A Spiritual Short-Cut to Emotional Tranquility, Less Stress and More Happiness

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Please note: the following post contains a spiritual practice that you should only attempt if you are relatively stable emotionally, self-aware and not under psychiatric care.

Also, remember to join us for tonight's Spiritual Life 1: Foundations teleseminar / webinar at: http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=21310599

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As you already know, we'll be examining the meaning of that nebulous phrase, "spiritual life", in my upcoming teleseminar series on the subject.  Whatever it means to you personally, though, there's little doubt you're interested improving your emotional life and increasing your subjective feeling of well-being.  

And that's a key point because it shows us that whatever spiritual life may mean to each of us, one common denominator is that it is somehow intimately related to our emotional being and, through that, to our very core as human beings.  

So what can you do TODAY to calm your mind, settle your emotions, shed your stress and remain increasingly tranquil no matter what's going on around you?  Well, there is one simple practice you could adopt that will do all this for you.  In its best articulated form, it's a Tibetan Buddhist practice, although elements of the ancient Christian mystical tradition and later Taoism both have equivalents.  Please note that you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice this - the results speak for themselves.

The Practice

Choose a day to start your practice.  It should be an ordinary weekday with nothing too unusual happening.  Here's what you'll do:

1. When you wake up, sit up for a few minutes in a meditative posture and focus on your breathing to calm your mind.
   
   
2. Once your mind is as calm as it will get, say to yourself, "Everything I encounter today is simply a projection of my mind.  Pleasant or unpleasant, everything I experience is no more real or substantial than a dream.  If someone acts in a way that is hurtful to me, I can simply remember this is just a projection of my mind so that a negative emotional reaction on my part would make no sense.  If something wonderful happens, I can simply remember that pleasant and unpleasant occurrences are always alternating, so there's no point in getting too excited."
   
   
3. As you take your shower, just say to yourself, "Here I am, washing this dream body with this dream soap."  And when you're getting your breakfast, realize you're pouring dream coffee into a dream mug.
   
   
4. As you go through your day, remind yourself continually that what you experience is a product of your mind.  And remind yourself that the more positive your emotional state now, and the more positively you can affect the state of other people, the more you are planting the seeds of positive experiences for yourself in the future.
   
   

This Spiritual Practice Has Several Advantages...

1. It reminds us that nothing we see or experience in our world exists in the same way that our senses suggest to us.  For example, all "material reality" is largely empty space and fields of energy.  There is no solid "matter" at all.  As Einstein once said, "Reality is an illusion... albeit a very convincing one."
   
   
2. It quickly severs the link between what happens to us and our habitual emotional responses, thus building our inner freedom.
   
   
3. It allows us to maintain a much calmer emotional life while at the same time building positive emotional content throughout the day.
    
   
4. In other words, events will no longer control how we feel.
   
   
5. We naturally find ourselves in the "place of the observer" - one of the principal goals of meditation and of deep prayer.
   
   
6. We find ourselves happier, with less stress and a lot more joy, all for very little effort.

Is there a catch?  Just one: this is a discipline and a practice - it doesn't work unless you do it.  One hint for you before you start - take it easy and begin with few expectations.  It's pretty common near the beginning to feel a sense of "Wow! This is SO cool!!" and then, a day or two later, to feel, "Damn, this is harder than I thought!"  

No worries, though.  That's all totally natural.  Just give it a try and feel free to share what you discover by commenting on this post or dropping us a line.  Enjoy!!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Get Happier and Healthier by Doing This One Thing...

"The best of all medicines is resting and _______."

~ Benjamin Franklin

Hi everyone,

Care to fill in the blank in today's quotation? 

Read on to find the answer...

A recent study has shown that _______ causes you to secrete more of a hormone called GHRELIN, which has a few interesting side effects...

- It gives you energy
- Makes you more action-oriented
- Makes you more sociable
- and better able to overcome obstacles

Okay, I know.  You're saying, "Where can I get me some of this stuff?!" 

