Fitting in

I can relate (to not feeling like I fit in) but I was probably much more extreme, and of course I am not saying any of this necessarily applies to you. I really did not have friends K-12. For example I went home for lunch every day K-12 to avoid the pain of being obviously alone. Actually being alone was not that bad, just somewhat lonely rather than very painfully alone when in a group. When I was 16yo though I would drive 80 miles many, if not most, weekends to hang out with cousins 4-6 years older. Before that it was mainly just a younger brother and dogs that I could connect with.

The first couple years of undergrad I lived with one of those cousins and hung out with his friends and developed a hard drinking entertaining people persona and carried that with me to another undergrad and for the first time kind of had my own friends who mostly seemed to enjoy me except when I went way too far, which was not uncommon. Basically, I think I am saying I developed a persona/role/ego that was capable of without too much discomfort hanging out in groups, about a decade or two after most. While this ego/role/persona is something we ideally overcome to a big extent to allow authentic wholeness internally and at the same time with everything else, it was a huge step for me to finally develop a workable form of it.

Unfortunately, I have found that all groups demand everyone assume a role, even if that role is to rebel in various ways against that group. They also have something like stereotypes about themselves and their members you are not supposed to buck too much. In this way the group can have predictability so members feel secure if they follow their role, and this security is traditionally one of the main reasons people want to be in a group. So today, I am OK assuming a variety of roles in a variety of groups, but experience much of it as a façade, and I do not have much desire to spend much of my time like that. Fortunately, most of the time today I seem to be able to connect at a deeper level (than the façade) with almost anyone when one on one (or in very small groups dedicated to moving past the façade), and that is how I choose to spend most of my free time, when I can find anyone interested. 

Brief FB comment

Yes, most believe what they need to based upon their experiences/"life education" and make scripture support that.  Realizing this can be a great beginning for the freedom you mention, not to mention much closer alignment with the actual message from the author of the scripture who is writing from at least a glimpse of of that freedom.

Free will

One of the most interesting aspects of this Susan Blackmore talk (to me) is that she seems to think that if we gave up on the idea that we have free will that we would end up acting much more meek and poor in spirit as Jesus suggested we should or with much less attachment to things, including ideas and concepts, as the Buddha suggested we should. She does not explicitly go to this, but if you view it from a philosophical perspective I think it is where she is headed. And as counterintuitive as that seems (to a red blooded American) I think she might be on to something.

I personally think we have a tiny amount of free will, probably about 0.1-1% of what we have generally been taught we have, and even at those times it is primarily a choice to embrace or reject/fight reality. Even that amount of free will though when exercised changes everything downstream from it and used over a lifetime changes plenty. Most will not even entertain the notion of us having much less free will than we have been taught we have because they think that would mean we should not punish others for their actions (and they really should forgive others).

In a way it does mean we should not punish people for their actions but it does not mean we should not impose consequences for their actions. The consequences would just be much better tailored to actually changing their behavior to make them a safe and responsible person to have in society rather than punishing them, and if consequences could not make them safe for society they might still need to have some sort of humane sequestering.

At this point we should be honest and admit wherever we draw lines between safety and liberty the line is arbitrary and favors one or the other. And we should always error on the side of liberty because only the side of liberty leads individually and collectively to progress and a sense of well-being.

Theories as blocks

It really is as simple as Jesus showed and taught us how to be saved, which means joining Him in being one with the Father. This was by loving and serving others as He did with the pinnacle of that demonstrated with his crucifixion.

We have tried to replace this simple and straightforward path with elaborate theories requiring mental gymnastics in order to try to avoid actually doing the things Jesus taught and demonstrated. No other way actually works though because all the other ways are, without us realizing it, built upon trying to maintain our separateness and safety rather than voluntarily giving up our separate identity to become one with our surroundings/Our Creator and His Creation.

Erroneous theories like the substitute atonement theory are attempting the impossible, to be both separate (for safety) and yet one with Our Creator to be saved/have eternal life with Him. In fact the whole idea of being saved as a separate individual is antithetical.

The moment we choose (which often is more like surrendering than choosing) and to the extent we choose to be united with Our Creator, which would always look in some way like how Jesus acted and taught us to act, we are one with Him/saved/have eternal life.

His Creation that we are called to unite with is often violent, but the violence/pain/suffering that is inevitable from our inescapable connectedness and mortality is beneficial to the Whole and thus us to the extent we are united with It. That inevitable violence/pain is normally the only thing that actually gets us to admit our need for God and each other, where we might be so lucky as to stumble upon His Grace and surrender to It and become unite.

However, if we are violent towards each other, creating unnecessary violence/pain/suffering, it makes individual attempts to unite dumb.

To summarize, we are violent towards one another to try to avoid the inevitable suffering caused by our mortality and inadequacy as separate individuals and then develop theories to try to justify ourselves. This violence towards one another, trying to shift or transfer inevitable pain, can make the only solution of becoming one with our surroundings dumb. This leaves the only answer to be the path Jesus and then the apostles taught and took, which is to build communities where we refrain from violence inflicted upon each other and shines a light upon those trying to shift their own (personal or group’s) inevitable suffering upon others.

