Why spirituality?
My spiritual practices colors all aspects of my life. It is the frame by which I view the world, my life and the universe. It is both my personal philosophy and my rules for living. I am not here to change atheists into believers (thanks Kanye!), my intention is to explore my beliefs and I want to do it hear to interact with others.
First off, I am a humanist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_Manifesto. The goal of Humanism is the maximization of human flourishing, who can be against that? I realize that we may not agree how to get here, but we all want to flourish. My Humanism leads me to work to increase the flourishment of all humans, I believe in my core that this is our highest calling. Spiritual people through millennia have known this, this is why Love plays such a large role in our shared history. Love is the way. There is deep human wisdom in this statement. Love is the connection between humans. We thrive together, we die alone. Here is a nice overview from the different types of love from a religious perspective, from the author CS Lewis if you want to learn more. https://www.cslewis.com/four-types-of-love/
I also take time to celebrate the progress that we have made as humans. As bad as any current situation may seem with climate change and racial divisions, I know that we have the tools to make it better. Why am I so sure? Because humans have done this through millennia. For all of the nostalgia for the past, by any objective measure our time is the greatest time to be alive. Life expectancy; sanitation; connectivity; knowledge; empathy; rights for women, minorities and people of all sexual orientations; these have improved over the past 50 years, let alone the last 200 or 500 years. Humans are challenged by perspective, a week seems long, a four years can seem to be an eternity and our brains have trouble imagining even 20 or 30 years years in the future. It’s important to see these changes, both to celebrate and relieve some tensions, but also to study what has worked. If you are interested in learning more about the data around the improvements in human flourishment, i encourage you to check out the great Steven Pinker and his books, including Enlightenment Now! and The Better Angels of our nature. https://stevenpinker.com/
As a humanist, I look at how humans have flourished. We need to study what works and enhance the positive and minimize the destructive. So what does work? The data shows that Love is key. Empathy is key. We can focus on these areas and learn how to integrate this into our lives.
Ok, back to me – how does humanism tie to religion? No doubt many humanists are atheist or agnostic, and are quick to point out the flaws in religion and the many, many instances when religion has been weaponized against human flourishment. We can’t be blind to how religion can be abused and we have to call out those that use religion for their own earthly goals.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson (another prominent religious sceptic) talks about the https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/essays/2007-04-the-cosmic-perspective.php) . The Cosmic Perspective is the knowledge that we both live in the universe and the universe lives within us. We are all made of stars, it is not only a song lyric, its a deep fundamental truth.
Everyone that you have ever known, everything that you have ever known, resides on a small blue ball floating in an unfathomably immense ocean of darkness. The confluence of events over the past 14 billion years or so that has lead me here, to be writing this note – to you reading it, to me meeting my wife; to the birth of my boys, to every experience is nothing short of a miracle. Since the human experience is essentially good, the universe that has brought us to this point is also good.
That’s my religion in a nutshell. Life is good, humans are good. Humans are part of the universe, the universe is good. Humans are learning more and more about the universe around us. We are so privileged to live in this time of discovery, the advances of our knowledge over the past 50 years is miraculous.
So what does this all mean, how does it impact my life?
We know that some things help human beings flourish. I covered love. We also know that embracing the silence through meditation helps the mind increase its resiliency and effectiveness. We know that thoughts impact the body and our worldly experience. Meditation is a form a prayer, where we quiet the mind and listen. This helps our mind form new connections, it helps us concentrate, it helps us think. Prayer as it is commonly known is talking to god, however that’s not how the Unity movement views it. Prayer doesn’t change god. God is the universe, hoping that the universe will change to meet our needs is an useless exercise. Prayer really changes us. It is positive thinking – we know that positive thinking provides health benefits, it helps get better outcome in business and life.
Prayer and meditation work together – you listen, you accept the truth and then you deal with it. That is what successful people do, they see the world as it is, not as they want it to be. They work to make the world what they want it to be.
So that is my Spirituality. Below I go into some more details about Unity and my journey. As of today (8/30) I have not edited so it may be even more raw that the section above. Have a great day.
It would be hard for me to picture my life today from where i was 10 or more so 20 years ago. One of the benefits of age is a true appreciation of the journey of life. I have come to recognize my life as a series of journeys. In these journeys, i live my best life when i chose to be the hero, on a hero’s journey. This is a choice. You are always the star of your story, but you have to decide what kind of story you are in and what role that you are playing.
When you choose to be the hero in your journey you realize that the highs are never as high as you think that they are, the lows are never as low, but in the end it is all going to be ok.
