Question: is spiritual change easy or hard?

Answer: Yes.  Definitely.  Spiritual change is easy and hard.  Some people say "it's simple, but it's not easy."  Many people I know participate in spiritual support that says "it works if you work it."  In Science of Mind circles, we sometimes talk about spiritual shifts as if they are instant and permanent.  The truth, in my experience, lies somewhere in between.

Yes, it is possible to have an instant sweet dissolving of the old ideas, habits and patterns that have kept me stuck (I am experiencing that now in my High Mysticism class with Rev. Dr. Kathianne Lewis).   And also yes, it can take work to a) experience that dissolution and b) keep it.  In the 12 steps they say "we are granted a daily reprieve contingent on spiritual fitness."  

Dr. Joe Dispenza unpacks the science behind this better than anyone I know.  Our habitual thoughts, beliefs, opinions and conclusions form well-worn neural pathways in our minds.  Dr. Joe says something like this, if you keep thinking the same thoughts and doing the same things that you thought and did yesterday, you can just pick up your yesterday and place it on your tomorrow.  You will have largely the same experience tomorrow that you did yesterday.  

And while a strong mystical spiritual emotional event can instantly create a new pathway that produces new thoughts that produces new actions and experiences, those experiences can be few and far between.  

When we use spiritual tools such as  daily meditation, gratitude, forgiveness, affirmations and clearings, on a consistent daily basis, we can create and strengthen new neural pathways that produce different results.

"We've never been more divided in this country," Really? Part 2

Most of us at some level know that applying the phrase "we've never been more divided" to American public life today is ludicrous in light of our Civil War.  Now that I'm on page 750 of the 1000 page Grant by Ron Chernow (author of Alexander Hamilton, the book that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the Broadway play), I can also apply that wisdom to "Reconstruction." This of course is the period following the Civil War, when the federal government was figuring out how to protect newly enfranchised black (male) voters and to re-integrate southern states back into the union and life of the country.

Grant acquainted me with the horrific details of the white backlash in the south against former (forced to be illiterate) enslaved men voting, running for and holding public office.  Did you know that during this time the original extremely violent Ku Klux Klan had such a tight hold on certain counties and states throughout the south that a federal investigation estimated over 60% of all white men at all levels belonged to it?  According to this biography, the Klan was truly the first terrorist organization within the United States, horrific lynching, murders, witness intimidation, torture and dismembership was widespread throughout the former confederate states.

In response to the orchestrated widespread terror, President Grant pushed through Congress the first broad expansion of federal policing and judicial powers: the Ku Klux Klan Act (which you could call the Patriot Act Part 1, something I hate to say because I detest the Patriot Act).  This act allowed the federal government to use the newly created Justice Department to suspend the rights of habeas corpus throughout the south, arrest and hold witnesses and suspects without charge for months and try them in federal court before (sometimes) interracial juries, in order to break the Klan. 

The amazing thing is that this multi-year crusade worked.  The "Ku Klux" as it was colloquially known in the 19th century, was almost completely eradicated by a few years into Grant's presidency (somewhere around 1871).  The KKK as we knew it/know it was re-born anew in the 20th century in 1915 and then, according to Wikipedia died around 1944 (presumably due to World War II) and was reborn in 1946 as a backlash to the mid-century civil rights movement.  So there was a 45 year period when there was no Klan --which, of course, is not to say that there was an eradication of racism.

I find all this (re)acquainting myself with the American history of racism, division and violence useful not to minimize anything that is happening today, but to a) put it in perspective and b) remind ourselves that the history of the United States of America is inextricably linked to our history of slavery and the preservation of white power.  Every time that white power has been threatened in this country*, large swaths of white America have organized to squash the effort with rage and violence.  We can all only hope and pray that this round will end soon with far less violence and for good.  