Relax - your body makes it.  Your stomach makes most of it and some extra comes from your kidneys, your hypothalamus and pituitary glands. 
Ghrelin has a notable anti-depressive effect and generally makes people much HAPPIER.

Of course, your system makes more of it when you're _______.

That might be part of the reason people practicing authentic ancient spiritual traditions are about the happiest folks you'll ever meet.  At least, that was certainly my experience of the Orthodox Christian monks of Mt. Athos in Greece. 

And they're certainly well known for their _______.


SO WHAT IS _______ ALREADY??!!

It's fasting.  The practice of going without food or sometimes food and drink for a certain defined period.  It's long been known that fasting kick-starts the body's cleansing reaction, causing you to release toxins.

And fasting it SIGNIFICANTLY contributes to longevity.  (If you want to live a long time, try not only eating a BETTER diet, but also eating LESS).  Some recent experiments with mice determined that cutting down the little rodent's food intake contributed to lengthening his lifespan by 30% or more and keeping him healthy at the same time.  For a human, that would mean the difference between a life plagued with health problems and coming to an abrupt end around age 80 versus a longer, disease-free life of closer to 106 years.  Sound good to you?

Fasting is also critically important to any REAL spiritual life.  By the way, that doesn't mean that ALL religious fasting is helpful spiritually, it just means truly spiritual people practice fasting.  There's a difference!  


Now, though, the evidence also suggests that fasting has a very positive, mood-altering side effect as well.  Again, this applies to INTELLIGENT fasting, practiced in MODERATION.  Don't succumb to the silly logic that if a little fasting makes happy, a ton of fasting will make you the happiest person on earth.  Wrong! 

So if you're aiming for personal resilience in your life, fasting will be an indispensable practice for you.  It will improve your mood, giving you the emotional resources to cope with the ups and downs of life.  It will help you detoxify, keeping you healthier.  And it will greatly facilitate your spiritual practices, such as prayer and meditation.  




NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE?

Then the best way to start is to ease yourself into it.

You can try spending a morning with nothing more than pure water, for example.  Then - and this is REALLY important - take note of how you feel physically, mentally and emotionally.



One of the easiest ways to incorporate fasting into your life is to set aside one day per week for it and then do a detoxification cleanse 2-4 times per year.  For your one day per week, you could start off, for example, by something as simple as drinking only pure water in the morning and then having only liquids (nutritious smoothies, for example) for the rest of the day.  

So, why not set aside a day to avoid this...

... in order to enjoy this?

 Believe me, your digestive system will be thanking you big time!

There are lots of varieties of fasting and we can't get into the details here, but you get the general idea.  

When regular fasting becomes part of your life, you'll LOOK FORWARD to it, knowing how great it makes you feel.

Remember to smile when you fast ;-)

~ 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 

 

Fasting Part Two: Fasting for Spiritual Purposes

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Ageless Beauty – Timeless Health:
Building a Lifestyle that Automatically Creates the
Health, Immunity and Longevity You Want

Toronto, Canada: June 4-5, 2011

http://www.harapower.com/AB/

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Over the course of human history, fasting for spiritual purposes has been at least as widespread and quite probably much more so, than fasting for better health.  We also need to remember that non-Western and pre-industrial cultures did not tend to divide life into categories of "physical" and "spiritual" as we do out of (bad) habit. 

Goals of Spiritual Fasting

There are many different ones.  As I write this, tens of millions of Eastern Christians are beginning their Holy Week fast leading up to Pascha (Easter).  For them the goal is to become more open to divine influence and to actually participate in the events they're celebrating.  Of course, there are many different spiritual reasons for fasting:

1. To become more open to divine influence
2. To receive divine guidance on a particular issue
3. To receive healing, whether physical, emotional or spiritual
4. To help someone else receive what they need, whether healing, guidance or protection
5. To prepare for a spiritually difficult task

In reality, of course, the majority of people who would say they practice spiritual fasting seem to do so on a semi-conscious level at best.  They often think they're fasting, when they're simply practicing a form of abstinence, or they're not clear on how fasting works or exactly what they wish to achieve.