When Paul talks about Jesus dying for our sins, what that means is that Jesus has paid the price that we might join Him in becoming one with the Father the instant we choose. We know that we have spent most of our life trying to enhance and protect our individual physical and emotional security and status (which is what he refers to as the ways of the flesh) and in this process shifted the inevitable pain of our individual existence onto those near and dear to us and the less fortunate. So we have mostly acted diametrically opposed to being one or united with Him and if there was justice we would have to sacrifice and make up for these things before we could join Him. We do not because this is the price Jesus paid for us.

We are instantaneously and without any preconditions invited to join Him at all times, and that is what He constantly yearns for us to do, which is his unending Grace. However, it is also completely true that we will only know to what extent we have actually chosen to join Him by how we act, to further our own security/status/materials (the way of the flesh) or following him to look out for others. To the extent we have joined him we will WANT nothing more than to rectify our past harms as much as we can, to reduce any current harm we might cause, and to help others to join Him/their surroundings.

Mental Illness

Often what is characterized as mental illness is people no longer willing/able to go along with the societal or group/family crazy dynamics that we (society/groups/families) create and adopt to try to take off the rough edges or totally avoid the harsh life we are currently a part of where we and everyone we love dies and lots of other pain also occurs.

So at least some of the time (and I’d say a lot of the time) what is characterized as mental illness at least starts as intuitively seeing/feeling things too clearly without having a good solution for the problem that we are willing and able to work towards. Unfortunately since society/groups/families are so invested in their crazy dynamics and most help for those seeing things too clearly tells the person they and how they are seeing things is the problem, rather than accurate, the person normally develops coping mechanisms also to survive that are accurately described as mental illness.

Unfortunately, our mental health system has pretty much given up on ever seeing the accurate root cause of the problem and true solutions to that and has instead shifted to trying to help people develop more effective and less disruptive coping mechanisms, while still labeling them as the problems and ignoring the root crazy thing the person was originally reacting to.

The Road Less Traveled (by M. Scott Peck) came from the end of an era of actually trying to heal the root of the problem, as we went to drugs and superficial cognitive behavior therapy as the answers starting in the late 80s and early 90s full bore with very few looking back since to see if that was a wise thing to do. I’d say the short term results are probably better with our current approach but the long term results are not hardly positive at all. And there is good evidence that we are not really improving our mental health at the societal level with our current approach. Instead at the macro level we are probably getting worse rather than better. To be fair we were not very effective with a deeper approach either though.

The way I write is often confusing, my apologies. And I am perfectly fine with you having your answer and I having mine. To clarify though, I was not saying mental illness develops as a result of a distorted world view. I was saying the opposite, that its original root is normally a more accurate world view than can be implemented in our current immediate surroundings.

I actually think we mostly agree, but I could be wrong, and again we do not need to at all. I’m saying that something like a trauma or intuitively seeing things clear enough to no longer feel OK going along with the status quo of our immediate surrounds causes changes in brain functioning and chemicals that along with our surroundings still normally being inconsistent with what our intuition is telling us, leads us to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms, like lashing out, withdrawing, escaping with or without chemicals, anxiety, depression, creating alternative realities, etc. That further exacerbates the problem, including brain functioning and chemicals. So then, yes, a combination of drugs and therapy are often needed to find the best solution possible. The legal and/or properly prescribed drugs never did much for me, but I absolutely know they do greatly help a lot of people and are probably indispensable for many.

And of course there is a heredity/innate component to all of it also. Part of the exciting thing to me though is that if what I am saying is true, being sensitive and perceptive and thus maybe more prone to what we characterize as mental illness can be every bit as much as a gift as a curse once we work through things and find ways to live that are consistent with what our intuition tells us, both in finding our own wholeness and happiness and in sharing that with the world. And I am not saying this is the norm, but I am saying that I have seen it play out in too many great examples to think/believe anything else.

LIFE

I want to start up again with the following because I think it may hold a facet of a most important truth, and yet more than just words not being able to hold that truth, it gets that truth somewhat wrong.

Our faith is obscured by our refusal to accept our current internal (feelings and thoughts) and external reality. If as I believe, God is creation from its beginning though eternity (or even if simply still present as the Holy Spirit), when we refuse to accept our current reality, this is precisely what separates us from Him/It, and to the extent we do, that refusal makes us the dead burying the dead.

The path to LIFE (as Jesus taught), aka path to the Father, is by having faith (as Jesus taught), which means knowing wholeness/connection with the Father/Holy Spirit/Entirety is the only thing that ultimately matters and that wholeness can only be found to the extent we stop rejecting the parts that scare us, within us as well as in our surroundings. Let me say that much more simply. LIFE is embracing Reality by having sufficient faith to equal or surpass the fear of being whole with It.

The exact opposite of this, the dead burying the dead, which we all do, is trying to create an alternative reality where things are not so scary and we do not need such faith, probably including most peoples’ concept of heaven, which doesn’t seem much different than everyone there taking an eternally acting euphoric drug. This concept of heaven is basically saying they deserve the right to be eternally numbed from LIFE because they have so successfully rejected/avoided it. I do not begrudge them and if they cannot find and choose the real thing (LIFE) I genuinely hope they get the heaven they want, although I doubt that one exists.

