[14/40] Friend of God

Friend of God.

PLEASE NOTE: Some readers of The 77% Weekly have told me that they have a hard time when I use the word God as they don't believe in an external, ultimate being. That's cool. But, if you are one of those readers, I still want you to read this article and think about your answers. Remember, I’m not trying to convert anyone to have any particular God beliefs — the mission of Religion-Outside-The-Box is to help you find and be with (the) God (of your understanding). Thinking about God in the way this spiritual-religious exercise presents God can help you figure out what you do and don’t believe. -RB

Two of the dictionary definitions of the word friend are:

• Somebody who is not an enemy.
• Somebody with whom one has a close personal relationship of mutual affection and trust.

Now, think about your conceptualization of God. (Admittedly, this is a pretty difficult thing to do. After all, God is often defined as beyond comprehension and the greatest minds of all time have had a hard time doing so; all the more so you and I. Nonetheless, think about your understanding of God.)

Here are some spiritual-religious questions to muse upon:

Would you consider yourself a friend of God?

• Would you say that you and God have a close personal relationship of mutual affection and trust?
• Would you say that you and God have a relationship at all?
• Are you and God friends?

What is your relationship with (the) God (of your understanding)?

• Do you treat God the way that many people treat relatives they don’t like — inviting them to events and then ignoring them?
• Do you treat God as though God doesn’t exist?
• Do you think or believe that God wants a relationship with you?

If you think of you and God as friends, how close are you?

• Do you tell God that you would be there for God in thick or thin?
• Do you and God exchange cards for New Years or birthdays?
• Do you call upon God to help you out when you need help and do you help God out when it looks like God could use a hand?
• Do you feel, metaphorically, like you owe God a phone call?
• Do you frequently/sometimes/never invite God to meals?
• Do you call God's name when you are having sex with someone else?

An explanation and book-plug.

The point of this exercise is this: it is important for spiritual-religious adults to have an understanding of our relationship with (the) God (of our understanding).

A lot of people assume that “(the) God (of their understanding)” is the kind of thing they can keep track of in their head. To use a homework analogy, they look at it as though this is something that isn't going to be turned in for a grade and consequently that they don’t need to do a good job. This, of course, is shoddy reasoning. Your relationship with (the) God (of your understanding) is one of the most important relationships that you might have in your entire lifetime — so it behooves you to actively think about that relationship.

To this end, I'm glad to plug my book, now in it's third printing: How To Find Out What (The) God (Of Your Understanding) Wants From You. (The previous link will also help you to download an electronic copy.)

With love,

Rabbi Brian

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

[13/40] A Simple Mistake

A simple mistake.

My friend Käthe did something recently that was so impressive, I need to share it with you.

Käthe had brought her son over for a play date at our house. Her husband, Jeffery, stopped in for a quick visit, and then he went to work. Inadvertently, Jeffery took both his car keys and her car keys when he left.

None of us realized this until Jeffery was already at work an hour and a half away.

Käthe left him a message telling him of his error, but she didn’t shame him, hold it over his head, or let it ruin her day.

Instead, she spent the whole day with Jane, Emmett, and me.

She didn't talk about him behind his back.

"It was a simple mistake," she said.

We should all give others (and ourselves) the dignity of not being perfect.

With love,

Rabbi Brian

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

[12/40] Feelings + Thoughts

Feelings + Thoughts:

(A spiritual-religious chicken or the egg situation.)

We are all aware, at least on some level, that we ought to strive to be present — to be, in the words of Ram Dass, "here" and "now."

But so few of us do.

Here's a simple exercise — a sort of spiritual-religious mad-libs — to help.

Fill in the following sentence:

I am _______ (insert: feeling) that ________ (insert: apparent cause of the feeling).

Here are a few examples:

feeling ................................. apparent cause of the feeling

sad /angry / mad ............... yesterday I lost $5.

happy / joyous ................... today I found $5.

surprised / confused ......... yesterday I lost $5 and today I found $5.

The radical suggestion that I am going to make is that we investigate lopping off the second half of the sentence — in other words, that we ignore the apparent cause of the feeling and just allow ourselves to be in the feeling. (After all, feelings are to be felt, not thought.)

