Like many Americans, I was deeply concerned and alarmed by the recent Supreme Court Ruling on corporate contributions to political campaigns. Please check out this video to hear my feedback on what this means for our country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaSxwqgYmYc
Saturday, January 30, 2010
A Unitive Look at Same-Sex Marriage
My teacher Thomas Berry used to tell me over and over again, “In the present context, humans as a species must learn to think with their genes rather than with their brains.” Another way he put it was, “We’ve got to learn to think at the species level.” What might he have meant?
The brain has three major sections or cortices. The newest on the scale of evolution is the neo-cortex, responsible for, or rather the locus of the cognitive processes. Thought is the most obvious “voice” of that cortex; the most obvious function is cognition. Beneath the neocortex and enclosed within it is the paleo-cortex or old mammal brain. It is the locus of feeling functions and within it is the brain stem or Reptilian cortex, which is the locus of instinctual functions. Thomas Berry’s advice is to bypass all three functions and to think in categories which are common to our own species, the other species, and ultimately the whole community of life called the biosphere. It is in my opinion our inability to follow his advice which plagues our attempts to understand why same-sex marriage just doesn’t “feel right” to heterosexuals, including the one who writes this.
Constitutional thought is one of those products of the cognitive cortex as is all legal thought. The same can be said of sociological, psychological, theological or any other thought. It must be stated that if marriage is a legally guaranteed right of the Constitution, then same-sex marriage must be made legal. US citizens must share equally in the protections of the US Constitution whether or not same-sex marriage feels the same as both-sex marriage does in the gut.
---but---
In the gut, where species level thinking finds a voice, another sort or category of knowing presents itself. We have called this category “Thinking at the species level.” So, what about same-sex marriage at the species level? The historical, archeological and anthropological facts seem to indicate that marriage is the way in which humans come together in a relationship of committed love to have and to raise human young. All species have mating rituals and all human cultures do as well. Marriage is the cultural/religious expression of a species level fact called propagation. We have done a pathetic job of our mating ritual in these past few decades, but, it is still what it is at the species level. Whatever else same-sex marriage has in common with both-sex marriage, this one thing is clearly different; two men and two women cannot propagate.
Or can they?
What if at the genetic or species level it was clear that our shoddy job of parenting, the result of our shoddy job of commitment, whether due to the war-orphaned or divorce-orphaned, neglect-orphaned or abuse-orphaned, or earthquake-orphaned or tsunami-orphaned, or however orphaned, what if the species mind is calling upon the same-sex couples to rescue these children and provide for them where both-sex couples have not? What if the same-sex family is emergent as a species-level rescue mission for both-sex failure or inability to rear human young? That emergence reflects a species-level response to emergency faced by so many human young. Maybe same-sex marriage is a parenting partnership with both-sex couples in response to the plight of all human young.
But again, in any case, if the US Constitution in fact guarantees equal rights regarding marriage, same-sex couples have the right to marry period! It feels different in the gut, but the Constitution is the Constitution for all US citizens.
Want to explore more of my thinking on same-sex marriage? I went into much deeper analysis in Chapter 29 of my book The Modern Christian Mystic.
The brain has three major sections or cortices. The newest on the scale of evolution is the neo-cortex, responsible for, or rather the locus of the cognitive processes. Thought is the most obvious “voice” of that cortex; the most obvious function is cognition. Beneath the neocortex and enclosed within it is the paleo-cortex or old mammal brain. It is the locus of feeling functions and within it is the brain stem or Reptilian cortex, which is the locus of instinctual functions. Thomas Berry’s advice is to bypass all three functions and to think in categories which are common to our own species, the other species, and ultimately the whole community of life called the biosphere. It is in my opinion our inability to follow his advice which plagues our attempts to understand why same-sex marriage just doesn’t “feel right” to heterosexuals, including the one who writes this.
Constitutional thought is one of those products of the cognitive cortex as is all legal thought. The same can be said of sociological, psychological, theological or any other thought. It must be stated that if marriage is a legally guaranteed right of the Constitution, then same-sex marriage must be made legal. US citizens must share equally in the protections of the US Constitution whether or not same-sex marriage feels the same as both-sex marriage does in the gut.