If the crazy things I am saying are actually somewhat correct, how then specifically do we choose this LIFE, which if we can we will find to be bottomless Grace. It turns out to be an inside job because to the extent we find wholeness within ourselves, we will realize we have always been and always will be an inseparable part of everything else/God. The thing that blocks us from knowing we are inescapably a part of everything else is the pain we have experienced allowing ourselves to be deeply connected to things beyond us, and the fear of more pain if we allow ourselves to be whole and present today. Part of our wholeness with things beyond ourselves is vulnerability, which is real. However, as previously mentioned we are inescapably a part of everything else whether we realize it or admit it or not and thus vulnerable whether we admit it or not. So spending most of our lives trying to avoid this inescapable vulnerability is how most of us waste most of our life and opportunities to experience and thus know LIFE/Grace.

I am not saying we need to go out of our way to allow or make ourselves vulnerable, but we do need to find ways to accept our inescapable inherent vulnerability. This might be in prayer and meditation or communing with nature or having a heart to heart with a close friend or singing and dancing or doing something kind for someone else with no strings attached or allowing someone to do the same for us or many other ways. Whatever it might be we will need all the faith we can muster if we are going to truly allow ourselves to be vulnerable and present in that moment without internally walling off a part of ourselves. Just as importantly we will need to give ourselves the freedom and right to choose when and how we do this. It will only be sustainable and not exploited to everyone’s detriment if we allow ourselves that gift, and we need to at least start to believe the good news, that if we do allow ourselves this freedom and work to become whole we will want absolutely nothing more than to be kind and generous.

Slowly becoming more and more internally whole in this manner we will automatically find ourselves more whole with everything else. We will find ourselves more and more willing and able and wanting to do things for others without any strings attached. After all we are now whole with them and a part of a larger whole with them and doing something for them is doing at least as much for that whole that includes us. The thing that creates the strings is our unwillingness to accept our vulnerability, which prevents us from knowing or embracing our wholeness with them, which makes us feel/think we need to be repaid (have strings) for the things we do for others.

(Let me interject a quick side note here that I am not saying every relationship we have can be or even ought to be based upon each freely giving as they want. For one thing it is absolutely necessary that we have relationships with those not capable of this if we are going to bring new wholeness to the world, but even beyond that all relationships need to have basic negotiations and understandings for minimal baseline expectations from which each party can go above and beyond with generosity as they feel compelled.)

To related this to a post of yours a couple weeks ago, in a nutshell I am saying to the extent we try to bypass this life in a spiritual manner, we miss out on both, and conversely, to the extent we embrace our current messy life we find what all the great spiritual teachers and many of the great philosophers are trying to convey.

To conclude, let me confess that I am only decent at the things I am discussing here. I truly used to be awful though and these are my observations on that journey so far from awful to decent, with decent meaning I have my doubts that I am even average yet.

Belief and/or Acts

I would explain what sometimes is seen as a conflict between belief and acts in this way. When the NT in various places talks about belief being foremost, especially for being saved, that is true, but assumes that means a deep conviction in Jesus’ path to the Father as he explained it (red text). So then what it means to say only belief in that path is necessary to be saved means is that if we are trying to follow this path (red text) and we error/sin in trying to do so this will not be held against us.

When belief is a mental assent to a doctrine, rather than a deep conviction we are actually trying to follow, the mental assent becomes an excuse and alibi for not following Jesus’ path to the Father, although we generally do not realize this.

Interestingly and unsurprisingly, the Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism) says much the same thing when it says:
A leaf, a flower, a fruit, or even
Water, offered to me in devotion,
I will accept as the loving gift
Of a dedicated heart. Whatever you do,
Make it an offering to me –
The food you eat or worship you perform,
The help you give, even your suffering.
Thus will you be free from karma’s bondage,
From the results of action, good and bad.
https://www.bmcm.org/inspiration/passages/whatever-you-do/

Desires

We of course intuitively know we ought to be contributing to our family, friends, and community. The problem is we think (and are taught in a wide variety of subtle and overt ways) that this is mostly at odds with our own wants/needs/desires. So we believe our task is to suppress our own desires and serve others. Trying to do this we often end up needing vices to help us suppress our own desires and we often try to serve in subtlety manipulative ways to get our own desires met without admitting we are doing that or that we even have them to begin with.

Our desires are often somewhat at odds with contributing to our family, friends, and community, but our deepest desires are always about contributing to the communities we are a part of, whether that be a marriage, other family, friends, workplace, church or other group, or earth inhabitant. Spending the time and effort to get to know these deepest desires of ours and how to act upon them in ways that benefit our communities ends up being the only way to give without also subtly and/or covertly taking. As such, that is our responsibility.

We and our communities are heavily invested in trying to get our needs/desires met without admitting we have them though. Ourselves because admitting them makes us somewhat vulnerable and often feel very vulnerable, and our communities because it underlies most of our social fabric and hierarchy. As such, we may find great resistance to this path being the correct one and to implementing it if we decide to proceed on it.

Additionally, many of us have a few decades or more of practice and autopilot pointing in the wrong direction of demonizing, suppressing, and otherwise trying to avoid at least most of our desires, and this takes a while and concerted effort to alter. And even when doing everything right we are likely to fail as much as we succeed for a while in trying to live from our deepest desires in a way that benefits our communities, which added to our revulsion to being or feeling vulnerable and the resistance we might experience from others makes this path require the faith Jesus often mentioned as the thing that healed.