When I pay attention to the actual order in which things occur, I notice that some of the time the feeling comes first and then I seek an appropriate rational explanation as to why it is that I feel that way — and then I re-write history in my mind to convince myself that the later caused the former.

My belief is that often the feelings come first.

For example, about six months ago I was lying in bed, frustrated. Instead of allowing myself to just experience the situation — me allowing myself to be frustrated, I found myself going through a mental Rolodex of things that might have been the cause of my frustration. Eventually I found one and blamed all my frustrations on that event. However, I knew even in that moment that this apparent cause of my frustration was just a convenient, semi-logical explanation. Point of fact, I was frustrated before I “realized” what I was frustrated about.

I am certain you have had similar experiences. Have you had moments in your life when you have felt filled with anger or sadness but you just didn’t know why?

I think it behooves us to just be in our feelings when we are in them and to refrain from always trying to attribute causes to them.

Moreover, when we label our emotions — we categorize them. Something that starts to feel like sadness we call sadness and then we lose out on the actual experience of it. Maybe it wasn’t sadness after all?

So, what am I saying here?

Maybe — like infants laying in cribs — we should just let our feelings just wash over us from time to time?

Maybe we ought to just be in our experience of life as it happens...

I don’t think there is any better spiritual-religious advice than that.

With love,

Rabbi Brian

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

[11/40] Was it better?

Was it better?

I don't know about you, but recently I've been hearing, over-hearing, and participating in a lot of talk about "the good ol' days."

People blather on about how the price of things used to be reasonable or how you used to be able to do this or that and it wasn't a problem, but now... well, now you just can't buy things like you used to and you can't just do things the way that you used to.

I wonder why this is happening right now.

Is it a spring-time thing or perhaps an election year thing? What has happened or is happening that is causing us as a society to LONG for a mythical past when the way things were better, easier, more honest...

(I don't really know the answer and would love your thoughts...)

All I can tell you is that the past always seems more comfortable than the present. The worries we had in the past don't seem as scary as the worries that we have today. From a logical point of view, this is because the future of the past is the present and therefore not as worrisome as the future of the present which is an unknown.

Seems like a good time to get comfortable with the spiritual-religious practices of faith (1, 2, 3, 4), surrender (1, 2), and acceptance (1).

With love,

Rabbi Brian

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

[08/40] Comfort

Ergonomics, comfort, and some spiritual-religious thoughts.

Three spiritual-religious things to ponder on the topic of comfort.

Privative Theory

The folks who design chairs will tell you that the best definition of comfort is an absence of discomfort. When I first reflected on this my reaction was, "Really, that's the best definition there is for comfort — not being uncomfortable?"

But sometimes that is the best way of knowing something — knowing that it isn't something else. (This is known in philosophical circles as privative theory .)

In the spiritual-religious world, it happens quite a lot. The biggest example is the definition of evil as the absence of good, and the definition of God as the absence of evil.

Outside of theology, we often define ourselves, not by what we have and are, but by what we want and lack — how backwards is that? We ought to be more aware of what we have and are more than we are aware of what we aren’t and don't have.

Moreover, a lot of people define themselves on the spiritual-religious spectrum based on not being, believing, or doing like others do. I know a lot of people who believe that Judaism is the "un-Christianity" — so, if Christians believe in the devil, heaven or that the messiah has come, then Jews aren’t supposed to. And I know other people who are spiritual-but-not-religious — if they think that “religious” people use the word God, these folks will use any word but.

(F.Y.I. with regard to Judaism being the un-Christianity, it might astound you to learn that none of the above assumptions are correct. Judaism, actually is replete with a long history of all of these “un-Jewish” things: a belief in the devil, heaven, and a messiah. For example, in the 1800s, 60% of world Jewry believed that Shabbitai Tzvi was the living messiah. And, today, many Lubavitch Jews believe that the late Rabbi Menachem Schneerson was and is moshiach — the messiah.)

Here is a quote attributed to Laozi and Tao Te Ching with regard to openness and the importance of not thinking so concretely about the world:

Unawareness of one’s feet is the mark of shoes that fit. Unawareness of one’s waist is the mark of a belt that fits. Unawareness of right and wrong is the mark of a mind at ease.

Comfort and attitude

A recent study on the coziness of airline seats showed a direct correlation between the friendliness of the crew and complaints about the seats. The less friendly the crew, the more complaints about the comfort of the seats; the more friendly the crew, the fewer people who noticed the seats.

