The Essentials

[qos]

I am blessed by the friendship of lovetakesyouin, whose posts are a continual reminder to me about the fundamental values of spiritual life, and whose life and teaching challenge me to find and act upon ever deeper levels of compassion.

His post this morning is a wonderful example of his writing, and highlights some of what I'm trying to express in my posts about the fruits of spiritual practice being more important to me than what I believe about the beings I work with.


There are very few things I hold as "beliefs," but perhaps the most important is this: that when we die, we are not quizzed about what doctrine we professed or what rituals we performed, or the gender or numbers of the people with whom we shared our bodies. If we are judged on anything, it will be about the amount of love, generosity, compassion, charity, understanding, justice, and mercy we brought into the world.

No one path -- religious or otherwise -- has a monopoly on those qualities.

Emanuel Swedenborg taught that God is what brings us closer to God, whether one believes in God or not, and that growing in love and wisdom is the path to God, no matter what name is at the trailhead. God doesn't care which path we take, as long we're on a path that results in the growth and deepening of love, and the will to act on that love.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Exactly so!

[athenian-abroad.livejournal.com]

This reminds me a bit of the position of the Unitarian Universalists (UUs).

As it's been explained to me (by a UU member), when the "merger" between the Unitarians and the Universalists was arranged, the decision was made to retain only the dogma and doctrine common to both denominations. And as it turned out, there wasn't any. Which means that, officially, the UU's have no official beliefs, only official values. Any beliefs consistent with those values are welcome.

I've always been fascinated with the idea of taking values as logically prior to beliefs -- reasoning from what we take to be good to what we take to be true -- partly because it's the opposite of the "standard" direction (i.e. it's susceptible to the charge of being rationalization rather than rationale), but also because I suspect that it's more in line with how human moral reasoning really works (regardless of how we say it works).

[qos.livejournal.com]

I've struggled with this as a chicken-and-egg question, especially in the time shortly after my existential crisis when I was trying to build an ethical framework that wasn't based on "because the Bible said so." I wasn't sure how to take the fact that even though I didn't believe in God anymore, my fundamental ethics were pretty much the same as they had been. My values remain powerfully influenced by my childhood beliefs, even if those beliefs have changed radically.

I'd like to think now that I hold the values I do based on a belief that acting on them makes my life and the world in general a better place. Of course, that in itself is based on a belief that a certain type of world is more desireable than another.

[professor-mom.livejournal.com]

Well said. I love the statement that God is what brings us closer to God whether one believes in God or not. I often find people whom I consider to be holy who do not believe in God.