A Secret Ingredient for Spiritual Success

I read last week a fascinating New York Times article titled "Secret Ingredient for Success."  The authors interviewed highly successful people about what made them successful and discovered one common element.  The discovery was surprising--somewhat even counter-intuitive.  Beyond their natural talent and skill, their personalities, their strengths, their passion and vision, how hard they worked, their success came from this quality:  intentional, regular, rigorous self reflection.  Self assessment.  Self evaluation. It's called double loop learning.

"In this mode we question every aspect of our approach, including our methodology, biases and deeply held assumptions. This more psychologically nuanced self-examination requires that we honestly challenge our beliefs and summon the courage to act on that information, which may lead to fresh ways of thinking about our lives and our goals."  (Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield)

It got me thinking about the way so many people go through life.  We just kind of float along, going with the flow, never really reflecting or thinking about life, trying to avoid obstacles as much as possible, taking the easy path as often as we can, the path of least resistance.

And even with our spirituality.  We tend to rarely think about it.  We just do whatever it is we've always done, never really evaluating or reflecting about it, whether or not we're learning anything new, or whether or not it's actually changing us into better people.  We just slide by spiritually.

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates once said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

I was especially reminded of the power of this value of self reflection last weekend.  I conducted the first of three weekend retreats called "Ignite the Fire of Your Spiritual Life."  Our small group spend a total of 10 hours doing rigorous self-assessment and evaluation.  The purpose of this process was to give each person an opportunity to take stock of their spiritual life to determine what is working effectively and meaningfully and what isn't.

And we engaged within community--not just doing personal reflection but also sharing some of our reflections with each other.  The process of hearing and listening and being heard and listened to is extremely powerful.  When people are willing to hold the space for us as we do our work in a way that's safe and affirming and accepting, we are empowered to grow and transform in beautiful ways.

One of the participants texted me the next day and said, "Thank you for a breakthrough life-changing retreat--my spiritual life is already better ... Can't wait to see what more there is to come and I know it will be very good."

That's the impact of healthy and effective self reflection.  It comes from being willing to be intentional.  To pay attention to your life, your spirituality.  To do it honestly, authentically, transparently, participatively.

Most wisdom traditions agree on the process for enlightenment and spiritual wholeness.  Confucianism describes it as becoming fully awake, waking up to life, seeing life clearly.  According to the Li Chi, the classic Confucian guide to becoming spiritually developed,

"there must be a turning point in life when the maturing individual recognizes that simply being a human is not sufficient to becoming fully human."

Spiritual maturity is not an automatic occurrence.  We can't slide into spirituality.

Jesus called that conscious turning point in one's life repentance.  "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."  It begins with awareness, waking up to our need.  It continues with desire, seeing something better--something more--that we want.  It involves an intentional turning around to chart a new path to receive that Life.  "Wake up so you can experience the depths of God's kingdom that is right in front of you, indeed, right inside of you," said Jesus.

One of the poignant stories Jesus told was of the ten bridesmaids waiting through the midnight hours for the appearance of the groom.  All of them had lamps.  Five of them had enough oil for the lamps to keep burning through the night.  So that when the groom finally showed up, they were awake to be swept up into the wedding party and join the festivities.  The other five missed out.  No light.  Sleepy.

Light.  Wakefulness.  Clarity.  Awareness.

Some of the markers Dr. David Benner, in his book Soulful Spirituality, describes as identifying a mature spirituality include

"being grounded in reality and alive to the present moment, a personal philosophy that makes life meaningful, the capacity for forgiveness and letting go, inner freedom of choice and response, the capacity for reflection on experience."  (p. 35)

These qualities don't just suddenly show up in our lives.  They're developed.  We awaken to them through reflection, intention, attention.  Like the five wise bridesmaids, we stock up on enough oil, we trim our lamps, light them, and use them to become fully awake to what's happening inside us and around us.  We repent.

I'm planning two more spiritual retreat cycles this Winter/Spring; one in San Francisco again (April 5-6), and another in Walla Walla, Washington (March 22-23).  Here's the link for the details:  "Ignite the Fire of Your Spiritual Life."  If you want a powerful opportunity to engage in awakening your spiritual life in new and transformational ways, I invite you to check out these events.  It could be a turning point for you.

The two authors of the above New York Times article interviewed tennis great Martina Navratilova to find out the secret of her ultimate success:

"[She] told us that after a galling loss to Chris Evert in 1981, she questioned her assumption that she could get by on talent and instinct alone. She began a long exploration of every aspect of her game. She adopted a rigorous cross-training practice (common today but essentially unheard of at the time), revamped her diet and her mental and tactical game and ultimately transformed herself into the most successful women’s tennis player of her era.  What we learned from conversation with high achievers is that challenging our assumptions, objectives, at times even our goals, may sometimes push us further than we thought possible."

