The Spiritual Progressive: The American Dream: Fact or Fiction?

From our friend Scott Manley at The Spiritual Progressive

The American Dream - Fact or Fiction?

The great American Dream first expressed by James Truslow Adams in 1931, was the idea that citizens of every rank feel that they can achieve a "better, richer, and happier life." The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence which states that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The American Dream has been credited with helping to build a cohesive American experience, but has also been blamed for over inflated expectations.

There are a few problems with this assumption. First of all, if “all men are created equal”, then why is the American Dream exclusively American? Then there is the problem of over inflated expectations. In the late 1800’s, Horatio Alger wrote stories of fictional characters from impoverished backgrounds who, through self-reliance and hard work, were able to realize the American Dream in this land of boundless opportunity.

The idea of self-determination and rugged individualism is idealized in the Republican party. They want less government, less government regulation, and more free market economics. This is epitomized in a story floating around the internet called “A day in the Life of Joe Republican.”

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

We are addicted to this rag-to-riches myth in this country. That is why we bought into the Reagan theory of “trickle down economics.” The idea that if the rich are allowed to make as much money as they can, some of it will trickle down on the rest of us as they steal into the night with their huge bags of cash. George H. W. Bush called this “voodoo economics.” We have seen the result of 30 years of Reaganomics - the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the middle class has all but vanished.

Although this economic theory has been proven wrong time and time again, people have been brainwashed into believing that the American Dream still can apply to them too. Most people outside of America don’t live their lives based on fairy tales. They live in reality, where there are only going to be a few rich people, and you are not going to be one of them. So get used to it.

The rich have gotten richer, and as a result, they have destroyed the American Dream and have sent the world economy into a tailspin that hasn’t been seen since the great depression. The rich, instead of being drawn and quartered and hung at dawn at city gates, they have gotten a big wet kiss in the form of record tax breaks from Congress, and no one has said a word. Why? Because we’re still addicted to the Horatio Alger myth, that someday, I can make it big after all. So don’t attack the rich man, because one day that rich man may be me!

Let me burst the bubble of this myth once and for all.

The Declaration of Independence says that we are "endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This acknowledgement of the creator’s endowment is certainly true. Not a blade of grass can move without God’s sanction. It says nothing about how each individual is self endowed with this ability.

The ancient Vedic wisdom of the Srimad-Bhagavatam clarifies this point. The 6th Canto, 12th Chapter, 13th Verse states:

“Just as a person not inclined to die must nonetheless give up his longevity, opulence, fame and everything else at the time of death, so, at the appointed time of victory, one can gain all these when the Supreme Lord awards them by His mercy.”

In the purport, Srila Prabhupada writes,

“It is not good to be falsely puffed up, saying that by one’s own effort one has become opulent, learned, beautiful and so on. All such good fortune is achieved through the mercy of the Lord. From another point of view, no one wants to die, and no one wants to be poor or ugly. Therefore, why does the living entity, against his will, receive such unwanted troubles? It is due to the mercy or chastisement of the Supreme Personality of Godhead that one gains or loses everything material. No one is independent; everyone is dependent on the mercy or chastisement of the Supreme Lord. There is a common saying in Bengal that the Lord has ten hands. This means that He has control everywhere—in the eight directions and up and down. If He wants to take everything away from us with His ten hands, we cannot protect anything with our two hands. Similarly, if He wants to bestow benedictions upon us with His ten hands, we cannot factually receive them all with our two hands; in other words, the benedictions exceed our ambitions. The conclusion is that even though we do not wish to be separated from our possessions, sometimes the Lord forcibly takes them from us; and sometimes He showers such benedictions upon us that we are unable to receive them all. Therefore either in opulence or in distress we are not independent; everything is dependent on the sweet will of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.”