It’s the warmth and kindness of the crew makes the seats more comfortable, not their size.

We all know how friendly dispositions — ours or others — melt problems whereas snarkiness causes more.

Being uncomfortable

There seems to be an unspoken and unwritten notion that we ought not feel any discomfort in our lives.

Where did we get the idea that we oughtn't ever be uncomfortable?

Where does this notion come from?

Our compulsive, constant pursuit of comfort and avoidance of discomfort will always disappoint us as we will never be able to achieve a cessation from suffering. (If this sounds vaguely Buddhist, you would be right.)

There is no such thing as a life free of discomfort.

So, as a spiritual-religious exercise, I would advocate that we all take some time in this next week to get a little more comfortable with our discomfort.

Really.

We ought to.

We might as well get used to it.

Fighting it isn't going to work.

Our discomfort is going to be with us for a while — no matter how cushy your chair or how nice the flight attendants are.

With love,

Rabbi Brian

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

(30/40) Peace.

Peace is not the absence of strife
. . .

Peace is not the absence of strife, it is more than that.

In Judaism, there is classic prayer asking God to give us the type of peace that exists in the heavens. This definition of peace is not the bucolic, pastoral, Thomas Kinkade image of peace that many folks are running around hoping for. The peace of the heavens is the harmony of the planets, each with their own tremendous amount of force, co-existing. That's real peace.

Real peace is the harmony of the apparently disharmonious.

And, I wish that for you . . .

I pray that you achieve a sense of peace with the conflicting aspects of your life . . . I pray that we all find a place of harmony within the apparent disharmony of this world.

Amen.

With love,


Rabbi Brian


And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

(23/40) Really Judging Ourselves.

On really judging ourselves.

I’m lucky enough to be a staff member at a summer magic camp every year. During the week-long session, the young prestidigitators strut their stuff and compete in a contest judged by the staff.

I asked a number of the participants if they could name the categories the judges used in determining their scores. What I found fascinating was that most could not even name half of the categories!

Isn't this also true in our day-to-day lives? We're constantly judging and determining our grade. But, do we really know the criteria we use to judge ourselves?

I decided to try to figure this out for myself. So, over a few days time, I compiled a list of categories upon which I found myself judging my self.

Here was my list:

• Listening (& not interrupting).
• Empathy for and kindness towards others.
• Seeming smart — including cleverness, wittiness and breadth of knowledge.
• Multitask-ability.
• Self-sufficiency.

By Friday I had learned a number of things:

• While I do judge myself on both how clever and self-sufficient I am, neither is a category upon which I want to base my self-worth.
• I often feel like I'm about to receive a bad grade and so I find myself frantically "performing" to improve my grade.
• I interrupt, a lot.

If you were to take an inventory of the qualities you judge yourself on, what would be on your list?
Should you choose to do this exercise, feel free to e-mail me and let me know what you learned after you graded yourself.

What I pray for every one of us is that we realize that we were passing before we even took the exam.

With love,


Rabbi Brian

(21/40) Be here now!

A Religion-Outside-The-Box Event.

You are invited!

• Who's invited: You.
• Where: Here.
• When: Now, right now!

Be right where you are, right now.

• You don't need to bring anything.
• Just be with reality as it is.

With love,


Rabbi Brian

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

(20/40) Same Sex Cheeseburgers

Same Sex Marriage as a Bacon-Double Cheeseburger.

Many Americans will not eat pork. Many Americans site biblical injunctions as their reasoning for not eating pork. And, many Americans will not eat pork for other religious or health reasons as well.

Nonetheless, in America the sale of bacon is still legal.

Similarly, there are Americans who interpret the biblical prohibition against boiling a kid in its mother's milk as meaning that they should not consume milk and meat in the same meal. But it is still legal for Americans who enjoy milkshakes with their cheeseburgers to do so.

The Bible is not and must not be the basis upon which laws of this country are made. The basis of the laws of this country are to be found in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as the hearts of our elected and appointed representatives.

Why shouldn't we use the Bible as a basis for our laws? Because our society is thousands of years more complex than that of Biblical days. Because the Bible tolerates slavery, the slaying of disobedient children, and ownership of women. Moreover, countries in which religious doctrine is used as the basis of law have been governments that the United States of America has historically opposed.