I wonder why so many of us fail to engage in this kind of rigorous self reflection and self evaluation in such a vital area of life, our spirituality?  Maybe it's because we simply don't know how to go about doing that.  Maybe we're afraid of failing or not achieving anything different than what we already have.  Maybe we just don't think about it--we're simply too busy or distracted by the rest of life.  Or maybe it's just not that important or appealing to us.

But maybe it is time to shine the light.  Time for the secret ingredient.  Time to awaken.  Fully alive instead of sleepwalking.  The best way to success and joy!

10 Spiritually Transmitted Diseases

I took today's perceptive title from a blog post I read recently written by Dr. Mariana Caplan, an internationally acclaimed author and teacher on Western Spirituality, and a psychotherapist specializing in spiritual issues and somatic and body-centered approaches to transformation.  She has an active practice in San Francisco and Marin County.  You can read her whole post here. Dr. Caplan provides what I think is a helpful description of the some of the dangers inherent in the spiritual life.  These are dangers that we often don't want to think about or simply don't see, especially in relation to ourselves.  In the midst of our genuine desire to grow spiritually, to commit ourselves to experiencing transformation and positive change in our lives, regardless of the specific religious environment we're a part of, there are certain blind spots that have the potential of derailing our spiritual growth.

Blind spots are those places that we simply don't see but by not seeing them, we are susceptible to crashing.  Remember taking driver's ed training and the teacher talking about being careful of the blind spot between what you see in your rearview mirror and what you see in your driver's side mirror.  There could be a vehicle in that blind spot and if you make a lane change too quickly, you could hit that vehicle.  So what are you suppose to do?  You're suppose to check your mirrors first, and then look over your left shoulder to take a specific visual cue of what's actually there.  And if there is in fact no vehicle there, you turn on your signal blinker and slowly make the turn.  You've checked your blind spot in order to navigate safely.

The title also suggests another spiritual reality.  If we aren't aware of our spiritual blind spots, not only will we hurt ourselves, we'll hurt others, too.  Dr. Caplan describes these spiritual diseases as transmittable - we can infect others with our spiritual deformities.  Our sneezes pass on our diseases.  How significant, then, for us to be aware of our own issues and work hard to deal with them effectively.  It's good for everyone in our lives!  The health of a spiritual community is only as good as the health of each individual's personal spirituality.

So here are Dr. Caplan's 10 spiritually transmitted diseases.  Ask yourself which one(s) you tend to suffer from.

1. Fast-Food Spirituality: "Mix spirituality with a culture that celebrates speed, multitasking and instant gratification and the result is likely to be fast-food spirituality. Fast-food spirituality is a product of the common and understandable fantasy that relief from the suffering of our human condition can be quick and easy. One thing is clear, however: spiritual transformation cannot be had in a quick fix."

And I would even add this caution for Christians:  though belief in the grace of Jesus is hugely significant to building confidence and security (we can't work our way to God's favor and the Next Life - it's a gift), grace is no substitute for the intentional discipline of applying that grace to every aspect of our lives.  Transformation doesn't happen in us spontaneously or magically.  It takes effort, determination, and practice.  Healthy, transformational spirituality cannot be purchased in a drive-through, fast-food delivery system.

2. Faux Spirituality: "Faux spirituality is the tendency to talk, dress and act as we imagine a spiritual person would. It is a kind of imitation spirituality that mimics spiritual realization in the way that leopard-skin fabric imitates the genuine skin of a leopard."

This is true because deep spirituality works from the inside out.  It deals with motives and values, feelings and thoughts, not just behaviors.  Even Jesus, in commenting on many of the religious professionals of his day, called them "white-washed tombs; cups that were clean on the outside but dirty on the inside."  Their kind of spirituality was external only - what you see on the outside is what matters most, not who you are on the inside.  That kind of spirituality was not acceptable to Jesus.

3. Confused Motivations: "Although our desire to grow is genuine and pure, it often gets mixed with lesser motivations, including the wish to be loved, the desire to belong, the need to fill our internal emptiness, the belief that the spiritual path will remove our suffering and spiritual ambition, the wish to be special, to be better than, to be 'the one.'"

Have you ever asked yourself, what tends to motivate my actions when I'm around other people?  Is my spirituality being driven by healthy motivations?

4. Identifying with Spiritual Experiences: "In this disease, the ego identifies with our spiritual experience and takes it as its own, and we begin to believe that we are embodying insights that have arisen within us at certain times. In most cases, it does not last indefinitely, although it tends to endure for longer periods of time in those who believe themselves to be enlightened and/or who function as spiritual teachers."

5. The Spiritualized Ego: "This disease occurs when the very structure of the egoic personality becomes deeply embedded with spiritual concepts and ideas. The result is an egoic structure that is 'bullet-proof.' When the ego becomes spiritualized, we are invulnerable to help, new input, or constructive feedback. We become impenetrable human beings and are stunted in our spiritual growth, all in the name of spirituality."