Is fasting a form of sacrifice that God demands imperiously?  Is it a form of punishment for human sin?  Well, if you read the ancient Christian spiritual sources carefully, such as the various collections of "sayings of the desert fathers" from the fourth and fifth centuries, it's quite clear this isn't the case.


What emerges is a bit more complex.  Because fasting cleanses the body, it also makes the mind more lucid.  If you consider that the desert dwellers who pioneered Christian spiritual fasting were totally dedicated to remaining in an unbroken state of inner "prayer of the heart", this lucidity of mind was very important.  The bottom line from their experience is that abstinence from heavy foods and periodic fasting will enable you to maintain focused inner attention and will cut down on the inner dialogue, swirling emotions and physical symptoms that ensnare your attention.  That's obviously a vital consideration for any sustained program of prayer or meditation, and explains why spiritual fasting has been so widely used worldwide for millennia.  


So if we ask how spiritual fasting works, it's clear the explanation bridges the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual planes of our being, creating a cleansing and unifying effect.  It's not simply a matter of fulfilling an abstract divine commandment; it has to do with how your mind-body organism is intended to function.  This is something that Orthodox Christian ascetics, Kriya Yoga practitioners and many native American medicine people, to name just a few, will tell you.  


Here's a really interesting video on spiritual fasting that also ties in the health aspect in an admirable and well thought out way.  Be sure to pause it to give yourself time to read the text, in addition to listening to the excellent commentary:












A Spiritual Warrior's Explanation


Without contradicting any of the foregoing, the Coptic Orthodox Monk, Matthew the Poor, offered this explanation of fasting. When he uses the word "self", he is using it in the sense of the "ego" or "false self":


"[When we fast] we must reach a state of accepting not the partial, but the complete annihilation of the self, and this can only take place by an act of deliberate volition.  In other words, if we begin by any exercise, such as fasting, which brings us to the partial overcoming of the self, we need to supplement the feeling of satisfaction that comes from accepting this state with an acceptance of the total destruction of the self.  This is obtained by the mental acceptance of death itself, with no dismay or restraint.  'But we received the sentence of death in ourselves' (2 Corinthians 1:19).  


"When our father Abraham offered Isaac his son, he did so partially with his hands, but totally in purpose.  When Abraham proved his willingness to offer Isaac, his only son, God did not leave him to carry out the slaughter; when the offering had been only partially made on the physical level, God considered the sacrifice to have been actually carried out.  This, and only this, is why God redeemed Isaac with a ram - a symbol of Christ - who was to redeem the souls of those whose self was destroyed partially by their actions, but wholly in their intentions."1.


In terms of spiritual fasting, that's certainly "food for thought"!  Think about it.  Better still, try it.  Just remember, though, as with fasting for health, the same advice and warnings apply here, so go back and read the previous post before you start!


Blessings!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Prayer, Healing and Resilience

When you hear the word "resilience" and especially terms like "personal resilience", you may get the idea that it's about being "tough".  And you would be right...

...although ancient traditions have a more comprehensive idea of being "tough" than we do.  


Some of the toughest people I've ever met were Orthodox Christian monks living in remote locations, such as on Mount Athos in Greece.  There I encountered men of prayer who, despite being twice my age, sure gave me a run for my money in the "tough" department - just following their daily routine would knock most professional athletes off their feet pretty quickly.  

You're about to see a short video about one such person.  For Orthodox (ancient) Christianity, as for any "authentic ancient tradition", the idea that you could become "resilient" without having a spiritual life, a life connecting you to the Absolute Reality, would be absurd.  