---but---
In the gut, where species level thinking finds a voice, another sort or category of knowing presents itself. We have called this category “Thinking at the species level.” So, what about same-sex marriage at the species level? The historical, archeological and anthropological facts seem to indicate that marriage is the way in which humans come together in a relationship of committed love to have and to raise human young. All species have mating rituals and all human cultures do as well. Marriage is the cultural/religious expression of a species level fact called propagation. We have done a pathetic job of our mating ritual in these past few decades, but, it is still what it is at the species level. Whatever else same-sex marriage has in common with both-sex marriage, this one thing is clearly different; two men and two women cannot propagate.
Or can they?
What if at the genetic or species level it was clear that our shoddy job of parenting, the result of our shoddy job of commitment, whether due to the war-orphaned or divorce-orphaned, neglect-orphaned or abuse-orphaned, or earthquake-orphaned or tsunami-orphaned, or however orphaned, what if the species mind is calling upon the same-sex couples to rescue these children and provide for them where both-sex couples have not? What if the same-sex family is emergent as a species-level rescue mission for both-sex failure or inability to rear human young? That emergence reflects a species-level response to emergency faced by so many human young. Maybe same-sex marriage is a parenting partnership with both-sex couples in response to the plight of all human young.
But again, in any case, if the US Constitution in fact guarantees equal rights regarding marriage, same-sex couples have the right to marry period! It feels different in the gut, but the Constitution is the Constitution for all US citizens.
Want to explore more of my thinking on same-sex marriage? I went into much deeper analysis in Chapter 29 of my book The Modern Christian Mystic.
American "Collective Narcissistic Disorder" (CND)
While there are still serious reporters like Jim Lehrer, Wolf Blitzer and other Walter Cronkite types, most of the cable “news shows” are peopled by multi-million dollar narcissists who, whether on the left at MSNBC or on the right at Fox News are more involved in keeping their fellow CND sufferers in the news. There is nothing newsworthy about Sarah Palin and sadly there never was. She’s way off to the right but who keeps her in the news, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and other so-called lefties. They keep Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, Bachmann in the front page of the MSNBC engines. And their willing counterparts? The above mentioned Foxies do the same for them. I’m not saying they agree to this as though contracted to each other, I’m saying that consciously or subconsciously, they keep each other in their multi-million dollar seats. What do they sell us? ANGER! They sell us anger from their multi-million dollar perches while we feel greater and greater antipathy toward each other and widen the chasm that threatens to swallow our country, Constitution, and all. The anger is addictive and like all addictive substances, even while we know it is destroying us, we somehow arrive in our seats every night, remote in hand waiting for a fix.
I’ve begun an experiment. Each night I go from MSNBC to Fox to hear the double-sided narcissism and then I watch the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and compare the tone. Try it!
I’ve begun an experiment. Each night I go from MSNBC to Fox to hear the double-sided narcissism and then I watch the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and compare the tone. Try it!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
E Pluribus Unum
On our American dollar it says: e pluribus unum, out of the many one. I would like to talk about the exact opposite: out of the One, the many. What I’m going to try and do is to establish an integral and integrative understanding of who we are as a people in relationship not only to ourselves and our two-party system but also to the other cultures, to the other species, and to the life systems of the Earth in which we find ourselves embedded. If we don’t come up with a viable spirituality, a spirituality that sees as its deepest moral dilemma the relationship to life itself, and if we don’t come up with a politic that expresses that integral relationship, then we really do go on doing exactly what we’ve been doing. And in my mind, that may just be okay. That just may be the way the world is.
In Chapter 27 of my book, The Modern Christian Mystic, I talk about a moral relationship with life itself at every level- not just human. The politics of decency are an attempt to really stretch what that means. Not to try and transcend the separation between church and state but to affirm it and say that no religion has the right to dominate because our Constitution guarantees the right of freedom of religion to all walks of faith. The separation has nothing to do with a moral relationship to life itself. All religious traditions assert that moral relationship between humans, between the human and God and between the human and the life systems of the planet. I’ve laid out a nuts and bolt look at these three relationships in chapter 11 of my book Cultural Addiction.