The American dream is a myth in as much as it is interpreted as being achieved as a result of one’s own endeavor, and that is the status quo belief. We must debunk this myth. It is only God who can give or take away the American Dream. Man proposes, and God disposes. We can work like asses for our own sense gratification, which is all taken away at the time of death, or we can serve God, for his pleasure. If we serve God, we will be given all that we require for our maintenance, but that should not be equated with the opulence given to those who have worked for their own selfish gratification. One type of work is binding (that of the karmi, or fruitive worker), another is liberating, (that of a devotee), who can use anything in the service of God, and is not entangled in the reactions of that labor. The devotee is free from karma, and will be liberated from the hard struggle for material existence, and go back to Godhead, to be in his constitutional position, as an eternal servant of God. The karmi will continue to rot in this material world, life after life. That is not the American Dream.

Posted by shick at 12:39 PM

Are There Dangers In Being "Spiritual But Not Religious?"

By John Blake, from CNN Living

June 4, 2010 1:28 p.m. EDT

Being "spiritual but not religious" means you do not need a church or a community, some say. A beach will do.

(CNN) -- "I'm spiritual but not religious."

It's a trendy phrase people often use to describe their belief that they don't need organized religion to live a life of faith.

But for Jesuit priest James Martin, the phrase also hints at something else: egotism.

"Being spiritual but not religious can lead to complacency and self-centeredness," says Martin, an editor at America, a national Catholic magazine based in New York City. "If it's just you and God in your room, and a religious community makes no demands on you, why help the poor?"

Religious debates erupt over everything from doctrine to fashion. Martin has jumped into a running debate over the "I'm spiritual but not religious" phrase.

The "I'm spiritual but not religious" community is growing so much that one pastor compared it to a movement. In a 2009 survey by the research firm LifeWay Christian Resources, 72 percent of millennials (18- to 29-year-olds) said they're "more spiritual than religious." The phrase is now so commonplace that it's spawned its own acronym ("I'm SBNR") and Facebook page: SBNR.org.

But what exactly does being "spiritual but not religious" mean, and could there be hidden dangers in living such a life?

Did you choose "Burger King Spirituality"?

Heather Cariou, a New York City-based author who calls herself spiritual instead of religious, doesn't think so. She's adopted a spirituality that blends Buddhism, Judaism and other beliefs.

"I don't need to define myself to any community by putting myself in a box labeled Baptist, or Catholic, or Muslim," she says. "When I die, I believe all my accounting will be done to God, and that when I enter the eternal realm, I will not walk though a door with a label on it."

People seem not to have the time nor the energy or interest to delve deeply into any one faith or religious tradition.
--June-Ann Greeley, theology professor

BJ Gallagher, a Huffington Post blogger who writes about spirituality, says she's SBNR because organized religion inevitably degenerates into tussles over power, ego and money.

Gallagher tells a parable to illustrate her point:

"God and the devil were walking down a path one day when God spotted something sparkling by the side of the path. He picked it up and held it in the palm of his hand.

"Ah, Truth," he said.

"Here, give it to me," the devil said. "I'll organize it."

Gallagher says there's nothing wrong with people blending insights from different faith traditions to create what she calls a "Burger King Spirituality -- have it your way."

She disputes the notion that spiritual people shun being accountable to a community.

"Twelve-step people have a brilliant spiritual community that avoids all the pitfalls of organized religion," says Gallagher, author of "The Best Way Out is Always Through."

"Each recovering addict has a 'god of our own understanding,' and there are no priests or intermediaries between you and your god. It's a spiritual community that works.''

Nazli Ekim, who works in public relations in New York City, says calling herself spiritual instead of religious is her way of taking responsibility for herself.

Ekim was born in a Muslim family and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. She prayed to Allah every night, until she was 13 and had to take religion classes in high school.Then one day, she says she had to take charge of her own beliefs.

"I had this revelation that I bow to no one, and I've been spiritually a much happier person," says Ekim, who describers herself now as a Taoist, a religious practice from ancient China that emphasizes the unity of humanity and the universe.

