I like your writing and I think I have grown from reading your blogs but I was raised a Christian so I have trouble when you say there is no good or bad. I don’t think most people have much trouble telling them apart so how can you say there is no such thing? What would the world be like if we didn’t teach kids the difference between right and wrong?
signed,
Faithful
Dear Faithful,
Thanks for your question. What would happen if we didn’t teach kids the difference between right and wrong?
Well… we can go ahead and have our own set of preferences, but we don’t need a set of rules to be taught to us for us to be decent. Little children naturally make friends. And humans were working together in tribes for a very long time for very good reasons. It is safer, everyone ends up more successful, and it allows everyone to enjoy the company of others.
But what if the issue around humans getting off course wasn’t about good and bad –what if it was about the perils of ego?
That makes idea of ‘original sin’ less about good and bad. Instead, it makes it more about how the evolution of words and language had developed into a new kind of demon that lived inside our heads. In other words, what if language was how we had bit into the forbidden fruit of knowledge?
And what was Jesus’ message? We don’t actually need saving. He knew it was just a veil of bedeviled thinking that was blinding our Godly perfection from us. And what a great teacher and a great lesson! It’s so elegant! So simple! Have faith. Go silent in the temple of your minds.
But almost no one listened to what was meant. No one surrendered their negative thinking. Sigh.
For that lesson to work, people had to truly believe in Him and his message in more than just respectful commitment. They had to see what he meant. Thomas Aquinas took a vow of silence once he realized how perfect everything already was. Why layer words over perfection? Appreciation and gratitude is all that is required.
If we truly believed in Him then we would see no point behind the mean-spirited thinking that often exists in our heads. After all, isn’t being entirely mad just a more extreme version of saying many of the same kinds of things that many people silently say to themselves all the time?
We all know it from experience. The voice we call ‘our conscience’ is really just a Devil that bullies us for any perceived imperfection. That’s not some ‘higher’ or more noble voice. Those serpents of thought can wend through our minds and lead us to hurt others, ourselves, and the world around us. That voice weakens us. That isn’t God.
We all exist within, and are fundamentally a part of, God’s realm. We never needed saving. We are exactly the way God wants us, where God wants us, and when God wants us that way –all in order to help Him make the universe to happen the way He desires.
We can’t even conceive of the the universe, so why would we question God? Our job is to simply surrender and leave the planning to God. Our duty is simply to live the life that feels right for us. Mistakes and all. The sins have already been forgiven.
Our feelings are just God’s gentle hand guiding us. If things feel genuinely badly and not just undesirable, then we should stop doing them. If things feel good, we should move towards doing them.
Jesus died for our sins. We can empty our heads of the Devil’s tongue and relax into our roles. They suit is perfectly. Any fears are only more bedeviling thoughts. We were born out of and into love. We just need to pay attention and act accordingly. Our instincts will guide us just fine.
By living this way, there is no need to spend endless time hopeless questioning God’s plan when we face tragedy, calamity or death. Instead we can move even more deeply into the silent place where God can keep the Devil’s thoughts at bay, and we are held in God’s peaceful embrace.
That quiet place is where we can feel the pull of our true nature. And when we feel it, we will find that we will either be called to be still, to offer assistance, or to be heroic. And we’ll know which role we’re supposed to fill by what we’re called to do, in which circumstances.
Whether it’s called Christianity or Quantum Mechanics, we all just want to know that everything all adds up somehow. That there’s a sense to all of this. And if we truly believe that there is —if we earnestly to-our-bones believe it— then our mind can surrender and we can let ourselves go, into the quiet.
From that quiet, ego-less place, we don’t need convincing regarding our ability to truly differentiate right from wrong. When we’re clear headed, we can easily feel which is which, and which we are compelled to do. It’s why people feel more generous and kind when they feel good.
God doesn’t need any help guiding the universe. Our ego’s thoughts only create emotions. When God just needs us to steer through reality, He’s given us our feelings as a way of communicating with us.
We can forget all of our habitual thinking and and the roller coaster of emotions they put us on. Instead, we can just go silent and trust. Because it is in that silence that God’s wisdom can strike us most profoundly.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.