Hard to Believe These Dinosaurs Still Exist...

Gobsmacked!

A few months back, my daughter mentioned to me that one of her friends would never even entertain the possibility that God or anything "spiritual" might be real because "it's not scientific".  

"What?" I replied, taken aback.  "Sounds like her mind is stuck in the '70s... and she wasn't born until the '90s!  You should tell her that her 'science' is a bit out of date."  

Truly, I'm always a little stunned when I run into someone who believes atheism is scientific.  Of course, I'm just as gobsmacked when an otherwise intelligent person informs me - as one did recently - that he considers alternative medicine to be nonsense and "witchcraft" and that he is happy to follow the advice of his allopathic MD exclusively.  "Well, that's your funeral," I thought.   


All these encounters remind me a little of my dear old dad who - and no, this is one hundred percent true - could never keep straight the difference between yoga and yogurt!!  To be fair, though, dad grew up in a much different time and was always open-minded enough to admit defeat if you could present him with irrefutable evidence.  After all, he was a lawyer!  


So what do you say to someone who's essentially stuck in the mechanistic worldview of the Newtonian Physics and can't break out of that paradigm?  What do you say when they accuse you of being unscientific, gullible, "new age" or plain stupid?

Here are some simple suggestions for you.  Just remember, what resonates with each person is unique, so be prepared to adjust your words accordingly ;-)

Helping to Open Their Minds

First, know why you want to engage them in conversation at all.  For me, it stems from the fact that the study of human resilience, which is the study of maximizing human potential, demands an absolutely unbiased, evidence-based and therefore scientific approach to understanding the nature of reality itself.  It's quite clear that if we allow ourselves to be slaves to preconceived notions and comfortable ideologies, we are not doing that.  


Second, remember there are four stages to any scientific discovery - 1. It's dismissed as rubbish, 2. It's persecuted as heresy, 3. "There may be something to this" and 4. "It's absolutely true and we thought of it first".


Knowing that's the case, consider the following short video, where Dr. William Tiller, professor emeritus of Stanford University, explains why some people, including scientists, just can't handle new information that challenges their assumptions:














Third, if they're talking about anything spiritual, you can inform them that the original versions of most of the great spiritual traditions espoused a scientific method based on using the human mind-body organism as the instrument of observation.  So, if they're really as scientific as they claim, they should logically be prepared to do one of two things: a) engage in the spiritual experiments these traditions have outlined in order to prove or disprove their claims, or b) admit their ignorance on the subject.  

To help you with this, you should read the short article on "True Skepticism" on Dr. Gary Schwartz' website here.  


(Also, feel free to share your copy of my book, The 5 Pillars of Life, with them should they want a more detailed explanation, or send them to the Global Resilience Solutions website to get their own). 



Fourth, be prepared to share with them some of the latest scientific evidence on human potential, including experiments in such things as distance healing, research into the human energy system, scientific validation for methods used in energy psychology, such as EFT, and more.


To get started, you can have a look at the works of:

• Dr. Rupert Sheldrake (UK biologist who has pioneered the theory of morphic / morphogenetic fields)
• Dr. William Tiller (Renowned US physicist studying subtle energy fields)
• Cyndi Dale (US author who has done extensive research into energy medicine across cultures)
• Dr. Gary Schwartz (Doctor of psychology, medicine and surgery at the University of Arizona and a researcher into the spiritual side of psychology)

There are lots of others, of course, so I'm not pretending that's a complete list by any means.  Hopefully, though, all this will help you more than hold your own the next time your run into someone who "didn't get the memo"! 

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger 

Identifying "Spiritual Life Gone Wrong"

Today we begin a two-part series on something at the very heart of the issues of our time all over the world: what happens when religion goes wrong...


In its most extreme forms, we see the results worldwide every day - radical evangelicals preaching violence against gays, a papacy in deep denial over the scale of sexual abuse in its midst, mass rioting and random killings throughout the Muslim world at the mere rumor of an anti-Islamic publication in the West, and the list goes on and on.

Those extreme forms are just symptoms, though.  They're symptoms whose causes remain largely hidden from us as a civilization because we no longer understand a fundamental truth - not everything that passes itself off as "spiritual" is good, healthy and beneficial.  Far from it...