Out of the many, One: we, as Americans, are the experiment of God for a unified planet because we have every creed, race, every opinion, etc. We are all gathered in this one place to try and work out the protocols for what we must do in order to survive. Remember what I said: we are one planet ecologically, one planet economically, one planet technologically, yet we are medieval culturally. We are still not understanding the interior, the soul of each other both individually and collectively. This is where we need to go. We are still operating out of true ignorance towards the other cultures. What do we really know about the Chinese and their experience? It’s not enough to call them Communists. They are also the Taoists and the Confucians that have a deep and magnificent cultural history that spans millennia, not two hundred years. When we look at India, what do we see? A people who worship cows and have millions starving to death? Well they have a tradition in Hinduism and Buddhism and Jainism that reaches back into pre-history! It goes beyond what we can even record! To be making decisions about these cultures with no understanding of the depth and profundity of what these people have to say is truly to operate in ignorance. We don’t know what makes these people tick. If we are to embrace our role as God’s experiment in oneness, we must delve deeper… perhaps this blog, this radio show, my work and yours, can help achieve this goal.
In Chapter 27 of my book, The Modern Christian Mystic, I talk about a moral relationship with life itself at every level- not just human. The politics of decency are an attempt to really stretch what that means. Not to try and transcend the separation between church and state but to affirm it and say that no religion has the right to dominate because our Constitution guarantees the right of freedom of religion to all walks of faith. The separation has nothing to do with a moral relationship to life itself. All religious traditions assert that moral relationship between humans, between the human and God and between the human and the life systems of the planet. I’ve laid out a nuts and bolt look at these three relationships in chapter 11 of my book Cultural Addiction.
Out of the many, One: we, as Americans, are the experiment of God for a unified planet because we have every creed, race, every opinion, etc. We are all gathered in this one place to try and work out the protocols for what we must do in order to survive. Remember what I said: we are one planet ecologically, one planet economically, one planet technologically, yet we are medieval culturally. We are still not understanding the interior, the soul of each other both individually and collectively. This is where we need to go. We are still operating out of true ignorance towards the other cultures. What do we really know about the Chinese and their experience? It’s not enough to call them Communists. They are also the Taoists and the Confucians that have a deep and magnificent cultural history that spans millennia, not two hundred years. When we look at India, what do we see? A people who worship cows and have millions starving to death? Well they have a tradition in Hinduism and Buddhism and Jainism that reaches back into pre-history! It goes beyond what we can even record! To be making decisions about these cultures with no understanding of the depth and profundity of what these people have to say is truly to operate in ignorance. We don’t know what makes these people tick. If we are to embrace our role as God’s experiment in oneness, we must delve deeper… perhaps this blog, this radio show, my work and yours, can help achieve this goal.
Third Millennium Christianity Part I
Even while school children lay trapped in concrete tombs, with their companions dead and composing in 90 degree heat- even while five stories of a hotel trap 150 UN workers in another tomb- even while people walk in circles dazed, with broken bones, head injuries and missing hands and limbs- even while others lay agonizing with severed legs- even while the dead were stacked like cord wood on the sides of the streets and roads- even with a lack of water and with starvation looming on all sides- and even now as the rats begin to devour human flesh in plain sight- even then the Christo-fascist Pat Robertson suggested that they brought this on themselves by making a deal with the Devil. Even then the bloated caricature of an intellectual Rush Limbaugh used these naked agonies to assail President Obama’s outreach to the Haitian people, and even encouraged us to withhold our monies. I’m not sure what the rest of the people in miniature had to say, Beck, O’Reilly, Coulter, Ingraham, but I hope they find the decency to at least maintain a solemn silence in the face of such utter horror.