That faith is obscured by our refusal to accept our current internal and external reality, somehow thinking we know better how things ought to be and we will only join the present after we first make things different. I am not saying we need to accept and stay in a dangerous or harmful situation or a safe and meaningless one, but we need to first accept if that is where we are at to gain/find/be granted the faith to move out of it in a sustainable way.

We do have a responsibility to give of ourselves and serve, but if that does not come from the very foundation of our being as something that is an honor and mostly a pleasure to provide, it is inevitably taking us further away from that foundation and will have to eventually collapse to allow us to start from the only solid foundation there is. And to the extent we learn to give and serve from this source we will find the giving and serving actually expands rather than depletes that foundation/source. And that is some really good news.

As such, our responsibility is to abandon ourselves as much as we possibly can to discover, spend time with and act from this foundation found at our individual core and in the connections between ourselves and things beyond us.

I am not trying to persuade anyone that what I am describing is the same thing as being baptized in the Holy Spirit, but I am saying I think it is. The Body of Christ is creation from its inception through eternity, and being baptized by the Holy Spirit is claiming our spot and destiny as a slightly unique, connected and valuable part of that Body of Christ, and spending the time in communion with It to have It teach us how to live from this whole and united perspective. And the good news is that this whole and united perspective is both the external reality (truth) because we are all inescapably connected and our deepest internal reality.

All of our thoughts and feelings to the contrary are the pain of being hurt by the world and the fear of being hurt again, which are based upon reality, but being baptized by the Holy Spirit means accepting this real pain and fear to get to and live from the deeper reality of communion, which of course takes the faith Jesus talked about as the thing that heals. To the extent we actually do this the pain and fear are transformed into the very connection to the Body of Christ/Holy Spirit and go beyond bittersweet to peaceful and pleasurable union.

Now please do not get me wrong and think I am being negative towards people who have not found sufficient faith/Grace for this transformation. No one can decide to acquire it and be confident they will, and it is normally a combination of pursuing it and surrendering to not being able to acquire the faith by our own volition that helps us slowly build a foundation of it that mostly seems like successive failures, as we are without our knowledge building it. Basically, in this way we are surrendering a bit more to Grace with each struggle and seemingly failure. Then at some point, if we are really lucky, we realize this Grace/union is Reality and embrace our tiny little spot in It. At this point we realize intuitively that we have found what everyone has always been looking for and we did it as a result of our efforts. However, not from being successful in those efforts but rather from failing at what we thought we were trying to do. So in a real sense it occurred both as a result of our efforts and in spite of our efforts.

FB Comment

I do have a strong preference for myself and others to error on the side of being too nice, but I also fully agree that this can be just as much a way to avoid the very real fear, challenge and pain that make up the only reality we actually have irregardless of what we try to tell ourselves our reality is or should be. And either way it equally and unfairly pushes the negatives of our actual shared reality onto others and keeps us stuck with the avoidable consequences and pain of trying to avoiding it. In other words coddling ends up having the same effects on a society as the powerful rigging things in their favor and thus oppressing the less fortunate. And our particular society at this moment seems to have a great deal of both whom think only the other ideology is to blame. (And I should put in the disclaimer that I have been greatly coddled in ways that have helped me come around to some better ways after life made continuing the old way impossible and in ways that have allowed me to stay way too spoiled still.)

Faith of our Fathers or our own

I do not think there are any safe roads (paths) to God, and that is why people normally opt for a safer alternative.

I concur with the late Carl Jung when he said, "One of the main functions of organized religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God." (I am not saying that is true among the initial creators and followers of what becomes an organized religion.)

If we do choose (or probably more likely find we have no other viable alternative) to going after the real thing we will almost certainly find we are always somewhat wrong and frequently very wrong in our beliefs and motivations. Additionally, we will find that we are often unsuccessful in living out those beliefs and motivations even when they are mostly right. As such, the only way we can actually be successful is if we are continually reflecting upon/contemplating our path with whatever connection we know from experience how to make, and then willing to admit and correct our mistakes as we realize them.

In this way, over time, our actual (as opposed to aspirational) beliefs become refined to something more and more accurate and we do improve considerably in successfully living them. At the same time we are generally drawn to new and more challenging arenas of beliefs and actions to live in and share the ever expanding Grace we find, which keeps us forever in need of a great deal of contemplation/reflection/prayer and the willingness to admit and try to correct our errors as we discover them.

Sin from the illusion of separateness

I really did not want anything to do with religion for a long time because it seemed to me that religion was trying to teach me that God created me as a sinner and then was mad at me and planning to punish me for being a sinner. I am still not sure if that is what religion was trying to teach me or not. I am sure I still want nothing to do with any religion that is trying to teach me that.

Fortunately, I was desperate enough that worrying about theories of various religions/denominations/etc became a luxury I could not afford and I had to focus on actually doing spiritual practices, such as confessing sins to the most trustworthy I could find, trying to make up for harms I’ve inflicted, engaging consistently in some sort of contemplative meditation/prayer practice, trying to be a trustworthy and generous fellow to those trying to do similar things, etc.

