N. (from rc-list@list.rc.org):

I was raised in a very observant Muslim family but in a non Muslim country
and a country that is quite anti religious (France). This and the oppressive
way my parents have used religion with me and my siblings have led me to
reject religion and god when I was a teenager. As I grew up studying
philosophy I was always surrounded by anti religious friends. So my
rejection went quite unquestioned. I have been rejected by my family for
religious reasons (I married a non Muslim), that and all the history of
religious wars confirmed me that religion was a bad thing.

I have started reconsidering my perspective on religion as I have started to
discharge on reclaiming my Arab-Muslim heritage and as I have started
looking for more spiritual experiences as part of a search of living in
present time and letting go of control patterns.

I now have a deep feeling of connection to the universe and I call that the
presence of god. I am not part of any religion right now and I know part of
it is still undischarged feelings from my early experiences. Another part is
many things in religions that I have a hard time making sense of. Parts on
which I am interested on hearing rational perspectives. Those parts seem to
me in contradiction with RC theory. I would be interested in reading the
perspectives on this from RCers who participate in any kind of religion or
spiritual practices.

Here are those parts and how far I've been thinking about this :

1. Ego vs god's will : I have come to consider the ego as the sum of all my
distress patterns so it makes sense to me to be outside of it. But the most
religions invite to let go of our own will, to not take pride in ourselves
as it is god's action, to consider that we are not powerful, god is.... This
seems to me in contradiction with RC perspective of self appreciation,
feeling powerful... We learn in RC to always trust our own thinking but in
religions it seems to me that people are invited to believe some things and
not try to think them through.

2. From religious perspective things can happen if we ask god without us
actually making it happen. This seems to me in contradiction with the RC
idea of making consistent efforts to make things happen not to count on any
kind of miracle. But I also wonder if the religious perspective is not close
to what we call the upward trend in RC, which I don't have a very clear
understanding of.

Well, I am looking forward to hear about your perspective on this and any
other aspects that you find relevant about RC and religion / spiritual
experiences.
　

K. (from rc-list@list.rc.org):
It is surprising to me that I feel a desire to respond to this message since usually talking about God and religion is something I don't do easily.  However, I struggle with some of the same issues and would like to share my thinking and get feedback.
 
God's will v. ego.  My understanding of this at this time is that I "do the footwork" and then accept what shows up.  In other words, I do have a direction (goal) and I do what I can reasonably do, but Spirit/God may or may not lead me to that place.  And when I find myself wherever I do, I express gratitude for it and appreciate the lessons, whether it is what I expected or not.
 
Powerful is a strange term.  Most of the time it means that we can create the results we choose.  I believe that we do have that power, but that if it is not used in alignment with something greater than ourselves we may end up somewhere else.  For example, I wanted some specific things in terms of a house and I built the house I wanted, but I made a bad judgment about where I built it and I was only able to live there for 6 years.  The house is beautiful and everything I could want, but the community was too limiting.  Was I powerful?  I am grateful that I had the opportunity to see my idea come to fruition and I often reflect on the fact that the house is still there, even though I don't own it or live in it anymore.
 
So, what does it mean to "make things happen?"  Most of what I "make happen" happens with the participation of a lot of other people.  Even simple things, like making a meal, involve a lot of other people who grow the crops, harvest, transport, process, stock the shelves, sell the goods, etc.  So, did I make this good meal?  Well, sort of.  Was there an organizing force greater than myself whose cooperation was necessary?  Perhaps not some individual in the sky, but certainly power greater than myself.
 
The next step which many take is to consider whether this power greater than oneself "cares" about me.  Am I important enough, etc. for any power greater than myself to care about?  I find that choosing to believe in a loving, caring force supports me in taking risks I wouldn't otherwise take and in moving through pain which I otherwise couldn't face alone.  The image that I have from the story:  A man was talking to God.  He said "God, when things were good, I saw our two sets of footprints in the sand.  But when I was having a really tough time, there was only one set of footprints.  Where were you?  And God says: "I was carrying you."  This image has carried me through many difficult dark times.
 
Now, there is another question which hasn't been addressed here.  Can we best find this sense of support for ourselves in religion.  Having a belief in a power greater than myself doesn't mean I practice a religion.  Do I need to praise God?  If so, does it matter how I do it?  Does this set of words or that make God more happy?  Or is it in my actions?  From one of the RC Jewish journals I found a rewrite of the 10 commandments as if they were written by Thich Nhat Han (misspelled).  They made such good sense to me and I thought, if someone had given me these precepts in this form how much easier my life would have been because I could understand them and follow them.  (Although even after reading them in this form, I have done things which were prohibited out of my own willfulness and experienced the consequences.)  They are not "rules" but give guidance to what will bring happiness and what will bring pain.
 
However, I still have reservations about "religion" because I have so often seen it misused to create a view of the world which is about "us and them."  If there is a Spirit which cares about us, it cares about EVERYONE, not just the people who perform certain behaviors in certain ways and places.  Just like RC says that we are "all good" I believe that no one is left out of God's love.  Nonetheless certain behaviors have certain consequences, and they are natural consequences, not because someone disapproves of me or I am "bad."
 
I don't know if this will bring you any enlightenment, but I would be interested in your responses.
 
　

B. M. (from rc-list@list.rc.org):

I think religion, at its best, is an attempt to express reality as opposed
to patterns.  The religious perspective is indeed very close to what we
call the upward trend.  Many forms of spiritual practice such as mediation,
prayer and chanting, affirm the upward trend and our part in it and direct
our attention away from distress.  And, of course, there are many distress
patterns in religion.

Regarding ego vs. God's will: If we are truly connected with the whole
universe, then the "self" of the universe can be felt working through us,
and that can be said to be the working of God's will. So self-appreciation
and acting powerfully are in accordance with God's will.

Regarding counting on miracles: To me, the idea of the Grace of God is very
similar to the RC notion of "the word from outside" one's distress
patterns. You can be passive and powerless and hope for a miracle, or you
can be active and powerful and align yourself with God's will and hope for
a miracle. These are two entirely different perspectives.  The first is
distressed; the second, powerful.

　

A. Z. (from rc-list@list.rc.org):

Thanks for raising these two questions.

Egos came up in a in a cultural context in two notes I posted on Parenting
and Wide World Change lists. I understand the ego as the sum of our
behaviours: To the distress patterns you mention, I would add our inherent
nature. In wide-world terms, we all work hard in every day life to balance
the 'good' (inherent self)  and the 'bad' (patterned self) in us. I think
that religion attempts to help us balance both by transcending them through
and/or to a higher being or level. In other words, I see RC and religion as
complementary practices:

- RC helps me deal with the day-to-day, as a contradiction to what happens to
me and around me. It helps me stay as clear as possible and operate as
effectively as possible. I call that the wide-world ego, or the
manifestation of my self in the wide world.

- Religion helps me connect my self with the universe at a plane beyond the
day-to-day. I call that the spiritual ego, the manifestation of my self in
the spiritual world.

- And the two balance each other. Keeping clear and operating well helps me
have a better life, and give me easier access to the spiritual. Keeping
spiritually fulfilled in turn helps me gain easier access to every day life.

It follows for me at least, that there is a dance involved here - we are our
own choreographers, our allies are our the cast, others are the audience,
and our ideology is the orchestra. At the risk of stretching the metaphor,
RC provides the dancing performance, and religion is what dancers and
audience alike walk away with from a thrilling performance. Like in ballet,
there is a lot of work involved, and while we get "a little help from our
friends", I see it's basically up to us. I was raised Catholic in southern
France, and left both religion on location because I was unwilling to hand
over the choreography to someone else (I emigrated to Canada, like my
parents did from Hungary).


F. (from rc-list@list.rc.org):

In my work I am hired to help people in solving problems. I won't dive
into the specifics but I'll try to stay abstract. These people tend to
come to me, not with a question, but with their analyses of the problem
and frustration about the analyses not leading to a solution. Because I
have more knowledge and experience (in that field) I get to think about
how the information they constructs a model and how easily some little
pieces of missing information lead to misconception.

A model is like a theory about something in a box that you can not see.
You get some information by rolling and shaking the box. This information
is input for your brain to build an idea about what is in the box. When
you think there is a rubber ball in the box you will try to check the
information to the model of the rubber ball. Here it gets tricky. You get
lots of information from shaking and rolling the box, so your brain selects
information that is useful to support the rubber ball hypotheses and will
try to neglect information that does not fit the rubber ball theory.

The model people maintain can be completely wrong, but as long as the
model is successful, they will be happy with it. There is no need to
change the model. And as long as the model works, new information will be
selected to support the model. 'Believe' plays a role in this system in
helping to sort out useful information. Soon the model will be reality.
Changing the model without need then becomes scary. Until a problem rises
that the model does not help solving and the only way out is to accept a
new 'reality'.