"I make my own mistakes and take responsibility for them. I've lied, cheated, hurt people -- sometimes on purpose. Did I ever think I will burn in hell for all eternity? I didn't. Did I feel bad and made up for my mistakes? I certainly did, but not out of fear of God."

Going on a spiritual walkabout

The debate over being spiritual rather than religious is not just about semantics. It's about survival.

Numerous surveys show the number of Americans who do not identify themselves as religious has been increasing and likely will continue to grow.

A 2008 survey conducted by Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, dubbed these Americans who don't identify with any religion as "Nones."

"I don't need to define myself in a box labeled Baptist, or Catholic, or Muslim."
--Heather Cariou, a spiritual but not religious seeker

Seminaries, churches, mosques and other institutions will struggle for survival if they don't somehow convince future generations that being religious isn't so bad after all, religion scholars warn.

Jennifer Walters, dean of religious life at Smith College in Massachusetts, says there's a lot of good in old-time religion.

Religious communities excel at caring for members in difficult times, encouraging members to serve others and teaching religious practices that have been tested and wrestled with for centuries, Walters says.

"Hymn-singing, forms of prayer and worship, teachings about social justice and forgiveness -- all these things are valuable elements of religious wisdom," Walters says. "Piecing it together by yourself can be done, but with great difficulty."

Being a spiritual Lone Ranger fits the tenor of our times, says June-Ann Greeley, a theology and philosophy professor.

"Religion demands that we accord to human existence some absolutes and eternal truths, and in a post-modern culture, that becomes all but impossible," says Greeley, who teaches at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut.

It's much easier for "spiritual" people to go on "spiritual walkabouts," Greeley says.

"People seem not to have the time nor the energy or interest to delve deeply into any one faith or religious tradition," Greeley says. "So they move through, collecting ideas and practices and tenets that most appeal to the self, but making no connections to groups or communities."

Being spiritual instead of religious may sound sophisticated, but the choice may ultimately come down to pettiness, says Martin, the Jesuit priest, who writes about the phrase in his book, "The Jesuit Guide to (Almost Everything)."

"Religion is hard," he says. "Sometimes it's just too much work. People don't feel like it. I have better things to do with my time. It's plain old laziness."

Many Faiths, One Truth

An op-ed from The Dalai Lama, appearing in the 5-25-10 edition of the New York Times

WHEN I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best — and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today.

Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.

Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance — it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding across boundaries.

Granted, every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity. Even so, I believe there is genuine potential for mutual understanding. While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.

An early eye-opener for me was my meeting with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in India shortly before his untimely death in 1968. Merton told me he could be perfectly faithful to Christianity, yet learn in depth from other religions like Buddhism. The same is true for me as an ardent Buddhist learning from the world’s other great religions.

A main point in my discussion with Merton was how central compassion was to the message of both Christianity and Buddhism. In my readings of the New Testament, I find myself inspired by Jesus’ acts of compassion. His miracle of the loaves and fishes, his healing and his teaching are all motivated by the desire to relieve suffering.

I’m a firm believer in the power of personal contact to bridge differences, so I’ve long been drawn to dialogues with people of other religious outlooks. The focus on compassion that Merton and I observed in our two religions strikes me as a strong unifying thread among all the major faiths. And these days we need to highlight what unifies us.

Take Judaism, for instance. I first visited a synagogue in Cochin, India, in 1965, and have met with many rabbis over the years. I remember vividly the rabbi in the Netherlands who told me about the Holocaust with such intensity that we were both in tears. And I’ve learned how the Talmud and the Bible repeat the theme of compassion, as in the passage in Leviticus that admonishes, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

In my many encounters with Hindu scholars in India, I’ve come to see the centrality of selfless compassion in Hinduism too — as expressed, for instance, in the Bhagavad Gita, which praises those who “delight in the welfare of all beings.” I’m moved by the ways this value has been expressed in the life of great beings like Mahatma Gandhi, or the lesser-known Baba Amte, who founded a leper colony not far from a Tibetan settlement in Maharashtra State in India. There he fed and sheltered lepers who were otherwise shunned. When I received my Nobel Peace Prize, I made a donation to his colony.