As a result most of my spiritual answers come from these practices, as opposed to any particular authority, whether person or scripture or textbook. I realize that makes me misguided at times, and acknowledge that. At the same time when people have completely opposite interpretations of what scripture or anything else means, I’d suggest they are being guided similarly – by their own spiritual practices or refusal to submit to spiritual practices and trying to find a way around them - and just do not recognize this or admit it. I say this to be transparent to help anyone who might read the things I write to understand where they come from. I also say it with the great hope that maybe it will encourage others to trust the process of spiritual disciplines and the answers they provide as the best and most accurate ever evolving answers we can grasp while also knowing they will always be incomplete and somewhat wrong and sometimes completely wrong.

With that disclaimer of sorts, I am going to explore what sin is, where it came from, and how we should view our continued use of it. My definition of sin is any action to gain an advantage at the expense of someone or something else. The root of all sin is seeing myself as separate from everything else, which is a good rudimentary description of consciousness, and I believe what the Bible is talking about with eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Consciousness is the ability to view ourselves as separate from our surroundings and evaluate how we fit into those surroundings. If you combine that with free will and the desire to survive and prosper we are bound to act in ways that try to gain advantages at the expense of other people and things, which again is my definition of sin. Essentially, I am saying the things that make us human are the very things that make us sinful, but also trying to present it in a way that removes an element of moral outrage from it since to be human is to be sinful by design unless or until we develop the wisdom to realize there is more to the story.

While it is true that we are somewhat separate from our surroundings it’s even more true that anything and everything is only defined and meaningful as it related to its surroundings. Each of us and everything else are inseparable parts of greater wholes and The Greatest Whole, which means if we try to prosper at the expense of our surroundings we are harming and putting up artificial boundaries with what we are inescapably a part of. As such, what I am defining as sin (and allowing ourselves or others to engage in it) is dumb as much as it is anything else. And viewing it as something dumb that we want to find wiser solutions for is often a much more helpful perspective to successfully find those solutions for ourselves and our communities.

This does not mean competition is necessarily bad. We often do not reach anywhere near our potential for ourself or our surroundings without being pushed by something like competition or calamity, and being lazy and not wanting to be pushed is as much taking from our surroundings as cut throat competition. It does mean that competition should not be rigged to favor those setting up the competition or their friends and that the loser is not crushed and is given a chance for further fair/level competition or providing other meaningful/valued contributions.

Judging

We can only be whole with/connect to/experience others and God to the extent we can be whole with all parts of ourselves in their presence. The things we judge in others are the things we feel/believe prevent us from being whole/honest/open in their presence. Often good reasons exist from our experience with them or others we project them to be similar to to feel/believe the parts we hide will be rejected if we expose them. So we need wisdom (a certain type of judgment) to help guide us to people, places, and ways that will be somewhat safe to explore and share the parts of ourselves we are (justifiably) scared to share and Faith in this wisdom, our fellows, and God to overcome this fear and move towards communion. To the extent we are able to become whole in this way with ourselves, others, and God we will also be gaining compassion for those that we once judged too harshly.

Grace and Justice

I completely agree that one of the most common ways for people to misunderstand God or Jesus's teachings is to take an anthropological perspective and yet we really have no other choice because we have to understand things through our own perspective which comes from experience while realizing that is limited.

I disagree with the way we normally error when taking this unavoidable anthropological approach. One of the major underlying themes of all Jesus's teachings was that God doesn't punish and is not interested in or even condone retribution. The father wants to heal and redeem only and we continually misunderstand this because we try to use God for our own ends.

Now people might say that God only wants to heal and redeem but he can't make us turn to him to do that. that seems to be true in ways for this earthly life (although if totally true would be inconsistent with saying it is all Grace.) If ECT is true though God either is not the God Jesus taught who only wants to heal and redeem or He is not very powerful, letting that get set up and not being able to change it.

Crazy as it seems I'm certain He has overwhelming mercy for all aka Grace. It makes no sense to say it is all Grace and then say some should be punished for not having received that Grace. And those who have received that Grace and are not doing everything they can to share it with others (especially since if you have received It you will know it is mostly transmitted by those who have received it acting graciously) are the most guilty of something, including me who lives a very spoiled life.

It would seem that I am discounting the value or importance of justice and I guess In a way I am, as an end in itself. Justice is extremely important, but this is because without a common struggling for justice among people here on earth doing God's work will mostly lead to being exploited rather than successfully sharing God's Grace. The parables of the prodigal son and the vineyard owner demonstrate that justice for its own sake is not important. They basically say all God is interested in is bestowing Grace and placing justice on the same level often blocks us from that Grace rather than help us embrace It or share It.

Brief FB Comment

We actually ought to be at least a little different version of ourselves in each area of our lives because in each area we have to try to figure out how to fit into that area in a way that is true to our core, but also useful or productive to that area when taking the long view of things. If that’s true it takes a lot of reflection/contemplation/prayer and patience (spending time with our core) considering where those 2 objectives meet, and then a lot of courage/faith to actually live the answer we receive while constantly reassessing if our initial answer actually still seems correct. Sharing the answers we think we are receiving with trusted others makes those answers much more likely to be fruitful and also helps a bunch with the courage/faith.