In fact, as a civilization we've become so divorced from real spiritual life that our ability to sort out false spiritual paths from healthy ones is marginal at best.  We no longer know the distinguishing criteria of each, the questions to ask or the tell-tale signs of each.  


In reality, asking most people today to distinguish real spiritual paths from false ones is about as useful as asking a Kalahari bushman for advice on your next family car.  

The Vital Importance of Spiritual Resilience

To get anywhere close to figuring out what spiritual resilience means, we first have to define the word "spiritual", which is no simple task.  


So let's put it this way: just as resilience itself is a path toward maximizing your potential on all levels (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual), spiritual resilience is the act of opening yourself to the deepest truths of your existence in this universe so that you can become everything you're meant to be. 

Not surprisingly, you can never become truly resilient and fulfilled as a human person if you ignore your own spiritual dimension, since that is, in reality, the deepest layer of your own being.


What I've called "authentic ancient traditions" in my bestseller, The 5 Pillars of Life*, are ancient, tried and proven approaches for doing exactly this.  And, contrary to what we assume, they have a boatload of evidence to back up the authenticity of their discoveries.  

Religion vs. Authentic Ancient Traditions

Here's a short excerpt from The 5 Pillars of Life* to help you wrap your head around the differences between what we usually call "religions" and something much deeper:


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All fantasies, especially that of religion, are caused by a short-circuit at the centre of the human personality.  This short-circuit, which exists between the heart which pumps blood (the circulatory system) and the spinal cord which circulates spinal fluid (the nervous system) is only repaired by ceaseless prayer in the heart.  It is only when the short-circuit is repaired that you begin to be liberated from the realm of fantasy.

- Rev. Dr. John Romanides in “Religion as a Neurobiological Illness”[i]

Startling, isn’t it?  - A world-renowned Orthodox priest and theologian calling religion a “neurobiological illness”!  But he’s right - Orthodox Christianity is not a religion in the conventional Western sense of that word.  And for that matter, neither are other authentic ancient traditions.  What Westerners conventionally call "religion" is a term that applies almost exclusively to their own approach to life as it has developed historically over the last thousand years or so.

"Religion" in the Western sense the word has a number of particular traits.  And generally speaking these traits apply to the vast majority of Western people who "practice their religion":

1. Religious teachings are ideological statements divorced from real life and which people subscribe to based on emotional considerations.  Teachings of authentic traditions are based on an experience of true life, and practitioners adhere to them based on observable verification.  

2. Religion provides psychological comfort and self justification in the face of its failure to cure psycho-spiritual (noetic) illness.  Authentic traditions take you from sickness to health; religions tell you your sickness is health.

3. Religion shifts the blame for good and evil, and for the final outcome of life, onto a deity or process (saying, for example, that illness is a punishment from God or that God decides whether to forgive you and send you to heaven or to damn you to hell).  Authentic traditions know that the Absolute Reality never does harm and that the only real danger to us in this world or hereafter comes from ourselves.

4. Religions and authentic traditions both have a ceremonial aspect or some collective manifestation, but the religious version exists to provide psychological comfort or aesthetic pleasure, whereas the authentic version is there to lead you to self-transformation.

5. Religion is always reduced to a compartment of life, whereas training in any authentic tradition involves every moment of life.

6. Religion's "transformation" of human life is limited to the superficial aspects of the personality, is often based on a tedious list of prohibitions and is geared toward social acceptability.  Religion produces nice people; authentic traditions produce extraordinary ones.

7. Real self-transformation is not a goal of religion; the knowledge and methods required for self-transformation are absent and there is no access to a lineage of transformed people.  Life degenerates into “salvation by association” (I’m saved because I’m part of the group) and “salvation by conviction” (I’m saved because I hold a particular opinion).

   

8. Religion is ignorant of the technical terminology of self-transformation and interprets it in a general and nebulous way.  The religious version of a tradition will seldom have any real idea what the authentic version is talking about, even if they use the same language.   

 

9. Religion is comfort-loving and presents no real challenge to its adherents, whereas authentic traditions take you beyond your comfort zone and into realms that religion knows nothing of. 

