joy. But most of all, peace was what I had been craving.

What About Mormonism

So what about all the spiritual experiences I had had as a Mormon? The more I thought about my past and the conditions in place when I felt spiritually uplifted, the more I realized they were all related to surrender, to letting go. Although I took them as evidence the Mormon church was true, I rarely had such experiences in the church's official services. It was much more common for me to have spiritual experiences on my own or in unconventional settings. 

I usually felt good in church, but not necessarily spiritually enlightened. It was just as common for me to feel like I was falling short, an unfortunate side effect of a culture focused on very high ideals. As I've recently created many powerful spiritual experiences on my own, while distancing myself from the church and its doctrines, I have begun to believe the church is not an essential part of my spirituality. None of what I have experienced proves the church isn't what it claims to be (God's true church on earth), but perhaps you, dear reader, can begin to see why I have come to believe that it isn't.

My Circumstances Begin to Change

Right around the time I took up meditation, I began to see changes in my outer life. Recall the three areas of stress I described before. Here's a little bit of what happened. 

Change at Church
When I went back to work after my month off, I maintained my practice of meditation and continued to heal and grow spiritually. About this same time, I was released from my church calling. I had been hanging onto it for the sake of my oldest son and the young people I was working with, but when I was forced to let go, the stress of that situation dissipated quickly. Though I was offered another calling, I declined and my departure from the church became more certain.

Change at Home
The stresses of my family life involve the private lives of others, so I won't share a lot of detail, but as I became more at peace with myself, extending compassion and forgiveness to myself, I found the power to be equally compassionate, loving, and forgiving of my family members. I believe it is that love, more than anything else, that has helped my children work through their challenges. It has been a couple of years in the making, but it seems to me our children are more balanced and happy than they have ever been and our family dynamics are approaching the kind of model I dreamed I could have as a teenager, but eventually gave up on as an adult as it began to seem impossible to attain. As I type this, my children are having a heated argument over something ridiculous, which helps me remember not to take my dreams, or anything else, too seriously. But the truth is, my family is much happier now than we were just a couple of years ago.

Change at Work
At work, my new environment was great, but as it was the same employer, I found myself unable to completely remove myself from the influence of my old group and eventually, things became challenging in familiar ways. This led me, about a year ago, to accept a new job with a small company in town and it has been wonderful. The culture of my new company has been very refreshing and, while the job has had its moments of stress and frustration, those times have been few and I've found a lot of joy in focusing almost completely on technical work instead of managing projects and personnel, which is where my career had been trending at my previous job for many years. I have been reminded why I majored in engineering. And I've been reminded that I'm quite good at it as I've tackled new and challenging projects and have done very well with them. It has been good for my confidence. 

Letting Go

So shortly after I began to let go of many things, including my religion, I began to find peace in the three major stress areas of my life. I believe the changes in my physical circumstances are, in many ways, due to my new spiritual direction, though the external changes have taken some time to develop. But even more wonderful than the external changes is the healing I have experienced inside. I think that healing is the strongest evidence that I'm doing what I need to do for my spiritual welfare at this time.

Summary

So what does all of this mean for me, my family, and my relationship with the church? Strangely enough, not much. In my daily conduct, I act very much like I always have, in private and in public, though perhaps with a bit more patience and kindness than before. But some things have changed. The most visible change is my lack of connection with the church. As the church's doctrines and services are based on the good/evil paradigm I described above, I feel like they are unhealthy for me right now. So while I respect the church and what it does, I don't attend its services regularly. I do sometimes attend to support my family and I enjoy seeing friends when I'm there, but I prefer to seek spiritual experiences in other ways.

In general, my family is still pretty involved in church activities. And mostly, I think that's good. The Mormon church is a wonderful organization that does a lot of good for its members and the rest of the world. My own membership in the church has done a great deal of good for me and I owe much of what I am today to its influence. The ward (congregation) we currently attend is one of the best I've ever seen and I'm hopeful the church will continue to be a good influence on my children.

This most recent phase of my spiritual journey has been interesting and not at all what I expected. But it has been good for me. Where will my spiritual path lead next? I don't know, but I'm not worried. I'm sure whatever comes will be great. That's a strange attitude for a personality like mine, but I have recently come to see the power of surrender and it has changed me. I am happier letting go of my need to understand and control.

Although I am happy with recent developments, I am sure my departure from the church will be disappointing, even heartbreaking, to some of my family and Mormon friends. To them, I would say, "have faith." I am happier and more peaceful than I have ever been in my life; I hope that will give some comfort. And if the truth of God does lie with the Mormon church, as the church claims, then I'm confident I will find it. I have, for many years, been a seeker of truth. And I still am. I will keep an open mind. I encourage you to do the same.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

There was a book I heard about in the early 90s that I never bothered to pick up. I'm glad I didn't. I wouldn't have understood it and most likely wouldn't have appreciated it.

I recently felt a pull to revisit it and finally finished it yesterday. It's called "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I'll call it ZAMM for short. It's not really about Zen. And it's not really about motorcycle maintenance. But at the same time, it's totally about Zen and has everything to do with motorcycle maintenance. Mostly, though, it's a book that is deep, profound, and beautifully written.

When I was in school, even in college, I rarely had a desire to read. Books were being shoved down my throat constantly and I've never been a fan of doing what someone else tells me to do. I tend to rebel. So although I would occasionally read books that interested me, I usually avoided reading completely. Being forced to read for academic areas in which I had no interest really stifled my desire to read anything at all.

After college, I began to see the value of certain fields of study that I had never enjoyed before. I started with economics, then hit history, languages, philosophy, and more recently eastern religions and philosophic traditions. In fact, I've been meaning to blog about what I've been learning about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. But that will have to wait ...

When I heard about ZAMM, I had no background in philosophy and no appreciation for eastern traditions. Without that background, this book wouldn't have done much for me. But with that background, the author has given me insights into things I've been learning about that feel like priceless jewels. He synthesizes some of the ancient western and eastern styles of thought and offers us a glimpse into his own personal journey of self-discovery.

What I find so interesting about the story is his own misconceptions of the purpose of the journey. A major part of his journey began as he studied the word Quality. Later Excellence from the Greek Arete, which is often translated as Virtue. But Quality - what was it? He couldn't define it. This led him to deconstruct the existing classic worldview and create a new metaphysics based on Quality. This new metaphysics seemed to him to be a way to break down some of the problems created by western culture and possibly even reconcile the divide by east and west and between classical (intellectual, dielectic) and romantic thought. He was ready to offer a great thesis to the world that would break down barriers and bring people together. What it really did was break him down.

And this is the most beautiful part. His whole journey was pointless ... from the perspective of his original intention. But what it did to him made the journey worth all the effort. It broke him down and, if I read him right, led him to a fantastic epiphany of self knowledge that is akin to the spiritual experiences of ancient and modern spiritual seekers. In the process, he was deemed insane, and perhaps he was, or perhaps in that moment of self knowledge, he was one of the few sane individuals in the midst of a crazy world. And he experienced reality directly. He found his Quality.

I'm seeking this same Quality and although my journey will be different than the author's journey, I learned a few things by reading about his journey that have helped me see things a little differently and will, I think, help me in my journey of self discovery. For example, in order to find the answers he sought, he realized he would have to step outside the current mythos. He would have to become an outsider of the culture. He would have to be viewed as insane. And that was ok. Another tidbid: one of the last things he did before finding his Quality was to face his final fear. He had faced them all down and finally emptied himself. There was nothing left inside and that was what was necessary for this Quality to fill him up.

I can't possibly convey the power of this book in a short blog post. I absolutely loved it. Have you read it? If so, tell me your thoughts.