*As it is today by immigration and reproduction trends-- estimates say that by 2045 the U.S. will make up less than 50% of the population-- in some states, California, for example, the census estimates that there are more "non-white hispanics" than any other ethnic group

Why and How I Combine Medicine and Faith

Rev. David Bruner, Spiritual Director of the Center for Spiritual Living, San Jose, inspired this piece by asking on Facebook whether if you got glasses or took a pill it was an indication of a lack of faith in the spiritual science that we practice.  The CSL community at large chimed in a thousand times over "NO!  Medicine is part of God.  Doctors are part of God.  Just because you got glasses or took a pill, doesn't mean you don't have faith."

I found myself alone in issuing qualified "yes" to his question, and that I wanted to say a LOT more about it than is usually in a Facebook comment.  So this is that.  

Certainly God is all there is, there is no place where God is not.  Therefore doctors and medicine and medications and durable medical equipment are all part of God--that is inarguable.  That means that a choice to wear glasses or to have surgery or to take a pill is at all times could very well be a faithful choice. 

However:

While God is all of medicine, medicine is not all of God.  God/love/life/energy/light is all there is the entire cosmos.  Therefore every single thing that exists, including medicine, including doctors, is part of that.  It is impossible to be outside of God.  But the converse is not true: modern medicine is not all of God.  So if I want to bring the full power of all of creation to bear on my healing (and why wouldn't I?), I might have to venture outside of modern medicine.

A lot of medicine treats symptoms rather than effectuating a cure.  While some of us still marvel at the cures that medicine has effectuated for diseases like polio and syphillis, there are a lot of diseases, or at least symptom clusters, for which medicine may not have a cure, but may just alleviate symptoms, such as migraine headaches, insomnia, and a lot of things that cause physical pain.    

When I use medicine to treat symptoms, I may miss an opportunity for total healing.  If a little red light on my car dashboard appears that says "check engine," I take the car to the mechanic to see what is happening.  If there is a problem with the engine, I generally do not ask the mechanic to turn off the "check engine" light, I ask them to fix the engine.  If I am getting a pill to treat symptoms without following these symptoms as arrows pointing in the direction of my healing, I miss an opportunity.  Are those symptoms uncomfortable?  Do I ever treat symptoms in order to relieve myself from that discomfort?  Absolutely I do.  However, I need to be aware that when I do that, I miss an opportunity.  

Symptom bypass can be as damaging as "spiritual bypass."  As spiritual scientists, we are increasingly wary of "spiritual bypass," which is going straight to prayer without first taking an opportunity to feel feelings and be with what is coming up for us.  Taking pills on a regular basis so that I will not feel symptoms is another form of bypass whereby I miss that opportunity to learn what I have to learn.

My body is a very intelligent system designed to restore me to wholeness.  My favorite kind of physicians are osteopaths (DOs) rather than allopaths (MDs) because MDs are trained to look for disease whereas DOs are trained to look for health.  While both kinds of doctors can write prescriptions and do surgery and everything that modern western doctors do, DOs function from an assumption that is aligned with spiritual truth:  my natural state is wholeness.  My resting state is health.  My body is intelligent all the way down to the cellular level and so every symptom in my body is there to point me to wholeness, to health.  

So if I combine a visit to a doctor who really is trained to support wellness, wholeness, with prayer or spiritual mind treatment, I am more likely to actually be restored completely to health, rather than to paper over symptoms.

Medicine does not have even symptom treatment for a lot of troubling physical conditions.  There are millions of people in the US and the world who are in chronic physical pain without a real treatment plan that could effectuate cure and without even real symptom alleviation.  Many are dependent on opioids which they need to be able to function at all but which give at best a kind of half life.  There are also a stunning number of diseases or "syndromes" (which is what doctors call a cluster of symptoms that they don't fully understand and don't have a cure for) like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, crohn's disease, lupus and more where millions of people, predominantly women, are in massive debilitating discomfort for years without any real hope of cure or change.  

When I go to a doctor without seeing a practitioner first I miss an opportunity for total healing, or at least sweeter, easier, better healing.  In the Centers for Spiritual Living, we have licensed spiritual practitioners (including ministers) who are trained to know the truth for me when I cannot know it for myself.   If I go to a practitioner before or as I have surgery, before or as I choose chemo or radiation, they can help me follow the arrows of my symptoms to wholeness.  They can know wholeness for me and health.  If I must choose to cut, burn or poison myself as the best I can think is possible for my health, their consciousness can bring me the most competent, loving, short, effective version of that choice.