10.  Religion abhors mystery and tries to explain everything with concepts.  These concepts can be controlled and manipulated by a cadre of “experts” for the good of the institution, whereas transformed people – saints, immortals or bodhisattvas - are notoriously hard to control.

Given these traits of religion, it is not too surprising that Father Romanides classifies religion as a "neurobiological illness".  What this means is that religion has its origin in the fallen state – where the neurobiological malfunction characteristic of life in the fallen world has not been healed – and that it perpetuates this unhealed state as if it were normal.  So it is not surprising that religion prevents countless millions of people from finding true fulfillment and happiness.  And like all illness, it leads to untold suffering and misery.

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[i] Pages 1-3.  The order of the elements in this quotation has been slightly rearranged for the sake of clarity.  Several Orthodox writers of the twentieth century noted that the word “religion” as commonly used among peoples of  European ethnic origin does not correspond to Orthodox Christianity. 

*The 5 Pillars of Life is available on the Amazon.ca website or through http://www.the5pillarsoflife.com. 

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Next time, we'll talk about some of the real "dark side" of the religion and spirituality that's out there now - how to identify it and avoid it.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger 

 

Spiritual Life: Reality or Delusion? (Part 1)

"All fantasies, especially that of religion, are caused by a short-circuit at the centre of the human personality.  This short-circuit, which exists between the heart which pumps blood (the circulatory system) and the spinal cord which circulates spinal fluid (the nervous system) is only repaired by ceaseless prayer in the heart.  It is only when the short-circuit is repaired that you begin to be liberated from the realm of fantasy."

- Rev. Dr. John Romanides in “Religion as a Neurobiological Illness”

Startling, isn’t it?  - A world-renowned Orthodox Christian priest and theologian calling religion a “neurobiological illness” and a "fantasy"!    You may remember that quotation from chapter one of The 5 Pillars of Life.  I'm bringing it up here because one question I get asked frequently is:

"How do you tell which spiritual paths will transform you life and which ones will wreck your life?" 

A month from now I'll have a whole new class of university students to explore that question with, as we take a really hard, analytical look at not only the world's major "religions", but contemporary spiritual trends as well.




So why is spirituality important at all?  Who needs it?  Simple... if you want to become a truly resilient human being, you cannot do so without a spiritual life because spiritual life, if it's real, is the only way to actualize the full potential of your being.  On the most obvious level, committing yourself to high values and principles will take you beyond the narrow confines of your ego and even beyond the constraints of this short life.  On a deeper level, there is no other way to open the depths of your being to a direct experience of the Absolute Reality. 




Of course, a quick look at the news is all you need to convince you that what we conventionally call "religion" can be a pretty scary thing - right wing fundamentalists condemning minority groups or telling their people how "God wants them to vote", Muslim demonstrators carrying placards saying, "Behead those who insult Islam!" are just the tip of the iceberg.  

You may remember that in The 5 Pillars of Life I make a clear distinction between "religions" and "Authentic Ancient Traditions" and outline the differences.  People in our culture these days tend to think religion - the institutional version - is bad, whereas "spirituality" - the individual version - is good.  Reality is not quite so simple.  So how do you tell the kind of spiritual approach that will transform you into a saint / Bodhisattva / immortal from the kind that will transform you into a neurotic, a terrorist or a self-righteous jerk?

Powerful Questions to Ask About ANY Spiritual Path:

1.  Does it insist that the only way to be saved or avoid eternal torture is to become a member and / or believe in its creed?

2. Does it tell you that God is angry, judgmental and is basically just waiting for you to slip up so He can punish you?

3. Does it give rise to a culture of guilt and shame?

4. Does it teach you that God hates "unbelievers" or that you need to convert them by force or otherwise oppress them?

5. If you try to leave this spiritual path, will your life be in danger?

6. Do its teachings give rise to large scale emotional dysfunction? 

If you're involved in or thinking of becoming involved in any spiritual path where the answer to any of these questions would be "yes", then I'd suggest you run screaming in the other direction... fast.  

In general, any "spiritual" path advocating violence is simply a fascist religious ideology masquerading as the will of God.  Those that have moral teachings that produce emotional dysfunction are usually distorted versions (religions) of earlier Authentic Ancient Traditions.  