Today we're going to look at what ancient Christianity considered the single most important practice in human life - unceasing prayer of the mind in the heart, also called "noetic prayer".  


As you watch this all-too-short video, I'd encourage you to take very careful note of what Fr. Teofil, our special guest today, has to say:

"Praying for the Unity of Our Own Being"

That's a remarkable statement!  Most people think of prayer as a request for something outside of ourselves, and least of all do they think of it as a means to reunite their inner powers of their mind-body organism.


In fact, the practice of unceasing prayer is quite different from other understandings of prayer for a number of reasons:

1. It's not the usual "give me, give me" approach to prayer (although making requests in prayer is perfectly legitimate)
   
2. Neither is it the "please save my sorry ass" approach we lapse into when our own decisions come back to haunt us ;-)
   
3. It's not so much an activity with a start and end point, but the search for an ongoing meditative state, where you remain immersed in and under the loving influence of the Absolute.

Of course, there are some presuppositions basic to this meditative prayer, the first of which is that God, the Absolute Reality, is "uncreated, personal existence".  That is, God is conscious of you personally and actually loves you personally.  God is not just the amorphous total of "all that is" nor some form of "divine electricity".  Like electricity, God has energy, but face it, electricity never loved anyone.  


The ancient tradition goes so far as to claim that this kind of prayer is the center of spiritual life, simply because it is the one activity that, more than any other, unites the human person to the Source of all life.  And, as Fr. Teofil suggests, it heals and creates wholeness within you while you're on the journey.

Without the knowledge that comes uniquely through noetic prayer, faith remains intellectual, our inner being remains unhealed and the likelihood we will have a genuine encounter with God in this life remains slim.  Unfortunately, though, the ancient teaching on noetic prayer was methodically suppressed in the West over this past millennium.  

As one holy man described the fruits of this kind of prayer:

"Compared to the Uncreated divine light, all the lights of this world, even the sun at high noon, are nothing but darkness.  It is a strange thing: when that true light comes, there takes place a union of the Infinite and Uncreated with the human person, who is created and finite.  By His energies the latter are truly transformed into gods and children of the Most High.  It is then and only then that a person can understand that he really is created in the image and likeness of God."  


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)



 

Prayer Requests that Really Work

For the second in this three part series on prayer, we're going to talk about prayer in the most common sense of the word, prayer as requesting a specific outcome.

Lots of people fall into the trap of feeling bad when they pray for some sort of outcome they want.  They feel they're not worthy of it, or that it's selfish or that God just wants them to suffer, so they should just suffer without the result they want.


All of this is deluded thinking.  First, if you're a Christian, you have to consider that the God-man - Christ Himself - taught people to ask for what they want and need.  "Ask and you shall receive," He said.  "Whatever you ask for in prayer, you shall receive."  You'll notice here that He doesn't say he'll reject any request that makes your life more pleasant because He wants you to suffer, and He doesn't say these requests are selfish. 

Now that we've got that out of the way, it's time to learn the essential steps to building a prayer routine that "works".  What do I mean by prayer that "works"?  Simple - you begin to see the fruits of your prayer, both in the sense of inner peace and the concrete results you've asked for (or something better).  And based on that, you develop a deep realization that you're not alone and that help is closer to you than your own breath.  Do you think that would work for you?
 

How to Make Requests in Prayer:

Step 1: Put Yourself in the Divine Presence


Represent God vividly before you.  Do not build a mental picture of Him; just put everything else out of your mind and feel the firm conviction that the power of God is here with you at this moment.  Remember that the direct experience of the ages has revealed two things - the Absolute is totally beyond human imagination, so don't try to imagine God, and the Absolute Reality is benevolent, so banish any childhood ideas that God is out to get you.  Simple be fully present and summon the full attention of your mind and heart.