Separate or Connected

I do not know about at the sub-atomic level much, but the cause of the separation at the more visible levels is trying to avoid our own inescapable vulnerability from being hopelessly connected to everything else. We have no reality separate from our surroundings. Our reality is only in how we fit into and relate to our surroundings, the things we interact with, whether that be alone in nature, with one other person, with groups, or with the universe as a whole. We are in some ways also separate and unique and that is part of our reality, but that can only ever be part of our reality. We have no reality that does not include how we relate and fit into things beyond ourselves.

Being hopelessly connected to everything else means we are dependent upon everything else, but for my purposes here I want to focus mainly on our immediate surroundings, and the fact that it means we are vulnerable to our surroundings, including people. This vulnerability is what we have been trying to cheat, deny, suppress, and otherwise avoid since we developed consciousness (the awareness of being somewhat separate). Trying to avoid that inherent inescapable vulnerability is original sin or the fall. This includes our own natural inclination to deny and avoid it as well as all the worldly systems we have created and live under that are built upon its denial and suppression.

As such, vulnerability is the stone the builder refused, which becomes the cornerstone. This is of course a near perfect analogy since a cornerstone is the foundation stone or first stone from which everything else is built up from, and vulnerability is the inescapable fact that binds everything together for good or ill depending upon if we acknowledge it and maybe even celebrate it or deny and suppress it. I do not mean celebrate it as in trying to achieve or increase vulnerability for its own sake, but rather celebrate being united with everything else, which can only occur after we accept the inherent vulnerability of being part of something greater than ourself. In other words celebrate the key step or stumbling block of truly being in union because of where it leads.

I am not saying anything new here when I say that our troubles are caused by our attempts to avoid this inherent vulnerability, which we experience as pain/discomfort/suffering. However, we all seem to need to be constantly reminded, most of all me. The jumping off place for Buddhism are the noble truths regarding this suffering from our inescapable vulnerability. In Christianity, this jumping off place is the way of the cross or taking up our cross, which is essentially accepting the pain, discomfort, and vulnerability inherent in the LIFE Jesus came to share with us. And of course neither religion stops there and both say if we jump and follow where it leads we will find ourselves a new creation that is exactly what we have been looking for and beyond our wildest dreams all at the same time.

This happens because what we experience as pain/discomfort/suffering is actually from trying to avoid and deny this vulnerability and when we stop doing this we experience the LIFE Jesus was talking about, which is embracing the messy and unpredictable world as it is, as well as the messy and fragile (alone by ourself) person we are. When we do this we will be and feel embraced back and what we thought was pain and suffering that we had to avoid at all cost becomes wholeness internally and with everything else, the Entirety that I call God, but it does not matter what we call it, the process and results are the same.

When we avoid this process (which I most commonly still do) we are avoiding what actually is (LIFE) and thus the dead burying the dead. Part of being in this sense dead is being blinded to the possibility of any other way. Ever since we developed consciousness (the ability to see ourselves as separate and evaluate how we fit in or ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil if you like) we have been using that to try to hide our own inherent vulnerability from being part of everything else. Fortunately this makes us miserable and we search for better answers. Unfortunately, finding those better answers requires a lot of luck (grace), courage (action in spite of fear, aka faith), perseverance, and a lot more luck (grace).

As you mentioned each of our struggles are somewhat unique, although there are many similarities in the process. Generally some combination of suffering and love, mostly suffering for most, makes trying to continue to avoid our vulnerability impossible and we surrender to it at least a little, most commonly without knowing that might be fruitful. Then if we are lucky we find someone or a small group of people who seem to accept us even in what we probably view as a hopelessly defective state (and alone it is that). This could be a friend(s), therapist, clergy member, or in the beginning might even be an animal, like a dog. Sometimes it is also God alone, especially in nature, but there are no absolutes here.

From here we need more luck to recognize it is only when allowing ourselves to be vulnerable that we are capable of connection and still more luck to find people and places that allow us to practice that and find it fruitful. The still blind dead will try to kill it and we’ll need a lot of courage, perseverance, and luck to continue and find places where we can fruitfully practice it and grow strong in our faith individually and collectively. Part of this will be finding others to support in their own fledgling attempts to do likewise and push back against the institutions and practices that exploit any vulnerability they can find to continue their lonely pursuit of avoiding their own vulnerability.

Always going on way way too long I’ll stay true to form and start in from a little different angle. I do not personally like the term true self because all of me and everything else is true, the good, bad, and ugly. I used to prefer the deepest self and now prefer to refer to it as simply wholeness, but I think I mean basically the same thing by wholeness that others mean by true self. They are all about being unblocked and whole.

Even if we were never hurt by our experience of the world we would want to and try to hide our vulnerability. It is simply part of what makes us human. However, we are often hurt deeply by our experience of the world and this makes us develop barriers or blocks to protect our self and our vulnerability from actually experiencing the world. And as discussed above to the extent we are avoiding experiencing the world/our reality we are in an emotional/spiritual sense dead. Our own collection of barriers/blocks is what some refer to as our false self, another term I do not like because if they are my blocks they are a true part of me.