Perhaps this explains why oftentimes it's spiritual or religious people who simply can't be argued with.  They know "the truth" and they believe they're embodying it, which makes them right and everyone else wrong.  They're already on "the way" so what can anyone else teach them, especially those who don't have "the truth" like they do?  They've allowed their identities to become completely enmeshed with their spirituality - so if their spirituality is threatened in any way, their identity feels threatened.  So they cannot allow their spirituality to be questioned.  And they will fight to keep their "rightness" and certainty.

6. Mass Production of Spiritual Teachers: "There are a number of current trendy spiritual traditions that produce people who believe themselves to be at a level of spiritual enlightenment, or mastery, that is far beyond their actual level. This disease functions like a spiritual conveyor belt: put on this glow, get that insight, and -- bam! -- you're enlightened and ready to enlighten others in similar fashion. The problem is not that such teachers instruct but that they represent themselves as having achieved spiritual mastery."

Contrary to many church's religious zeal and methodology, you cannot mass produce spirituality through attempts at mass movements or mass conversions.  And genuine spirituality is not a "cookie-cutter" life where everyone looks and acts and believes the same or where everyone only has to utter the same words in a simplified formula.  Authentic spirituality looks different in different people.  It's achieved differently because everyone is unique.  Embodied spirituality

7. Spiritual Pride: "Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of 'spiritual superiority' is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that 'I am better, more wise and above others because I am spiritual.'"

I find it significant that the primary spiritual teachers and leaders from the major spiritual traditions (people like Jesus, Abraham, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammad) were people of great humility.  Jesus commented about his spiritual life by saying, "I assure you, the Son can do nothing by himself.  He does only what he sees the Father doing."  No wonder, on the eve of his death, in an upper room where he and his disciples had gathered to celebrate the Passover meal, when it became clear that there was no servant to wash their dusty feet, he took off his outer robe, picked up a towel, and began to wash his disciples' feet.  Genuine spirituality is not driven by pride but by authentic humility.

8. Group Mind: "Also described as groupthink, cultic mentality or ashram disease, group mind is an insidious virus that contains many elements of traditional co-dependence. A spiritual group makes subtle and unconscious agreements regarding the correct ways to think, talk, dress, and act. Individuals and groups infected with 'group mind' reject individuals, attitudes, and circumstances that do not conform to the often unwritten rules of the group."

Every authentic spiritual tradition encourages inclusivity and compassion as core to the spiritual life.  Ironic, then, that so many religious groups develop an "insider" vs. "outside" mentality - an "us" vs. "them" worldview.  "You can only be here if you become like us!"

9. The Chosen-People Complex: "The chosen people complex is not limited to Jews. It is the belief that 'Our group is more spiritually evolved, powerful, enlightened and, simply put, better than any other group.' There is an important distinction between the recognition that one has found the right path, teacher or community for themselves, and having found The One."

This deadly spiritual disease has been the motivator of countless persecutions, executions, and shunnings in the name of God.  The paradigm is, "If we have been chosen, then you can't have been chosen, too.  For you to be equally chosen like us, you have to join us, believe what we believe, live like us."  So the whole mission of the "chosen people" is to bring everyone else into alignment with them.  And if they resist, they are resisting God.  So we either have to "fix" them, or walk away from them lest we get contaminated by them.  This is a deeply destructive spiritual disease that can often be terminal for both parties.

10. The Deadly Virus: "I Have Arrived": "This disease is so potent that it has the capacity to be terminal and deadly to our spiritual evolution. This is the belief that 'I have arrived' at the final goal of the spiritual path. Our spiritual progress ends at the point where this belief becomes crystallized in our psyche, for the moment we begin to believe that we have reached the end of the path, further growth ceases."

I'm reminded of the super-disciple of Jesus, Paul, who once wrote about himself that he had not arrived.  He was still on the journey.  And so he kept his gaze on the one he was following, Jesus, in order to stay focused and remain moving forward.  Spirituality is not about arriving, it's about traveling; it's about a transformational process and journey that continues one's whole life.  That reality should produce great humility in us.

So which of these 10 spiritually transmitted diseases do you struggle with the most?  Is there one you tend to be infected with more than the others?  How does the disease manifest itself in you?  What are your primary symptoms?

Dr. Caplan's partner, Marc Gafni (an author and teacher), makes this statement:  "The essence of love is perception.  Therefore the essence of self love is self perception. You can only fall in love with someone you can see clearly--including yourself. To love is to have eyes to see. It is only when you see yourself clearly that you can begin to love yourself."

And when you and I begin to truly love ourselves, we are empowered to love others in healthy, meaningful, and compassionate ways.