Consequently, any citation of the Bible with regard to the civil law of marriage especially with regard to same-sex marriage, is moot.

Simply put: much like those who believe that God doesn't want them to eat dairy and meat simultaneously abstain from eating bacon-double cheeseburgers, if you disapprove of homosexual unions, don't enter into one.

With love,



Rabbi Brian

I am very proud to tell you that I am a featured theologian in the soon to be released documentary For The Bible Tells Me So which explains how the Bible has been misinterpreted by the religious right with regard to homosexuality.

(It will be screening at Outfest in Los Angeles on Tuesday night, July 17 and will open nationwide in October. Get tickets quickly, it's selling out.)

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.

(19/40) (Happiness,) Acceptance & Being Here

On acceptance and being here.
(Actually, an except from Rabbi Brian's upcoming book: Personalized Religion.)

Late 13th and early 14th century mystic Meister Eckhart said, "God wants nothing of you but the gift of a peace-filled heart."

This is true. God wants my heart to be peace-filled.

This, I have learned, is not the same as happiness.

There is a notion on the street that God wants you to be happy all the time. That's simply not right. (You might, after taking your religious life into your own hands, feel more peace-filled, but that’s not the same as happy.) God wants me to have a peace-filled heart, to experience all the emotions of a filled life, not for me to be constantly strung out on or looking for a hit of the drug "happiness."

(Happy is a dangerous goal. “Happy” is a relative term, and therefore it both has limits and ends. The pursuit of constant happiness and its inevitable failure, however, does drive much of the U.S. economy.)

Peace isn't just the absence of strife — it's the harmony of the apparently disharmonious. A peace-filled heart is one that can contain in harmony the apparently disharmonious — happy and sad, love and hate, good and bad.

As a child, I used to fervently strive to see only the happy, to the point of denying "negative" emotions and imagining a "happy island" that someday I would reach. I'm wiser now to know that within each joy there is sadness — for example, at every wedding there is a cause for celebration that the couple found each other and there is also, while hardly ever acknowledged, a sadness that they will one day have to lose each other. I know now that there is a shadow side to every emotion and that God wants my heart to be filled, not delusional.

God wants me to be present to reality, accepting and experiencing reality as it is. To accept the things I cannot change, even if I don’t like them.

(Acceptance is not abetting, advocating, agreeing, aiding, approving, assisting, authenticating, authorizing, backing, complying, concurring, confirming, consenting, cultivating, encouraging, endorsing, furthering, liking, maintaining, permitting, promoting, ratifying, reinforcing, sanctifying, supporting, or sympathizing. Acceptance is saying, "It is what it is, and what it is, is what is.")

To exist in the world, as it is, right now, wholly.

Jane once defined true happiness for a class I was teaching with the following:

Happiness is not things going or coming your way, but being in a relationship with reality.

That’s it. Taking reality as it is, accepting it. Exactly what Eckhart said, but in different words.

We can also sing it with the Beatles’s wording and melody, Let it be.

This truth is repackaged over and over and over again, in every language, and at least once a generation, one form of it becomes a hit. It’s the crux of the current-day bestsellers The Power of Now and Loving What Is. And, there’s reason to say it over and over again: it’s a truth, like a songbird or anything holy, that cannot be held in captivity and maintain its radiance.

It was said simply in three words by 1970s religious iconoclast Ram Dass, Be Here Now.

The truth is that this, right here, right now, is the only reality. Now. Here. Not hoping that anything will be different, but just being here with a peace-filled heart.

Lamenting, regretting, and living in the past is a denial of the splendor of the present. Fearing and overly preparing for the future does the same. We need to understand something that 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza said: "Reality and perfection are synonymous."

With a theological bent to it, Eckhart said the same:

You might ask, ‘How can I know if something is God’s will?’ My answer is, 'If it were not God’s will, it wouldn’t exist even for an instant; so if something happens, it must be God’s will.'

If we accept that reality is exactly as it is — then accepting that reality is exactly synonymous with God's will isn't a far leap at all.

Let me end with the rest of the above Eckhart quote:

If you truly enjoyed God’s will, you would feel exactly as though you were in the kingdom of heaven, whatever happened to you or didn’t happen to you.

With love,


Rabbi Brian

And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.