Is the Devil loose among us?

I have to remind myself frequently that all souls deserve love. Jesus and Buddha both taught this. A certain segment of American politics today seems to be completely ruled by egotism, greed, and hate, to the point that it seems to evidence some sort of demonic possession. To blame any kind of devil is to externalize evil and deny that the cause of hateful and destructive behavior lies within all of us. The cure is also within, and it is the pure essence of Love that is the life-giving manifestation of the universal Spirit. What has been cast as a struggle between good and evil is really between Spirit and ego, between Love and not-Love. A leader who expresses pure ego is dangerous because his example encourages the expression of unloving egoic traits in others. You could say he makes hatred acceptable. The temptation to resist hate with hate is strong, but that in itself is an ego response. Putting the blame for our negative impulses on any outside influence only keeps us from acknowledging our own responsibility to turn our backs on those impulses. The best we can do is to resist ego by accepting Love as the source of our attitudes and our behavior. Surrender is an essential spiritual practice, but we must be mindful at all times to surrender to Love and not to ego.

This blog contains a great deal of guidance on this subject.  For convenience, some posts are listed (and linked) below.

Love Is Still the Answer -- "Each of us is responsible to look into our own soul and ask whether we are contributing to the problem or to the solution through the energies we resonate to and broadcast."

Spirit and Politics -- "Even if government becomes cold and selfish, we must remain loving and compassionate, even redoubling our efforts."

Ending Xenophobia -- "It has become increasingly clear over the last several decades that humanity will not survive much longer as a species unless all of our disparate members are able to live peaceably together."

Compassion for the Uncompassionate --  "You are mistaken if you think compassion is a gift that you bestow upon others. Compassion is your obeisance to God, the recognition of the universal spirit that unites you with the other. If you lack compassion for any child of God you are choosing to separate yourself from God to that extent."

Are There Demons? -- "Belief in the Devil is seductive, because it allows us to blame our negative feelings and our misfortunes on an outside influence."

Karma the Teacher

We sometimes speak of karma as an instrument of Divine retribution - as a sword with which God is standing ready to strike down those who transgress Its laws. For many of us this is because we grew up in the framework of traditional Christianity with its vengeful and tyrannical Jehovah. We may have distanced ourselves from the surface trappings of our childhood religion, but the fundamental attitudes are deeply ingrained and harder to escape.

If karma were intended for punishment, it would be an incredibly inaccurate tool. "Good" things happen to "bad" people, and vice versa. This observation led me to conclude in an earlier post that things happen in the physical Universe at random. It's also possible that our opinions of "good" and "bad" are off the mark. But it's clear that there's no strong correlation between behavior and worldly rewards, whether behavior is measured against the traditional standards of our youth, or the "New Age" principles we have learned from teachings handed down thousands of years earlier.

What if karma is not a scourge for the disobedient, but the firm hand of Spirit guiding each of us to the experiences we need to have in order to learn the lessons plotted out for us in this turn of our existence? Material success and worldly comfort are not always the best teachers. We did not come here for them. We came to learn that Love is all there is, and to apply that learning in every life situation. We came to learn that all other principles we might choose to guide our choices are either subsumed in Love, or false and hollow. We need to reinforce that knowledge by learning to live every moment and make every decision in a manner dictated by Love. It is relatively easy to live by Love in soft times; much more difficult when times are hard. Each of us must learn at our own pace. But we all must run the gamut of life experiences to complete our education. Most of us will require many lifetimes to do so. Karma the Teacher must test us under a wide variety of circumstances, perhaps with many repetitions, to learn the value of Love and how to identify and produce a loving outcome in each situation.

Since we do not have active memories of our former existence, either in this material Universe or in the space between lifetimes where karmic planning takes place, we cannot judge our lot in life against the measure of lessons we need to learn. Much less are we able to understand the reasons for the circumstances in which others find themselves. It could be that what we perceive as randomness is in fact the mechanical operation of an unguided and impersonal Universe. But is it not more likely that Spirit employs the karmic record to help us find the lessons we set out to learn in this life? I would like to believe so.

Suffering At Our Own Hands

When we feel that we have been mistreated - either by another person or by the mysterious workings of the Universe - we tend to take refuge in self-pity.  The irony of this is that self-pity, and any other device that ego uses to focus attention on itself, is no refuge, but rather a way of perpetuating the pain inflicted upon us, that left alone would quickly dissipate.

How much suffering we inflict upon ourselves! This is well illustrated, albeit in a different context, by the Zen story "Two Monks and a Woman" that is told and discussed at this link. When someone mistreats us, the greatest suffering we experience is not the direct result of the mistreatment, but the result of the way we react to it. The event and the pain inflicted from outside pass in an instant; any pain that is felt thereafter comes from inside. This is the most important teaching I can ever give about suffering, and I urge you to mindfully apply it to your own experience until it becomes an integral part of your consciousness. This is the foundation of another important teaching: that while we cannot control what happens to us, we can control the ways in which those events affect us and are absorbed or reflected.

