I will be using this space to post excerpts from my e-book, "A Handbook for the Spiritual Journey," available on Amazon as a Kindle book, and available for free on my WordPress site, "My Published Works." This is a 2012 revision of my paperback published in 2002 with the title, "The Evolution of the Idea of God." Which is to say that the ideas presented here were preached from the pulpit of the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, in Greensboro, North Carolina, from 2002 until my retirement in February of 2011. And I'm bringing them to light here, because why not? I hope you find reading these excerpts to be helpful in your journey!
From chapter nine, “Community and Chaos”
The right kind of community is essential for emotional and spiritual support, for comfort and encouragement, for caring presence, for listening us through confusion to clarity, balance, sanity and peace.
Our overall guiding strategy has to be putting ourselves in the position of making the best possible decision about what to do in each situation as it arises. A community of innocence (Innocent in the sense of having nothing personal at stake in, or to gain from, its individual members, but exists solely for the good of the whole, helping each other stay grounded in, and focused upon, seeing/hearing/knowing what is called for in each situation as it arises and doing/being what is called for throughout what remains of the life left for living.
Things have their own rhythm and flow. Our place is to read the situation as it unfolds before us and assist it toward its natural and preferred outcome. In order to do that, we have to stand aside, step back, get out of the way with our preferences, desires, fears, wants, dreads, will, opinions, and sense of duty, to see what needs to be done and what we can do about it.
When we do things this way, we open the way to living appropriately in response to the moment unfolding before us. We have to put our agenda away and simply receive the moment and step into it with our “skill set” of our original nature, innate virtues (What we do best and enjoy doing most), our inherent imagination and our intrinsic intuition, which forms our particular genius, and makes us uniquely prepared to grace this here, now with exactly what it needs to move toward its “natural and preferred outcome.”
When we get out of the way, seeing/hearing/understanding/knowing spontaneously becomes doing/being (One thing, not two). Which transforms us and enhances our ability to be what is called for wherever we are.
Our situations bring us forth this way when we step into them innocent of all intentions and agendas, receiving what is there, and offering to it what we have to give the way emergency room personnel approach whatever comes through the door. They do not try to exploit their situation to their benefit and advantage, but do all they can to be present for the good of the time and place, the here, now, of their living.
Joseph Campbell said, “The hero always gets the adventure they are ready for.” And, “Where you stumble and fall, there is the treasure.” The adventure we get is never the one we have in mind, and “the treasure” may be nothing in common with our idea of treasure, which comes with good fortune and resplendent glory attached to it, and we go looking for the way to that particular image in mind.
We have no business looking for endings, advantages and glory. Our business is looking for what needs us to do it, and do it. Our idea of how we want our life to be takes us far afield from the life that is our life to live, and leads us further into the wasteland away from the adventure that is ours.
When we go looking for help with our life, seeking advice and guidance from friends, therapists and self-help books, we are looking for a way to the end we have in mind for ourselves. We are looking for how to have our way and get what we want.
What does wanting know? How did it get its place in guiding our boat on its path through the sea? Wanting is the source of all of our problems today and every day. Stop wanting and everything is immediately transformed. What would it be like to live without wanting? The adventure we get is always the one we are ready for–the one that is needed for our next step toward wisdom, maturity and grace–and always the one we don’t want anything to do with.
What will we do? Will we show ourselves to be worthy of our adventure? Or, will we pass on it and wait for one that is much more in keeping with our idea of what an adventure should be? Will we seek the treasure where we stumble and fall? Where our life goes off the tracks? Where there is nothing but nothing as far as we can see?
When we put ourselves in accord with our life, and seek the treasure where we never thought a treasure might be, things shift in an imperceptible, yet undeniable way. And we find doors opening where we didn’t know there would be doors at all. Help that we would never have recognized as being helpful, comes to our aid.
In the TV series, The Power of Myth, Bill Moyers asked Joseph Campbell, “Don’t you feel sorry for people who have no invisible means of support?” Invisible support comes to those who trust themselves to their adventure. But. There is a catch.
The catch is that we cannot exploit the support that comes to us on our adventure and use it to our personal advantage. Our adventure is not for our benefit. Not for our gain. We do not benefit in any personal way from the adventure at hand. We do it solely for the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it. That is all we get out of it. We live for the experience of being alive, and not to have something “to show for it.” The Hero serves the community, the collective. The boon is for all humankind–really, for all sentient beings!
The Buddha did not live for the aggrandizement of the Buddha. Jesus did not live for the prestige and renown of being Jesus. Stat sheets and personal records of achievement are meaningless on the journey, on the adventure, that is ours to undertake. Help is available, but not for our personal advancement–only for the work that is ours to do, for the completion of our journey, our adventure, for the sake of a good that is greater than our personal good.
The help that comes to us may come from the outside, or from the inside, in the form of dreams, realisations, nudges, hunches… We have to be quiet and perceptive in order to evaluate whether something is helpful or not. It may look/sound good, but is it? Sit with it for a while, listening to your body. “Time will tell” if something is helpful, so take your time with what comes your way.
The Shel Silverstein verse is beautifully stated and to the point: “Some kind of help is the kind of help that help is all about, and some kind of help is the kind of help that we all could do without.” The old Taoist advice also applies here: “Take what you can use and leave the rest behind.”
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