Brave Enough To Be Bliss

I believe God knows my heart and instead of worrying about what anyone else believes or how they behave, I choose to take personal responsibility for ensuring my life is lived with as much kindness, love, and grace as I can. In the end, God will know I did that, and I think He will be pleased. I will have done what I could, my small part, to get us closer to more peace in this world. Everything I know about Jesus teaches us the basics of how to be good humans. Whether people choose to believe he was the son of God or simply a historical figure, if they lived in alignment with how he treated all people, that alone would get us closer to peace. It seems to me we could have a much healthier world if we could simplify and focus on spirituality or even the commonality among religions and denominations versus fighting over the vast differences. Most of the world’s religions have an emphasis on morality and ethical behavior, which in my dumbed down way of thinking and speaking equates to treating our fellow humans in kind and loving ways. If we could agree on that at a high level, then when we speak or act, we could ask ourselves, will what I say or do fall under that common umbrella of kind and loving words or behavior? If yes, say or do it. If no, don’t say or do it. If we allowed that to guide our words and actions, I see a greatly reduced amount of conflict in our interpersonal relationships and therefore within the world. Think about this related to religion, but the same concept of fear and control could apply to most anything people are in conflict about. ▪ If I’m confident I’m right, then it doesn’t matter if other people choose to believe what I believe or not. I don’t have anything to fear because I’m right. Therefore, I don’t need to control anyone else to believe what I believe. I can live peacefully, treating other people with kindness and love, just letting them believe whatever they want to believe because I have nothing to fear. ▪ If subconsciously or consciously I fear I might not be right , then I’m going to fight with everything I have in me to try to control them until they believe what I believe. And because of that fear, I will treat them in unkind and unloving ways which creates shame within me. And because of that shame, I can’t allow them to peacefully exist believing something different than I do. I have to make them be wrong so I can feel justified in my behavior, even when that behavior goes against a core belief of mine that I’m fighting about. Periodically I receive emails from Craig Hamilton and on October 2, 2020, I read the following from Taking a Stand for Openness: How to Have Conviction in Your Beliefs Without Holding Them Too Tightly : “ One of the great insights of integral theory — one that the philosopher Ken Wilber often makes —is that everybody’s right, but some people are more right than others. This means that there’s a nugget of truth to everyone’s viewpoint. So, when we try on othe r people’s perspectives, even those we don’t agree with, we’re able to see those nuggets of truth in their view. This shifts us into an orientation where we’re no longer defending our own positions but are actually interested in the truths held by all sides of an issue. And because most issues are generally more complex than they seem, taking this approach gets us much closer to the actual, multidimensional truth. ” I ’ve heard religious people say they’re just trying to “save” others even as they are being unkind and judgmental. If any Higher Power was so concerned with everyone being exactly the same and believing exactly the same, I think we wouldn’t have any choice in the matter and we would have all been made the same. If the Higher Power isn’t forcing us to all have the same beliefs, why does any individual or group think they have that responsibility or right? Because we are all so different, we all respond to and are inspired by different messages, music, rules, structure, language, etc. Even within a family, not all children will need, respond to, or be inspired by the same things. I f these children with the same DNA in a small nuclear family are all different, why wouldn’t within a population of more than eight billion people there be all kinds of different religions to appeal to all those “Confidence comes not from always being right, but from not fearing to be wrong.” Peter McIntyre “Be careful not to dehumanize people you disagree with. In our self -righteousness, we can easily become the very things we dislike in others.” Eugene Cho

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