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Spirituality - a broader perspective
By Robert Burney
"Perspective is a key to Recovery. I had to change and enlarge my perspectives of myself and my own emotions, of other people, of God and of this life business. Our perspective of life dictates our relationship with life. We have a dysfunctional relationship with life because we were taught to have a dysfunctional perspective of this life business, dysfunctional definitions of who we are and why we are here.
It is kind of like the old joke about three blind men describing an elephant by touch. Each one of them is telling his own Truth, they just have a lousy perspective. Codependence is all about having a lousy relationship with life, with being human, because we have a lousy perspective on life as a human."
"So now I share this message with you, the reader of this book, in the hopes that it will help you to remember the Truth of who you are, and why you are here. This information is not meant to be absolute or the final word - it is meant as an alternative perspective for you to consider. A Cosmic Perspective that just might help to make life an easier, more enjoyable experience for you."
"We were taught that death is a great tragedy and that we should spend our lives fearing and ignoring it. We were taught to fear death and to never live life. That's backwards.
Death is a transition, a transformation, death is a milestone in the longer journey. It is not a tragedy to be feared - it is an eventuality to be accepted. What is tragedy is not enjoying living while we are here."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
In this series of articles, I am sharing my beliefs. As the quote from my book above states, I am not trying to impose my beliefs on anyone else. I am sharing them as an alternative perspective for you to consider. These are the beliefs that work for me. I do not need for other people to agree with me, I am just sharing my perspective because I have found that many people find it helpful.
I do not waste my time and energy arguing with people who think I am wrong. People who believe that their beliefs are the only "right" beliefs, and any others are "wrong" - are reacting out of the black and white thinking of their codependency, in my opinion.
I have over the years had many people - usually ones who were raised in a shaming religion - who objected to any use of the word God, or anything they thought was "religious." I wrote an article for them on my web site - in an attempt to help them stop reacting to the extreme so that they could start seeing the gray area between the extremes of "right" and "wrong." For anyone who would like to check that article out, there is a link to it in the left hand colum: Spirituality for Agnostics and Atheists
I have also over the years received periodically, what I call Christian hate mail. People who would write to me and tell me how wrong I was, how I would be damned for my beliefs - how I had to be "washed in the blood of the lamb" for my soul to be saved.
That there could even be such a thing as "Christian hate mail" is to me evidence of how twisted and perverted the teachings of Jesus Christ - whose message was about Love - have been in some versions of Christianity. I believe that Jesus Christ was the greatest Master Teacher in the history of mankind - and that great harm has been done in his name throughout the history of the planet because of twisted, rigid, black and white interpretations of the bible by wounded, terrified codependents.
Codependency is at it's core, a relationship with life that is based upon fear, shame, and scarcity. Codependency recovery in my belief, is about changing our ego programming, changing the conscious and subconscious beliefs that are dictating our relationship with self and life, to ones that are more aligned with the belief in a Loving Higher Power / God-Force / Goddess Energy / Great Spirit - not a punishing one.
In a follow up article to the one for agnostics and atheists, I offer a definition of spirituality that is based upon being open to enlarging one's perspective of self and life.
"My own personal Spiritual belief system is one form of spirituality. It is certainly not the only one. Mine works for me very well in helping me to have a relationship with life that allows me to be happier today. It is not necessary for you to accept my belief system in order for you to use the tools, techniques, and perspectives that I have developed for emotional healing / codependence recovery / inner child integration.
For the purposes of this discussion of spiritual integration, I would now define what I refer to as a Spiritual Awakening in the quote above, as: being open to a larger perspective - awakening from being trapped in a limiting perspective. In this regard, spiritual would be a qualifier, an adjective, that describes the quality of one's relationship with life.
This adjective, spiritual, would be (in my definition) a word describing an expanded level of consciousness. A level of consciousness, of awareness, that is expansive and inclusive and facilitates personal growth - as opposed to limited, exclusive, rigid, and inhibiting growth, development, and alternative view points.
By this definition, any religion that claims to be the chosen one, that excludes alternative perspectives or certain people, is not spiritual."
- The Recovery Process for inner child healing - spiritual integration
This particular column has grown out of the fact that this past Sunday was Easter. Easter, like other "Christian" Holidays, is a celebration that was designed to replace the pagan holidays of the people the early Christians were trying to convert.
"Christmas, like almost every other Christian Holiday, is a celebration that was usurped from Pagan religions that preceded Christianity. The early Christians obviously included some people who were very good at marketing, because they made Christianity more palatable to the people they were trying to convert by stealing Pagan celebrations and making them Christian Holidays.
This early pragmatism of Christianity laid the foundation for Christianity to become the state religion of Rome. That state religion then became very dogmatic in using Christianity to conquer, subdue, and control the masses."
- Joy2MeU Update December 2004
Easter is scheduled in the same time period as the Spring Equinox. Spring is the time of new beginnings - of new growth, of rebirth, of resurrection. Easter is about resurrection and the Truth of eternal life.
When I began my quest to understand how it was possible that there could be a Higher Power, a God-Force, that was Loving - one of the first limiting perspectives I needed to enlarge was my perspective of life and death.
As the quote from my book above states, death is a transition. The Soul / Spirit leaves the physical body at death - but the Soul does not die. The energy that is the Soul existed prior to birth and continues after death. The Soul has eternal life in my belief.
Here is a another quote from my online book about the terrorist attack of 9/11, that I quoted last month. Again, within this quote is a quote in italics from my book.
"One of the first things I needed to do was to change the context in which I viewed life. I realized that if I looked at this life experience as if it were a one time thing - that our existence began with birth and ended with death - there was no possible way that it could be fair and Loving. Not with billionaires on one hand and children starving to death on the other.
The only way I could see that it was possible that there was a Universal Force that could possibly be Loving, that could possibly Love me in my imperfect humanness, that could possibly have a Divine Plan that was somehow fair and equitable - was over the span of multiple lifetimes. Reincarnation is what made sense when I started searching for some Spiritual answers.
"All the worlds a stage and the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts."
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene 1
"We have all lived multiple lifetimes. We have all experienced every facet of being human.
We are now not just healing our wounds from this lifetime, we are doing Karmic settlement on a massive scale, at a very accelerated rate.
Karma is the Loving, wonderful law of energy interaction which governs human interaction. Like the other levels of Universal Law, it is about cause and effect. In this case, "what you sow, you reap."
Karmic Law dictates that every action of cause on the Physical Plane is paid for with a consequence of effect on the Physical Plane. In other words, no one can end up in the hole, or in some hell in an afterlife. (Hell is here on earth, and we have all experienced it already.)"
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Starting to see death as a transition, as a milestone in a longer journey, made life make more sense to me. It at least had the possibility of being fair and Loving, if the part of it I could see was only a small piece of a much larger puzzle."
- Attack on America - A Spiritual Healing Perspective
Codependency involves relating to life out of fear because of getting the message in childhood that life is a test that we can fail. Codependency involves relating to life and self out of shame because we got the message that it was shameful to be imperfect humans. Living life out of fear and shame is hell.
There is a quote I heard some years ago - whose origins I do not know - that I resonate with very strongly.
Religion is for people who are scared of hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there.
Again, these are my beliefs I am sharing here. I do not need any communications from people who believe I am wrong. You have a right to your beliefs, I have a right to mine.
Next in series: Inspiration from the Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous
