just be it Just Be It is a practice of presence that recognizes the limits of language. When aware of silence there is a state of inner still alertness. You are wholeheartedly present.

I will not vote for greed and capitalism without moral conscience.

I will not vote from fear and anger.

I will not vote from the illusion that we are separate from one another.

I will not vote for the closed mind that ‘thinks’ it has all the answers.

I will not vote for those who think their religion is the only right one.

I will vote for shared pain and gain.  I prefer to call it kindness and opportunity rather than the currently accepted label of ‘entitlement’.  I will vote for health care and educational opportunities for all and for the preservation of human rights from those who would oppress those freedoms.

I will vote from a sense of stewardship and faith that we’re safely held by the whole universe, whatever label we may use for this.

I will vote from reliance upon divine providence, from what God would do in the best interest of the planet, the international community, the nation, the state, the community and the family.

I will vote for bigger understanding to the challenges of today’s changing world, for open minds and for dialogue over monologue.

I will vote for the candidate skilled at speaking to today’s challenging and fast changing religious climate, for the candidate who heals our global community rather than the one who inflames anger through arrogant notions of having the ‘right’ answer.

Ancient Hawaiian spirituality calls it “best for All with harm to none”.  It’s a high standard to aim for, but one that’s been directed from the core of all spiritual traditions.  I will vote for this candidate when he/she shows up.  And finally, I will allow you to vote for what and who you feel you must vote for without attempts to change you.  Please allow me the same.

Yesterday I went to an air show and was amazed at the stunts the acrobatic pilots were able to pull off.  I was most impressed when they built speed in a dive only to throw the plane into a vertical climb, maxing out in a held static position until the plane stalled and free fell like a leaf.  These pilots took the plane from complete control to a full surrender.  The plane would tumble several hundred feet and then it would capture enough airspeed where they could throttle up and fly out of the plane’s overwhelmed condition.  These pilots had faith in the realm of uncertainty and apparent overwhelming conditions.  I’ve interviewed many top athletes known for pushing new maneuvers and have always been curious about that ‘moment’ when they left familiarity, entering a new zone of performance outside their previous experience.  It’s almost unanimous that they systematically work up to the moment of surrender with days, months, and sometimes years of practice.  Yet, there’s a moment where they step beyond our typical notions of time and space, almost in a foreknowledge, completing the surrendered procedure before initiating it.  Katagiri Roshi describes it beautifully in Each Moment is the Universe:

“…time becomes supreme time, beyond any concept of past, present, or future; place becomes supreme place, beyond any dualistic concept; and person becomes supreme person, who is melted into the universe.

That situation is unknowable with our consciousness.  It’s impossible for me to express it in words.  But maybe you can feel that this is true, that this activity is something that could appear in you life in the future.  If so, that feeling becomes a kind of prediction, foreknowledge, or hope.  That is big hope.”  p. 145

He talks about how hope just comes up, we do something with complete devotion and focus, from the whole heart, we forget our self (separation), and we change the structure of time and space.  Even though people may not see this, they ‘feel’ it.  There’s a felt sense of the bottomless nature to life’s mystery that brings us to our knees in wonder and awe.  It’s what gives us the courage to free fall ourselves when moments of uncertainty inevitably arise.

At the same air show, I by chance, met up with one of my favorite sailing friends.  He’s an ER doctor working one of the Duluth hospitals and was giving his time to cover medical emergencies at the event.  We spoke about those life situations where we’re brought to our knees from ‘not knowing’.  I had told him how this was our topic of conversation at a recent meeting I’d attended for a group at Rush City Prison.  I told him how some inmates described the free fall from ‘no hope’ and others described it from faith.  We briefly discussed the life experience of overwhelm vs. the courage to surrender in faith to life’s next surprise.  He then went on to describe his experience in treating attempted suicide patients in his ER.  I recall him saying how most surviving suicide patients radically change their spiritual journey once they’ve lived through their attempt to end this physical life. He had seen a major transformation that he said was hard to explain.  My sense was that they felt ‘caught’ from the free fall.  This seems to be our journey.  So often we can slip into overwhelm with feelings and thoughts of ‘not enough’, guilt, shame, and conditions not turning out as desired or expected.  Yet, when we surrender to divine Providence, when we can ‘let go’ our attachment to what we ‘think’ should be, faith grows through the experience of knowing we can never be alone.  We break the illusion that we’re separate and we find the strength and courage to enter what I call ‘I don’t know land’.  As Katagiri wrote, ‘we’re melted into the universe’.  He also describes it as knowing that wherever you ma be, your life is sustained and supported by the whole universe.

The night before this air show I had the great fortune of watching some friends creating music at a local club.  A couple who’s been deeply in the depths of ‘I don’t know land’ from a serious health condition intensely stepped up to meet the moment, hitting the presence of each arriving note.  Their sense of ‘aliveness’ brought a vitality to their music that touched us all.  We could ‘feel’ big hope in the moment, in supreme time and supreme space. They communicated the feeling of being supported by the whole universe.

The conversation changes when we can step out of our small ‘knowing’ minds to embrace the wonder, awe, and surprise found in our ‘unknowing’.  This week the great story teller, Garrison Keillor from A Prairie Home Companion, eloquently told a story about the suffering we cause from our small judgmental minds, especially during political election years.  While our media feeds on trying to grow conflict from polarization (Fox News vs. MSNBC), Garrison told a heart touching story that’s possibly familiar to us all.  He described a relative who carried a wonderful humility when returning to his Minnesota home even though he was famous in Texas.  He knew this gentleman held radical right wing political views in opposition to Garrison’s views.  He described our typical behavior of holding silence on these topics when we believe they’ll only lead to anger and further conflict.  He then went on to describe how this man he was tempted to objectify thrust a butcher blade through his heart from despair when he discovered his wife was having an affair.  He captured our need for compassion, even to those who may think different political or religious thoughts.  He challenged us to the vast mystery of life and humbled us to never be so arrogant to ‘think’ we’re right and others are wrong.  Life is too big.  The Divine is too mysterious.  It’s why we’re repeatedly instructed to love one another, even those of different world views.

It’s so easy to become distressed by the ‘con men’ trying to gain our confidence in ‘their’ thinking.  Noam Chomsky has said there is always underlying violence whenever we try to persuade others from our notion of being right.  It’s why our actions are so much more important than our attempts to debate or change others.  I’ll never forget the Dali Lama leaning over to a fellow Buddhist who was enthusiastic about explaining one of the teachings.  He said, “You’re not trying to push Buddhism, are you?”  Or the ministers who were trying to push their notions/beliefs on traumatized Virginia Tech students who were in free fall from a mass shooting.  We just need to cultivate our faith through the courage to face the surprise of the next moment with kindness.  We don’t need to agree in our heads.  We’re just hear to touch each other’s heart, just as my musical friends did, just as my ER doctor friend has done, just as the acrobatic pilots did.  When we can do our best in meeting the next arising moment, giving our full devotion to our activity, others can ‘feel’ it.  Big hope says this is what we’re here for.  It’s what we do for each other, feeding big hope and faith to those who may experience overwhelm…to those who’ve lost the feeling of being caught.

In the free fall, we need the courage to receive grace, to make space to find the gift in what’s given, and to break through the illusion that we’re alone.  Every act of kindness grows this feeling.  Every act of silence in the the face of attack grows this feeling.  Every act of love given to those in overwhelm free fall heals us all.  Today’s campaign screams ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’.  No doubt, difficult economic times challenge us now as they have in the past and will in the future.  Yet, we know that no amount of material accumulation will bring us lasting peace.  Actually, most spiritual traditions describe how our growth comes from meeting suffering and loss with faith, a knowing that we’re supported by the whole universe.

For me, I’m waiting for the messenger who addresses this ‘free fall’, not trying to sell confidence in them, but in something much bigger than them.  It goes well beyond the strategy and mechanics of the campaign talking heads.  We all want confidence and it can only come from the spiritual journey.  Change happens constantly.  Everything wears out.  Suffering comes from our attachments to what was or what we have.  Our freedom, growth and evolution will come from our kindness to one another.  Our careful stewardship of the planet, nation, state, community and family will forever come from the mandate to do what’s best for all with harm to none.  Our courage to meet each other in our differences, with open compassionate minds/hearts, surrendering to what divine Providence has to offer up, is where we’ll find our healing.

This isn’t about the ‘right’ nation, the ‘right’ race, the ‘right sex, the ‘right’ religion, the ‘right’ political party or the ‘right’ economic strategy.  It’s bigger than that.  We all know we’re in free fall.  Our vitality is fed through our open mind and heart and our willingness to embrace uncertainty through complete reliance upon divine Providence.  Our forefathers got it, including it as the glue to our Declaration of Independence.  We print it on our money, “In God We Trust” (if the word God is a semantic trigger, use the word that best points to the ‘feeling’ of being caught).   If you’ve been awake enough to notice all the times grace has touched you, it’s a dis-on-grace each time we fail to communicate how we’ve been caught.  We’re all caught.  We can’t not be caught.  To rely on others is to be uneasy.  To rely on divine Providence, on everyone being caught, is to open to surprise and our blooming.  Our closed minds evidence lack of faith.  Our open minds, willing to refrain from judgment on others, feeding kindness, is where we’ll find our healing.

This morning I read a post from my son about our grandson’s evening insight.  He said, “Nobody knows anything except God and Santa”.  This openness to bigger mysteries is so evident in the five year old mind.  It’s a release from our arrogance of ‘thinking’ we know.  It’s a deepening in our spiritual journey to forever discover the surprise that God, Santa, Universe, or whatever language you use to point to this feeling, has in store for this next arising moment.  When we crack open our closed minds we can let in the light and wisdom provided from that that’s much bigger than our small mind thoughts and belief systems.

Life is so much more complicated than our small minds could ever understand.  It’s why we’re continually directed by all spiritual traditions to humble ourselves in the vast mystery.  Once we find our stillness we can only rest in gratitude for the gift of the given.  Once we kneel to the Divine we can see our journey is to surrender in confident humility to divine Providence.  Today’s gift is a rapid acceleration of interdependence.  Globalization is happening at a rate that overwhelms the reasoning mind.  Yet, we have political and financial interests doing whatever can be done to try to control this.  Whether it’s racial, religious, sexual, economic or age diversity, it’s happening at a rate never before seen.  All the while, as the train of change speeds up, we seem more and more lost in the quagmire of technological thirst.  It now seems normal to claim spectator sports as ‘our religion’.  There seems to be no outrage with political influence given to the highest bidder/contributer.  A social politics of oppression, the very thing our forefathers came here to get away from, seems to be accepted.  It seems that policies to oppress voter rights, to oppress marriage to limited social standards, and to dictate personal body choices in matters of life and death, are gaining momentum.  These attempts to limit our freedoms have been made before, and ultimately, divine Providence has us as a nation, ending in justice.  Eventually, women and blacks were allowed to vote.  Eventually, kindness and understanding made it legal for mixed race marriages.  Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that women have rights over their bodies.  Eventually, we were brought to our knees, humbly asking how we can best support one another without causing harm.

Our fear, greed and ignorance to this rapid change/interdependence has us in a dangerous position.  Caught in our ego’s notion of ‘being right’, we tend to close our minds to change.  We refuse to sit in a collaborative circle to see what divine Providence would offer up.  Yet, it’s this open, humble attitude that opens us to solutions that are bigger than our small minds and special interests.  It’s the small mind that’s insensitive to others’ spiritual journey.  It’s the small mind that tries to ‘push’ it’s notion of ‘rightness’ on others.  And it’s certainly the small mind that would inflame religious followers with derogatory attacks on a particular religion.  Today we have a presidential candidate who criticizes those who would apologize for the harm caused from an inflammatory movie created in our country.  This is arrogance.  This is harmful pride that refuses to open to the challenges of globalization.

Today’s leaders, more than business sense, must have a deep respect and understanding of the world’s various religious traditions.  They must be eloquent in finding common ground and common sense solutions to an increasingly challenging world.  The notion that we can somehow separate religious views and values from the debate is naive.  Today’s world commands an open mind, flexibility to fast moving conditions, a solid grounding in basic spiritual truths, and a capacity to communicate with impeccability, reducing the risk of conflict.

The inflammatory rhetoric of Romney and the conservative right wing has us going down a path of escalating conflict.  While not the perfect surgeon of diplomatic language and action, Obama is light years ahead of Romney.

I want a candidate who understands the spiritual principles of gratitude, humility, moderation, kindness, empathy, and grace.  I want one who can document training in listening skills rather than business practices that disregard harm.  I want a candidate well versed in international experience.  How many countries have been visited, in what capacity, how long, and what languages have been learned?  What’s the candidate’s real understanding of the American experience?  Have them describe their experiences of ‘not having’, of ‘faith’, and what ‘divine Providence’ means to them.  Ask them about their views on capital punishment and how that washes with their spiritual tradition.  And most importantly, let’s see them in situations where they actually can demonstrate their capacity to listen and accurately restate what they heard.

Our future will be determined by how carefully we traverse the present.  This can only be accomplished through deep, mindful listening and collaboration.  The degree to which we push our agenda on the world without regard to harm will only accelerate the  train of conflict.  It’s time for wisdom, gratitude, and humility for grace given within this moment of opportunity.  May we have the strength to always ask forgiveness for unintended harm done, whether through drone missiles or insensitive media.  Our universal spiritual command is to love one another, to reach out to our neighbors, to wish good will and blessing on all peoples and things, and to surrender in deepest gratitude to the gift of divine Providence.  Just a little less pride and a lot more humility, please.

Opening Doors of the Mind, Entering the Heart

We have a choice.  We can fill ourselves with pride, feeding our ego with notions of being ‘right’ and of ‘knowing’.  We can humbly surrender to the vast mystery of the Divine, allowing the perfection and surprise of each moment’s gift.  We’re all creative artists of life, either nurturing this unfolding with deepening awareness to the pure heart or moving in fear, greed and ignorance from the pure heart.  The first requires an open mind that’s pliable under the influence of the Holy Spirit (Divine, Source, etc.).  The second is filled with notions of cleverness, intelligence or subtlety of mind, and other ego feeding notions of pride in separation from the Divine.  Rev. Jean-Pierre de Caussade says we must practice “a passive acceptance and yielding, like metal to the mould, canvas to the brush or stone to the chisel” p. 74 the sacrament of the present moment. He stresses that God is in and of all things and our work is to surrender to the gentle care of all, humbly listening to the heart for direction.

Yesterday I heard a Lutheran minister eloquently speak to this broader sense of belonging.  He suggested that whenever we separate we are sinning.  I like the origin of “sin”, which suggests it’s when we’re “missing the mark”.  Spiritually, can we say we’re missing the mark whenever we separate from others?  When we fill our minds in judgment and small belonging, whether through racial, economic, religious or ethnic discriminations, aren’t we missing the mark?  When we complain about the gift of ‘this’ moment, aren’t we missing the mark?  The heart doesn’t seem to know this separation.  Yet, the mind draws us to notions of pride, cleverness, greed, fear, and our ignorance to this interdependence we have to all beings and things.  Spiritual wisdom would say the Holy Spirit lives in all things, beyond any possibility of division.  It would say everything matters, so we must be very careful in our response to each moment.  When we are, we cause less harm, leaving a wake in life that’s more in harmony and rhythm to Divine action.

Today’s politics are filled with extreme, polarizing division.  A few extremely wealthy individuals and corporations spend billions of dollars attempting to influence an outcome that will place more benefit to them without regard to harm for others.  The Divine has challenged us with extremely difficult issues, asking us to explore with flexible minds, surrendered to Divine Providence, responses that come from a pure heart rather than a fearful, clever mind.  Whether dealing with complexities of how we handle birth/death policies, immigration, social safety nets, health care, or education, we’re being asked to let go our self interest in pursuit of a bigger solution.  When facing big problems, we have to get bigger than the problems.  We’re directed to sit with open minds, rooted in faith to the gift of Divine Providence, confident and humbled in knowing a better answer awaits when we still our dissonant minds from anger, fear, greed, and small belonging.

Each time I hear a politician trying to buy my confidence for a plan that’s trying to be sold or claiming credit for a policy that seemed to cause success, I lose confidence.  My life has been filled with every kind of con man you could conceive of.  And yes, they are me and I’m them.  My work is to not judge their journey, but only deepen my awareness to the tremendous carnage that’s left in the wake of selfish actions.  It’s Divine Providence that they came into my life so I could now write this.  It’s not chasing after our wants in desire but embracing the gift of each moment, in suffering and in celebration, in pain and in joy.  It’s about Big Hope, fully settled in the pure heart, mind stilled, filled with joy from the very grace of this arising breath.  This is harmony.  This is rhythm.  This is the music of the creative artist found in the hearts of all beings and all things.  This is why we must practice with an open mind, in faith, peace in every step, fully aware of the wake of our thoughts, emotions and actions.  This is ‘hitting the mark’, something we can all aim for.

“As long as a man ‘wakes up’ and lives as the Universal Self, he always works in the direction where the Universal is alive.  Everything we confront is our life.  Because of this, the aim is to make all things, the world, people, affairs, etc., live as the Universal life with the attitude that the Self is taking care of the life of the Self.  I live within your life and the Universal lives within my own life.  This is because you and I and the Universal are living out the life which pervades everything.”

“…the flower of my life blossoms when I work to make the flower of all the world, people and things which I now face blossom, and when the flower of my life blossoms, the flower of Universal life blossoms.  Likewise, the flower of your life blossoms when you work to make the flower of all the world, people, and things which you now face blossom, and this is when the flower of Universal life blossoms.