The moral bankruptcy of the Right has never been so obvious. The pathetic alliance between the Right and the once great Republican Party, has reduced it from the solid elephant of the GOP to a rodent. Follow rats and you become one. Follow the morally bankrupt and you become them. Profit from liars and well-paid liars at that and you become People of the Lie. Winston Churchill sounded ridiculous warning against fascism in Hitler and so also did Pope Pius XI. Cruelty is at the core of all tyranny… cruelty wrapped in a thin veneer of religious rhetoric… cruelty wrapped in a thin veneer of economic and political policy. The same cruelty which would deny healthcare to the vulnerable here at home would question the political motivations of helping alleviate the horrors of Haiti and other places. Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly, Coulter, Ingraham, Hannity, and all the Tea Bagging Republican leadership are all rodent wannabes. Sarah Palin is a parasite on the gluttonous wealth generated by the whole yellow journalism industry which keeps people like herself and Beck and Limbaugh in their multi-million dollar seats. “What are the ideas they have with which you disagree?” asks my dearest and oldest friend. None… they have none… what they have are self-centered and self-serving cruelties which they market under the guise of ideas, under the guise of political and economic policy. As the poet W.B. Yeats put it in his poem “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”
The moral bankruptcy of the Right has never been so obvious. The pathetic alliance between the Right and the once great Republican Party, has reduced it from the solid elephant of the GOP to a rodent. Follow rats and you become one. Follow the morally bankrupt and you become them. Profit from liars and well-paid liars at that and you become People of the Lie. Winston Churchill sounded ridiculous warning against fascism in Hitler and so also did Pope Pius XI. Cruelty is at the core of all tyranny… cruelty wrapped in a thin veneer of religious rhetoric… cruelty wrapped in a thin veneer of economic and political policy. The same cruelty which would deny healthcare to the vulnerable here at home would question the political motivations of helping alleviate the horrors of Haiti and other places. Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly, Coulter, Ingraham, Hannity, and all the Tea Bagging Republican leadership are all rodent wannabes. Sarah Palin is a parasite on the gluttonous wealth generated by the whole yellow journalism industry which keeps people like herself and Beck and Limbaugh in their multi-million dollar seats. “What are the ideas they have with which you disagree?” asks my dearest and oldest friend. None… they have none… what they have are self-centered and self-serving cruelties which they market under the guise of ideas, under the guise of political and economic policy. As the poet W.B. Yeats put it in his poem “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”
Saturday, January 16, 2010
A Buddhist Purgatory?
I remember all too well the mad clowns of my boyhood who called themselves "Brothers of the Sacred Heart" and/or "The Christian Brothers". In between beatings and molestations, they terrorized me and the other little boys in their "care" with hideous visions of Purgatory and eternal damnation in hell. I knew even then that if there was a Purgatory or hell, it was their schools and I was already in it. But I loved Jesus Christ then and I still do.
Graduating in 1965, I fell into the toxic swamps of the "sixties" and I staggered around until 1969 when I encountered the Tao Te Ching which had recently been translated by St. John's University NYC.It set me on a journey, a forty year journey through the eastern scriptural traditions and then back to Jesus Christ with a whole different vision of the "Guru of Gurus", the great Teacher from Nazareth.
Recently, my wife bought me the "Bardo Thodol", a Tibetan Book of the Dead. This particular illustrated edition of the ancient scripture is published by Metro Books New York, NY. It was compiled and edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz who also offers the most amazing introduction one can imagine. Sadly for you and me both, Evans-Wentz died in 1965. What is this book about? It is a Buddhist tourist guide through what the Church used to call Purgatory, the place of purgation of one's shadow self.
Buddhism, like all religions, has an exoteric Trinity- Buddha, Dharma, Sangha: The Buddha Mind, the path of teachings, and the gathering or brotherhood. We could call this Trinity the Trinity in Time. Wentz notes that there is also a Trinity in Eternity, the "Source Trinity" for the "reflected Trinity in time". The Eternal dimension is Dharma-kaya, Nirvana-kaya and Sambhoga-kaya. Wentz notes that while the Catholics were forming heresy panels to burn "gnostic heretics", the Buddhists were explaining eternity in a pre-spatial, pre-temporal Trinity of Being. While the good brothers were terrifying little boys with threats of hell engendered in their midsts, the Buddhists were charting the map past and through such states of being. That new rock band called "Sarah Palin and the Tea Baggers" know all about heresy panels and can be reached for more information at www.frompurgatorytohell.com. Or, you can contact Brit Hume at Fox News. Mr. Hume is a Buddhist master who converted to Christianity. He's in the know!