Step 2: Be Honest with Yourself and with the Divine Presence


If you're not sure that God exists, or that God is personal, or that God is loving or any of that, don't worry.  If you have doubts, express those too.  And know that you can certainly ask God for clarification, for love and compassion.  The Absolute Reality is up to the challenge  ;-)



Step 3: Give Thanks


Give thanks for all the blessings in your life.  Give thanks for your family and friends, for your job and career, for your health and for all the good things that have happened to you.  Don't worry about being exhaustive here, just bring a few things to mind.


Then recall specific prayer requests you've made that have been fulfilled.  Yes, if you're new to this you may have to skip this step for now.  Just keep in mind it's vital to know exactly what you've asked for and exactly what you've received.  This will boost your faith, which in turn is vital to the success of your prayer and your entire spiritual life.  


Step 4: Make Your Requests


Know exactly and clearly what you're asking for.  Make your requests known to the Absolute without the slightest doubt.  Simply assume you will receive your requests and that if you don't receive them immediately, that some even greater benefit is coming to you.  


God is the Uncreated life force behind the entire universe.  Nothing is impossible for Him.  If you think your request is impossible, keep in mind it's absolutely possible for God and that the only barriers to your request are found in yourself and nowhere else.  


What should you pray for?  First of all, ask for spiritual progress for yourself and those close to you.  Ask that all of you will be protected from harm, whether spiritual or physical.  Pray for some people individually, especially those most in need.  Ask for any material thing you need as well.  In short ask for anything you need or want.  And always end by reaffirming the things you've prayed for.  This makes it all the more definite in your own mind and memory.  With it fixed in your memory, you can recall your prayer requests during the day, knowing that they're on their way to you and to the people you've prayed for. 

Of course, we're not talking about requests that are purely selfish in the sense of petty.  Praying to become a billionaire might not be the best idea, for example.  First, you don't need it and second, you probably wouldn't even like the result!  As St. Isaac the Syrian put it (and I'm translating this literally), "Don't ask a king for shit."

Does This Really Work?

Well, if you're a skeptic looking for scientific data, I'd recommend you have a look at Lynne McTaggart's classic book, The Field: the Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe.  There you'll find the results of some rigorous scientific experiments on distance healing, for example, proving that prayer really can heal people measurably and repeatably, and over any distance.  

I can tell you personally that I'm continually stunned by the results of prayer.  I expect my requests to be granted - not because I'm gritting my teeth and fighting off doubt, but because I've seen it so frequently that it no longer occurs to me that I should doubt.  


It wasn't always like this, of course.  Learning fruitful prayer takes time, persistence and dedication.  But when you've learned well, you have a whole new take on life itself.  You know for a fact you're not alone.  You know for a fact that help is closer to you than your own heartbeat.  And you know that this help is the power that created the Universe in the first place. 

Next time, we'll talk about an even more profound type of prayer - prayer as a continuous inner state of communion with the Divine.  As I said before, this is the "real chocolate", the real nectar of life and it's unfortunately a teaching that has long since disappeared from conventional "religion". 


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Prayer - a Vital Resilience Practice

The requests keep coming in... they never stop.  "Talk more about prayer, meditation and spiritual life." "Will prayer help my health?"  "How does prayer fit into resilience and how is it different from meditation?"  And the list goes on...

So this week I'll do my best to answer and to help you make sense out of all this by talking about prayer.  We're going to do this in three parts.  First we'll talk about some of the basics.  Then, in mid-week, we'll talk about prayer in the sense most people are familiar with, as a request for a specific outcome.  And finally, on Friday, we'll get to the "real chocolate" of spiritual life - prayer as a continuous spiritual communion with the Absolute reality.  

"I Know Lots of People Who Pray... and Most of Them Are Wackos!"

If that statement describes the way you feel, believe me, you're not alone.  I'm a priest of the Orthodox Church and I feel the same way! 