Anyway, these blocks are both what keeps us from wholeness and also our path to wholeness with ourself and everything else. The different methods and specifics of them are beyond my scope here (thankfully something is, right?) However, to generalize it is always by processing the hurt in some way that led to needing the block that the block is removed, and even more importantly we learn from the vulnerable part of us that was hurt and is involved in the processing how to interact differently with the world as to prevent re-injury much of the time and know even when someone hurts us going forward it is that person rejecting their own vulnerable self and not really about us at all. So we may be wise to avoid that person but it does not actually have to hurt or threaten our own wholeness/core/true self/etc.

As we get unblocked we experience our observing and integrating mind, which is very different than our thinking mind. For most of us our thinking mind mainly tries to justify and support our blocks, but when trained can learn to become a powerful tool for translating and articulating the insights from our observing and integrating mind.

Our observing and integrating mind is what actually experiences our reality though, moment to moment, to the extent we are unblocked. It is the part of us that automatically knows we are part of everything else and experiences that connection and union through its very being and its origin, from the big bang and evolution for example, as well as through our senses and awareness itself of our surroundings and hence our connection to those surroundings.

Addictions (as the word is commonly understood) are one of countless ways of masking, denying or otherwise avoiding our inherent vulnerability, all of which turn into something like addictions themselves.

Life's Messy

Most of our avoidable problems are related to people not being willing to be with the messy muddled middle ground of real life, whether internally/individually, between people or between groups, and thus try to pick an ideal (fantasy) to champion and fight for. This is true at all levels of life and relationships (marriages, families, friends, charitable organizations, churches, workplaces, politics, etc), and we never really arrive at the truth from both (or more) sides of an issue because of this. Democracy is dependant upon finding and implementing these truths from all sides of an issue that are not completely at odds with each other, as people initially assume, but we only find this out when we are willing to somewhat open mindedly experience the mess and discomfort of real life rather than retreating to our fantasies of how it ought to be or is supposed to be.

Brief FB Comment

Everyone I’ve met that has a faith that is attractive and contagious seems to have had that faith primarily formed struggling through overwhelming emotions, most commonly some variety of pain. So carry on and I'm sure your faith will become even more attractive and contagious.

Violence

I’ll start by asking why we resort to violence and it seems like the answer is almost always because we are scared or hurt (probably for very good reasons). This is easy to see in most of the typical scenarios that seem to pop into our heads with strangers threatening us or strangers or past relationships or life in general hurting us. It is a little harder to see in our close current relationships, which it seems you are trying to focus on without much luck.

While hidden better the same basic dynamics are at play in these close current relationships, basically fear that we will be hurt and exploited if we do not keep our guard up and ready to fight if needed and actually fight when the threat gets to a certain point. This of course is exacerbated by the fact that we have all been hurt and exploited a lot by various things that have happened in our lives. So basically it is our current real vulnerabilities magnified by our past unresolved pain that causes our current fear (of that vulnerability).

Before moving on lets look at where our very real vulnerabilities at any given time come from. They come from the fact that we are hopelessly an inseparable part of everything else, the alpha and omega - aka God, if you wish, but it is an undeniable fact whether we believe in God or not or whatever God we believe in. And the absolute core of Jesus’ message was that trying to hide or eradicate this vulnerability is what leads to death/hell/evil, and conversely that since God is the alpha and omega (Entirety including Eternity in both directions) embracing these vulnerabilities – the things keeping us separated from/broken off from/lost from God (the Entirety) is the path to the Father/Alpha and Omega/LIFE.

Unfortunately, the church lost this message when if became powerful and did not think it needed to be or embrace vulnerability anymore at the individual, collective, or institutional levels, and has been greatly focused on trying to come up with fancy and complex doctrines and dogmas to rationalize this path in the opposite direction of Jesus ever since. That theology would say that it does embrace vulnerability between individuals and God, but this is a complete lie if it does not embrace vulnerability in and with their immediate surroundings.

I am getting off track though. So let me get back to how this denial of vulnerability at all levels is what leads to violence at all levels. Let’s start with individual close relationships since I think that is what you wanted to focus on and where it all starts. Trying to hide, mask, deny, etc our vulnerabilities is the very thing that makes us guarded/defensive/etc and then leads us to withdrawal or lash out when these vulnerabilities feel threatened. We of course do this for very good reasons, we humans are master manipulators and the best (and maybe only) way to manipulate others is to in various ways (mostly subtle and unknown to all parties involved including the manipulator) prey upon their vulnerabilities.

So the answer is not to simply expose our vulnerabilities in personal relationships or publicly and hope for the best. The answer is to expose the vulnerability and to the extent needed highlight in the most visible and outlandish ways possible if others try to take advantage of that vulnerability. This is what those 200 methods of non-violence have in common and of course what Jesus, MLK, Mandela, and Gandhi were masters at. What really set those 4 apart (and probably others) though was that they did not view the people they were in conflict with as an enemy to be overcome, but rather as a valuable part of the same Entirety to be won over and embraced.

Non-violent methods can be very effective even without the last part, but then are often mitigated by the fact that when they work the person or people who were successful still view the other side as an adversary. And the only answer to this is that they must heal from their past injuries of being hurt and exploited. Until they heal they cannot embrace the other side and inevitably will act from it and try to subjugate the other side (maybe with less violent methods) keeping the conflict simmering for a future eruption.

So how does a person and group heal. It is almost always some flavor of confessing sins (things done to mask, deny, suppress, protect their own vulnerabilities) and trying to make amends or make up for those things done, as well as graciously allowing the other side to do the same thing when it seems they are sincere.