Unless a tradition meets the following criteria, it's highly likely to be either a dumbed down version of an authentic tradition (i.e., a religion) or simply a fake from day one.  Here's what every legitimate spiritual path must have or do:


1. It must teach that a total mind-body transformation of the human being is possible, that it can begin in this life and that every human being, here and now, can come to a direct experience of the Absolute Reality (God or whatever the name might be).


2. It must possess a deep spiritual teaching that includes meditation and / or unceasing noetic prayer.


3. It must be able to prove that there is an unbroken lineage of transformed people who have put this teaching into practice, been transformed by it, and can pass it on.


4. It must be able to prove that it gets the results it claims, preferably by demonstrating this across multiple cultures for several centuries.


5. It must value love, compassion and humility above all else and teach forgiveness.  


These simple criteria will enable anyone to get to the truth about any tradition in short order.  


If you're a Christian or if you know the New Testament well, you may remember a section from the book of Acts (5:34-40) where a Pharisee named Gamaliel says that any spiritual movement that comes from God will survive and thrive, whereas any movement not from God will just fade away.  Since many Christians are used to the idea the Bible contains no errors, they may not have noticed that there's only one problem with Gamaliel's theory...

...It's plain wrong.  Total crap, actually.  History proves that many religious movements have existed for over a millennium, with hundreds of millions of followers, and that these same movements have given rise to near constant strife, killing, emotional dysfunction / neurosis and endless misery.  

So be really careful before you commit your spiritual future to anything.  If you apply the simple criteria above, though, you'll be just fine.

Next time, we'll talk about how to build a firm foundation for your spiritual life.


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilience Tip: Reject, spit at and mock this mentality...

For you to be right, do others have to be wrong?  For you to be good, do others have to be evil?

Ask yourself this: "Is there a secret desire in me to be the one who is 'right' and to persecute those who don't agree with me and are therefore 'wrong'?" 


This is one of the greatest diseases of the human spirit.  It cost tens of millions of lives during the 20th century and it's all around us today in various forms.  Several years ago I was visiting a church - I won't say which or what kind here - and the sermon left me horrified.  I was told that people outside the church are selfish, egotistical, greedy, materialistic and unspiritual.  "Oh," I thought, "I guess we don't know the same people, because most of the people I know outside are kind, thoughtful, caring and trying to do the right thing."


FASCISM is a perennial human temptation, a spiritual disease and not just a political ideology.  People try to transform the groups they belong to into fascist communities, into exclusive groups that are "right" and are therefore justified to hate those who are "wrong".  Political parties and religious groups are especially at risk.  Today's Jihad-crazed sociopaths are simply the latest version. 


What I've called "authentic ancient traditions" of spiritual life are immune to this, fortunately, and consider every single human person to be precious, no matter what their current beliefs or where their life is at.  St. Isaac the Syrian (7th century) provides a wonderful description of this:


"Do not provoke anyone or argue with them, either for the sake of the faith or on account of their evil deeds, but watch over yourself to make sure you don't accuse anyone in any matter.  If you would correct them, then say a word or two to them with tears and love.  For love does not know how to be angry or provoked or to passionately reproach anyone.  The proof of love and knowledge is profound humility." 


One of the great hallmarks of resilience and emotional maturity is the refusal to treat the great mystery of life as black and white, but rather to acknowledge its complexity, its many shades of gray, to embrace its rich texture and everyone who shares it with you.


This, paradoxically, means the one thing you must not tolerate is the mentality of narrow-mindedness and hate.  Ready to spit at it?


~Dr. Symeon Rodger

Does God Really Want You to Be Healthy and Wealthy?

Hi all,


This great question just came in from one of our members:


"The pentecostal 'health and wealth' gospel emphasizes the idea that God wants us to be healthy and wealthy. Does God actually want us to be healthy and wealthy, or is this based on some flawed presuppositions?" - Jason C.


When it comes to the Law of Attraction (LOA), you have some pretty sharp disagreements out there - I suspect most Christian groups would denounce it as a demonic fabrication, whereas at least some Protestants and lots of people with New Age inclinations claim it's true.