Graduating in 1965, I fell into the toxic swamps of the "sixties" and I staggered around until 1969 when I encountered the Tao Te Ching which had recently been translated by St. John's University NYC.It set me on a journey, a forty year journey through the eastern scriptural traditions and then back to Jesus Christ with a whole different vision of the "Guru of Gurus", the great Teacher from Nazareth.
Recently, my wife bought me the "Bardo Thodol", a Tibetan Book of the Dead. This particular illustrated edition of the ancient scripture is published by Metro Books New York, NY. It was compiled and edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz who also offers the most amazing introduction one can imagine. Sadly for you and me both, Evans-Wentz died in 1965. What is this book about? It is a Buddhist tourist guide through what the Church used to call Purgatory, the place of purgation of one's shadow self.
Buddhism, like all religions, has an exoteric Trinity- Buddha, Dharma, Sangha: The Buddha Mind, the path of teachings, and the gathering or brotherhood. We could call this Trinity the Trinity in Time. Wentz notes that there is also a Trinity in Eternity, the "Source Trinity" for the "reflected Trinity in time". The Eternal dimension is Dharma-kaya, Nirvana-kaya and Sambhoga-kaya. Wentz notes that while the Catholics were forming heresy panels to burn "gnostic heretics", the Buddhists were explaining eternity in a pre-spatial, pre-temporal Trinity of Being. While the good brothers were terrifying little boys with threats of hell engendered in their midsts, the Buddhists were charting the map past and through such states of being. That new rock band called "Sarah Palin and the Tea Baggers" know all about heresy panels and can be reached for more information at www.frompurgatorytohell.com. Or, you can contact Brit Hume at Fox News. Mr. Hume is a Buddhist master who converted to Christianity. He's in the know!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Welcome to the Blog!
Welcome friends!
Some of you may know me personally, others may have read my books, heard my lectures on the road through Cross Country University, or have only come to know me through my radio show on WCRN 830AM on the dial (Worcester, MA). For those of you who don't know me, my name is Albert and I am an author, a psychologist, a teacher, a radio talk show host, a poet and more. I have been involved in the study of world religions, human spirituality, psychology, addiction, ecology, cosmology, and more for the better part of four decades. This blog is a way to share with you some of what I am working on, for those who may wish to familiarize themselves with my work. If you would like to know more about me, feel free to visit me on Facebook, listen in on Sunday nights at 8:00pm on WCRN 830AM on the dial or stream live at www.wcrnradio.com, or check out my publications on Amazon.com. My most recent pieces in include The Way of Christ: The Gospel of John Through the Unitive Lens; The Modern Christian Mystic: Finding the Unitive Path to God; Cultural Addiction: The Greenspirit Guide to Recovery; and The Architecture of the Soul: A Unitive Model of the Human Person (all published by North Atlantic Books, distributed by Random House.)
I plan to use this blog as a place for dialogue- if you have questions or insights about my radio show, responses to reading my books, questions about what I am up to these days or upcoming lectures and events, please feel free to contact me or post on the blog. I welcome your feedback!
Peace,
Albert
Some of you may know me personally, others may have read my books, heard my lectures on the road through Cross Country University, or have only come to know me through my radio show on WCRN 830AM on the dial (Worcester, MA). For those of you who don't know me, my name is Albert and I am an author, a psychologist, a teacher, a radio talk show host, a poet and more. I have been involved in the study of world religions, human spirituality, psychology, addiction, ecology, cosmology, and more for the better part of four decades. This blog is a way to share with you some of what I am working on, for those who may wish to familiarize themselves with my work. If you would like to know more about me, feel free to visit me on Facebook, listen in on Sunday nights at 8:00pm on WCRN 830AM on the dial or stream live at www.wcrnradio.com, or check out my publications on Amazon.com. My most recent pieces in include The Way of Christ: The Gospel of John Through the Unitive Lens; The Modern Christian Mystic: Finding the Unitive Path to God; Cultural Addiction: The Greenspirit Guide to Recovery; and The Architecture of the Soul: A Unitive Model of the Human Person (all published by North Atlantic Books, distributed by Random House.)
I plan to use this blog as a place for dialogue- if you have questions or insights about my radio show, responses to reading my books, questions about what I am up to these days or upcoming lectures and events, please feel free to contact me or post on the blog. I welcome your feedback!
Peace,
Albert
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