PART 1: SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS
I propose that spiritual principles apply to solving our
own and the world's problems. We'll start with an examination of the
following principles:
1. FORGIVENESS
/ LETTING GO / LETTING GOD
2. GRATEFULNESS
/ AWE & WONDER / THANKSGIVING
3. ONENESS
/ CONNECTEDNESS / INTERDEPENDENCY
4. LOVE
/ DO UNTO OTHERS / HONOR THE STRANGER
5. GROWTH
/ TRANSFORMATION / HEALING
and their application to
1. ANGER
/ FEAR / HATE / WAR
2. SCARCITY
/ POVERTY / GREED
3. POWER
/ EXPLOITATION / DOMINANCE
4. IGNORANCE
/ SUSPICION / RACISM
5. POLLUTION
/ POPULATION EXPLOSION / ECOLOGICAL DISASTER
The first five principles define the major tools,
recommended by all the wisdom traditions, for infusing spirit into life.
To infuse spirit into life is to brighten and sharpen our vision, bring
clarity to our world and make visible its intrinsic harmony. Our increased
awareness suggests higher-level solutions to lower-level problems.
Higher-level solutions see and account for more of the
factors and effects. The lightened mind is more considerate than the
burdened one. The grateful mind is more compassionate than the victimized
one. The loving mind sees more interconnectedness than the selfish one.
The growing mind has more of a chance at wisdom than the stagnant
one.
The model here is of “higher-levels” representing a
hierarchy of advancing realms of consciousness. The hierarchy is marked by
an increasing awareness of the depth and breadth of the universe in which
events occur. This increasing awareness reveals interconnectedness not
evident at “lower-levels” and therefore allows for more inclusive
solutions, solutions that are more apt to solve problems over the longer
run.
Lower-level solutions, because limited in the scope of
its understanding, tend to increase the disharmony of the level they work
on. The consequence of this is that they often unsettle more than they
settle, or at least as much (spinning wheels). They oppose a part of
reality with forces that are part of that same reality, causing opposite
forces to either escalate their antagonisms or to go on repeating them.
These reactive solutions often seem right as a gut
response, kind of what might be appropriate in a zero sum game, a winner
take all contest, a survival of the fittest strategy. We are wired, it
seems, to respond to threats in this fashion. We were birthed by the
survival-of-the-fittest biosphere and have only recently added the
possibilities of global cooperative responses, or other higher-level
solutions.
Higher-level solutions increase the harmony of the level
they work on because they see the disharmony from a more integrated and
inclusive higher-level. They account more fully for our accumulated
wisdom, for the effects of cooperation and community, for what the other
side is thinking and seeing, and for the faults of their own worldview.
They factor mother earth, the ecosystem, humanity and history into the
equations. The causal plane is revealed more fully at this higher-level so
new possibilities are revealed. Predictive intent is more apt to be
realized.
So, far from being a hypothetical virtue, highness of
thought and intent, will actually lead to a better world. Not because the
people of high intent are better people, although that certainly is a
valid attraction, but because high intent leads to actions that better
solve problems. Now, this is important, because it separates altruistic
ethics that must simply be believed and practiced, from appropriate
strategies that are useful because they work.
It’s my contention that spiritual principles when
applied to humanity’s problems have a higher chance of formulating and
achieving solutions then do lower-level principals such as revenge,
punishment, fear, competition, victory, war, secrecy, selfishness,
scarcity, danger, greed, exploit, use, master, subjugate.
One argument has it that these lower-level principles
are naturally human and therefore cannot be helped. These people say that
to stifle them is to stifle our humanity. We must, they tell us, channel
these God-given impulses into tribal, national, corporate, ethnic, racial
and religious bonds and defend these groupings against the uncaring
“other’”, the rest of the world.
I argue that to be human is to accumulate knowledge and
wisdom, to produce history, to create culture. To be human is to develop
over time, to move creative action from the biosphere to the noosphere,
the world of concepts and ideas. To be human is to have left the jungle
and its laws and to have built social systems increasingly based on
justice, mercy, equality and freedom, the higher-level takes on success.