So I get to choose whether I can change the model a little bit, by giving
some new information that will help to shift just enough to be 'helped' or
to do some 'education' when a bigger shift is needed, or even sometimes I
get to change the inside of the box (I take out the cube that is actually
inside the box and put in a rubber ball; that is when I feel like I am the
supreme being :-)

At the same time I run into the limits of my own model(s). I spend days
(and nights) testing adaptations of the model, looking for information,
building test situations etc. etc. I am used to completely review models
of my reality because I have been in situations were my insights didn't
help me and I was pushed to deliver a solution (and because I have
successfully helped people to change their models of reality, it became
easier for me to throw away a model and construct a new one). Because I am
not in the position to change what is in the box, it has always come down
to changing my mental model. I have been trained in this job in looking
for assumptions that do not work (anymore). I have played around with
assumptions to see how a simple change of the root of a chain of thoughts
can influence the outcome.

From a theory point of view, religions provide a model of reality that
tries to deal with the challenges of live. Many of the religions I know
something about, have theory and practices that conflict with my model and
I can choose to either accept it is different or adapt my model. Religions
also tend to give models without information to validate the proposed
reality. Looking for this information is then sometimes called blasphemy.
I think it is rather arrogant to claim a religious model to be closer to
reality then any other model. At the same time I can understand why a
model of reality that creates a god to the image of manhood is attractive.
If it is a useful model to so many people, why would I claim my model is
'better' (more real) than the religious model.

So far, the upward trend has become my religion. I am tempted to put
quotes around religion. I saw a documentary of world famous scientist
(Gould, Hawkins, etc.) who seamed to get to the conclusion that their must
be something like an upward trend as the explanation for our existence.
This documentary, and the opinion of these scientists helps me to trust my
own analysis. Is this more valuable than the insights of religions that
rely on generations of experiences?  So far I have not found anything in
religion that was (1) meaningful to me and (2) did fit the
assumptions of RC theory including the upward trend.

The upward trend is a force that goes against entropy (the force of
destruction: a natural tendency of systems to increase disorder) and
therefore the source of higher organization. It is easy to see that on a
longer timescale manhood has developed, our societies have become better
organized and more people are educated and fed, people live longer, etc.
This is the result of the upward trend. RC theory is one result of the
upward trend. To love each other as a more intelligent solution to social
challenges is upward trend. The laws of physics alone cannot explain the
development of live without some force like the upward trend. As I recall
Harvey gives many examples in the Upward Trend article (I will reread it
myself to).

I don't think the upward trend is far away from what many people expect
from god. When you don't think of god as a creature or a being, but as a
benign force that balances natural forces slightly in our favor, it gets
close. When that's to abstract it may be useful to create an image. But
would I expect miracles from it? When I want something to happen I turn to
reclaiming my power as a more rewarding and more hopeful perspective into
getting something done:

    I CAN ... and the upward trend is in my favor. Ha ha!

Ego is a matter of definition. So I don't really understand what Nadia
means by "Ego versus god's will". Can ego be defined as solely the sum of
distress patterns. I think my ego is bigger (grin), that is, there is more
in me than distress. And on the other hand don't forget distress patterns
once started out as a workable solution to certain challenges, and because
we didn't have a vision to help us move beyond we were stuck with the
pattern. That doesn't make patterns bad. They are just patterns waiting to
be re-evaluated. Good versus bad is a concept that I know from my
religious background, that I define as the result of Christian dualism. It
tries to mould everything I know (including RC) into good and bad.

So I like to be simple about it. God's will is the upward trend. Sometimes
it is hard to estimate what is upward trend. At those times I have found
that following my own thinking gives me better access to my reemergence
(which is part of the upward trend = god's will). Circle closed.

I appreciate this discussion!


For reference: The following is a short piece entitled as "God" by Harvey Jackins,

Harvey Jackins (From a letter written in 1973, carried by Present Time, July 2009):

   My own idea of God is one I came to very slowly. I started out a Norwegian Lutheran, which is a strict,
fundamental kind of Christian. I rebelled for many years against the hypocrisy that went with it and was sort of anti-God, but I think at this point I now understand much better what God is. I think the notion of God was invented by human beings in order to keep their own good human nature out in sight when their troubles and the ways they acted because of them were covering it up.
  I don't have any trouble being at ease with a member of any religion now, because 1 think that if there is a
God, then certainly that God would be no less than the whole of the universe, and that certainly exists. So if
someone wants to call that God, and I privately believe it is the universe, I have no objection to calling it
God when 1 discuss it with him or her.
  I am not so happy about organized religion, of course, because it is used for the organized repression
of individuals and to pour new patterns of fear and shame on them. But as an expression of the best
in the universe and the best in human beings, I can respect any notion of God and someone's worship of the
idea.