Haiti – Our World is One of Suffering

Haiti – The death and suffering are beyond understanding. Anytime like this some question God. If he is all powerful how could he let this happen? Our world is one of suffering. Sometimes intensely personal and sometimes hugely tragic, but the central theme of spiritual experience itself tells us that God is transcendent. In this way, God helps us transcend suffering. God is not causing and controlling us, but inspiring us to be his hands of compassion.

Why Do You Work?

I was hit by a flaming arrow by a Forum piece in USA Today last Monday written about God (The God Choice).  It was written by Barbara Bradley Hagerty whose new book is Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality.  Her book asserts that all of us are confronted with a nagging choice.  Under scenario one all of human consciousness resides inside the three-pound slab of meat called our brain.  In this scenario, the meaning of both the universe and our daily life, our family, and anything else we might care about are the results of brain chemistry.  All meaning and all morality is made up.  All reality is material.

The other choice is to look at our brains’ design as a radio receiver capable of receiving inspiration and wisdom from a source beyond our personal biology.  Furthermore, this greater wisdom is constantly being broadcast whether we tune into it or not.  Neurological research on people who meditate, for instance, develop parts of their brain that enables them to reduce negative stress, improve sustained contentment and creative responses to challenges.  This she proposes is like putting a big antenna on our inner radio so we can receive clearer, deeper and more inspiring wisdom from a source beyond our brains.  Why should we believe this?

Well, the truth is no one knows what consciousness is.  What we do know now is that people who have had all brain wave activity cease in their brain due to a medical procedure can still experience complete consciousness even when they are brain dead!  (See the case of Pam Reynolds).  The implication is that our unique human consciousness appears to exist independent of our physical brains.  Wow.

So what’s spiritual meaning have to do with our daily life?  It turns out, plenty.  I was conducting a training of a global brand name company last week for a group of senior sales executives who were dealing with the brutal impacts of unrelenting stress performing at a high level in this crazy economy. One of the questions I asked is “Why Do You Work?”  As the answers flowed it soon became apparent that we work to live rather than live to work.

Then I asked, “What makes life worth living?”  In the many decades of doing this kind of work the answer is always the same.  The people we love make life worth living. Relationships are at the core of meaning because healthy relationships require us to go beyond our self-interest.  They ask us to love when people are acting unlovable.  They ask us to understand, to listen, to encourage, to be loyal and committed even when it’s inconvenient.  Especially when it’s inconvenient.  It’s relationships of love that give us the glimpse of what’s possible when we authentically connect with another.  It is then when we feel the energy of selfless love instead of the grimy world of survival of the fittest.

So is love real, or is it just the result of brain chemistry and DNA?  Well, again, it’s a choice.  For me hell would be believing that life was meaningless and that love was a mirage.  It means that patiently listening to a grieving friend is meaningless self-indulgence.

Heaven on the other hand, begins when I have a moment of intense presence with someone I love.  In those moments heaven crashes over me in an ecstasy of profound gratitude that connects me to every element of the universe.  And in those unique moments I feel oneness.  Is that made up?

Of course sophisticated brain scans can identify the parts of the brain that light up when people feel this transcendence.  Some cynics believe because we’ve discovered the human antenna that there is no need to consider the source of the divine music.  It seems no matter what they insist, life has no absolute meaning.  But what if life does have meaning?  What if the common human experience of love is what makes life worth living because love is real?

My choice is to believe it’s more real than anything else.  My choice is to believe it’s more real than the economy, politics, retirement, a job, the Internet or my personal stresses and disappointment that the world does not conform to my agenda.  That is my choice because it is my experience.  What’s yours?

What do you believe?

First of all, thank you all for your kind and inspiring words regarding my mother-in-law’s sudden passing and my mother’s plight as an Alzheimer’s victim.  Your insights and personal emails really matter.  It is so heartening to participate in a community of thoughtful, compassionate people who are striving to make their difference and to live lives of genuine inspiration.

Today I thought I’d just plunge in and take a big chance.  I am talking about belief in the Divine.  I know, I know.  Why do I have to bring it up at all?  Nothing is more controversial.  And it is because it matters so much.  So here’s what I propose.  I’ll tell you how I think about belief and non-belief and you tell me what you think.  No matter what, let’s agree afterwards to still be friends.

