personal/spiritual
does
God exist?
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book: A Spiritual Predicament
Let's be clear about this from the start: personal development and spiritual growth are completely different things.
On the one hand, we have the world of lifeskills workshops and personal fulfilment, of discovering our unique gifts and shedding fear so we can make the best use of them. This is the world of things to be done, great works, awareness and choice, personal responsibility, freedom and power. This is where we make our life choices, decide our priorities and our goals and take steps to pursue them.
On the other hand, there's the amazing grace, the recognition that all that we call reality is an illusion, the longing to let go, to melt into the One, the Great Ultimate, and to leave our everyday consciousness behind. This is the world of spiritual practice, from prayer to meditation to renunciation of all that we cherish. In this world there are no goals except to get our heads round the basic truth that there is no way things should, or even could, be otherwise.
Being a rather pedantic soul, I've had a lot of trouble with this in the past. We appear to have two paths, both of which have words like Love and Happiness and Freedom in their vocabulary, both of which really matter to the depths of our being, and which point in diametrically opposite directions! I'll call them PD, for personal development, and SG, for spiritual growth.
So, for example, a typical PD workshop is based on an idea, such as 'you choose your own reality', and a goal, such as 'discover your self-confidence'. The process involves a lot of introspection, maybe making lists or mind maps of the ideas you have and deciding which ones are helpful and which hold you back. You hope to go away with new inspiration into a brighter world where you can really make a difference. Your self-image is developing into 'not that, but this', and you are becoming a powerful being in your own right.
By contrast, SG practice is focused on emptying the self. You are, at most, a channel for the perfect harmony of the Eternal to work itself through you. Any intentions you might have of your own only mess up this perfect flow. Any wish that things were otherwise is universally agreed by the spiritual traditions to be the root of suffering and/or sin. You, and Reality, are 'not this, not that', and the only powerful being in the whole caboodle is beyond our understanding.
And here we are, with our fears, hopes and dreams, stuck in the middle. How on earth are we to proceed?
To do anything at all through our own conscious judgement, however noble the motive, is to judge reality and is therefore sin. To choose to do nothing is also sin. Even to try to remove our sin is sin. Personal development is the very essence of sin. So, a number of SG thinkers over the centuries have got things so confused that they insist that to enjoy yourself at all is evil, and plenty of PD enthusiasts go through convoluted reasoning to try to convince us that God really wants us all to be millionaires. We really do need to clear this one up.
There's more about sin in the book, but for now I'll just say that sin has nothing to do with morality. (It's OK, guys, it really is :-) ) The essential distinction between SG and PD is very simple, and traditional: it's the difference between the temporal and the Eternal. The key is the view of Time. The spiritual is the realm of the Eternal, and the concept of sin belongs there. The temporal world is everything that we are conscious of in our lives, and so our values and our PD belong there. The Eternal logically can't have values. The Eternal, seen from our temporal perspective, is simply the way things are (and that includes the way things are changing).
So from the Eternal perspective there's no way that things could be otherwise. The whole of Time is in view. So SG is the project of accepting things as they are without judgement, and reports from the field tell us that we'll discover bliss and heaven there. But those reports also tell us that the experience is typically quite unexpected, and never sustained for long (unless we're talking drugs or psychosis). The timeless moment is unearned, and reverts to Time as soon as you're conscious of it.
Meanwhile, here in the grubby, imperfect temporal world there are all sorts of things that require our attention. It's only here, in time, that our consciousness and our character make any sense. Even 'spiritual' teachers operate in the temporal world, transmitting techniques and ways of thinking. They give us some pointers so we'll know the Eternal when we see It, but if they start to preach morality they've switched into PD.
And it's in PD, without reference to the Eternal at all, that we find such principles as: the world you experience is a reflection of your deepest beliefs about it and about yourself; to be fulfilled you need to have a purpose which fits your talents; desperate doesn't get; the more you give, the more you receive; maybe the pig's ear has a silver lining (coming to a workshop near you - just kidding).
And where does PD get you? Well, if all goes according to plan, you develop a more relaxed attitude to life in general; because you're happier, things bother you less; you find you're more content with what you've already got; you're less concerned about what people think, so your ego naturally starts to fade; your tastes tend to develop towards simplicity; and so on. All things that any self-respecting guru would be proud of.
So the bottom line seems to be: get on with the PD, and the SG will look after itself. Just be careful not to neglect the kids.
next essay: does God exist?