So are there any spiritual vaccinations we can take to prevent and/or heal ourselves from these spiritually transmitted diseases?  In my next blog, we'll take a look at some powerful antidotes that have the potential of effecting profound, honest, authentic spiritual growth and transformation.  Stay tuned!

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Developing A Faith That Works, 2: What Is Fidelity?

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] The word "faith," especially to Westernized Christians, has come to be seen as a primarily notional experience - having to do with what you think about God.  It tends to mean holding a certain set of "beliefs," believing a set of statements to be true, whether cast as biblical teachings or doctrines or dogma.  Your faith is judged by how much you believe and how accurate your beliefs are.  If you possess this "right" kind of faith, you're called a "believer."

As a result, this concept of faith as primarily an intellectual exercise has turned faith almost exclusively into a matter of the head, too often with disastrous results by heartless, nonloving "believers."

But significantly, that was not the central meaning and usage of the word "faith" in the history of human religion (including early Christianity).  As Karen Armstrong, in her powerful book The Case For God, states, "Religion was not primarily something that people thought but something they did ... Religion [from its very inception in human history] was always a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart."

It was a way of being and living, not simply a way of thinking.  The stories and sacred scriptures of every religion emphasized the journey of heart and spirit in learning the sacred art of self-forgetfulness and compassion.  As a result, religions developed powerful rituals and practices that, if followed and wholeheartedly engaged in, would enable adherents to step "outside" their egos and experience the Sacred and Divine, empowering them to live more compassionately and unselfishly toward others.

For example, as Armstrong points out, the early Chinese Daoists (over 300 years before Jesus and the early Christian followers) saw religion as a "knack" primarily acquired by constant practice.  They, like the earlier Buddha and even Confucius, refused to spend lots of time speculating about the many metaphysical conundrums concerning the divine (as Buddha once said to a follower who constantly pestered with those kind of questions:  "You are like a man who has been shot with a poisoned arrow and refuses medical treatment until you have discovered the name of your assailant and what village he came from.  You would die before you got this perfectly useless information!").

Zhuangzi (c. 370-311 BCE), one of the most important figures in the spiritual history of China, explained that it was no good trying to analyze religious teachings logically.  He then cited the carpenter Bian:  "When I work on a wheel, if I hit too softly, pleasant as this is, it doesn't make for a good wheel.  If I hit it furiously, I get tired and the thing doesn't work!  So not too soft, not too vigorous.  I grasp it in my hand and hold it in my heart.  I cannot express this by word of mouth, I just know it."

Like the Chinese hunchback who trapped cicadas in the forest with a sticky pole and never missed a single one.  He had so perfected his powers of concentration that he lost himself in the task, and his hands seemed to move by themselves.  He had no idea how he did it exactly, but he knew only that he had acquired the knack after months of practice.  This "self-forgetfulness," Zhuangzi explained, was a "stepping outside" the prism of ego and experience of the sacred.  (from Armstrong, The Case For God, pp. xii-xiii, 23.)

No wonder Jesus, centuries later, reiterated this paradigm of spirituality and religious experience when he called his followers to "take up your cross and follow me."  He's not simply talking about believing in your head the right doctrines and the core truths.  He's talking about a "way" of living.  Referring to his own experience as the example for his followers, he said, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who is willing to give up his life in this world will keep it forever." John 12:24-25

Genuine faith is not just about your head, it's about your heart, it's about your journey, it's about life transformation that comes from self-forgetfulness and an experience with God the Sacred and the Divine.

SO IN THIS SERIES, we're taking a look at the four words that are translated as "faith."  We're unpacking each word and exploring what it means and what the differing nuances suggest about developing a faith that works in real life, a faith that transforms life, a faith that defines ourselves and produces a rich and deeper experience of both God and Life.  It's a return to the core of what religion was always meant to facilitate but has too often lost along the way:  a transformation of the heart.  In my last blog, we explored the 1^st word for faith, “fiducia,” from which we get our English word "fiduciary" (a person in whom we place our trust to protect our finances and estate).  So “trust," is the central definition, which in the realm of faith then conveys a profound kind of relaxed, solid, worry-free confidence in God as a power that can be trusted and relied upon to have our best interests in mind.

Today's word for faith is "fidelitas," which is the Latin word for "fidelity."  It literally means loyalty, faithfulness – originally referring to a vassal's loyalty to his Lord; a steadfast and devoted attachment that is not easily turned aside; constancy, steadfastness.  Faith as fidelity means loyalty, allegiance, the commitment of the self at its deepest level, the commitment of the “heart” to the experience of God not simply to statements about God.  A radical centering in God from your heart and soul not just your mind.  So what does that look like in real life terms?

There are two metaphors that the sacred scriptures use in describing our faith relationship with God that I'll unpack in my next blog post.  These metaphors describe what "fidelity" is NOT and so help to increase our understanding of what genuine faith as fidelity and loyalty is.  Stay tuned!