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How It All
Began
Thirty-five years ago I had a mystical experience. I wasn't
looking for it. I wasn't trying to achieve it. It just happened. I know it was
a mystical experience, because it fit the four marks of a mystical experience
that William James describes so well in his book "The Varieties of Religious
Experience". Those marks are: |
1. Ineffability. (Words can't adequately describe
it.)
2. Noetic
quality. (Knowledge or comprehension.)
3. Transiency. (It doesn't
last.)
4.
Passivity. (Will power doesn't make it
happen.)
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Initially, I had no vocabulary with
which to express this mystical experience. My Unitarian rearing hadn't
recognized mystical experiences. How could that rearing have given me words to
describe it or communicate it?
To find ready-made vocabularies, I had to
explore other religious traditions. How interesting that each religious
tradition had developed its own vocabulary, and they were all different. It was
just like all the different languages that had developed in the world. All
communicated experience. All the words were different.
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Word
Sculptures of a Mystical Experience
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I don't remember who came to my
door. I don't remember what he said. I do remember he was angry.
I had
just finished reading a book called Summerhill by an English
schoolmaster, A.S. Neill. Its theme was freedom, not license. Each student in
Neill's school was free to do what he wanted as long as the conduct didn't hurt
someone else. The community Neill had created was a free, creative, loving,
respectful, responsible interaction of unique human beings.
Recently,
I'd been involved in disciplinary battles with my preschool sons. The battles
resulted in increasingly destructive behavior in them and increased frustration
in me. I decided to give Neill's methods a try, with my own children and with
other people in my life.
The man at the door wasn't hurting me. I
decided to allow him to vent his anger. I didn't do it because it was something
I ought to do. I did it because I chose to do it. I experienced acceptance of
the anger and no desire to retaliate. Suddenly, the anger stopped.
Nothing changed. My house, the door, the living room, the man, were all
still there, just as they had been five minutes before.
Yet everything
changed. Suddenly, I understood the meaning of words I'd been taught as a
child: "But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite
thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Matthew 6:39.
I
couldn't stop playing with these ideas. Was my life the same or was it
different? Did I know or did I know nothing? I wasn't sure.
My
five-year-old son Bill began wetting the bed after his youngest brother was
born. At first, I ignored the bedwetting. Perhaps it would disappear on its
own. When it didn't, I explained to him why he was too big a boy to wet the
bed. The wetting continued. I reasoned with him, threatened him, screamed at
him, and spanked him. The wetting continued. I felt angry and frustrated.
Neill frequently dealt with problem behavior by rewarding his students.
While rewards for bad behavior didn't make sense, nothing else had worked.
Neill's ideas had worked with the man at the door. I decided to try them with
the bedwetting problem.
The next time Bill wet the bed, I gave him a
penny. He stared at me in confusion. The following morning, his bed was dry. He
never wet it again. My anger and frustration disappeared.
What a
powerful tool! I began using Neill's ideas with neighboring children.
One day, two children were calling each other names in the back yard
and threatening to fight. Instead of trying to stop them, I took each aside and
asked him if he wanted to fight.
"I don't want to fight," each
responded, "but he's making me do it. He's calling me names."
"Do you
want to fight?" I reiterated. "If so, go ahead and do it."
The boys
mumbled to themselves and looked at the ground. Two minutes later, they were
happily playing together.
What I was doing contradicted everything
society had taught me, but it brought the peace and harmony I desired. Society
had taught me to punish people for bad behavior, but I didn't punish them.
Society had taught me to resist evil, but I no longer resisted. Society had
taught me to fight for peace, but I didn't fight.
Instead, I simply
detached from the anger and turmoil around me and allowed it to happen without
responding to it. The anger and turmoil dissipated, and my life and
relationships worked. By allowing myself to remain peaceful and harmonious,
everything around me became peaceful and harmonious.
I had always
understood Matthew 6:39 as an unattainable moral commandment, requiring
subservience of my own needs to the needs of others. It wasn't that at all. It
was extremely effective action I could take all by myself, that benefited both
me and others. There was no self-denial in that action. There was nothing but
self-affirmation and life affirmation. I had never before felt so free, so
strong, so powerful, so integrated, so fully in control.
Nothing
outside me changed. The only thing that changed was my own thoughts, actions,
and emotions.
What I experienced has been called a "mystical
experience". As a child, I had been taught to doubt, question, and trust my own
judgment. My upbringing didn't include education about mystical experiences,
but I knew these experiences dominated many religions. As I read William James'
"Varieties of Religious Experience", and texts from Christianity, Buddhism, Zen
Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism, Plato, and existentialist
philosophers, I could recognize my own experience in all the different words.
It was as if different people were describing the same beautiful flower
garden. Some talked about roses, some spoke of delphiniums, some noticed the
color patterns, some focused on the trellises and paths. If I hadn't seen the
flower garden and were just listening to the words, I would have thought the
people were talking about different things. Having seen the flower garden, I
knew they were all giving verbal structure and form to the same underlying
experience, just as our minds give form and meaning to the fixed lines of
optical illusions.
Are the religious words true, or is each set of
words simply a finger pointing toward the moon? Is there a sense in which words
are false idols? Does the meaning of each set of words depend on the human
consciousness that hears them and uses them?
The last great frontier is
shifting human consciousness. Peace will happen only when each of us takes
responsibility for creating it in our own lives.
IT IS ALL VERY
SIMPLE
Each of us has only one soul to fix ...
Each of us has
only one heart to heal ...
Each of us has only one head to clear ...
But we need all of us.
Without one, there is disorder ...
Without one, there is imperfection ...
Without one, there is a hole in
harmony ...
It is all very simple.
We all matter.
The World
of Paradox...
Like what
you're reading here?
If so, you'll love "Shift: Change Your Words, Change
Your World".
To order, click here.
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