On the other hand, there is the attitude which stifles Universal life.  People see themselves as simply one individual in a world which is only a place to compete for existence.  They think that the law of survival of the fittest is the truth, compare and rate themselves against one another, and in their competition try to kick each other down the ladder.  There are winners and losers, but the winners degenerate in their own extravagance and the losers go from frustration to neurosis.  They end up without even being able to make their own flower blossom.  The flower of Universal life can never bloom here.”  from Approach to Zen by Uchiyama Roshi

As a Zen Christian, I tend to resonate more with the use of the words God or Divine.  If this is the case for you, can you read Uchiyama’s words with this insertion and see what it does for you?  When we ‘wake up’ to the Divine within All, we necessarily ‘work in the direction’ where the Divine is alive.  The Divine lives in all and pervades everything.  Consequently, we’re blessed to be here, now, doing what we can to water the seeds of joy for ‘all things, the world, people, affairs, etc.”.  Just as the Declaration of Independence grounds our country on “reliance to Divine Providence”, Uchiyama captures this ‘big hope’ experience of faith in directing us to ‘live as the Universal life with the attitude that the Self (Divine, God) is taking care of the life of the Self (Divine, God).  This surrender into the mystery that is so far beyond our words and reason is what real faith is about.  It’s a reliance upon the glory of this moment’s gift, no matter what.

Jean-Pierre De Caussade, a Jesuit who wrote in the early 1700’s, wrote in ‘the sacrament of the present moment’ the following:

“God is Everywhere.  A preoccupation with God tells us unconsciously that all will be well provided we leave him (Self) to do what he (Divine) will, and live by faith alone.

Everything proclaims him (Divine) to you.  He (Source) is by your side, over you, around and in you.  Here is his dwelling and yet you still seek him.  Ah!  You are searching for God, the idea of God in his essential being.  You seek perfection and it lies in everything that happens to you—your suffering, your actions, your impulses are the mysteries under which God reveals himself to you.  But he will never disclose himself in the shape of that exalted image to which you so vainly cling.”  p. 18

He speaks beautifully to moving past the limitations of our images and language, impositions which have cost us millions of lives, fighting our various religious wars.  Brother David Steindl Rast has spoken about ‘making space to find the gift in the given’ and de Caussade captures this in his continuation of the above thread:

“O Divine Love, conceal yourself, leap over our suffering, make us obedient!  Mystify us, arouse and confuse us.  Shatter all our illusions and plans so that we lose our way, and see neither path nor light until we have found you, where you are to be found and in your true form—in the peace of solitude, in prayer, in submission, in suffering, in help given to another, and in flight from idle talk and worldly affairs….finally the futility of all our efforts leads us at last to leave all to find you henceforth, you, yourself, everywhere and in all things without discrimination or reflection.  For, how foolish it is, O Divine Love, not to see you in all that is good and in all creatures.”   p. 19

When we cultivate the ‘feeling’ of the Divine in all things we’re able to develop the attitude of Self (God, Divine) taking care of the life of Self (God, Divine).  Our panic to act relaxes.  We move into resonance with God, harmonically aligned in faith to ‘just be’.  Another French Christian theologian, Jacques Ellul, has captured this in The Presence of the Kingdom when he writes:

“Our attitude towards the problem of the end and the means leads us to take up a position which is wholly revolutionary; it is actually a radical change in the perspective of human life.  For Christians the first ‘consequence’ of this new position is this:  that what actually matters, in practice is ‘to be’ and not ‘to act’.

Our world is entirely directed towards action.  Everything is interpreted in terms of action, nothing is more beautiful than action, and people are always looking for slogans, programs, ways of action; indeed, our world is so obsessed by activity, that it is in danger of losing its life.  We know that the great slogan of all dictatorships is this—action for action’s sake.

At the same time our world tends to eliminate, almost wholly, the life of the individual.  By the formation of masses, by the artificial creation of myths, by standardizing our living, and so on, there is a general movement towards uniformity, which leads man more and more to forget himself as he is caught up in this general tendency of our mechanical civilization.  A man who spends all his time in action, by that very fact ceases to live.  A man who spends his days rushing about in his car for hours at a time, at a speed of sixty miles an hour, has the sensation of living on speed, of intense activity and of ‘gaining time’, but actually a mental torpor creeps over him–he becomes less and less alive; more and more he is simply an automaton in a machine, he has reflexes and sensations it is true, but no judgement, and no awareness of anything beyond.  In the perfect working of his engine he has lost his soul.  Thus we are all suffering from a weakness which may become a serious disease.”  pp. 90-91

This concept of ‘being’, cultivating awareness to our interdependence with All, seems to fly in the face of many cultural American traits now being pushed.  The push to dismantle health and education safety nets, to promote pride as a positive virtue at the expense of humility and grace, to push competition over collaboration, and to feed the greed of special interest without thorough examination of ‘who gets hurt’, these are symptoms of the ‘serious disease’ Ellul speaks of.

Our suffering deepens when we separate.  We can try to rely on our smaller circles of belonging, lining up with those who think like we think, or look like we look, or have blood lines or location similarities.  Yet, to live this way is to be uneasy because we all know there is disappointment and challenge down this road.  Ultimately, lasting peace is found in deepening faith that All is gift, God is in everything and everywhere, and we can rest in peace knowing the Self is taking care of the Self.  Katagiri Roshi calls this ‘big hope’:

“In this unity, you give energy to your activity as object, and simultaneously you accept lots of information from your object.  That is called total functioning—cause and effect are one simultaneous action of input and output.  You give and receive information simultaneously.  That is communion of heart with heart, going constantly, in and out.  At that time your activity becomes Buddha’s (Divine) activity;  time becomes supreme time, beyond any concept of past, present, or future; place becomes supreme place, beyond any dualistic concept; and person become supreme person, who is melted into the universe (Divine).

That situation is unknowable with our consciousness.  It’s impossible for me to express it in words.  But maybe you can feel that this it true.”  p. 145 from Each Moment is the Universe (insertion of Divine by me)

So as our culture spends more and more money trying to get us to choose sides, to diminish our circles of belonging, and to build confidence in their myths, perhaps it’s critical time to just let go our anxiety about ‘fixing things’, about pushing our particular point of view, about locking into who’s right and who’s wrong.  Maybe some good old spiritual wisdom will get us once again to start asking, “How can I help?”, “How can we cause minimum harm in stewardship to what’s been given?”, “How can we humble ourselves in the glory of God (Divine, Self) with the aim to let the flower of our life blossom when we work to make the flower of all the world, people, and things which we now face blossom, knowing that this is when the flower of Universal (God) life blossoms.  This is Big Mind, this is Open Mind, this is reliance upon Divine Providence.

