Contemplating Spiritual vs. Religious

In a THOUGHTS column a while back I talked about my “Vision Quest” and pursuing a spiritual path. When have I ever heeded the old warning of discussing religion and politics, especially politics? Politics and religion seem to bring out a primal passion in human beings to the point of war and death. The long, sordid history of mankind bears witness to this. Over the centuries they have been used as an excuse to segregate, discriminate, minimize, torture and eliminate whole groups of fellow human beings on Planet Earth. Of the two, religion would seem to be the least likely weapon against mankind and yet it stands out.

In my 57 years of life, I have been a Presbyterian, a member of the United Church of Christ, an elder in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. I have been an attendee of Unitarian Universalist Churches, Methodist, Baptist and Catholic Church services. Since moving to San Antonio, I have attended Quaker Meetings and Unity Church services. During my time as a Lutheran, I completed a two year Bible study class and could quote chapter and verse by its end. For most of my life, I thought of myself as a Christian. Later, I declared myself a “born again Christian.” Jesus was my Savior because He died for my sins. If I accepted his grace for free and took the words of the Bible as the unalterable words of God, I was assured a place in Heaven. Then I began to read and think outside the box.

I guess I can lay my “wayward path” at the feet of my mother at some point. She began reading books about Edgar Casey. We would have long discussions about the concept of Reincarnation. She was an avid reader and even though she came from good Presbyterian stock in her youth, she opened her mind to other things in her later years. The more I studied history, and in particular the early Christian Church, the more I realized that there were more questions than answers when it came to…religion. As a Christian, I had to accept that out of all the world religions, there was only one true path to God…Jesus Christ. All other beliefs were false. One way! One belief! And yet, the tenets of many of those other world religions say that THEY are the one true way. THEY are the only path to God. Wars have been fought over which religion is the one TRUE religion.

I was dealing with the end of my first marriage when I began to think about religion vs. spirituality. Weren’t they one in the same? If you are a religious person, doesn’t that also make you a spiritual person? Eventually, I came to an understanding that one did not assure the other. Being a religious person did not necessarily mean that you were a spiritual person. Eventually, I saw myself as a spiritual person. From that point, I felt that no one religion had all the answers. Each was man’s attempt to understand his dual nature of spiritual and physical being. Religions were created by men and were therefore subject to interpretation and fallibility. (Wow! Look out! Them’s fightin’ words, stranger!) And so started my spiritual path, my spiritual journey. From that point, I was free to consider and read other philosophies, beliefs, religions and thought. Books, CD’s, movies, people and teachers began to cross my path in my quest for spiritual enlightenment. They would literally jump out at me. Each was a piece of a puzzle without end. The more I learned the more I began to realize…how little I know.

Am I still a Christian? Well, yes and no. I accept that Christ is truly the Son of God and a very enlightened being, but then so too were others like Buddha, Moses and Mohammed…even me (child of God, that is). Is Christ my personal savior? Well, again, yes and no. To me His salvation for us was in what He had to teach while He was among us in the flesh…not that He died on the cross for our sins. Read Deepak Chopra’s book, The Third Jesus, to get a better handle on this concept. (Heresy, you say! I can hear it coming, folks.) My path has led me to this place and each one of us has to reconcile our belief system or our faith with our own spiritual reality, whatever that may be. My reality is not your reality. I’m no more “right” than anyone else. If the tenants of your faith or particular denomination give you peace and understanding…then you are blessed. Your own spiritual path has led you to that place at that time. But will you realize that the path continues?

The real question is, can man evolve to realize that we are One and that we can no more cut off our fingers to spite our hands than we can condemn our fellow brothers and sisters for perceived offenses or differences. We are connected and One with all that there is. Heaven and Hell no longer have relevance when we realize that we are forever… we are eternal. Our THOUGHTS create our reality and Love defines our being. If we can only evolve, perhaps we can stop fighting and killing over our politics and religion at last.

So you see, you can pronounce judgment on me and send me to Hell (your Hell) but, if reincarnation is real…I’ll be back (in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger).

FOOD for THOUGHT...

AIG Too Big to Fail?

I’m still scratching my head over the idea of a bank, a corporation or an insurance company being too big to fail. Smaller businesses come and go all the time. The recent bankruptcy and closing of Circuit City is a good example. So how does an organization like AIG become so large, so complicated, so critical that it cannot be allowed to fail?

Of course the answer is that if they are allowed to fail, it would mean global economic ruin… the “Domino Effect.” The other reason is that if large corporations are allowed to fail, it would mean thousands of workers thrown into unemployment. So I guess there is something to this “the sky is falling theory” of why we need to bail out these companies that are too big to fail, but it just does not feel right. It is like we are paying the people that just drove the bus off the cliff to stay in the driver’s seat and keep on driving… and hope for a soft landing.