As I see it, there are two general possibilities, two scenarios. Both scenarios have their supporters.  Both sides use science to back them up.

Scenario #1 is that we are “accidental humans;” the result of a cosmic chemical spill.  A random mass of colliding electrons guided by unseen forces that proceed without any cause or meaning. Under Scenario #1, consciousness is just a by-product of biochemistry––an epiphenomenon, as the scientists say. If we accept this possibility, then all meaning is self-invented, a comforting illusion to save us from despair. With Scenario #1 values are simply the preferences we invent to help us get along. When humans decide they are the pinnacle of all intelligent life, it opens the door to genocide and child abuse being just as legitimate as charity work because if there are no universal values, life is simply about survival of the fittest. If you think this is far out, consider the long list of early 20th century leaders that believed in selectively breeding out what “science” said were low IQ races: Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, William Keith Kellogg, Margaret Sanger, and Winston Churchill to name a few.  Eugenics was a very popular fake science.

This view of accidental humanity is quite popular among the highly educated. In fact, it has become de facto religion in most of our colleges and universities. Several well-known twentieth century tyrants used their own version of Scenario #1 to justify their actions.  We all know what happened.  It led to the slaughter of over 150 million of us. If Darwinism is the soulless mechanism of creation, what we end up with is a life based on competing for power instead of one of meaning.

I know there are people who claim religion has done more to harm humanity than non-belief ever has.  But all the wars, intolerance, and torture didn’t happen because of a belief in a divine unseen world.  It happened because humans are corrupt.  The fact that religion doesn’t tame man’s evil doesn’t mean that life is meaningless.  To the contrary.  It makes life’s intrinsic meaning even more important.

All attempts of the “accidental humans” camp to create secular meaning are in the end meaningless. After all, if meaning is made-up, then it really isn’t meaningful. And living without real meaning is not fulfilling—never has been.  It also makes science, art, spirituality, and love meaningless. Just diversions on the road to nowhere.

Scenario #2 says that there is something more to us.  It says that we are significant humans. We are part of something that goes deeper than the electrical wiring of our brain. We are connected to a greater intelligence, a transcendent spiritual energy that is at the core of everything.

Scenario #2 isn’t made-up woo-woo. It, too, has science behind it. Its reality begins with understanding E=MC2––Einstein’s discovery that matter and energy are one and the same and that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed.  Every physical thing, according to Einstein, is really just energy in a particular form that our particular senses interpret as matter. And energy cannot be destroyed, only changed in form. We don’t actually live in a material world.  Matter is just energy.  It is technically non-material. And the name we commonly use for things non-material is spiritual.  Spiritual energy, imagine that.

What’s wild is that the laws that govern how energy changes form seem to depend on consciousness.  Decades of repeated experiments performed by scores of mainstream renown physicists have categorically shown that human intention powerfully affects the behavior of matter/energy.  Period.  It’s no longer up for debate.  In fact it’s this property of physics that makes electrons behave in ways that make electronic circuit boards possible.  It’s ironic that every computer chip is a reminder of an invisible unexplainable reality.

Our awareness is not an after-effect but a prerequisite. It comes first, not second.  Thanks to new super-sophisticated brain surgery we now have clinical evidence the individual human consciousness does not depend on our brain being alive.  That’s right.  We now know that we can have zero brain wave activity for prolonged periods and still have conscious awareness of what is happening while our brain is switched off.  Now that’s amazing. (If you want to read about a clinical account of independent human consciousness, read The Scalpel and the Soul  by Allen S. Hamilton M.D.

So in Scenario #2, we are not, at our essence, physical, biological hunks of matter that have learned to think. Rather our biological bodies are only the temporary manifestation of some essential, eternal energy––what spiritual teachers have for millennia called our souls. In that case, the source of our true desires and noblest intentions is much deeper than our individual story, our personality, or our brain chemistry. It is an abiding, universal consciousness temporarily housing itself in our body.

What’s the importance of all this? Well, if Scenario #2 is true, then most everything we tell ourselves is important isn’t. At least not in the way we think it is. With Scenario #2, our soul belongs to a deeper spiritual reality. And in that reality love does matter.  In fact, it matters most of all.  I don’t know about you, but I’m putting my chips on Scenario #2.

What do you think?