I mostly fail at doing the above things, but do actually try to follow that path in my relationships at home, with friends and at work – allowing myself to be vulnerable, pointing out when people are taking advantage of my or others’ vulnerabilities, confessing when I am taking advantage of them and trying to make amends, as well as trying to graciously allow others to do the same. And I regularly reflect on how I am doing and how I might be able to do better.

Expanding a bit in reply to a comment

I do not think we disagree at all that the powerful that are corrupt and oppress should be fought against.

I am saying that shinning as large of a light as possible on that oppression and corruption that exploits the vulnerable is the best answer – taking the emperor’s cloths to expose what everyone will recognize as vile. To be in solidarity with the vulnerable, as the people we most revere have been. This is the type of fighting that the powerful truly fear and that creates change if there is enough solidarity from the masses.

The problem with fighting with violence is that it does not highlight and expose the oppression, corruption, and exploitation because most people accurately view it as simply two sides fighting for dominance and to impose their will on as much as they can. And when the masses get restless the powerful always try to bait them into this violent fight for this exact reason.

And unfortunately unless someone has embraced their own vulnerability as their own path to solidarity with everything else, they inevitably are blinded to most of the above and think if only they had sufficient power they would rule magnanimously. And yet they will not rule magnanimously unless they have embraced their own vulnerability as the only path to connection and union with the Entirety, aka God.

Brief FB Comment

Much of the problem is that we are bombarded from all angles for almost all of our lives with the idea that doing what we want and what we ought to do are at odds when in fact a lot of overlap exists. The overlap is actually the good news, which is hidden by bombardment from all angles, often foremost from religions. Even when you know to shoot for the overlap though, trying to live there is scary and hard. Looking anywhere other than the overlap though makes the good news impossible.

I do not mean to imply there is a big conspiracy and most of the people with power realize they are doing what I am suggesting. Rather I am saying that we are taught all along to resist our desires and focus instead on what those with authority think we should be doing (which is generally how those in authority got to where they are, which seems to be a desirable position and thus they think they are giving generous advice.) 

 The result is having to exert a great amount of energy both on suppressing our desires and on pushing ourselves to act in ways that will please/satisfy others, which then leads us to also need various escapes from all that effort fighting ourselves. Just as importantly we never learn to find the overlap (which takes a lot of practice, discipline, and reflection) where we are fulfilled by acting benevolent, which is the transformation people seek. 

 The only way to be transformed is to be acting on our own deepest desires in ways that benefit others without demanding things from them. In this way we get what we most want by being benevolent and without regard to what anyone else does, which is the gospel. It seems to have mostly been replaced by trying to valiantly fight our desires and make sacrifices for others that feel like sacrifices rather than fulfilling/rewarding, which explains why many churches/religious organizations have lost the power to attract and transform.

Brief FB Comment

Yes, in order to thrive in the realm of the Spirit we seem to need a secure home (circle/trusted friends) and foundation (beliefs we actually practice), as well as to regularly question/challenge both in various ways.

Re Asking God for help with our petty problems.

While true, where this leads is uncomfortable and challenging to our very core. If God cares more about our petty conveniences and comforts than about the estimated 100,000 children in the US trapped by human trafficking, most of which are regularly raped by adults, or all the other atrocities here and abroad, that God is nothing short of callous and cruel. So the theology is not just shallow it is at least one aspect of a good definition of evil and where evil comes from.

Even more uncomfortable and challenging is that if I am using most of my energies and resources for my own comfort and enjoyment (which is most often true of me) rather than using them to try to help alleviate those atrocities we humans inflict upon one another, I am acting in a scared, dumb, callous, and cruel manner (probably in that order).

The Gospel is nothing less than facing this (the cross) and allowing the mustard seed of faith to grow into something strong enough to more and more overcome my fear, stupidity and selfishness as I learn to act from it to bring healing and wholeness to those I encounter and in turn myself. Understanding that sometimes helps, but not much. Mostly it just explains why we all try so hard to create an alternative gospel that is not so demanding, until life (if we are lucky) makes us surrender to the only True Reality.

However, if as I believe Christ within is a wholeness with our core (God’s image) that knows we are hopelessly an inseparable part of everything else (the alpha and omega, aka God) then the path to God is through our vulnerabilities - needs and fears from being this hopelessly inseparable part of everything else. So opening up our needs and fears to Our Creator is the path to growing our faith, which could also be described as our ability to be united with things beyond ourselves. Encouraging others in this same process, especially when they have been hurt/traumatized by trying to be a part of things beyond themselves, as we all have, is what a faith community is all about, along with demanding that vulnerabilities are not exploited by those with power.

Putting those two seemingly opposed concepts together we might arrive at the idea that we should open up our petty and deeper needs to God and find they are the connecting thread to Him through His creation, but not ask for them to be satisfied so we do not actually need Him.  It is only to the extent we come to understand that we are hopelessly inadequate (and miserable) alone and decide to join His creation, moment to moment, that we become one/united with Him.  

Brief FB Comment

It is ridiculous that a religion that is supposed to be about Jesus and his way to the Father acts much more like the few he railed against rather than embracing people where they, are as he did and STILL DOES.