Simply Put #1

My 21st Century Spirituality model is an attempt to offer a contemporary alternative to old world religious metaphysics and new age magical thinking. As such the model asserts three key principles:

* critical thinking (and cognitive/intellectual self-development)
* inquiry-based (as opposed to faith-based) practice
* shadow-work (depth-oriented psychological honesty).

Simply Put is a distilled statement of critical thinking based truths that  have inquiry-based practice application in conjunction with shadow-work.

The first three installments will be a re-run from earlier this year and thereafter I plan to add more installments to this series. This time around I will add an extended commentary in the comments section below and video blogs offering elaboration and meditation instruction - this is just the beginning:


Simply Put #1

There being reasons for things happening is not the same as everything happening for a reason.

Cause and effect is indisputable, yet completely compatible with chaos.

Look behind the belief in divine causation and you'll find the denial of chaos, suffering and meaninglessness.

Yet without accepting the reality of chaos, suffering and meaninglessness, the truly organized, compassionate and meaningful cannot be fully perceived.

Thus the denial of the meaningless robs us of the ability to perceive true meaning.

The denial of chaos obscures the true wonder of intelligent organization.

The denial of suffering makes compassion appear less essential.

The denial of death dulls our experience of aliveness.

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Most forms of spirituality are caught in this trap precisely because they unwittingly seek to distort reality.

The function of these forms of spirituality is to dream up a feel-good metaphysical reason behind what we don't like about reality.

Innocents are slaughtered, wealth is unfairly distributed, evil people prosper, accidents happen, old age sickness and death come to all of us.

It is not fair.

In many ways, life makes no sense and is not what we think it ought to be.

This is spiritual truth number one.

In meditation, noticing the activity of the mind that tries to spin elaborate belief systems and metaphysical concepts to pretend this is not so, we can stop and direct compassionate attention underneath that activity - toward our own fear.

Relating honestly to fear by offering ourselves compassionate presence is good medicine.


Click here for Simply Put #2