I’m sure we have all taken time to ponder the question, “Why am I here?” Considering the meaning of life goes back at least as far as the ancient philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and has remained a favorite topic of philosophers through the centuries.
Entire religions are built upon the need to provide purpose for our human existence. I have read a description of Christianity as defining the purpose of life is to seek salvation for a promise of eternal life. A great speaker once told me that the purpose of religion was “to make people feel better about death.”
Discounting all of the religious variations, I think most of us fall into one of three camps:
a) ‘we are born, we live, we die, that’s it’
b) ‘we are born, we live to meet the goals set out by our religion, we die, then spend eternity based on how well we met our religious obligations’
c) ‘we come from pure positive energy, we experience duality and conflict, we return to pure positive energy.’
As for me, when I’m asked what I believe, I usually just say that I’m hopeful.
As a youth, my family attended an active Southern Baptist Church. It was what most Southern people did in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Every Sunday morning, you would get dressed in your “Sunday finest” clothes and go to your church of choice. Most of us also attended a Wednesday service, as well. I remember one Sunday morning when I was around five or six years old, my father was quite vocal on the drive home from church saying it was the last time we were going to that church, that they spent more time preaching about money than they did scripture. It was the last time we attended church as a family for many years, and it also taught me, as a young child, that church was not to be trusted. I felt a bit like an outcast because ‘everyone’ in our neighborhood attended church on Sunday morning except our family and the family of the town drunk that lived a couple of houses up across the street.
Fast forward almost a decade and I found myself in a new school, 8th grade at the newly constructed high school. My other elementary classmates matriculated to the old high school but our family had moved to a neighboring school district. I met my new best friend, John, on that first day of school. Though he was a year older than me and a year ahead of me, we had several classes together, including chorus. Oh, how I loved to sing. I had first discovered my joy for singing in our weekly music class in elementary school. I can still remember my third-grade classmates groaning when I asked if we could sing “Home on the Range” almost weekly. Just a couple of weeks into the new school year, John asked me if I would consider visiting his church, the local Presbyterian Church, and invited me to attend the choir rehearsal that Wednesday evening. I was all in, choir practice every Wednesday evening, church service every Sunday morning, and often special services on Sunday evenings. I was there so much that my parents and two younger brothers even started attending.
However, there was always a disconnect for me. I would spend the morning in Sunday school listening to how loving and caring God is, then move up to the main sanctuary to be told how judgmental, spiteful, and vindictive God is. Another covenant I had problems wrapping my head around was the declaration we had to proclaim every Sunday morning: “I believe that the Bible is the word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” Fifty-five years later and that phrase is still in my head. I never truly accepted the Bible as a literal expression of God’s word, much less that the red letter scriptures were actual quotes from Jesus. I stayed at that church for the balance of high school, not for the message every Sunday, but for the chance to sing regularly.
One of the more recent philosophies was made popular in the 1980’s by author Wayne Dyer and has been attributed to the 20th century philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I’m sure you are familiar with “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” 1980 is also the same year my wife and I were married. She was a strong proponent of spirituality separate from religious dogma. These thoughts were very much in line with the philosophies of Wayne Dyer and, in the early 1990’s, another author she followed, Abraham Hicks and the “Law of Attraction.” I was not ready to hear those messages, and I called them no more than “woo-woo philosophy.” She was persistent and consistent in how she presented that “new thought” paradigm to me. Most importantly, she demonstrated those ideas through her actions, not just her words. It took until the late 1990’s for the light bulb to finally turn on in my brain.
By this time we had moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and I was committed to my life on the hamster wheel. Always chasing more, always searching for happiness ‘out there’, and never finding contentment. Ten years with the same small high-tech company had brought me industry notoriety, a comfortable paycheck, and a feeling that I still wasn’t contributing to the common good. The owner of the company, along with the VP of Finance, attended a long weekend experiential ‘self-help’ seminar and wanted all of their top-tier managers to attend. I was to be the guinea pig for the rest of the organization. I showed up on Thursday evening not even knowing what the seminar was about.
As with most things I get involved in, I went in with an open mind and participated fully. It was very much all of the “woo-woo” stuff my wife had been telling, but this time it was presented in a way that I could understand. I couldn’t wait to share my newfound discoveries with her and all she would say is, “Yes, I know. That’s what I’ve been telling you for the last twenty years.
I started volunteering with the seminar organization, eventually attending an advanced weeklong class that dug deeper into our decision making, then becoming a leader both in the basic seminar as well as the advanced seminar. One of the most insightful messages I received about myself was that I spent so much time striving to be “Right” even at the expense of “Being Happy.” Yes, words Dr. Phil also often used. Communication between my wife and I actually flourished. Shortly after 9/11 in 2001, my wife and I decided it was time to pursue happiness and we returned to the Atlanta area.
Upon moving back to metropolitan Atlanta, we decided to go into business together. We worked side by side seven days a week and were basically together 24 hours a day. We would never have survived that ritual before finding common ground spiritually. As mentioned in Part 1, our world came crashing down in 2018 when our youngest child took their own life. We not only lost one of the joys of our life, we lost our joy for life.
In the summer of 2018, as my wife was searching for spiritual comfort, she decided to attend a service at our local Unity Church. This was something I was not familiar with, but she did find comfort there and encouraged me to attend. The core principles of Unity aligned with my belief system, and I was comforted by a spiritual group that used meditation to seek alignment instead of a religious group that used prayer to ask for favors. Unity uses the Bible as its basic textbook, not an “infallible truth”. Unity acknowledges the divinity of Jesus but also asserts that the same divinity lies in each and every one of us. In our local Unity Church, Jesus is our master teacher and model. Just as importantly, Unity states that EVERYONE is a unique expression of God and together we are One.
In Part 1, I commented that we, collectively, seem to be more disjointed in our belief system than ever before. How do I respond to this? As the title of this post implies, how do I navigate this journey of life? How do I reconcile that family and other people I know have such diametrically opposed views on religion, politics, diversity within the human race? For me, the inspiration is simple while the application is often quite difficult. If I truly believe that “we all are one”, that “we each have the divinity of God within us”, that “our thoughts manifest reality,” I say to you:
“The divinity within me honors the divinity within you.”
Unity teaches me that the spirit of God lives within/around/as each person; therefore, all people are inherently good. It is not for me to judge.
I was going to close this post with a single word – NAMASTE, for those of you not familiar with the word, it is pronounced: nah-mah-stay. I also found these short definitions, maybe I should have just started this post with these:
“I bow to you”: A literal translation meaning “salutations to you” or “hello/goodbye” in Sanskrit.
Gratitude: A way to thank the teacher for sharing knowledge and students for their presence and energy.
Oneness: A gesture promoting unity and acknowledging that beneath differences, we are the same.
Spiritual Connection: Helps connect energies and close the practice with a sense of peace and reverence.
“The divine in me bows to the divine in you”: A common interpretation, recognizing shared spirit. Hmmm, sound familiar?
However, I will do it anyway.
Namaste
