Diary of a Heretic

There seems to be this great momentum of events and ideas happening around me at the moment. I am being pushed and shoved and generally made to feel unsettled. Which seems to be my normal state of being these days. My boundaries on all fronts of my life are being stretched and stretched and stretched.

I guess I am like a million other people trying to find some life balance in all of this chaos, and my mind is always being confronted with conundrums concerning my ideals and motives on everything from relationships, work issues and spirituality.

Which brings me to the matter on hand . My mind has been involved in an endless conversation on Dragons of late. Iam researching, contemplating, and meditating in preparation for the upcoming workshop. During this ongoing inner chatter of thought processes, I was stopped by a very small voice this morning it simply said ‘mature spirituality’. My mind immediately quitened and I thought deeply about this concept. How mature is my spirituality? I wondered if this was something that people pondered upon, on their long spiritual journey to reach actualisation?

Of course spirit has its own unique way of engineering a specified outcome and it wasnt long before I started my search for an answer. Consequently I came across a site on the web that seem to hold all the right information. A Buddist monk by the name of Jack Kornfield has written a book ‘A path with Heart’ which discusses mature spirituality. See what I mean about engineering an outcome.

Hmm… food for thought. The ten qualities of mature spirituality certainly resonate within my being. The big question is how can I evolve as a spiritual being when I live in this human shell with it’s limitations and restrictions. I live with this ongoing frustration of confinement. I guess I am ranting, but you see I want to progress my spirituality, and I try to transcend these limitations but I guess the answer here is acceptance . I need to learn to accept who I am and learn to live in harmony within myself. Perhaps I should just start with one quality of mature spirituality, just one small step at a time….. after all I have eternity to reach self actualisation, whatever that means.

Janine
November 23, 2006

Nonidealism

The quality of nonidealism refers to acknowledging that no person, thing or event is perfect, including ourselves. We must adopt compassion and relate to others with the heart instead of through the lens of ideals held in the mind. Perfectionism is unattainable and leads to judgmental attitudes and being overly critical rather than caring and compassionate. We fail to appreciate the wonder and beauty of the world that when we attempt to achieve what can never be attained. What a burden if everyone we encounter was seeking perfection in us!

Kindness

Nonidealism leads naturally into the next quality of mature spirituality, kindness. This isn’t the sort of kindness that inspires us to rescue scrawny kittens or say something nice to our grumpy neighbor. It’s the fundamental notion of self-acceptance when we are kind to ourselves rather than maintaining a constant emotional field of guilt, blame or shame.

Self-acceptance

Self-acceptance is harder than it sounds and requires the third quality of mature spirituality, patience. Very few of us will wake up one morning with the realization that spiritual completeness came to us over night. Living in harmony with dharma, Tao, the universe, God, nature or with whatever we seek to harmonize is a process through time. Patience is not striving for accomplishment of a spiritual goal but recognizing it as being a journey through the seasons and beyond time.

Immediacy

Therefore the next quality of mature spirituality is immediacy. We find our spirituality in the here and now. It is not a gift to be bestowed in the future it is something we cultivate within the context of our lives. Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth define eternity as something other than endless time. He said it was something outside of time. It was not the past and not the future, but now. This moment. But as soon as one contemplates the moment it is gone. That is eternity. So if one seeks eternal spirituality it must be a continual process of the here and now. One Zen saying is, “after the ecstasy, the laundry.”

Integrated & Personal Sense of the Sacred

So now we have an integrated and personal sense of the sacred as our next quality of mature spirituality. This is the direct opposite of compartmentalizing our lives. Nothing is divided between the sacred and the secular. We honor our spirituality in our every word and action. We don’t adopt a spiritual attitude when we walk through a door, we have it in the car on the way to work, when we made breakfast this morning and when we go to school or anywhere else . We tap into the spiritual nature of not only a bird’s twittering on a cool crisp day but in the wailing of a baby and the honking of a car horn.

Questioning

The next quality comes almost naturally to Unitarian Universalists and most, if not all of us, have very little difficulty with the notion of questioning. Mature spirituality is not adopting a philosophy or blindly following a teacher. Instead we recognize that we must see and experience for ourselves. We sustain a willingness to discover what is so without imitation. Yes, of course we turn to a living tradition for inspiration but we do not shy away from questioning the relevance and validity of any aspect of the sources of our faith.

Flexibility

This predisposition to questioning doesn’t automatically guarantee possession of the next aspect of mature spirituality, flexibility. Flexibility in this respect refers to responding to our world with compassion and understanding, recognizing the changing environment around us. Mature spirituality allows us to recognize when to stay present and when to let go. Flexibility is joyful and restful. It allows us to let go of strife and gives us the wisdom to know when to hold on and when to move on.

Embracing Opposites

This particular aspect is very different from nonidealism and kindness which are more childlike. The ability to embrace opposites is decidedly unchildlike. It is the ability to recognize that a single person is not all bad or all good but can choose to behave either way at different times. Someone who is angry is not angry all of the time. As we mature we become more comfortable with paradox, life’s ambiguities. Utter duality seems a rather naïve and simplistic world view. A person who embraces opposites can truly appreciate irony, metaphor and humor.

Concept of Relationship or Relatedness

Kornfield’s ninth quality of mature spirituality has to do with the concept of relationship or relatedness. We are always in relationship to something. We may have little control over what happens in our life but we can choose how to relate to our experiences. The mature spiritualist possesses a willingness to relate to all things. Although at times we may be sorely tested and tempted to withdraw from the world around us we can maintain such isolationism. We exist in relationship to the people in our lives, the food we consume, the air we breathe, and the ground we walk on. Remind anyone of our affirmation to respect the interdependent web of all existence?

Ordinariness

All of these qualities lead invariably to the tenth quality of ordinariness. This is a simple presence in the moment that allows the mystery of life to show itself. We cannot do that without nonidealism, kindness, patience, immediacy, integrated sacredness, questioning, flexibility, embracing opposites and a willingness to relate. This quality is finding a balance between what was and what will be, which is the here and now. Joseph Campbell refers to this moment as the true definition of infinity. Infinity isn’t the endlessness of time, it’s the illusiveness of the present moment. Once I have considered whether or not I am in the here and now, that moment is gone. The ordinariness of spiritual life comes from a heart that has learned trust and from a gratitude for the gift of human life.

The information above was edited from an article written by Ann Fuller, March 2006 about the book Kornfield, Jack, A Path With Heart, Bantam Books, New York, 1993. http://www.brevardminister.com/sermon_032606.htm