Compassion is equally important in Islam — and recognizing that has become crucial in the years since Sept. 11, especially in answering those who paint Islam as a militant faith. On the first anniversary of 9/11, I spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, pleading that we not blindly follow the lead of some in the news media and let the violent acts of a few individuals define an entire religion.

Let me tell you about the Islam I know. Tibet has had an Islamic community for around 400 years, although my richest contacts with Islam have been in India, which has the world’s second-largest Muslim population. An imam in Ladakh once told me that a true Muslim should love and respect all of Allah’s creatures. And in my understanding, Islam enshrines compassion as a core spiritual principle, reflected in the very name of God, the “Compassionate and Merciful,” that appears at the beginning of virtually each chapter of the Koran.

Finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever. As a species, we must embrace the oneness of humanity as we face global issues like pandemics, economic crises and ecological disaster. At that scale, our response must be as one.

Harmony among the major faiths has become an essential ingredient of peaceful coexistence in our world. From this perspective, mutual understanding among these traditions is not merely the business of religious believers — it matters for the welfare of humanity as a whole.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is the author, most recently, of “Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together.”

Spirituality In Higher Education: Overcoming The Divide

by Arthur Zajonc, a professor of physics at Amherst College in Massachusetts

Click here to read the full article.

"I believe that discoveries in science, artistic breakthroughs, and even the more common successes we experience in the classroom are instances of an apercu breaking into our habitual awareness with novel cognitive insights. To quote Emerson once again, "No discovery is ever made except by poetic perception."

How do we fashion the new eyes that lead to the novel apercu? The very act of attention shapes these capacities. In Goethe's words, "Every object well contemplated creates an organ for its perception."

In a letter to Emil Bernard, Cezanne wrote: "Nature is the true teacher, and through looking and working we must make ourselves concentric to her." That is to say, we start eccentric to nature, off center. Through our constant attention to her we become concentric, we reshape ourselves with every stroke on the canvas to be in alignment with her. Goethe was amazed by our malleability.

To grasp the phenomena, to fix them to experiments, to arrange the experiences and know the possible modes of representation of them ... demands a molding of the poor human ego, a transformation so great that I never should have believed it possible. I view the transformation of the self as the highest form of education."

Fear And Loathing In Heaven?

By Satyam Kaswala for ISKCON News on 11 May 2010

Image: www.freeuni.edu.ge

To love God or to fear God? That is the question.

As I was driving down an interstate road late one breezy spring night, I read a billboard signed by God. But I felt no tranquility, no joy. My lips grew so heavy I could not smile. I was gripped by a strange, suffocating unease.

“DON’T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE,” it angrily warned.

The warmth of the moonlight, which felt like God’s smiling, protective eye gazing directly at me as it hit my skin and illuminated the darkness, suddenly became an intrusive beast that was lighting the darkness ahead of me only to see me crash in it. In that moment, the earth became a lost city.

Is God not already present in the soul of every living being, and reflected in every non-living thing? And more strikingly, why (on earth) would God “coming down” in His personal form ever be a thing to fear? Indeed, mankind has no greater dream: it is a prospect that every life of every civilization in human history has lived and died for, and will continue to live and die for - whether at its occurrence skeptics will look and say, with matter-of-factness, “proof,” or followers will say, with tears in their eyes, “at last.”

But that was the billboard’s intention exactly: instilling fear. Fear, the most dangerous of all human emotions, the catalyst of inaction. And when it comes to authentic spirituality, there is no greater demon than inaction, because it not only prevents progress itself, but also eliminates the will to progress. Our very lives are expressions of our past spiritual progress, and because of the inaction that fear can enable, there will be nothing left to express, no higher lives to live for. How can we confidently and faithfully climb higher if the very mountaintop we are climbing towards is telling us to be afraid of heights? We cannot.