However, the truth here may be more complex than either of those groups believes:



In my book, The 5 Pillars of Life, I introduced you to "Authentic Ancient Traditions" (AATs), spiritual traditions that can prove they get the results they claim. The original Christian tradition, preserved in the East, and several other traditions worldwide fit the criteria of Authentic Ancient Traditions.


One thing AATs have in common is they see the whole purpose of human life as "self-transformation" - a total transformation of mind, body and spirit that goes beyond anything we can imagine in our current state, a transformation that is itself union with God, with the "Absolute Reality" behind our visible universe.


In fact, everything they teach has only one purpose - to bring about this transformation.


A logical corollary of this is the teaching that in our current, untransformed state, we're not "normal" at all. Quite the opposite; we're suffering from serious delusions about the nature of reality based on a chronic self-aborption and ego-centrism.


Since this is the case, it would be ludicrous to believe that God, the Absolute, wants us to get what we want all the time, since many of our wants are going to be self-destructive in the long run, no matter how good they would make us feel right now.


All these AATs teach from their own experience that love and compassion are fundamental to the very fabric of reality. It doesn't take a genius to realize that if the Absolute IS love, then giving us what we "want" all the time would not be a loving act. We don't do that for our own kids and parents who do this are actually harming their children.


So contrary to what certain Christian and New Age authors will tell you, "what God wants" is not necessarily identical to what you "want" at any given moment and certainly isn't restricted to a particular idea like wanting everyone all the time to be healthy and wealthy. If the real purpose of human life is self-transformation, then what people need at any given moment is what leads them in that direction.


Obviously, health or wealth could be spiritually helpful to some people at certain stages of their spiritual development and spiritually harmful to others. Like nearly everything in human life, health and wealth are neutral - the use we make of them determines whether they help us or harm us.


The GOOD news here, though, is that God doesn't have an agenda to keep you sick, miserable and impoverished either. And that's really important to know, since some Christians think a pious Christian life has to be sick, broke and miserable and that suffering is somehow the purpose of human life. There's a whole mistaken theology behind this I won't get into now.



Now, the Flip Side...


Does the LOA actually exist? Well, everyday experience suggests it does. So without getting into the latest discoveries of quantum physics and all that, we can definitely say this: anyone with any experience in counselling people will come to the ironclad conviction that how we think about ourself and our life determines what our reality looks like.


We are all the victims or beneficiaries of deeply ingrained belief systems from early in life. Some of these beliefs propel us to our greatest successes while others make us miserable. What examples can you come up with from your own life?


So, not surprisingly, AATs put a huge emphasis on faith, on believing in the reality of your spiritual work so that it has the intended effect. This is not "faith" as in an abstract belief in the invisible that you can only confirm when you die. No, this is faith as in trusting in the Absolute until you come to a genuine and irrefutable experience of It.


If you look at some of the ancient spiritual teachings on prayer and meditiation from various traditions, you'll be struck by how similar they look to the LOA. Take these words on prayer by St. John of Kronstadt from late 19th century Russia:

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"The main thing in prayer is a lively and clear faith in the Lord. See him vividly before you and in you, and then ask Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit for whatever you desire and you will obtain it. Ask simply, without the slightest doubt, then God will be everything to you, instantly accomplishing great and marvelous things."


"When we pray, we must believe in the power of the words of the prayer, so as not to separate the words from the deeds they express. We must believe the deeds follow the words as surely as a shadow follows a body, for the word and the deed of the Lord are indivisible: 'He commanded and they were created.' And likewise, you must believe that what you ask for in prayer will be done."


"To God all things are possible and nothing is difficult. So when you pray, be firmly convinced the Lord can do everything you ask in a moment. Do not ascribe your own inability to God."

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Bottom line? Reality is very complex and we simplify it at our peril. On the one hand, the universe is not a cosmic vending machine designed to fulfill your every whim. On the other, the universe will deliver what you think about most of the time, for good or for ill, and it IS set up to look after your long term welfare. And God is most definitely not out to keep you sick, broke and miserable.



So there is far more truth to the LOA than its detractors claim, but much more nuance involved than its proponents are often telling you.



Hope that helps!



- Dr. Symeon Rodger