The human journey, I contend, has taken us from
lower-level principles and their application to higher-level principles
and theirs. I argue that this process is more quintessentially human than
any built in reactive or instinctual animal response, the trait we share
with the biosphere. We are, if anything, an historic unfolding that
creates and transcends successively more real and more inclusive
worldviews.
But we, humanity, are a mixed bag. Some of us have come
further than others. Most cultures constrain advance, because the powerful
conservatively defend the status quo. It maintains their advantage. Many
of the poor of this world are locked into ancient worldviews that leave
them very disadvantaged both in the global economy and in the global
worldview. Demagogues whip up the lower-level emotions of those who feel
left out of the economic, social and political processes, the desperate
and hungry.
There is a powerful constituency for lower-level
analysis, strategies, and actions. The world has been dominated by male
testosterone for thousands of years and there was a time when, it could be
assumed, it was needed and welcomed. That is no longer the case on the
stage of my reality; at least I see its flaws. But when last I was
confronted by a snarling dog I out-snarled him.
Essentially, none of us knows the answer. We pays our
money and takes our choice. I find it very useful, satisfying and joyful
to believe that there is a hierarchy of worldviews, stepping up the
inclusive scale, that every step yields real gain, real clarity and
insight, real solution oriented power.
So for me, the ineffectiveness of lower-level
strategies, their counterproductive results, their collateral damage,
their attempt to get something for nothing, or to exploit what’s not
nailed down, to confuse or confound reason, are obvious and obviously
poorly thought out and narrowly visioned. But, it seems, not so for them.
Much of the world still functions on this level and, tragically, we have a
president that can’t rise above it.
In times of danger we turn to our Neanderthals, the
low-level, high pain response force. Every nation seems to. No matter that we slide backward,
that years of worldview development get sheared away, that we move closer
to the abyss. The abyss, after all, is high-level technology in the
service of low-level consciousness. That was Hitler Germany.
We must guard against the Hubris that allows us to
believe we can employ low-level strategies in a good-versus-evil cause, as
though the cause would redeem the strategy. No, low-level
reasoning has less of a chance of achieving results than high-level; we
lower our chances of success, increase our chances of failure and advance
the probability of further difficulties.
I wish both the United States and Israel would abandon
their lower-level responses to the problems they face and apply
higher-level vision, principals and strategies. We, they and the world
would be much better off.
PART 2: REALITY'S SUBTLE
DIMENSIONS
Two
additional important reality defining dimensions spring into existence
when viewed from a higher perspective. The first is the developmental
dimension. Every aspect of reality finds itself in a present that is,
considered from a wider perspective, a stage of or frame in a moving,
unfolding story line, its developmental dimension. Everything we are,
know, observe, and imagine has reached its present existence through a
developmental story line that started with the big bang.
The big
bang can be thought of as infinitely random, infinitesimally atomized, and
instantaneously metamorphosing. It was a point defined by its lack of
structure, information and stability. It had, because of that, near
infinite potential. Everything that followed was the story line of
transforming that amorphous condition into realities that have structure,
information and stability.
Parts of our universe are close to
conditions as they were at the big bang and other parts have undergone a
vast developmental journey to get to exist in our present reality. We,
human beings, have perhaps traversed more developmental territory than any
other piece of our surrounding reality. Of course, every part of reality
has lasted exactly the same amount of chronological time, from the Big
Bang to now. It's the journeys, the number of transcendent fulcrums
negotiated, that varies greatly.
Celestial lives, the journeys of
stars, galaxies, black-holes, are measured in billions of years, not much
chance for transcendence in the 15 billion year history of the universe.
Planetary Geology moves inches in millions of years, new and energetic
when compared to the celestial clock, but very stable for life forms to
play on.
And life forms, the grand developmental story line of
Darwin's evolution appear, quickening the unfolding process and its
developmental variations. Then we arrive and the rate of change, the
increasing speed of development becomes noticeable, even within human time
frames.