This is trust, faith and freedom from neurosis.  It’s my sincere hope you’ll make space to touch stillness, to rest in the Divine present moment, in glory to the gift of the given.

Everybody belongs.  You can’t ‘not belong’.  Yet, this is what we do to each other, ‘thinking’ we’re somehow better or worse.  Yet, in the end, when we humble ourselves to see the divine belonging in all, we’re filled.  When we push a sense of superiority on others from our pride, we’re left restless, our sense of belonging ultimately tarnished.  And then we suffer.

Those who usually cause the most harm are those who were somehow damaged in youth by someone telling them they ‘don’t belong’, or they ‘are not good enough’.  They then often perpetuate this cruelty in their later years, pushing for damaging powers over others.

Ultimately, we’re here to wake up to our real belonging.  The illusion of our separateness has cost us dearly as we’ve harmed so many.   Yet, when we wake to a bigger belonging we feel real peace and an abiding which gives us courage to meet the surprise of the next moment.  When we truly recognize how we can’t be separated, we can’t ‘not belong’, our anxiety diminishes.  Our competitive urge to ‘win’ at another’s expense relaxes as we move to simply ‘being’ the best creative expression of ourselves.

This ‘feeling’ of deep belonging is beyond words.  It’s our antidote to the poisons of greed, fear and ignorance.  It’s where we touch the Ground of our Being, what some have called the Holy Spirit.  It’s what others have called Big Hope.

So next time you notice anxiety building, noticing the mind starting to freak you out, find a quiet place and surrender to the loving arms of deep abiding peace found in surrender to a deeper sense of belonging.  Surrender the notion that belonging is in anyway dependent upon the approval of others.  Just cultivate awareness to stillness, breathing in and breathing out, in awareness to a deeper support that goes well beyond our reasoning minds, well beyond our concepts of time and space.  Katagiri Roshi has written:

“To be completely absorbed you have to devote yourself totally, with sincerity, and then you can be absorbed—you can see the unity of your body, your mind, and your object.

In this unity, you give energy to the activity as object, and simultaneously you accept lots of information from your object.  That is called total functioning—cause and effect are one simultaneous action of input and output.

This is communion of heart with heart, going constantly, in and out.  At that time your activity becomes Buddha’s  activity:  time becomes supreme time, beyond any concept of past, present, or future; place becomes supreme place, beyond any dualistic concept; and person becomes supreme person, who is melted in the universe.

That situation is unknowable with our consciousness.  It’s impossible for me to express it in words.  But maybe you can feel that this is true, that Buddha’s activity is something that could appear in your life in the future.  If so, that feeling becomes a kind of prediction, foreknowledge, or hope.  That is called big hope.”   p. 145 from “Each Moment is the Universe”

This is real ‘waking up’.  This is direct contact with the Holy Spirit, in service to the well being of All.  This is the peace found in deeply knowing we can’t be separate, no matter how hard others try to feed that experience.  We’re always supported, beyond notions of birth and death.  With each arising breath, I’m fill with gratitude for this support.  This is the place of wisdom, where we move from self interest to the bigger question of refined action in awareness to ‘help vs. harm’.

Life is a great mystery.  Our spiritual traditions are all grounded in this surrender to that which is far beyond our understanding.  They all speak to the renewed spirit, to opening in humility to the unknown, in gratitude for our opportunity to participate in this great experience called life.  Our pain and suffering increase to the degree in which we ‘think’ we have the ‘right’ answer.  I recall seeing a billboard advertising a local radio station where the arrow on the dial was pointed to “Always right”.  In nature, we’re continually brought to awareness of the difficulties brought on through rigidity and frozen forms.  It’s why we build some flexibility into our skyscrapers.  It’s why aging people who stay active generally suffer less than those who seize up from inactivity.  Really, flexibility and openness is what our country was founded on and it’s why I love America.  The glue of our Declaration of Independence is found in the last line, advising us to forever surrender and rely in openness to “divine Providence”.  Flexibility of the body/mind is a key component to stewarding health of body, mind, and our country.

The open mind humbly submits to something greater than one’s small ego.  Our greed and desire to ‘be right’ is set down in curiosity to see what comes up when we honor, respect and listen to one another.  This is contrary to our current political focus on debate and persuasion.  Today, political gridlock is costing us our spiritual heritage, not to mention billions of dollars of waste due to the influence of big money’s role in preventing an open dialogue.  Our two party system has become much like a football game when we fight one another, failing to realize we’re all in the same boat.  Rather than mindful stewardship to what’s best for all, our energies are consumed in argument, brinksmanship, and the never ending pursuit of our small mind’s cleverness.

I recently heard a radio broadcast of a workshop attended by major experts in today’s national political arena.  Some were criticizing the Republican party for their closed minds.  Others were criticizing Pres. Obama for not working harder to cultivate more of an open mind in those who are against him.  In the mean time, as a nation, it seems impossible for us to have serious dialogue about the real issues facing the future of our country and planet.  My personal experience and forty years of experience in studying interpersonal communications currently holds the notion that it ‘takes two to tango’.  There’s not much you can do when one party refuses to openly communicate, to listen openly in ‘reliance to divine Providence’.  Blockage from a closed mind can only end in carnage.  Yet, a humble respect for that which is bigger than us, a willingness to drop our agendas in a sincere desire to hear one another, opens us to discover common sense.  This courage invites something in that’s bigger than us, something beyond our personal, self interest agendas.  Rather than focus on ‘what’s in it for me’ the discussion turns to ‘how can we help’ and ‘who gets hurt’.  In ancient Hawaii, the basic law was ‘Best for all with harm to none’.