When once asked by a devotee what he felt when he chanted the holy names of the Lord (which of course is non-different than experiencing God Himself) Srila Prabhupada replied with that characteristic lack of hesitancy only attainable by someone who has seen the face of Truth:

“I feel no fear.”

My heart began to vibrate as I read those words. It was my soul, shaking with ecstasy. Srila Prabhupada was saying to live without fear is to be with God. Of course, there is no way to escape fear in this world except through taking shelter in God Himself, through His transcendental names, so that they are embedded into our very heartbeat, our very lifeline, so that even when we are not actively saying them they sustain our existence, at which point our hearts are no longer even beating but rather dancing. And to embrace God in this way is the most courageous thing one can do in this universe.

But to portray God not only as an angry punisher, but as the source of all fear as the billboard implies, was one who would rather intimidate us with His absence and threaten us with His presence, rather than act as a loving protector, who, by contrast, yearns to deliver us from that very absence and longs to be with us, seems criminally counterproductive. Because it brings our sincerity into question: are we acting out of love or self-interest?

Some may say the answer to this question does not matter in spirituality, as long as we believe; on the contrary, it could not matter more, because the answer breeds an even more fundamental question: is it actually God we seek, or simply the security of the place where He lives? Or, expressed in biblical language, God may have created the heavens and the earth- but did He not exist before that?

I believe the mentality, so prevalent in materialistic culture, that appeals to our lower selves (through fear) rather than our higher selves (through love) repels people from religion, and infinitely worse, from God. Especially young people, who are already disillusioned by fear-mongering, whether by political leaders, parents, or organized religion itself. One example of this repulsive mentality is the group of so-called religious preachers who stand outside the public events and shopping centers of America condemning individuals who, because God “hates” them, are doomed to suffer eternally in hell. Homosexuals. Liberals. Non-fundamentalist Christians. Their list is endless. It is manifested in senseless religious wars. It is manifested in the dangerous notion that the road to enlightenment is paved only with guilt. And it is manifested in the billboards that fail to guide us and have nothing worthwhile to say. People see these atrocities and turn the other cheek. Unconditional love of God cannot exist in a culture that calls hope rage.

This is a reason that the Lord triumphantly declares in the Bhagavad-Gita, “Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear.” (18.66)

Thus to embrace and surrender to God is to be fearless. But fear is hardly real; it is an illusory construction of the mind. As verse 15.7 from the Gita states, “the conditioned soul is bound up, as though shackled by iron chains. He is bound up by the false ego, and the mind is the chief agent which is driving him in this material existence.” Therefore, rather than pander to the basest emotion of the disturbed, ephemeral mind, perpetually agitated by temporary material conditions and pulled by chains like a dog, why not appeal directly to the Soul, eternal and brimming with God’s present love, and change the angry, spiteful message that induces aversion from God (as reflected in the billboard) to the achingly beautiful and comforting one that attracts us to God (Krishna, after all, means all-attractive) and is reflected in the Lord’s blissful words in the passage quoted above?

“The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: Fearlessness; purification of one's existence; cultivation of spiritual knowledge; charity; self-control; performance of sacrifice; study of the Vedas; austerity; simplicity; nonviolence; truthfulness; freedom from anger; renunciation; tranquility; aversion to faultfinding; compassion for all living entities; freedom from covetousness; gentleness; modesty; steady determination; vigor; forgiveness; fortitude; cleanliness; and freedom from envy and from the passion for honor — these transcendental qualities, O son of Bharata, belong to godly men endowed with divine nature.” (BG 16.1)

It is no coincidence that the very first quality the Lord lists as transcendental and divine is fearlessness. Hence Srila Prabhupada’s response: “I feel no fear.”

After all, it is our own karma that ultimately punishes us, not God. But of course, in this material world, making God a scapegoat for our own fears is so much easier than meaningful self-examination.

Read more: http://news.iskcon.com/node/2799/2010-05-13/fear_and_loathing_in_heaven#ixzz0nv032ZnJ