Now this whole phenomenon of reality having a developmental
dimension has just recently appeared to human consciousness. It happened
about two hundred years ago. Before that it was believed that the stage
was built as an act of creation and we, the actors, created in a similar
act, were placed into those given static conditions to act out our lives.
This is decidedly not how reality works but many of us still have trouble
getting out of that basic paradigm.
So when one talks about basic
instinct you are talking about a moving target. It is different at
different times of development. In slow developing strands of reality,
basic instinct or the way celestial bodies act, for instance, hasn't
changed for billions of years. But if your talking about strands that
undergo appreciable development, humanity as a prime example, basic
instinct is always appropriate to the world view resulting from the
journey taken up to that point in time.
Cooperation and competition
are indeed dualities that are played out in real time but the horizon line
separating the two moves over time so that more and more underlying
cooperation forms a foundation for that horizon line. Its the same with
knowledge. More and more knowledge underlies the border between the known
and unknown. I like that saying "As the continent of knowledge grows, the
shoreline of ignorance also grows."
In both instances we, as
humans, understand that we are playing the game at a higher level when
more information is fed us from more diverse sources, more knowledge in
the service of greater inclusiveness and cooperation, that is the
direction of the vector. If competition in areas of uncertainty,
ignorance, and developmental options, lead us more rapidly toward more
information in the service of greater cooperation then so be it. But don't
loose sight of the arrows direction and the journey we, as human beings,
have already taken.
A second area worth considering when dealing
with reality is that it seems to exhibit a range of expression. Almost all
populations, whether of celestial bodies, or human beings, have a bell
curve distribution of attributes and qualities. We live in a universe of
holons, entities that have both an individual and a group aspect.
The group aspect needs statistical and not anecdotal illumination while
the individual might be best revealed by anecdotal
evidence.
Whenever we talk about a major theme in humanity's story
line, we are dealing with a range of both actualities and possibilities.
This applies to societies, to governments, to economic systems, to
knowledge constructs, to scientific understandings and to faith beliefs.
Let's call this a distribution dimension. A sophisticated take on reality
should have both the developmental and the distribution
dimensions.
This distribution dimension says that every spectrum
line is represented in any universe, from the lowliest to the highest,
from the most obtuse to the most sublime, from the crudest to the most
enlightened, from the most primitive to the most advanced. Just because,
in our perforce limited experience, we encounter one form or another, does
not mean that these experienced forms are the only ones that
exist.
Now, although hind site should, in theory, be very accurate
when connecting results with action taken, it nevertheless often makes the
wrong connections mostly because it makes those connections already
prepped by a particular world view. It verifies what it sets out to prove.
That's why science has required double blind experiments or experiments
that could be verified by disinterested peers.
Wisdom traditions,
as Huston Smith calls them, religions as they have been called, spiritual
practices as the new age calls them, have a long and varied history as one
of the elements of human thought and understanding. Spiritual Belief
Systems comprise one of perhaps ten major themes that comprises the
development of a civilization's world view. I'll list
them:
Spiritual Belief
Systems
Experiential Knowledge
Bases
Theories of
Existence
Forms of
Governance
Economic
Systems
Ethical and Moral
Values
Standards of Beauty and
Esthetics
Historic and Mythological
Narratives
Hierarchical Groupings
Theories of Human
Consciousness
Each of these strands has both a developmental
dimension traced through time and a distribution dimension, a snapshot of
its radiating display frozen in time. That's true of the spiritual belief
dimension, the religions that became their hallmark, and their present
divergent and diverse states of thought and practice.
I agree that
the orthodox of all belief systems seem to be the cause of much trouble in
the world. I think they are fighting a losing battle, and with their backs
against the wall they are making a last ditch effort to push their view
into power. And whereas they are admittedly self righteous asses, they are
now representing the one force powerful enough to halt free-enterprise
capitalism from overrunning all the strands of the human story
line.
We, the moderate spiritual journeyers, must reclaim our
territory, reclaim the great bell curve bulge, reclaim the true nature of
spirit and the growth of human consciousness. We must not, rejecting all
orthodoxies, cede the field to capitalism. Put the word Commercial in
front of each of the strands of human development listed above and see
what you get... not very attractive.