If I have an awesome God that is all powerful, then why wouldn't I consult that God even before I consult a doctor? Given that I have an awesome God that has created every single thing in the known and unknown world, including doctors and medicine, that means that that Divine Intelligence knows the cure to all diseases and all symptoms long before the doctors and the scientists do.  Long before scientists discovered antibiotics, it was known, it in Divine Intelligence--it was equally true that it would work 1000s of years ago.  Long before scientists discovered the microbiome, we had billions of bacteria in our gut that could play a role in our health.  What else is possible?  What else does Divine Intelligence know that is not known yet by our doctors or medicine?  What might my cells or microbiome know that I don't know?  What might they be able to tell me? 

I am open to all that is available to me for complete healing.  I have used spiritual tools to restore the ability of my knee to walk miles and carry a backpack.  I have also had surgery on both my knee (I now feel that was unnecessary) and my wrist (apparently very necessary).  I do it all with the help of the all powerful, all knowing force that I call God.

  

As women, can we be more transparent now, so we don't have to scream later?

The events of the last week, and my emotional response to them,

has me wondering what is the best way to be a woman who wants change in the world.  To scream or not to scream that is the question.  I mused last week that we were one America despite differences, and then that maybe we needed to scream more in elevators, then I beseeched God to show me what to do and how to love "these people."  

I truly feel that somehow the answer is, as we perhaps say too often in my philosophy these days, "both and."  Maybe I need to find a way that is more honest and transparent and less concerned with men's comfort and maybe I need to do it before the point that I'm ready to scream.  In thinking about how to be, I need to observe that it wasn't men who raised me to lower my voice in elevators, be circumspect and not offend men, it was women.  

It's really strange that I grew up with such strong programming to be careful of men's fragile egos.  My father was a strong gentle self-confident man whom I don't recall yelling at me or my brothers even once.  If we pushed it too far and crossed a line, the most I ever remember was him tightly gripping one of our upper arms and saying "that's enough." 

Yet, from my mother, I internalized a message of don't be strident, don't talk about women's things in front of men, and above all, cross your legs at your ankles.  And, although I have broken all these rules many times, I have prided myself on being able to work and get along with men well, where other women may not have.  Even recently I notice that if there is a group of women with only one or two men (common in my profession of new thought ministers), I'm making sure that the conversation is comfortable for the man, that we don't veer too far into women's subjects.

Generally, men will not extend the same courtesy to women.  A group of men with one or two women, will usually feel perfectly comfortable with an extended discussion of professional or amateur sports.  I think it's well-established that the groups with less power are expected to understand, tolerate and be conversant with the more powerful groups' norms and behaviors but not vice versa.  This is part of what we call "privilege."

We all know how circumspect women still are on anything to do with menstruation.  I remember feminist comedian Kate Clinton (back when there were like two such comedians) doing a hilarious bit on how it would be if men had periods.  Two men are spectators at a sporting event, one shouting out, "hey, who has a tampon? I'm out!"   A guy several rows down says, "you need a 'pon, man?  That's cool, packing right here," slapping his breast pocket.  He pulls out like a cigarette box of tampons, pulls back his arm like a quarterback and shouts "go long!" before hurling it.

I know for myself that would make me lose my composure and scream in an elevator is years of suppressing rage, fear and truth, years of pretending that things are okay that are not okay.  So maybe one thing women can start doing is just being open in real time about things to do with women: what we like, what we need, what we feel and how we do.  And maybe men can just begin to see this is really how it is.  And maybe that will make as much or more change as protest later.*

*Note that "visionary political astrologist" Caroline Casey points out that the etymology of the word "protest" is from the Latin "testis" for witness which is the same root as "testes."  Literally the original "witness" was asked to grab his testicles to swear rather than a Bible.  Perhaps women want to rethink the language and the action of protest in light of this.  Although we do need to seriously draw from our gonads into order to speak our truth.

Open Letter to God: Why? What Next?