Emotional pain is the hardest to deal with. Our selfish pride is bruised by the feeling of being disrespected. This kind of pride is just another word for insecurity. Ego does not believe that it is worthy of respect and fears that others will feel the same. So ego broods on every slight as well as every mistake, including the hurts we inflict upon others. I know this, because it has been my pattern. Physical pain is also often translated into emotional pain, when we misguidedly wander down the blind alley of "Why has God done this to me?" (For more on that topic see this blog entry).

Love, in particular self-love, is the way out of this trap. The path to Love begins with forgiveness. The hardest person to forgive is yourself. I have no magic key to this, but I believe that meditation and affirmations can help. One of the first affirmations I created for myself was "I am God's perfect child." There are many others; such as "Each of us is always doing the best we can." I think this last is hard to swallow, particularly when you consider that so much action is impulsive and ego-based; but if you take "best we can" to mean "best we can do given our humanity", it makes sense. In order to forgive ourselves, we must acknowledge our human weaknesses, and learn to distinguish in our self-awareness between our humanity and our innate divinity. Only when we are able to reconcile our limited human selves with our unlimited potential in Spirit can we reach out unselfishly to forgive others, and to help them learn to forgive themselves in turn.

The forgiveness I am talking about comes after long practice and meditation. But once it does come, there should no longer be long periods of suffering between the hurt and the release. Forgiveness should be our immediate and only reaction to any painful stimulus. It must be the face of Love that we present to the rough and tumble of everyday existence.

Eventually, Love leads to Oneness; and the knowledge that individuality is an illusion, and that the essence of each person is an indivisible part of Oneness in Spirit. In Oneness, there is no sin, no wrong, and no need of forgiveness. There is only Love.

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I was recently reminded of this 10-year old post on forgiveness: Judging

Mindfully replace fear with Love

Fear is a dominant force among us today. Partly this is due to the inherent uncertainty of events and our inability to control them. A great deal of ambient fear is also generated by the many media sources that bombard us constantly. Those sources must attract our attention in order to survive. Media do not hesitate to focus on negativity, or to exaggerate and even fabricate their stories of imminent danger. They have learned that fear, and the negative emotions such as hatred that it engenders, are powerful magnets to our egos. Ego thrives on fear and negative emotions; they reinforce its paranoia and support its demand for our exclusive attention. In many ways, the media are the voices of ego. 

We live in an environment of instant communication and constant exposure to the agendas of others.  That environment insists that we respond, and we may develop the habit of reacting immediately to every stimulus. This means that our reactions are not thought out, but are based on  irrational latent fears, prejudice, or the infectious fears of other people.  As a result, we say things we later wish we could take back, and do things we never should have done. We are easily manipulated by fear to lose our grip on truth, on our values, and on spiritual wisdom.

To cope with fear, mindfulness is essential. First, we must be mindful of ego's agenda, which is not to protect us, but to aggrandize itself. In pursuit of that goal, ego will create exaggerated scenarios in an attempt to paralyze us with fear. We must learn to recognize ego's influence in our thoughts, and to dismiss it as much as we are able. What we cannot dismiss, we must learn to contemplate calmly and rationally. Fear is a primitive mechanism designed to trigger a fight or flight response to physical danger. It may serve a useful purpose in calling our attention to social or emotional threats, but once it has done so, fear must be set aside so that we can calmly and mindfully consider, plan, and execute ways to deal with those matters in light of our fundamental values and beliefs.

How can we set fear aside? Ego has a lifetime of experience in monopolizing our attention. By its nature, fear grips us tightly. Mindfulness can help loosen that grip. Ways mindfulness can help include:

• Keeping in mind our core values, and restraining ego's exaggeration of danger;
• Recognizing that nothing outside ourselves can disrupt our secure connection with Spirit, our Source of love, security, joy, and strength;
• Resisting calls to panic and maintaining a calm, thoughtful attitude that will inspire others to do the same;
• Not accepting every unsupported assertion as fact; 
• Recognizing and shutting off knee-jerk reactions;
• Pausing to consider before reacting;
• Seeking first to understand, rather than to be understood.

Meditation is very helpful in developing mindfulness. It helps us to focus and to see clearly. It reminds us we are not ego, and that the thinking mind is merely a tool that can be used for good or can cause great harm. It maintains our inspirational connection to the Source of Love, the sole basis for right action.

Mindfulness is a skill, and requires practice. With enough practice, it becomes a habit. As a habit, it can replace the habit of reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to fearful stimuli arising in the environment, or created by ego. It can be the mechanism by which we teach ourselves to act - or refrain from acting - out of Love, not fear.

