SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM
Matt Chait - Sunday, September 13, 2009
SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM
It is often said by spiritual materialists (members of organized religion who believe that God is a particular person, with a particular name and a particular history) that to have a strong morality you must be a member of one of these spiritual material religions. That it is only these religious groups that have retained, through their sacred texts, divinely inspired sets of rules to dictate our behavior and without which there would be no morality and merely spiritual and social chaos. And, of course, the great majority of people in these groups believe that there is only one set of rules that is actually right, and that set of rules, of course, is the set of rules that is followed by their particular group.Spiritual materialists also believe that spiritual spiritualists (people who do not believe in a particular religion but who believe or who experience the spiritual as the essential nature of the universe and who believe or experience God as a transcendent non-physical Being who is not separate from every individual being) have no morality at all; that they are consumed with the narrow and selfish goal of their own spiritual development and that they are slow or even non-responsive when it comes to confronting injustice or speaking out against immorality and abuse.
And spiritual materialists are reinforced in this thinking when they hear certain ideas that come from this spiritual community; not so much the ideas themselves, whose origins are ancient, but interpretations of these ideas which are really quite modern. Among these is the notion of karma, which is an eastern idea whose meaning is very close to the western idea that "you reap what you sow," that somehow the universe will punish you for deeds that violate the universal morality and the universe will reward you for deeds that are aligned with the universal morality. Also, that everyone is on a path, of which this particular life time is only one very small part, toward complete union with God or the Cosmic Consciousness, and that any perpetrator of immorality or injustice is just another being working out his particular path toward spiritual union.
This last part, which basically is saying, leave that evil-doer, that criminal, that tyrant, that abuser, alone, because he, too, is on a path and the 'universe' will be dealing with that person in due time (if not in this life time, then in another) is the modern spin on karma which not only gives the impression of, but which, if followed, actually leads to, spiritual and moral passivity. Yet remember that the idea of karma comes out of the world of spiritual spirituality. In this world there is no physical God with a baritone voice who metes out rewards and punishments. So how does the 'universe' express itself in this world view?
Most of us are not hermits. We do not live in complete isolation. We live in a society and our lives are enmeshed in a whole series of relationships with other people. For the great majority of us, the 'universe' expresses itself in the way that we are treated by these other people; in the quality of our relationships. You are part of 'the universe' for everyone else, just as everyone else is part of 'the universe' for you. If you witness an injustice, an abuse or a crime and say or do nothing, then, for that perpetrator, this is proof that the universe is indifferent. If you confront this perpetrator, or prevent him from this immorality, or take steps to insure that this person will not be able to do this kind of thing again, then, from the perspective of this particular criminal and this particular crime, the universe does care. So it is really not some 'magical' thing like a loose brick falling off a building and hitting you on the head which is supposedly 'the universe' settling some kind of score with you. Obviously, statistically, moral people and immoral people are equally the victims of falling bricks. And I don't want to talk about fatal mishaps, because that brings us into the realm of speculation and belief as to what happens to us after we leave our bodies. I want to talk about survivable misfortunes. So if one is seriously injured by a falling brick or by any other accident, the difference is in the kind of support and caring from other people that this accident engenders. Does this person's family and friends unite to make this victim's recovery from the falling brick as pleasant as possible? Does this victim realize in the aftermath of this accident the extent to which he is loved and appreciated? Or is this a person who's associates, even who's own family, think so poorly of him that they believe that he somehow deserved this misfortune? "He was greedy, selfish and abusive his whole life; so now let him fend for himself." Everyone is the victim of traumatic events at one time or another. I am not recommending them, and there is no need to seek them out, but when they do happen, they reveal to the victim, more clearly than at any other time, the extent to which he or she is valued by other people.
When you act or react in the face of injustice, crime or abuse, you are acting not only in service to the victim but also in service to the perpetrator. There are many abusers, many tyrants, many criminals, who, on one level, think that they are getting away with something and that they can do so because they are living in a morally indifferent universe. At the same time these people, on another level, a deeper level, suspect that maybe they haven't gotten away with anything at all. Whatever power or possessions they have managed to attain through their misdeeds, they fear may be taken away at any time when the means through which that power or those possessions were acquired is revealed. The servants, the aides, the sycophants, the groupies, the entourage that surrounds these people are always pleasant and obedient, but can they be trusted? The suspicion is that the only reason they are so docile and compliant is that they fear the consequences of not being docile and compliant, and that they secretly resent or even hate the perpetrator, even though they would never admit it. Perpetrators, even ones with enormous outward success, live in a world of painful isolation and fear; a world in which they can never allow themselves to be completely comfortable with another person and where the other person cannot allow themselves to be completely comfortable with them. If the ultimate experience of life is the experience of loving and being loved, or the experience of oneness, the perpetrator lives in a world in which he experiences neither.