So yes, you'll find lots of deluded people who "pray" frequently.  The Taliban folks pray.  Your Aunt Mildred who keeps beating you over the head with the Bible prays.  The TV evangelist who tells you God wants you to send him your money prays too.  Of course, all these people are praying more to their own delusions than anything else.  Prayer can transform you life into paradise on earth, but... if you stubbornly persist in delusion, it can destroy you.

Back in late 19th century Russia, someone asked a holy man named Theophan the Recluse why so many "religious" people were plain nuts.  The old man, who was a great teacher of prayer, replied that when you put yourself in contact with the Uncreated Being, you either accept that power into your life or you resist and distort it.  If you accept it, you become more like the divine - more loving, more peaceful, more integrated and more whole on every level.  If, however, you resist, you become the opposite of all that.  In short, if you're trying to use prayer to build up your ego instead of get past it, you're on the path to self-destruction. 
 

We, however, are presumably interested in prayer for the right reasons - to feel spiritually connected to the source of life, to fill our hearts with love, gratitude and joy, and to radiate compassion to those around us.  As long as this is our aim, and as long as we're genuinely trying to distinguish truth from falsehood, we're not in any danger of joining the wackos mentioned above.  

Do I Need Prayer to Become Resilient?

Looked at scientifically - and all authentic ancient mystical traditions were rigorously scientific - if the Absolute Reality exists (and they verified this), and if you are therefore in the image of or contain the nature and potentiality of the Absolute within you (also verified), and if the purpose of life is union with / transformation by this Absolute (another verified discovery), then it follows that if you are not consciously in communion with this Absolute, you are falling below you potential, weakening yourself and losing resilience.  Pretty simple, isn't it? 

You'll find a much more detailed discussion of all that in The 5 Pillars of Life, of course, but I can tell you now that in the eyes of any Authentic Ancient Tradition worldwide, if you don't pray, you're like someone who's never experienced real life at all.    

What If I'm Not Sure About God?

That's okay.  If you grew up in a "religious" milieu, you may still be struggling deep down with the idea that God is a cosmic despot with a significant anger-management problem, that He demands blind conformity to what some institution has told you and that if you don't believe in Him 100%, He's already really ticked off with you. 


Nonsense!  Without getting into the particulars, the whole idea of the angry God is a false teaching, according to the original Christian tradition.  There's some more information on this in The 5 Pillars of Life, as well.  Here's an example of what the early Christian tradition really learned about the divine being.  I suggest you read the following very carefully...


"God is good.  He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same.  We men, on the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united to Him.  But if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated from Him.  By living in holiness, we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked, we make Him our enemy.  It is not that He grows angry with us in some arbitrary way, but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us and expose us to the demons who torture us.  And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him change, but that through our actions and our turning to God we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God's goodness.  Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind."(1)


St. Silouan of Athos, a great Orthodox Christian spiritual teacher of the 20th century, once said there are only two kinds of spiritual people - those who believe in God and those who know God.  The latter are those who have had a direct, overwhelming encounter with the Uncreated.  

So if you're not too sure if God exists or what God / the Absolute reality is like, that's okay.  You need to be honest with yourself.  There is very little difference between you and the person who, to use Silouan's words, just "believes" but doesn't yet "know".  That person has simply taken a different ideological stand than you have.  However, he or she is still in the dark, in a manner of speaking.  


And yes, there are lots of Christians who'll be happy to tell you they "know" God, but their "knowledge" of God unfortunately has nothing to do with "knowing God" as the ancient mystical tradition taught and still teaches.  And Silouan was a typical example of that tradition. 

Finally, you may also be struggling, even unconsciously, with the whole idea of God as "father" or parental figure.  This can be especially troubling for people who have grown up in dysfunctional family environments where the parental role models were incompetent, if not overtly toxic.  It's no secret that how you related to your parents can have a huge effect on how you conceive of God.  Fortunately, there's an antidote.. a very old antidote that works wonders...