In the case of AIG, we are learning that not only are they too big to fail…they are too big to regulate. Where was congress? Where was the SEC? We are leaning that the Financial Products Group of AIG was able to invest in these mysterious “derivatives” and “credit swap products” without the normal oversight and regulations that the rest of the banking and financial industry must face. Now just why was that allowed? Some say that these risky products, while very lucrative, were just too complex to understand by most regulators, even if they could be regulated.

Being too big to fail (and knowing they were too big to fail) gave AIG a sense of entitlement. Even as their company crashed around them and they were getting that first big infusion of tax-payer bailout money, we learned that AIG was going ahead with a lavish sales meeting and bonuses for its top people. They continued to “fiddle while Rome burned.” Now, we learn, to our national outrage, that AIG plans to pay or has already paid “retention bonuses” to the very executives from their Financial Products Group that brought the company to ruin. We are told by the legal minds in our Treasury Department that there is nothing we can do to stop them. The bonuses are written into their executive contracts to keep them from leaving the company. But wait! Didn’t the government just tell GM and Chrysler to go back and renegotiate THEIR contracts with the UAW as part of their bailout?

I just don’t get it. I have always rankled at people who felt they were above it all, the ones who cut in line because they were too “important” to wait with the rest of the crowd. Neither do I understand “Golden Parachutes” to executives that leave corporations after driving them into the ground. Now, with AIG, we pay executives bonuses to stay after they bring the company to ruin. Is it me, or has the world gone mad? Have we created a privileged class of people that are just too big to fail? Do the mighty no longer fall… or are they are bailed out?

FOOD for THOUGHT...

Be the Rock

For weeks and months, whenever I turn on the TV or listen to the radio, I get GLOOM and DOOM from the news media and the political hacks on the opposing party. Rush Limbaugh actually wants Obama to fail so that the Republican Conservative Right can say…See we told you so! What we are experiencing is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you create enough gloom and doom and fear that everyone starts to BELIEVE, then everyone starts pulling in, buying less and holding off on bigger purchases. They don’t go out as much and they don’t give as much. We become like turtles pulling in our arms and legs and heads into our shells just as a truck comes barreling down the highway headed right for us. Instead of moving forward, we stop, we pull inside and go into survival mode.

Even if we want to spend money, buy a house or purchase a new car, the banks are not lending. They are taking the government money, but they are holding on to it, making the credit crisis even worse. Why should they continue to make loans when more and more people cannot repay their existing loans or their mortgages because they are losing their jobs, because people are not spending and companies are going under? What a vicious cycle, what a wicked merry-go-round we find ourselves on these days. Where is our knight in shining armor? Where is Superman when we need him?

Did you ever stop to think that just maybe…it starts with us, with how we THINK? If we lose our hope, how can we make others feel hopeful? We can be like Rush Limbaugh and all the nay-sayers and help spread the fear and the panic or we can hold on to our hope and trust that things are beginning to get better. We can look for the glimmers of good news or be consumed by gloom and doom. We create our own reality. If this economic crisis teaches us nothing else, it should prove to us once and for all that we are all connected and what we think and what we fear does make a difference. The only way to stop a string of dominoes that begins to fall is to step out of line and refuse to fall.

Have faith, my fellow Americans. Have faith. We will come through this and we will learn from this crisis. Don’t be the domino…be the rock.

FOOD for THOUGHT...

Going After Bush and Cheney

There are calls for investigations of former President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, especially now that they are out of office and out of power. Charges of abuse of presidential authority and improprieties over the last eight years in office are rising. I thought I would surely add my voice to the chorus, but like President Obama has suggested… perhaps it is time to look forward not back.

God only knows I spent a lot of my THOUGHTS on blasting Bush/Cheney & Co. over the last eight years. Bush & Co. have created one hell of a mess for this country to clean up. They have destroyed America’s credibility, our good name and our trust around the world. They were on the road to tossing our constitutional rights and civil liberties and replacing them with fear and secret agendas all disguised as keeping us safe from “evil-doer’s.” Now, it looks like the Bush legacy will be the biggest economic crash since the Great Depression. No, I’m no fan of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, but there comes a time to move on. We have too much to do to become distracted by a national investigation and a trial a-la Watergate and Richard Nixon. Becoming embroiled in a national tribunal would only fuel the flames of partisanship at a time when we need the country to pull together, find solutions and heal our differences.

In the words of President Gerald Ford, when Nixon resigned the Presidency, “Our National nightmare is over.” I am content to let history write the last word on George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their cohorts. America is better than what they made us over these last eight years. We now have a window of opportunity with President Obama to remake our country for the better. We have a chance for a fresh start. Will we take it or will we fall back into the same old partisan politics that brought this once great country to its knees leaving us gridlocked when it comes to ideas and solutions?

It won’t be easy. Liberals and Conservatives do not trust one another. The old ideas of “Tax and Spend” and “Trickle-down Economics” have been tried, argued and debated enough, already. It is time for a new approach, a bipartisan approach, a progressive approach. We need cooperation and respect on both sides of the aisle. The future of America hangs in the balance.

FOOD for THOUGHT...