So what can we do now?  We can call out the ‘closed minds’ for the tremendous damage caused from their rigidity.  We can turn up the pressure for Obama to repeatedly invite those closed minds to dialog.  The agreement to this dialogue would be to 1. Listen and speak from the heart, 2. Hold a curious open mind, 3. Hold all attempts to persuade, 4. Hold comments to a rule of brevity rather than going on and on, 5. Agree to surrender to the mystery of ‘divine Providence’, in full reliance to seeing a better solution come up from this open minded process.

Those who refuse to submit to the basic law of this land, surrendering to the mystery of that which is bigger than us, could be called out.  Big money aimed at personal interest rather stewardship would be called out.  As a nation, we could once again return to the open mind, from our damaging pride to mindful humility and gratitude for our freedom to be in this great land on this precious planet.  The real dialogue of ‘how does this harm’ vs. ‘how does this help’ could once again be pursued.

So President Obama, keep inviting them to your table.  Commit your open mind to them and present the agreements necessary for honest, open dialogue.  Do this everyday, even to your strongest opponents.  We’re all so tired of the infantile bantering that comes from the closed mind.  It’s time to push for something better.  This nation is far better than what we’ve come to in the political arena.  And when/if they refuse to sit at the table, as a people we should turn them out as traitors to the commands of the Declaration of Independence.  There’s nothing more dangerous than a closed mind, nothing more troublesome than the phrase, “I know that”, nothing more courageous than the open mind in search of ‘common sense’ in reliance to divine Providence.  I have a friend who wrote a book based on the notion of God running for President.  The operative phrase was always, “What would love (God) do?”  Until we’re willing to sit with one another in respect and openness to our divinity, we’ll simply not be able to hear the bigger answer.

The spiritual experience is repeatedly referenced as ‘beyond words’.  Katagiri Roshi has written in Time is the Universe:

“To be completely absorbed you have to devote yourself totally, with sincerity, and then you can be absorbed—you can see the unity of your body, your mind, and your object.

In this unity, you give energy to the activity as object, and simultaneously you accept lots of information from your object.  That is called total functioning—cause and effect are one simultaneous action of input and output.

This is communion of heart with heart, going constantly, in and out.  At that time your activity becomes Buddha’s activity:  time becomes supreme time, beyond any concept of past, present, or future; place becomes supreme place, beyond any dualistic concept; and person becomes supreme person, who is melted in the universe.

That situation is unknowable with our consciousness.  It’s impossible for me to express it in words.  But maybe you can feel that this is true, that Buddha’s activity is something that could appear in your life in the future.  If so, that feeling becomes a kind of prediction, foreknowledge, or hope.  That is called big hope.”   p. 145

This ‘feeling’ of Big Hope is where we find our spiritual security.  And when we try to describe it we fail since language is a system of arbitrary symbols that can only point to this experience.  The linguistic field of General Semantics explores this extensively, showing us how meaning is ‘in the person’ and not ‘in the word’.  And yet, today we still fight with closed minds, holding on to the fixed notion that meaning is black and white.  We argue with one another about who knows best, who’s right and who’s wrong.  We sew the seeds of fear, greed and ignorance as we demand others to take our meaning as theirs.  Yet, in reality, no one can have the same experience.  We can only meet openly in our attempts to understand one another.  This is most rich when done in the exploration of spiritual tradition common ground.  What Dainin Katagiri called Big Hope may be what Jacques Ellul calls the Holy Spirit in The Presence of the Kingdom:

“ For the Christian intellectual this problem of language is the key-problem to contact with other men.  Other people, too, have felt this need.  Other people have sought for this language, but they have only ended up in a more hopeless solitude, like that of the Surrealists.

It is normal that men should be separate and strangers, but the Holy Spirit creates communication between them, and enables them to break through this separation.  The Holy Spirit alone can do this, the Holy Spirit alone can establish this line with one’s neighbor.  The Holy Spirit alone can open our eyes and ears, not only to revealed truth, but to the humble love of men.  But man must work patiently at that which the Holy Spirit uses.  If man flees into the desert, if he hides himself away, alone, in a hermit life, there will be no neighbors, and then what can the Holy Spirit do?  If man in our civilization, does not recreate a possible language, there is no support for the action of the Holy Spirit, there are no human means which God always demands from men when He wishes to manifest his power.  The Holy Spirit alone can give meaning, truth, and effectiveness to this language, but men must have sought for it.

It is urgent that Christian intellectuals should rediscover the meaning of their vocation along this line.  Everything has to be done, but it the only way of rediscovering a method of comprehension beyond all classes, formulas, and political divisions.  It is the only way of breaking through the sociological trends which separate us, and rediscovering genuine personal relationships in love.  It is today the only way in which we can live in love without the fatal sentimentalism with which liberalism, both intellectual and theological, had infected the idea of ‘neighbor’.  If we do not invent this language all our preaching of love cannot be understood by men.”  pp. 127-8.

There’s something very similar in these statements, something that provides a deep grounding, faith and trust in something bigger than us.  There’s reference to the hard work required to continue smashing the natural human tendency to separate.  There’s recognition of the limits of language, of the wonder and awe, and the need to surrender to the surprise of the divine.  In the early 1700’s, Jean-Pierre de Caussade, described this surrender as ‘pure faith’:

“…it is the mystery of mysteries, where all is hidden, so obscure, so incomprehensible that the more spiritual and enlightened one is , the more faith is required to believe…..Its (pure faith) effect is to enable one to find God at each moment;  it is this that makes it so exalted, so mystical, so blessed.  It is an inexhaustible fund of thought, of discourse, of writing, it is a whole collection, and source of wonders.  To produce so prodigious an effect but one thing is necessary; to let God act, and to do all that He wills according to one’s state.  Nothing in the spiritual life could be easier, nor more within the power of everyone; and yet nothing could be more wonderful, nor any path more obscure.  To walk in it the soul has need of great faith, all the more so as reason is always suspicious, and has always some argument against it.  All its ideas are confused.  There is nothing in it that reason has ever known or read about, or been accustomed to admire; it is something quite new.”  p. 61, Abandonment to Divine Providence.