You see, unlike the Christianity of the West over the last millennium, the ancient tradition explicitly taught that you should not take verbal descriptions of God too literally.  Using what we now call "apophatic" theology or "theology by negation", the ancient tradition says that if we say, for example, that God is "good", then we also have to say that God is not "good" as we imagine that word, but good in a way that goes beyond our usual concepts.  And likewise, is we refer to God as "He", using the masculine pronoun (a huge stumbling block for many, given the historical shortcomings of most cultures), then we must also add that we do NOT mean "male as opposed to female" in the sense of human gender.  


So if you find yourself hung up on some of the traditional language about God, know that it was never intended to be taken in the simplistic way you were probably taught, and you can cheerfully dissociate your mental image of God from your parents.  


As Silouan said, after a particularly intense encounter with the Absolute Reality, "God is love insatiable."  When one of Silouan's contemporaries was asked by a younger person why he was always weeping, he answered, "My child, when God appears to you, all you can do is weep for joy!"




What's Coming Up Next:


Next time, we'll talk about putting your requests out there in prayer and how to do it so you get results.  In ancient times, prayer was referred to as "the art of arts and the science of sciences" and there's more to it than you ever imagined...


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Spiritual Life: Reality or Delusion (Part 2)

Last time, I talked a bit about how we can discern real spiritual paths from the zillion "spiritual" side-tracks out there that can seriously mess up your life.  

This time, as promised, I'd like to talk about how you can begin an authentic spiritual life or get the one you have back on track. 


Now you may be thinking, "How can I start a spiritual life if I'm not really sure what I believe in yet?"  The answer is simple: if you feel the need to begin or expand your spiritual life, that means you most likely believe already that there is an Absolute Reality behind this visible universe, that life does have meaning, and that you can bring your own life more into alignment with this Absolute Reality than it is right now.  

I've studied spiritual life for decades and met some extraordinary people worldwide while doing so.  And over time I've become less and less interested in the specifics of each person's theological beliefs (as important as those may be) than in what they actually DO in their spiritual lives.  In fact, it's scarcely an exaggeration to say most people I know who would claim to have a spiritual life don't really do much of anything on a daily basis by way of practicing it. 

On the other hand, some of the people with the "busiest" spiritual lives, who "do" lots on a daily basis are primarily engaged in ritual actions that make them "feel" spiritual without actually transforming their consciousness.  In other words, they too have a "spirituality" largely confined to beliefs, to the intellectual level, that doesn't affect how they use their mind-body organism at all. 

Unfortunately, according to every Authentic Ancient Tradition worldwide, that kind of spiritual life is pure self-deception.  Real spiritual life depends not only on what you do, but on doing the one thing that will transform your life...

The 5 Laws of Spiritual Life:

Here are five things to put on your spiritual "to-do" list.  If you do each one consistently, patiently and joyfully, I'll guarantee you'll reap the fruits of your spiritual practice in your own life before long.  Remember, of course, that in spiritual life, the journey itself is to be enjoyed - not because it's easy (it's not), but because of how it changes you.


1. Persevere:
Spiritual life is about repeating the same basic practices over and over until they transform your inner world into paradise.  While you do this you will be tested beyond your current limitations.  You'll find it boring... or painful... or useless... and you have to learn to disregard all that and continue.  That's the plain truth.    


2. Discover the Miracle of Stillness:
Inner stillness is the foundation of every Authentic Ancient Tradition without exception, including the original Christian tradition, where it's called "hesychia", meaning "stillness" or "silence".  This silence is interior and doesn't refer to whether you talk or not.  You discover inner silence by sitting in quiet meditation and using some psycho-somatic method to calm your mind and observe your inner world without getting caught up in the emotional drama.  To get started, simply pray to be open to the truth and to be preserved from harm.  Then go into your stillness practice with that intention.  The most common, safest and powerful method is simply to use your mental attention to observe your breath.  Random thoughts will come, of course, and you can't stop them.   Don't try.  Just bring your attention back to the process if your mind wanders.  