Unsubscribe

My email inbox attracts lots of messages that I don't want or need. Most of it is from people or websites that I may have visited once, or from online vendors I have patronized in the past. Periodically, in order to prevent these unsolicited messages from flooding my mailbox and overwhelming the few that I actually want to read, I go through and click on the tiny "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the message. In that way I am able to reduce the distracting clutter and focus on the messages that are really important.

Life these days is a lot like my email inbox. I am constantly bombarded by messages from people I may know slightly, or from people I don't recall ever knowing, wanting my attention for their political cause, their candidate, their product or service, or their particular approach to spirituality and healing. These messages come over the television, on the phone, in newspapers and magazines, and of course over the Internet in emails or popup ads. 

In addition to external messages, I hear ego's many voices calling on me to be concerned about this or that perceived problem, or so-and-so's personal attitude. Ego whispers in my ear that I can't rest until I have solved the problem or dealt with the interpersonal situation in a way that gratifies ego's need for protection and self-aggrandizement. 

Just as I need to periodically cleanse my inbox, I realize now that I can perform a similar cleansing on my personal space. While I can't stop people from broadcasting their appeals, or ego from nagging, I can manage my own attention so as to minimize the effect of these distracting voices. By the following affirmations, I renounce giving any attention to things that would distract me or divert me from the Path of Love and Joy. I invite others to add their own suggestions:

• I renounce the need to judge the thoughts, speech, actions, or beliefs of others, however different they may be from my own. I affirm my own commitment to express Love and Joy in all that I say or do.
• I renounce the need to worry about my health or that of my loved ones. I affirm that the Universe will restore any temporary physical imbalance in its own time and its own way.
• I renounce the need to be concerned about the financial security of my family. I affirm that all our needs will be provided for and that we will have the opportunity to earn a generous living.
• I renounce any belief that the key to happiness lies outside my own heart and mind. I affirm that the source of Joy and Love is within me and is accessible at all times, and in all places.

And so it is.

Namaste.

Love Is Still the Answer

A friend asks, "Why haven't we as a society made more spiritual progress?" There are at least two ways of interpreting current events in light of that question, but to begin with the more obvious one, our progress can't be measured by the things we see in the news - lives and property damaged or destroyed, hateful messages and deeds - but by the extent to which our (individual and societal) response is sourced in love and compassion rather than violence and hatred. By that measure it may well be that we as a society haven't progressed since we baby boomers were young adults, or indeed have regressed, but we must look beyond the news to find out. Each of us is responsible to look into our own soul and ask whether we are contributing to the problem or to the solution through the energies we resonate to and broadcast. If we collectively have not raised the level of our energy, our vibration, beyond the negativity that ego generates, then we cannot expect love and compassion to manifest in our world. The necessary response from people of good will is not to despair, but to redouble the effort to broadcast love and forsake hatred. This is an imperative for individuals, but it must also become a goal of society that is implemented in the ways we relate to ourselves and others and, above all, the ways we teach our children. This is not a goal for a day, a year, or an individual lifetime, but for the future of life on this planet.

There is a sense in the spiritual community that a wave of compassionate connection is sweeping across our society. This is not because spiritual people don't read the papers, but because their awareness reaches the deeper level of the collective soul. If indeed the imperative to "choose love" is taking root and spreading, then it is predictable that the collective ego will react violently to prevent it. This leads to the second interpretation mentioned above, which is that an upturn in the level of violence actually is a positive sign because it shows that the forces of hatred are threatened by the increasing influence of compassionate teachings, and are reacting in ways calculated to generate anger and violence. 

I'm not a big fan of apocalyptic good versus evil theories, nor do I believe that there is a devil or some other intelligence behind the swing toward xenophobia and hatred in some areas of popular culture. The knowledge that each individual has an ego that will fight desperately to protect its grip on individual consciousness is sufficient to explain the mass effects of many egos pulling in the same direction. But I do choose to believe that an increase in violence is at the very least not inconsistent with the spreading influence of love and compassion (as, for example, racial or gender-based violence can be triggered by new expressions of societal commitment to racial or gender equality). 

For this reason, I encourage you not to despair, to stay the course, teach love and compassion, and make the effort to cultivate the lotus that grows from the garbage heap. If we allow ourselves to be guided by our own egoic impulses rather than the teachings of Spirit, we can't expect better from others or from society.

Posts about ego and the higher Self

Overcoming the influence of ego, and learning to live from the higher Self, is at the heart of spiritual living. Here is a collection of earlier posts about ego and the higher Self:

Ego is not the self.

Inner Peace

No Limitations

Spiritual Surrender

The Power of Patience

Love or Attachment

Ego and the News

Are "Ghosts" the Survival of the Ego?

The Source of Unhappiness

Attachments

Are There Demons?

The Mind's Filter

Ego and Spirit

Living Without Ego

The Mind's Self-Importance

How to Treat Enemies