They seem to be advising us to move beyond language, thought and reason, to discover “something quite new”.  They recognize our deep connection with all things and the illusion of our separateness.  They all pull us to discover the divine unfolding in each present moment, before we remove ourselves in language and thought attempting to capture it.  They proclaim an ‘awareness’ practice that helps us better see what helps and what harms.  They recognize the power of faith in holding us peacefully with a stable, steady mind through turbulent conditions:

“…if only we have the courage to let the thunder, lightning and storm rage, and to walk unfaltering in the path of love and obedience to the duty and demands of the present moment, we are emulating Jesus himself.”  p. 53, The Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre de Caussade.

Dainin Katagiri speaks to the precious nature of the present moment and the spiritual security found in cultivating awareness to Big Hope when he writes:

“How do you live in this complicated reality?  How do you face the moment when the earthquake suddenly happens?   How do you handle yourself in a moment that is beyond your control?  When a moment appears, there is only one thing that controls you:  the capability that comes from your spiritual practice, your ability to face impermanence and deal calmly with the conditions of every moment.  So, before the earthquake happens, before your mind starts to work and you want to run away, accept every moment as an opportunity presented to you to practice facing reality as it really is.  When a moment arises, you don’t know the reason why it exists, but you have to accept it and face it, whatever happens.

Life is an emergency case!  Where is the emergency?  Is it a particular situation, one day of you life?  No, every moment of every day is an emergency.  You have to do your best to face every moment, because this moment will never come again.  The moment that you are living right now is a very important opportunity to make your life vividly alive.  If you want to live with spiritual security in the midst of constant change, you have to burn the flame of your life force in everything you do.”  pp. 23-4, Time is the Universe.

When we face the divinity of the arising moment ‘before your mind starts to work’, before reason pulls us from alignment, we’re moving from the heart, from the spirit of divine Providence, from what some have called ‘conditioned origination’.   This demands such complete openness of mind, such curiosity, such faith, such Big Hope.

So in deepening our relations with our neighbor, it will help to surrender our notions of being ‘right’ as fed from our inadequate linguistic system.  It will serve us better to face him/her as ‘us’, to meet in a sense of communion rather than polarization, and ultimately do what we can to help each other hear beyond the words, touching Big Hope…touching the Holy Spirit….touching the indescribable wonder and awe of this very gift of the next arising moment…the gift of Being.

Gov. Dayton on Divine Providence and the Open Mind

If you really want a party, you have to have an open mind.  Today’s politics are driven from closed minds.  We’re caught in the trap of ‘thinking we’re right and others are wrong’.  It’s an age old problem and one which flies in the face of our forefathers who’ve pledged their trust in ‘divine providence’  (“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”, from the last line of the Declaration of Independence).

With this statement, they provided the glue for their intentions in manifesting this nation and it’s ‘true north’.  This being noted, it seems we’d all be served best to dialogue on what our pledge is.  To what do we put our faith and trust?  Someone had the integrity to temper our greed and attachment to the security of money with the phrase “In God we trust”.  As we’ve evolved, it seems many have had a semantic trigger reaction to the word ‘God’.  As we’ve evolved in our understanding of thought and language we’ve come to see that words are arbitrary symbols, a map of the territory.  An examination of any spiritual tradition will show that the essence of our connection to the divine is beyond words and thought.  This experience is touched in the gap between concepts, words, and thoughts.  Yet, we fight wars, argue with one another, and get carried away with our notions of the ‘right answer’ all at the expense of our humanitarian evolution.

Life is filled with con men trying to get us to put our trust in them.  Sometimes we feel we’ve been treated well and other times we suffer an unpleasant consequence.  When the con man works to feed the poisons of greed, fear and ignorance, our security is diminished.  Yet, when we embrace uncertainty to that which is bigger than us, surrendered in divine providence, we cultivate real security with an open mind.  We touch the ultimate in wonder and awe for the mystery of each moment.

Today’s politicians struggle to gain our confidence with their solutions.  They lock into their rigid notions of a solution, feeding the toxic nature of our polarized nation.  Big money spends billions to buy our confidence through media and other persuasive efforts.  It seems no one is capable of a conversation anymore since that would command an open mind, a bigger mind that surrenders to the wish of our fore fathers.  When we feel support by God (Universe, Source, Ultimate, Buddha, Allah, Ground of Being, or whatever word that best captures this for you), we find our real confidence to meet the next arising moment in joy, peace, and gratitude for the opportunity to just be.

So I propose we do as the Declaration of Independence commands in the first paragraph.  The take over of big money and paid influence have now made it “necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them”.  They clearly understood that the Laws of Nature command an open mind dedicated to the stewardship of this land, always asking for the assistance of divine providence in our actions.  It now seems the time has come to question the toxicity of a party system that’s become frozen in the abyss of the closed mind.  It’s time to honor the wisdom of our forefathers as we surrender in divine providence to that which is bigger than us.  It’s time to sit with open minds, filled with hope and confidence that the Divine will provide an answer far superior to what an ego filled leader can concoct and sell.  Deepok Chopra, in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, addresses this when he speaks to the illusory nature of our search for security:

“…the search for security and certainty is actually an attachment to the known.  And what’s the known?  The known is our past.   The known is nothing other than the prison of past conditioning.  There’s no evolution in that—absolutely none at all.  And when there is no evolution, there is stagnation, entropy, disorder, and decay.

Uncertainty, on the other hand, is the fertile ground of pure creativity and freedom.  Uncertainty means stepping into the unknown in every moment of our existence.  The unknown is the field of all possibilities, ever fresh, always open to the creation of new manifestations.  Without uncertainty and the unknown, life is just the stale repetition of outworn memories.  You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is the self left over from yesterday”. p 86

The Dali Lama says we’re here to cultivate joy.  Our great spiritual teachers say we’re here to be kind to one another, to do what we can to reduce suffering.  Surrendering to uncertainty in confidence to the Divine, we open to the magic, mystery, celebration, wonder, awe, and exuberance of each unfolding moment.  The open mind makes space to find the gift in the given and the courage to explore new opportunities and possibility.