 Dear God,

I feel so so sad today.  I feel so angry.  I feel so helpless.  I go around telling people that all is well and that all is in divine right order and timing.  And now Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court.  Why?  How? What is the plan?  Can you let me in on it?  How is it that this man who, no matter what else is true, was belligerent and rude and angry to his job interviewers has been given the job anyway?  And how is that there appear to be millions of people who are excited and riled up and angry and motivated to vote for a party that feels comfortable not listening to women, shaming women, and attacking women?

I confess, God, that I don't understand all of this.  I thought I was seeing that the President and his followers were the representation of an old tired worn out consciousness in the world, a consciousness of separation, of hate, of division, of exclusion, of hierarchy, of patriarchy, of homogeneity, of white supremacy.  And I thought that the visible expression of this old consciousness had awakened the dormant new level of consciousness that wants to come in, one of love, inclusion, diversity, of equality, of oneness, and that that consciousness was waking up to itself, standing on its feet and voting (choosing) it in this coming midterm elections.

But now it feels like the old consciousness is just getting stronger.  It feels like it has just cemented itself on the highest court in the land to overturn any law or policy that is loving or including or caring.

What am I missing, God?  What am I missing?  Is it as simple that as I am angry at "them" and their representatives in Washington, I am caught in that old consciousness of hate and separation and so it is empowered?

Is it as simple as what I resist persists?  

What is it?  What is the Truth of this situation that I need to see?  Okay, God, please let me love Donald Trump.  Let me love Mitch McConnell.  Let me love all their followers.  Let me even love Brett Kavanaugh.  Let me see them all as individualized expressions of the One.  Let me know this deep in my soul.  Let me understand that they are me.  Let me treat them as me.  Holy One, please excavate, destroy and uncreate in me any resistance of this agenda.  Let me allow it to flow through through the space of love that I am and dissipate back into the nothingness from which it came.  Let me feel my anger and my sadness and fear all the way through.  Let me act from love and not anger and fear.  Let me vote from love and not anger and fear.  Let me talk to my neighbors from love and not anger and fear.

Maybe we all need to scream in elevators

As I watch events unfold around Jeff Kavanaugh's confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice, I am more and more aware of the "hysterical woman" within me.  

Nowhere was this more apparent than the feeling I had watching Ana Maria Archila scream at Jeff Flake in the elevator.    Later, I saw her interviewed.  She comes across as a very intelligent, well-considered professional woman.  Ana Maria Archila is now an American hero.  She has been a community organizer for years.   According to the Washington Post she is now the co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive community-based advocacy group in New York.  

And I began to think about how often I present an intelligent, well-considered woman to the outside world and how often I am that screaming hysterical woman in the elevator in my mind.  I was definitely raised to keep that woman within quiet.  She is not supposed to come out and play.  

I use the word "hysterical" advisedly.  Derived from the Greek "hystero," it shares the same root as "hysterectomy" -- it means uterus. 

It is a cliché that "well-behaved women seldom make history."  And I begin to wonder if those of us who have been showing up as the women who men in power are comfortable with, the women they like to be around need to bring the hysterical woman out to play.

Maybe there needs to be more screaming in elevators.  Maybe a lot more.

One America: Texas and California

I'm continuing to consume Ron Chernow's 1000 page bio of Ulysses S Grant while I enjoy my stay in Dallas, Texas.  I'm struck by how much more California has in common with Texas then the differences between the states.  And the parallels between our time and the Civil War.

Last night (for me) Generals Grant and Robert E. Lee negotiated the terms of surrender for Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox.  As they did so, they chatted a bit about mutual friends and family--they had met when they both fought for the American army in the Mexican War a decade hence.  Even though they had just spent years fighting to the death, and even though the Confederate "rebel" army had in fact committed treason, Grant was able (with Lincoln's blessing) to extended generous terms of surrender to them.  Instead of being executed for treason, they were paroled to their homes, allowed to keep their sidearms and horses.  Even the enlisted men were given a ride home on the federal railroad.   

The night after surrender, General James Longstreet, of the Confederacy, dropped by to pay his respects to General Grant--leader of the Union Army.  Grant invited him into his quarters, slapped his back, offered him a cigar and invited him to play Brag--a card game they had enjoyed before the war.