How do I know everything will be ok? Because i have chosen to believe that. What choice do i have in the matter? Things are going to work out, one way or the other. I choose to hope for, and work for the best in all aspects of my life.
Making these choices over time takes work and preparation. You will make choices that you later regret, or learn from. The key is not to avoid these mistakes, but rather to recognize and learn from them.
One of the key aspects of my life, and one of the most critical tools for keeping me on the journey is my spiritual practice. Specifically the Unity movement. *why?*
My perspective on life has not always been this way. In the next section i will talk about how i have gotten to where I am, and how Unity plays a key part in this journey.
The first thing that I did was to open myself up to love. I believe that my spiritual journey took a marked turn from the abyss when i met my wife sarah.
I opened myself up to love, and by doing so, to life. I suffered from an extreme sense of lack of self worth growing up. This manifested itself first through intense shyness, and then over the top indulgences. All of this activity was driven by my lack of self worth, feeling that i was not good enough and didn’t deserve a hero’s life.
When i met Sarah, all of that changed. The intensity of her love for me changed me to my core. Every sappy love song, wind beneath my wings for example, now makes perfect sense. I realize how lucky i am in this regard.
The song says that there are many fish in the sea, but it is hard for me to think that there are any others that possibly the match that i have. I used to think about all of the things that had to have gone right over our entire lives for us to meet, it is miraculous. Religion has opened me up to the enhanced perspective of how many things went right in the history of universe for this to happen. ( should i EXPAND these concepts?)
Religion has helped me enhance my connection with my mind. I have tried different meditation paths, such as Transcendental Meditation for many years. Sarah and I gave each other the gift of the meditation course in the year that we were married and did it together. It gave me a foundation for meditation, but my practice never stuck.
The Unity community is like a sports team, we are all cheering for each other in the game of life. Every week we connect, people ask how you are doing in a deep manner. Unity creates a non-judgmenental space where it is ok to say, that things are not ok.
This connection is so liberating! I rarely have issues that i need to address, but a good spiritual community lets you know that if you need help you can get it. This is true freedom from suffering. It is the constant reinforcement that we live in a kind and loving universe.
Since i started attending Unity regularly, . I now meditate daily. Unity has helped me to normalize my meditation practice. Every week service introduces some new concepts for me to contemplate.
People often ask what the impact of meditation is. This is a grounding activity that gives my brain a chance for my brain to connect with my body and scan for any issues. However the real benefit of meditation is from the behavior that it enables.
Since i have started to meditate, i eat less, sleep more, drink less, exercise more and generally live a more healthy body. The changes in my life have been sustained and i have no doubt that they will be with me for the rest of my life. How can they not? The changes from meditation and spirituality have changed me to my core. This is not a fad diet. Because I am so intune with my body, i can’t go back to my old ways.
Does this mean that my journey is done? Never. Everyday the journey continues. The key i not to lose hope, to keep trying, to keep pushing.
Work
My spiritual practice also ensures that i see the infinite game, or journey of work. I have experienced trying situations through work.
These include the whipsaw effect of competing priorities. As the Finance Director of a new startup with limited resources and experience, we often were learning on the fly. The benefit of experience is not that you know all of the answers, but you have a better sense of the mistakes.
The EA has a constant battle of competing priorities. We were constantly behind in our deliverables and impossibly hard metrics. When we won the grant, we were already behind in our other grants. We thought that money would solve all of the issues. It doesn’t, it only seemed to exacerbate them.
One of the key issues that exacerbated our issues was the lack of clarity about the organization priority between the leadership team. I was focused on the here and now. We were a brand new organization that had just won a lot of grant money. This was not quiet, patient capital these were ‘stimulus’ funds. They were designed to move quickly. They were designed to be a one time injection into the economy, there was little expectation of continuous funding at any signifcant level.
I believed that it was imperative that we execute on these grant funds. One of the critical objectives of the grant was to create infrastructure in the community. This
How did this lack of clarity manifest and impact the organization?
We were growing and space was a terrible constraint. Our initial workspace was an unoccupied floor in the foundation that funded us. For me our space was was the quintessential vision of a boot strapping, impact driven organization. We had second hand desks that didn’t match and would often break. However the key task at hand was executing on our grants and growing as a non-profit.
For our Executive Director, who had a different vision of what the organization was, the space was a disaster and the highest priority. He was the head of the organization so his priority became my priority.
I spent a ton of time on the design and execution of a new space for our entire organization. There was no Corporate Real Estate. We had to find space to relocate to while we were