But that's what seems to await
us unless we, you and I, mount a campaign to retake the spiritual high
ground, as we see it, because we are the middle class power that makes the
US so vibrant and strong and the US is the main power in the world. I
don't know how else to do it than by writing to you, or publishing Monthly
Missive, or speaking to various groups here, and, of course, practicing it
in my everyday life. To quote Joel Cohen, from his last message to
me:
The body politic here and elsewhere needs to have an
understanding of the philosophies of the dominant cultures and if they are
not clear they need to be redefined and clarified. Our guiding
mandate here is that all men are created equal and endowed by their
creator (whatever that be) with certain inalienable rights life, liberty,
personal pursuit of happiness, un-exploitable justice, equal treatment
before the law etc. We certainly need to make it clear that we stand for
these rights and mandates globally. Your principals speak more of
responsibilities than rights which I like. In situations where
people are granted their unalienable rights, and assume their
responsibilities as well, they will prosper and the world will
prosper.
Morty Breier, Kailua-Kona Hawaii, 6/18/2002
RETURN
TO TABLE OF
CONTENTS
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Marcus Uzilevsky: We are proud to have as a contributor distinguished California
artist and musician Marcus Uzilevsky. Talk about hip, he's in the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame, for his 1965-68 group The Third Bardo, (he
jammed with Dylan in the Cafe Wah). Under his present name
Uzca, he has two world music CDs Slice of Light and
Gypsy Dreams, this last he calls Nouveau Klezmer. Klezmer, the
Jewish music of Eastern Europe with its weeping and laughing clarinets
and violins has always been in Uzca's heart and soul and his latest CD
blends Gypsy guitars, African talking drums, Middle Eastern belly
dancing rythms, Klezmer violin and clarinet and hypnotic vocals in his
intuitive universal language. We are invited to join in the dance of
life to celebrate our common humanity. As an artist Marcus is well hung
in permanent collections and 50 one man shows, selling over a half
million lithographs. Born in Brooklyn, migrating to California in the
late sixties he is now esconsed in an old railroad building on the
fringes of Marin. Uzilevsky has long been a spiritual journeyer,
creating his poetry in both the visual and musical arts. The man is out
there and be here to tune in on his poetic offerings..
Rose': Rose'
was born deep in the Bronx in 1934. He began crafting his poetry
attending a number of colleges during the 50's. After a stint in the
army he bounced around working as a lifeguard, masseur and astrology
writer. He saw his heaviest combat duty teaching High School English in
New York. In the early sixties he assiduously pursued Ancient Greek
while dining on Mexican beaches, toping in European cafes and slumming
in Moroccan dives. Between a stint of acting, including the movie "The
Edge", he published a book of drawings and launched skin diving trips
throughout the Yucatan and the Florida Keys. His "School of the Night"
specialized in occult classes and his "Liquid Wedge Gallery" made media
history with sculptor Tony Price's first "Atomic Art Show" in NYC in
1969. Struck with what he calls his "Man-o-pause", Rose' started his
epic poem "The Pearl in the Crown", still a grand work in progress. He
performs as a stand-up poet in salons, homes, theatres, clubs, sushi
bars, on radio and television in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Santa
Fe. Rose' now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Tony Price, 1937-2000: Thomas Anthony Price wa born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1937. He
began his art career in the Marine Corps, painting sixty-foot murals and
portraits of generals. After his stint in the marines, 1955-57, he
painted and illustrated books, poetry and magazines in New York City and
Mexico. Price then worked from 1962-3 as an art director and set
designer in films and television for Studio 30 in New York and Brazil.
In 1963 Price left for Paris and Rome to paint. His European work is
held by collectors in Italy, France, Holland, Germany and Spain. In 1964
he returned to New York and began sculpting in stone, metal and
electronic materials. Since his move to New Mexico in 1965, Price has
worked with nuclear scrap materials exclusively from Los Alamos from
which he has created icons of world religions. Tony died in early 2000
after a yearlong battle with a stroke that had left him partially
paralyzed. 