3. Find Inspiration:
It's vital that you stay inspired in your spiritual life, and that's partly why a community of like-minded practitioners has always been considered so important.  Whether or not you can find such a community right away, you do need to find books, articles, videos, etc. to keep you spiritually inspired.  You need to build yourself a steady diet of this inspiration because, if you don't, the pressures of daily life will almost certainly derail your spiritual intentions.


4. Pursue Harmony:
In everything you do, pursue harmony.  This means first and foremost pursuing harmony within yourself, harmony of thought and emotion, harmony between your mind and body.  And then it means harmony with the created world, with your environment, with your spouse, your children your friends and colleagues.  


5. Beware of the Dark Side:
The dark side of spirituality is very real and it's all around you.  You'll find some people telling you that you need to join their group to be saved from hell, or that you need to persecute groups they don't like because God said so, or that you have to fit into their preconceived ideas of behavior and social morality.  Stay away from these people and from what they teach.  You'll find other well-meaning people telling you that we're here to suffer for our sins and the more wretched and miserable we feel, the better our spiritual lives.  That's a tiny bit of truth mixed in with some huge twists, so be careful.  If you're not sure about where the line between truth and delusion is, be sure to solicit the opinions of people of integrity you trust.  That doesn't mean you take their opinions as gospel, just that you ask for help in discerning what's for real and what's not.  


Implement these five steps and you'll be well on your way to a genuine spiritual life.  

~ 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

The Path to Emotional Intelligence

"In the last decade or so, science has discovered a tremendous amount about the role emotions play in our lives. Researchers have found that even more than IQ, your emotional awareness (EQ) and abilities to handle feelings will determine your success and happiness in all walks of life, including family relationships." --John Gottman, Ph.D.



After some twenty years of doing pastoral counseling, I'm more convinced than ever that the biggest hurdle people face in their lives is "emotional incompetence".  Why the biggest?

Well, unless you know how to relate to and manage the incredibly powerful emotional currents within you, those currents will destroy your relationships, wreck your health and make spiritual life impossible, reducing you to a state of abject misery. 

Bottom line?  To achieve physical, mental and spiritual RESILIENCE, we all need to master our emotional lives. 

Of course, it's easy for "spiritual" people to delude themselves completely here, because when they suffer from their own emotional incompetence, they have a tendency to construe it as some sort of redemptive suffering (which is only true if you're working towards healing) or to see themselves as suffering unjustly at the hands of "evildoers" (the Jihadist response).  Both alternatives just perpetuate their own emotional incompetence. 

Last time, when we talked about a "spiritual path that really works", we mentioned that you have to be willing to make friends with your emotional content.  You stop repressing it and you stop acting it out - which are just two different ways of not dealing with it - and you start to relate to it directly.

This takes a lot of guts, by the way.  It can scare the crap out of you at first.  However, you learn pretty quickly that your powerful and scary emotions aren't nearly so frightening once you invite them in for tea.  They're very often just a cover-up, a fear-based response.  So the real question behind all of your ego-centric neurosis and mine is... "what exactly are we afraid of and why?"

When you get to the bottom of your fear, you realize it's not so scary as you thought, that FDR was right about "the only thing to fear is fear itself". 

Do you have the courage to take all your anger, your attachment and your indifference - those three poisons of the soul - and "make friends" with them?  Are you willing to have a chat with them and see what makes them tick, to uncover your own fears?  One barrier to doing this, by the way, is your social and religious programming telling you certain emotions are "bad" and you "shouldn't" have them.  The more you listen to those voices, the more you repress, until finally the pressure becomes too strong and you act out instead.  And that pretty much describes the useless cycle many people are trapped in.   

However, if you're willing to be present to your emotions, if you're willing to feel the fear and do it anyway, to use the cliche, you'll be well on your way to emotional healing and true resilience.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger