Rethinking Spirituality

Traditionally, spirituality had much to do with mysticism, esoteric, and unexplainable things. I think, though, it is possible to use logic and rational thinking when defining one's spiritual system, too. Usually, if we do not understand something, we tend to find mystical explanations. Thunder and lightnings were considered to be a sign for God to be angry. Today we know it is just a natural phenomena, and we understand why it is happening. I think, the same is happening for most of our mystical explanations: once we learn more, we can start to understand what is happening and why.
In my quest to find my own spiritual frame-work, I observed that too. There are many instances, where we choose to believe a mystical explanation, but after thinking things through carefully, a logical, rational explanation can be found.
There are always aspects that can not explained, where we have to just decide to believe something. Anything about this physical world that we live in, has the potential of being explainable – some of it we already are able to understand, much of it we still have to figure out. Anything that goes beyond our physical existence will never be provable, but remain a matter of personal belief. I find, though, that for anything we can explain, we shouldn't continue to use a mystical concept. Just because we can understand what is happening, doesn't make it any less miraculous, any less wonder-full. It is actually even more amazing.
However, the idea of replacing mystical tales with the real explanations when possible, is a major break from the traditional spiritual teachings of our religions. Changes are always met with resistance. People always try to fight new ideas, new perspectives. Especially, when it comes to spiritual topics. Eventually, though, we adapt and embrace these new concepts.
This website (www.toolOfTheUniverse.org) is dedicated to rethink traditional spiritual approaches, replace out-dated mystical tales with logical, rational explanations. What struck me by surprise first, and excitement and happiness later, was the fact, that many of these new ideas actually meet exactly much of what is described in many of the old spiritual scriptures like the Bible, the Qu'ran, the Bhagavad Gītā, and others. They are just different ways of looking at the analogies, different interpretations of the models. Once we allow ourselves to put aside traditional interpretations, which are so colored by the culture and limited understanding of the world from the time when they were formulated, we can see the actual message. Once we remove the packaging, we can get a glimpse of the real content – and that content is amazing, beautiful, and hope-inspiring!
I am excited about these new perspectives for two reasons:
first, so many analogies and stories from the old scriptures make so much more sense now, and are so much more relevant and applicable to my life in the 21st century, than with the traditional interpretations.
And secondly, a world is now much more feasible, where all humans are living in peace with each other and the environment. The traditional spiritual guidelines try to force peace onto us from the outside. There are rules; must-do's and don't do's, judgment and punishment. The new perspective works from the inside. It is based on understanding. Peace results as a logical consequence of the inner attitude towards this world and all humans. It is no longer our fear for punishment, that prevents us from doing something we ought not to do. It is our understanding of our role, and our eagerness to fulfill this role, that makes us want to do what needs to be done.
There is no longer a disconnect between what is going on in my life and in my spirituality. No more contradictions, or unexplainable rules. Things start to make sense! My spirituality now is clear, easy to understand, very relevant and applicable to my life as “spirited animal” of this world. It turns into a life-style, it permeates everything that I do: my work, my personal life, my relationships, the way I deal with my kids, my siblings, parents and everybody else. It gives me direction and purpose.
I am eternally thankful for having been allowed to learn about this new approach. I am tremendously hopeful, that we humans will be able to turn around and stop destroying each other and the world we live in. And I am excited to be part of the generation where this new understanding is starting to crystallize and the long awaited Spiritual (R)evolution is happening!

Miracles

Every so often I receive an email forwarded from this friend or another, where some super-natural miracle is described. The last of these emails was about the spirit of a dead father having taken his young children out of the car of their mother just before a bad accident and placed them into the police-car that came to the scene of the accident.
Such emails always make me ponder the topic of miracles. When I look at my own life, my own experiences, I have never witnessed any super-natural occurrence. However, I am witnessing many miracles on a daily basis. And, really, these miracles are much more wonder-ful and miraculous than any super-natural happening could ever be. It is just that we are so used to these miracles, that we don't notice them as such any more. We take them for granted. We don't see it as a reminder of how beautiful the Universe is, and how wonderful it all works – without the need for super-natural intervention. In our quest to find God, hope, and fulfillment we are inventing and enjoying made-up miracles, missing all the real miracles that are all around us.
I thought, I list here a few of the ones I see, in the hope it will help you start seeing those and many more again as what they are: the great miracles in our lives!
Imagine, if we could build a car, that starts of as a matchbox car. Over time it grows and gets bigger and bigger, until it reaches the size of a regular full-size car, which provides transportation services for people and their goods. Imagine, further, that whenever this car gets a scratch or a dent, it fixes itself – totally without our help and intervention. Well, even the tires don't wear off! Instead, while the outer layers of the tread is wearing off, the lower layers of the tire rebuild it, on the fly! No tire-rotating necessary. No changing of tires needed. But now, the best of all: Imagine, this car has a mini factory integrated into it, where little matchbox cars are produced, which over time themselves become fully grown regular-sized cars! Now how miraculous would such a car be? Well, obviously, you are such a car. And I am. Just still much more magical. So amazingly full of wonder, that even the most knowledgeable researchers and doctors will never be able to completely understand how all our features and functionality works.
I travel a lot. And sometimes, I am lost, or I find myself in a tough spot. The prayer for God to help me is usually always answered. Not by a blond woman in a long white nighty floating down from the clouds (this is how angels were depicted in my religious education books at primary school). Not by some thing or myself just disappearing into thin air. Neither by a lightning out of the blue sky, that would make stuff go away, or fix a situation. Usually, what ends up providing help to me are other people. Sometimes, they choose to offer their help, sometimes they help without even noticing or intending it. The Universe is using us people to help each other out. What a wonderful miracle, that the right persons are in the right place at the right time to fulfill the prayer of another person!
Often, too, it is things I learned previously in my life, that provides the ideas, knowledge, and wisdom to solve a problem. In other words, the Universe had placed me into situations where I was able to learn what I now need. Now, how magical is that?!?!
Another thought: Imagine, if you wanted to provide a toy for your little kids that is easy enough to use, that they can use it even when they don't know much at all of it. And, as they grow, that toy can be used in more and more complex ways to accomplish more and more complex tasks. So, that same toy can be a simple spoon that allows the kid to eat, and it can be a starship, that allows the kid to fly to the moon and back home. Well, such a toy surely is a miracle, isn't it? Well, this world is just such a toy! It provided for us what we needed while we where still cave-people. And it allows us to build a remote-controlled dune-buggy to collect rock-samples from Mars.
Alright. How about that: If there was a rock that rises into the air, and without falling down moves around, and later comes back down right in your front-yard. Now that surely must be a miracle! Right? Especially if this item is taller than your house, hundreds of feet long, and can hold people inside, safely carrying them around! Hm. The Universe not just makes this miracle happen every day hundreds of times. It gets even more miraculous! This all is not just done by super-natural force by the Universe itself, through outside intervention. No, the Universe has given us enough brain to understand some of the rules in this world well enough, that WE can make this miracle happen!
One final thought: if I was God, and I created this world – making things disappear into thin air and reappear somewhere else would be no difficulty at all. Making everything work by itself, without my crude intervention, now that I find is real greatness! A system, that does not need outside intervention, that, to me, is the greatest miracle of all!
I hope, these thoughts help you realize again that live as it is, is full of miracles. And I hope that you will be inspired to be a miracle yourself – the best miracle you can be! Mahatma Gandhi said: “Let us become the change we would like to see in the world!” It is really up to us alone to cause the change we would like to see. There is no super-natural power fixing the mess we are making. We have been given the talent and ability to fix it, if we want to. But we have to do it ourselves. We have to be the miracles that make this world a better place...

Religion - A Blessing Or A Curse

Yesterday, 11/Sep/08, All Things Considered, on NPR, aired a segment titled:”Does Race Matter In '08? The View From York, Pa.” (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94523754)
Among all that was said, one sentence stood out to me:
"I look at Obama, and I have a question in my mind," she says. "Years ago, was he taken into the Muslim faith? And my concern is the only way you are no longer a Muslim is if you are dead, killed. So in my mind, he's still alive."
About 800 years ago people who called themselves Christians headed out to the “holy land” and killed anything that moved – children, babies, old people, women, men. They leveled the cities, towns and villages they encountered. Their reason for doing this was not, that they wanted land, or gold and riches (well, since they found some, they took that too, of course), it was not because the people in the middle east had attacked them first, or done anything at all to them. No, the sole reason for the slaughter was, that they were Muslims and not Christians. These “wars” were called Crusades. Now, 800 years later, I hear another Christian say “...the only way you are no longer a Muslim is if you are dead, killed.” That scares me!
I am sure, the lady does not want Muslims to be killed, but was referring to the part of Islam dogma, that demands for anybody, who is leaving the Islam belief-system, to be killed. Either way, both scares me: There is a religion with a large following, that some centuries ago killed other people for the sole reason that they followed a different “spiritual” belief-system. And today, there are still a lot of fundamentalist followers, some of which are quite willing to commit violent actions against people who do not share the same believes. Then, there is another religion, with as large a following, that requires other people to be killed should they choose not to continue to follow that believe-system.
All this is a stark reminder of how necessary it is for us to start focusing on our spiritual development. Such attitudes and ideas may be fit for the dark ages, but in the 21st century, we really ought to be able to grow beyond that. The question is how can that maturation process be achieved. I am dedicating my life and this whole site to facilitate such positive spiritual development. And you are invited to contribute, too – by adding comments, by asking questions, by pointing your friends and family to this site, and, by thinking about spiritual topics, learning and growing...

Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. The essence of his teaching seems to be “Love your neighbor”. “Love”, not hate! “Love”, not kill! How can the followers of a religion, founded on a person that tried to teach love, be so hateful as they were 800 years ago? How can the followers of that religion be so unloving, judgmental and self-righteous as many of us are still today?
I find, that much of the essence of Christianity can also be found in other religions. Just expressed differently, explained through other analogies. Why do we still not get it?
I believe, that the essence of all the religions is divine content. Summarized in one word it is Love. Unfortunately, the divine content is muddled up with human add-ons – superstitions, cultural bias, and ideas that originate from our instincts as animals of this world. Add to it a heavy helping of misinterpretations, and it becomes more and more understandable, that the essence is getting lost, overlooked. Our cultural background strongly influences where we place our focus – usually it's on something that is not important at all.
Some of the topics, that I find to be rather unimportant, but that receive a lot of focus within the Christian community, are discussed at length and caused many an argument and bad blood among families, friends, and communities are: Was Mary a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus? Is Saturday or Sunday the 7th day? Is King James Version the “real” bible?
Among the topics within the Islam believe-system, I find the whole issue of what is appropriate attire for females, and the concept of “holy war” to be rather a result of human thinking, than of divine inspiration.
What makes the whole situation almost impossible to improve is our practice of proclaiming our interpretation of what is written as the Word of God. Our language does not allow us to describe spiritual content well, as it was conceived and designed to explain the physical world around us. The only way we have to explain spiritual ideas is by using analogies, parables, models. No model is a true, complete representation of the original. If we focus on every aspect of the model to be taken as is, literally, we are bound to misunderstand. Declaring the model to be the Word of God, moves the focus from the content to the package, discourages the search for the real Word of God and forces the model to be adored and followed. (This concept, too, is a left-over from the dark ages, when monks wanted to retain control over the population, and feared to loose that, if the population thinks for themselves.)
I suggest, if one wants to attribute “something” as being the Word of God, to think of the content, and not the packaging; The meaning behind the words, rather than the words. At least, that makes it admissible to think beyond the narrow confines of 500 year old interpretations, when pondering the content of the Bible, the Qur-An, and all the other spiritual scriptures.
Finally, our strong tendency towards traditions, and away from change, makes it almost impossible to make course corrections. If you look around in your life, you will find many, many instances of where we adore traditions, holding traditions up high, following traditions that make no more sense in todays world. At the same time, you can also find many, many instances where we strongly discourage change, where change is seen as evil, and development is seen as deterioration, rather than improvement.
There are so many obstacles hindering us from finding a better understanding of what our religions are trying to teach us. However, there is a growing number of people in this world, who are working hard on overcoming these obstacles, and who are on a journey towards spiritual growth and development. You are one of them, as you are reading this text. We are today's pioneers. We have set out to leave the over-populated cities of mass-churches, fundamentalist prisons, and purpose-less treadmills behind. We are daring to go, where many are still afraid to venture. We have traversed and left behind the grand old river of superstition, and are exploring the landscape beyond the great plains of ignorance, to find in the majestic mountains of wisdom and spiritual understanding those green, fertile pastures of Love, where eventually we all will be able to live with each other in peace and harmony...

The tools of the Universe

Changes are not happening by things appearing or disappearing magically. We humans are the change-agents in this system, who make things happen. We are God's Angels – at least, we have the potential to be; But it is always our choice.
The Universe guides us through intuitions and coincidences. It helps us by bringing the right people into each of our lives, which allows us to learn what we need to learn, to ask ourselves the questions we need to ponder to make a next step, and to provide hints and ideas to find the answers for these questions.
So often a person comes into my life right at the moment when I am able to hear their message, when I am ready for the ideas they spark in me. The Universe is using them to help me develop.
And just as often, I find myself in a situation where I can observe how, through me, a person was able to overcome an obstacle, realize more of their potential, or get a better understanding of themselves and the world around them. The Universe is using me to help them develop.
After observing this happening to me and through me, I soon became aware of the methods the Universe uses to influence my changing in a particular direction. I realized that the Universe is not directly shaping me, but it uses the folks in my life as the tools to shape me! It is helping me choose to change myself in the way it needs me to develop. It is still my choice; I am not forced. But I am being allowed to see the beauty, and I can't help but choose to change toward it.
In a way, the Universe is using us as tools to help each other develop and get ahead! It is using us humans to implement changes to the system! I love this notion: I am the Tool of the Universe! To see myself as such makes me happy, provides meaning and purpose to my life, and makes me feel important and connected.

The best tool

Imagine you were to cook a nice meal. You need to cut up some vegetables. Which, of all the utensils in your kitchen, would you use for that task? The refrigerator? The toaster? Maybe the ladle? Of course not. You'd use the knife. You'd use the tool that best supports the task you want to accomplish.
I believe the Universe uses the same strategy. Whenever anything needs to be done, it sends the best suited person into the situation, and hopes that that person will first of all understand what needs to be done, and secondly, choose to accomplish the task.
Imagine you want to cut a tomato, but the knife is “just not cutting it”. I guess, you'd try to sharpen your knife, right? Well, I think the Universe is doing the same thing. It sends us into situations to learn and to grow, to make us more effective. Even the best knife needs sharpening. Even the best tool of the Universe can grow and become better.
When I came to the realization, that I am the best tool available to the Universe for the situations I find myself in, I made a conscious decision:

I want to always try to be the best tool I can be!

To support this quest, I am particularly careful about resulted in my personal goals for me:

I am always trying to understand what the Universe might need me to do
I am always trying to choose what needs to be done over what I want to do

I am a tool of the Universe

Once this insight crystallized that we are the tools of the Universe, I started to look at myself and all the other people differently. Here are some topics, where I am looking at myself differently now:
I am capable!
I am the best tool available to accomplish this task at hand. My talents, skills, understanding, attitude, personality, experience – my total self is best suited to cause the change that is needed to happen. Of all the people in the world, I am it! If it wasn't me, if there was somebody else better suited, the Universe would have sent that person into this situation – just like you choose the best tools for the various tasks you want to accomplish.
I am important!
The Universe needs me to help nudge the creation into a good direction. Just like a cook needs a good knife, the Universe needs me. If I were not around, the second best tool would have to be used to compensate.
I am powerful!
The Universe uses me to effect change! I can influence the course of the whole creation! I may not see what the ripple-effects of my little contribution are, but they can be very, very big. My little drop of water, could cause the seedling to stay alive and grow, and eventually turn into the big tree that provides habitat for so many other plants and animals, shade from the sun, and oxygen for all of us!
I am loved and well taken care of!
A good cook takes good care of her tools. The Universe takes care of its tools too. It needs our help, as only through us it can help shape this creation toward a better world. It makes sure we have everything we need. It assists us to be in the best shape we can be, to accomplish the tasks we're here to accomplish.
I am not alone. I am assisted!
Just like a good cook lovingly sharpens her knifes, the Universe sends us into situations to help us learn, grow, and become better more effective tools. Just like we are assisting other people to learn and grow, other people are providing the opportunities for us to develop our skills, hone our talents, come to realizations, and have insights crystallize.
I am how I am supposed to be!
The Universe has created me. It has endowed me with my talents. These talents are what are important to accomplish the tasks it needs my help with. If I don't understand what my talents are, it doesn't mean I have none. Instead, it means I am not looking for them, not allowing myself to see what they are. Just because I WANT to be a painter, doesn't mean the Universe needs me to BE a painter. I learned, that instead of looking for what I want, it is more effective to look for what I have.
I am where I am supposed to be!
It has arranged for me to grow up in the family and environment I grew up I, so I could have the experiences I need, to learn what I need to learn, so I am best prepared for my tasks.
Hard times are “Tool Sharpening” sessions!
When I find myself in hard times, I see it as a “tool sharpening”. This allows me to focus less on my discomfort and pain, but more on what I can learn from it. The main effect of this shift in focus is, that I am learning much more through my experiences. A nice side-effect is that the hard times are less painful.