Don't get me wrong here:  The sides and the men involved had fierce ideological differences.  They weren't mercenaries.  Grant was said to be absolutely convicted about the Union cause and by this time a strong abolitionist.  Longstreet was very much for the rebel cause.  

While safely ensconced in California, I like to imagine Texas as a very different world.  When my son was younger and we took these frequent 35 minute drives across I-80 from Fairfield to Sacramento, we allowed some road signs ("Alamo" "Arsenal" and such) to queue us that we were suddenly driving in Texas instead of California.  Instead of Nicky he was Nicky Bob.  Instead of Sara, I was Sara Lou.  We spoke with Texas accents.  We talked with disdain about our cousins (Nicky and Sara) on the left coast and their misguided support for handgun control, high taxes and Democrats.  

Los Angeles freeway

Dallas Freeway

I've visited Austin, Texas before--considering it a safe politically left enclave in the state.  This is literally the first time I've spent any time at all deep in the heart of Texas.  Yet, in driving around (north) Dallas, I am so much more struck by the similarities than the differences between Texas and California.  

Look at these Dallas and LA freeways here--big difference?  I mean these large, populous, formerly Mexican states are both so wealthy, so beautiful, so culturally rich, so full of themselves.  Seeing us square off against each other in the culture wars its like watching two people hating what they see in the mirror of each other.

Granted, big cities tend Democratic (can we talk about that sometime?  When people live close together, do they basically always move to the left unless they have a dictator?) and Dallas is no exception.  

It's exciting to sit here in the heart of two potentially key Congressional races:  Democrat Colin Allred is running hard against longtime Trump-supported Republican Pete Sessions in the House 32nd district (I think I'm literally in that district now).  Democrat Beto O'Rourke is considered to have a shot at taking down Republican Ted Cruz in the US Senate.    

Today's Civil War, is, after all much more "civil" than "war."  We are fighting at the polls not on the battlefields.  And that's how it should be.  We need to fight hard nonviolently for the America we believe in.  But you take my point.  At the end of the day, Texas and California are both America.  Let's smoke cigars and play Brag while we fight.

Looking Up in Texas

I'm in Dallas, Texas this week attending the Centers for Spiritual Living Ministers Gathering hosted by CSLDallas.  Today scores of us ministers will stand at Dallas City Hall to honor and know a different truth for Botham Jean, an African American man recently shot and killed in his own home by an off duty police officer.   

In our tradition, we do not turn to prayer as an alternative to action.  We call our type of prayer "spiritual mind treatment" and we say "treat and move your feet."  Today we are doing both.  We are moving our feet to City Hall and we are taking our prayer to the streets of Dallas to know the truth of the situation instead of appearances.

We are in a time when the daily news begs us to look down.  It pulls us to fear and anger that it is still not safe for black men like Botham Jean to be in their own homes, let alone drive or visit other areas.  It pulls us to fear and anger that women like Christine Blasey Ford are publicly attacked and threatened for speaking bravely and truthfully about their experience with sexual assault.

As spiritual scientists, we know that while we do want to acknowledge and feel these feelings, we want to follow them as arrows pointing us to healing, not arrows pointing us to more anger and fear.  Dallas is no stranger to the consequences of widespread fear and anger.  This is the city in which President John F. Kennedy was murdered as he drove peacefully in a parade.  

Today I continue my daily practice of looking up for ten minutes a day to lift my heart, my mind and my thoughts to the hills, from which, the scripture says, "cometh my help...All of my help cometh from the Lord."  Psalm 121.  

What this means for us in Dallas is that we will catch the greater Truth from outside this world and we will know it for Dallas and for the world.  We will stand together in love and hope and a vision of a world in which police officers are trained to love and protect, rather than shoot to kill.  We will stand together and know a place where Black men can live, walk, drive, work, move and vote surrounded by love and peace.

By looking up, when others are looking down, by standing together and knowing that Truth, we transform our experience, we dissolve the apparent current realities and we invite in a Greater Reality, one in which a world that works for everyone is possible.