Yes, this person is on a path where 'the universe' will eventually lead this person back to God and to oneness. But when? Why don't you, being a part of this person's universe, step forward now, call them out on their behavior, risk the consequences, and be the instrument of this person's spiritual development? Please be clear that I am not talking about any kind of priggishness here. I am not concerned with the hemlines of women's skirts or whether or not someone's underwear is visible. I am not talking about ever changing fashions or sexual mores. I am talking about a universal morality which is universal because that God given sense of right and wrong, no matter how we try to argue against it, or justify doing otherwise, is alive within us. I am talking about an essential morality that has nothing to do with etiquette or complicated rules of behavior or fads. I am talking about a basic sense of dignity and respect, of honor, that we should have for ourselves and that we should have for each other, regardless of what that other person may or may not have accomplished, how many possessions they have managed to accumulate, how many awards they have managed to win, what kind of clothes they wear, what kind of car they drive, what kind of house they live or don't live in, what gender they are, what sexual orientation they are, what religion, profession, body type, culture, race or age they are. It is what is embodied in the 'golden rule' and in the 'inalienable rights' enumerated in our American Declaration of Independence. I am talking about the understanding that we are made in the image of God, not the physical image, but that we are of the same spiritual essence as the Divine, and that we can, like the Divine, but in a very limited way, experience things and intend things and that we all have received this amazingly complex and beautiful gift of a human body and a human brain that allows us to experience this world in a particular way and to manifest our dreams and intentions within it.
How do I know, if I speak out against injustice and abuse, that I am not just expressing my own personal view? Isn't it dangerous to assume that anyone has a connection to the Divine and therefore knows what is right and wrong? But, if not you, then who? Do you really think that there is any other person besides yourself, who is better able to pass on the rightness or wrongness of a situation, who is better able to detect the presence of cruelty and abuse than you are? What blurs a person's judgment in these regards is a lack of information or any personal agenda, any ambition or interest that they might have in the outcome of a judgment, and any pre-existing prejudice or bias that they have toward another person (in other words arriving at a situation where you believe that one of the people, for whatever reason, is less worthy of dignity and respect and opportunity, than another). But everyone (and our jury system is based on this notion) is capable, if they are both adequately informed and disinterested, of determining, in terms of basic morality, what is right and what is wrong. This ability is not based on any foolish evolutionary argument that those people with the 'caring' genes survived more abundantly than those people with the 'selfish' genes. Genes are strands of sub-microscopic bits of nucleic acids. What would a 'selfish' nucleic acid or a 'caring' nucleic acid look like? It is, rather, based on a basic, God given innate moral sense that all of us have (although often clouded by the teachings of prejudice and entitlement). To the extent that we live in a moral universe, we do so because of the reactions of other human beings. When we are repulsed by cruelty, when we are in awe of courage and self-sacrifice, and when we admonish or praise people accordingly, then we create a moral universe. So, yes, this 'universal morality' is from the Divine, but to the extent that it is expressed, it is expressed through humanity. And within ourselves it is very clear to every one of us when we are doing right or wrong. Even when we cannot admit to ourselves that we did something wrong, we know immediately, that it is something that we have to justify.
So if you believe that a wrongdoer will be taught a lesson by the universe, then you, being a part of this person's 'universe' begin that persons instruction now. And please be clear that I am not talking about vengeance; about getting even. I am talking about not letting injustices, iniquities and inequities, stand. If you do, you do a disservice not only to the person who is the victim of this abuse and injustice, but to the perpetrator. Because the perpetrator really is on a spiritual journey, whether he or she realizes it or not. Your silence gives them the impression that they are getting away with something. People may go through their whole lives thinking they are getting away with something and not realizing until the very end that among all those people that they thought they had fooled, not one was actually fooled. In spite of their continual fawning, because they needed to hold on to their jobs or they feared the consequences of speaking out, they all realized what kind of person you were. Your fears that no one really liked or respected you, were true. Your aching loneliness was true. Your suspicion that everyone was using you, was accurate. Your suspicion that in this world, the world that you created, no one can be trusted, is true. But, if that one morally courageous person comes forward, not to punish, not for revenge, but to let you know that they are aware of what you are already aware of; that what you did was wrong;and that they can no longer have a relationship with you, at least a trusting, positive relationship with you, unless you mend your ways; then they will become, no matter how you first react to their message (positively or negatively), the first person in your universe that you can trust. They are the bearer of the first message from 'the universe' that it really does care, and your spiritual journey can continue.
Another notion from the world of spiritual spirituality that can give the impression of moral passivity is the law of yin and yang, or opposites. Yin and yang is based on the understanding that in this world, the visible world that surrounds us, we know things only in relation to their opposite. So we only know heat in relation to cold, dark in relation to light, up in relation to down, male in relation to female, and good in relation to evil. In other words, for there to be good, there must be evil; for there to be peace there must be war. I even heard someone proclaim recently that, because of this, he is not opposed to war; that we must have a concept of war in order to have a concept of peace.