At this stage, the closed minds of all political parties make the concept of ‘party’ an oxymoron since it takes an open mind to party.  I’ll vote for the first party with the courage to sit down in circle, to communicate from a sincere desire to understand, to let go attachments to fixed notions of security surrendered in faith to divine providence.  I’ll vote for a party that values dialog over persuasion, that values the inquisitive mind over the ‘right’ mind locked into a static answer.  I’ll vote for those who put faith in divine providence over big money and personal greed.  I’ll vote for those who can truly demonstrate their skills in active listening over those who can debate and fight one another.

An open minded party knows it’s supported by divine Providence.  It’s less likely to force solutions on problems, allowing us to find common sense actions as we open in alertness to new opportunities aimed to serve all with harm to none.  This party would move away from self interest to Self (divine) interest.  The first operative question would not be, “What’s in it for me?”, but would move to a thorough examination of, “Who gets hurt and how does this apply to the Laws of Nature and the responsibility we have to embrace a bigger belonging in kindness to one another?”

As you can tell, this July I’ve been taken with Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, and the notion of divine Providence.  An examination of this has substantiated my original feeling that it’s about the open mind, about humility and not pride. It’s about security through trust in the divine rather than trust in money and the material, about the courage to be rather than dying to the poisons of greed, fear and ignorance.

I think few would contest that the world feels smaller.  Borders are breaking down no matter how hard people try to erect fences.  Humanity is being worked by divine Providence with the one basic command, “Love one another in the knowledge that we’re all connected in the mystery of life.”

The open mind knows that time is change and is contained in our awareness and care to the present moment.  Our courage to face this moment in humility, to acknowledge the grace with which it’s been given, and the wisdom to embrace uncertainty in faith and trust to the divine is what the Declaration of Independence is for me.

They didn’t say Christian Providence, Buddha Providence, Islamic Providence, or Abraham Providence.  They recognized the arbitrary nature of words and our need to think bigger, to recognize that words are arbitrary symbols, simply maps to a very mysterious universe to which we get to participate.  I love America for this, much as I’m dismayed over the base, crude level our politics and religions have come to today.

So in the interest of those who follow, I suggest a revolution, a spiritual revolution where we get bigger than our small self interest, where we once again return to the courage to surrender with open minds to the power of divine Providence, to communicate with one another in heartfelt desire to see what comes up.

Those stuck in the mud of the closed mind will find many excuses to stay there.  Yet, when we open to the abundance of what the universe has to pour upon us some amazing opportunities will come.  This is what I have trust in.  Deepok Chopra captures divine Providence for me with the following:

In detachment (openness) lies the wisdom of uncertainty…

in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom

from our past, from the known,

which is the prison of past conditioning.

And in our willingness to step into the

unknown, the field of possibilities,

we surrender ourselves to the creative mind

that orchestrates the dance of the universe.

p. 81 from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

Life/death is difficult.  It’s complicated.  It’s messy.  And when we try to make decisions from our head rather than our heart, we run into increasing difficulty.  When we become rigid in our thinking we can make things worse.  The closed mind can be a dangerous thing.  On the other hand, there’s nothing more beautiful than a mind wide open to the wonder and mystery.  A mind, open from the heart, flows like water to meet the next change, the gift of the divinity of the next arising moment.  Within the complexity of life, perhaps our most important action is to listen deeply to the heart’s call.  This is where faith abides.  It’s where we find our center, outside the insecurity of trying to convince others that we’re right and they’re wrong.

There’s simply no way I can know what a young woman is going through who finds new life in her body that’s not wanted.  There’s no way I’ll understand the conviction of someone who’d wish harm upon this woman because they refuse to meet her suffering.  I’ve always thought the Pro Life movement has lost credibility by refusing to stand against capital punishment and collateral damages from war.  I do know that faith calls us to compassion, to meet another’s suffering with an open heart.  It calls us to surrender these matters to Divine Love, knowing it all works out, far beyond our small ego mind’s temptation to think we somehow ‘know what’s best’.  In these matters, I have no choice but to rest in faith, embracing the uncertainty of it all.

The longer I live, the more I ‘think’ I know, the more I’m humbled to the mystery of this gift of life.  It seems my greatest test of faith is to surrender through deep listening to divine Providence.  Faith says to surrender, knowing it all works out, moment by moment.  It’s this Ground of Being that gives us the vitality, strength and courage to participate.  Even when the problems like abortion, war, capital punishment, euthanasia, etc. present themselves, we can fill with joy for the opportunity of participation.  And when it’s obvious there are no black and white answers, faith gives the flexibility to openly meet new moments with curiosity and a desire to ease suffering.  From here we must continue to ask the questions, beyond the illusions of ‘an answer’.

When I present a strong attitude of ‘knowing’ I seem to increase suffering.  When I allow faith to work, the open heart and curious mind listen more carefully.  At this moment, we touch what’s common…common sense.

This deep faith that comes from an open heart is beautifully described by a seventeenth century Jesuit named Jean-Pierre de Caussade:

“….God is only asking for your hearts.  If you truly seek this treasure, this kingdom where God alone reigns, you will find it.  Your heart, if it is totally surrendered to God, is itself that treasure, that very kingdom you long for and are seeking.  When we long for God and his will we rejoice in it and that rejoicing is the fulfillment of our longing.  To love God is to long earnestly to do so.  Loving, we wish to be the instrument of his action so that his love can operate in and through us.  Divine action responds to the willingness and good intentions of the pure and simple, not to their intelligence, nor to any precautions they may take, plans they may make their own initiative.  All these can lead them astray—they often do.  But their honesty and good intentions never betray them.”   p. 30, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

I find it extremely gratifying that our fore fathers understood this, directing us to surrender to divine Providence in matters of such complexity.  I admit, I don’t have the answers.  Yet, I have to confess that for me, pro choice is pro life.  It’s asking for a deeper examination of our suffering and our willingness to meet one another’s suffering.  Our fore fathers understood how money corrupts, printing “In God we trust”, once again directing us to move beyond our notions of cleverness and knowing.  Rather than spending billions of dollars trying to persuade one another to what we “think” is right, how about going back to the glue this country was founded on….faith and the open heart?  It’s in this magical space of mystery, faith and wonder where we’ll come to the ‘feeling’ that pro choice is pro life, divine action deepening our understanding of one another.