Like the law of karma, the law of yin and yang is accurate, but it is not any justification for moral passivity. Let's take the war and peace part. It is important to note in this discussion that there is a big difference between someone who has a concept of war and someone who has an experience of war. Most people that have had an experience of war are quick to point out that their experience of it once they were actually in it was very different than their conception of it going into it. Most of our more aggressive politicians who casually prescribe war as an instrument of foreign policy have had only a concept of war, while those politicians who have actually experienced war are, as a whole, far more cautious about committing their country and a whole new generation of soldiers to another one. Now whether any of us actually experience war again in our life time, we will still have a concept of war. We live in a culture. This culture has an oral, written, photographic and cinematic history. As long as those still exist we will know, at least conceptually, about war. So, it will not be necessary for any of us to actually experience the killing and being killed, the maiming and torture and the destruction of entire communities, that is the actual ingredients of an actual war, to be able to understand it, or to be able to appreciate peace.
All of these opposing states can be arranged in a gradient. If there is a little tension at a certain time between you and your friend, this could hardly be considered a war. Yet there is enough difference between the experience of that tension and the closer experience when that tension is lifted for you to appreciate that closeness and take steps to avoid that tension developing again. The same thing for good and evil. You do not have to experience your family being raped, murdered and dismembered in order to know evil and to experience its opposite. We live within a range of all these gradients. When we experience a really hot day we have greater appreciation for a cool evening. But none of us have experienced the temperature at the surface of the sun. We couldn't survive such an experience; just as none of us have experienced absolute zero. So we understand heat and cold from a, thankfully, limited perspective. I am sure that none of us would want to have anything more than a conceptual understanding of either absolute zero or the surface of the sun. And certainly the same is true with good and evil. Evil may be too strong a word for cheating on a test. But the quickening experience that you have when you do it, the fear of being caught, the isolating feeling that you got away with something, something that must be kept as a secret, and that you don't really measure up to those other students that did well and did not cheat, is enough of an experience to be able to understand and appreciate the calmer, cleaner and much more gratifying experience of having competed fairly and still been successful.
We do not need more evil in the world in order to appreciate good. There is already way more than enough for us to understand it. And it is in the very nature of our condition, where we are always having to choose between pursuing our own selfish goals at the expense of others or making choices that are best for everybody involved, that we come to understand good and evil anyway, and understand it on a manageable level of intensity that we can recover from. If I have cheated on an exam, I will get down on myself, but not so much that I no longer think of myself as capable of improvement or redemption. The same may not be able to be said of a mass murderer. He may have become so vile in his own estimation that he cannot ever imagine himself capable of improvement or being able to ever enter again the close and trusting society of honorable people. So rather than enhancing our ability to appreciate goodness, the commission or even the witness of truly horrible evil may be overwhelming to our sensibilities and make any future experience of goodness, at least in this life time, impossible.
And all of these examples are from our relative, changing physical world of people and things. In the spiritual world, goodness and peace are not relative. If you have been blessed with a moment when you have experienced the 'peace that passeth understanding,' the transcendent peace of the spiritually arrived, this is so far from our ordinary experience, it stands in marked contrast to anything we have ever experienced before anyway. We do not need to seek out or cause to engender what we think is its opposite. Everything in our normal life is markedly different from that experience anyway.
We also hear people of a spiritual persuasion using the term, "It's God's will." This phrase, or other phrases similar in meaning are commonly used to justify a kind of "what can you do?" passivity. But this is too superficial a view. It is also God's will that all human beings have a will. If God wanted us to be passive, neutral observers of world wide injustice, then we would not be equipped with a sense of moral outrage and the intelligence and strength to do something about it. The only reason that there is any cruelty and oppression in this world is that people, not disembodied forces, but people, whose passion for pursuing their own self-interest and greed is stronger, or expressed more openly, than the passion of people who have a moral sense of the greater good. If we burn with outrage at some major injustice; if we are so passionate about some cruelty that we or others experience or an abuse that we or others suffer under, that we are willing to risk our lives in an attempt to change that situation, then it is also God's will that we experience that outrage and that passion and that we organize ourselves and activate ourselves in order to rectify that situation.
In Viet Nam it was Buddhist monks that led the protest against the war. At home, clergy and religious people were at the forefront of the anti-war movement; and the civil rights movement was led by clergy, both black and white. Spiritual people led the anti-colonial movement for Indian independence and the anti-slavery movement both here and in England. It is through a spiritual understanding that our appreciation for life, for all of life, deepens. A natural result of this understanding is not passivity, but a heightened intolerance for cruelty and abuse and a greater courage in the pursuit of justice.
I welcome your comments.
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