The meaning of the Tower of Babel is that all our language just points to underlying reality/the map is not the territory. The discord in the world is due to our taking our maps for the territory. Growing up as a Roman Catholic the church taught - this is the one true faith. Them is fighting words!!!! Peace comes when we use things like the meta-model in NLP to understand each other through questioning. Below is how I translate Joyce Meyers map to conform more to my own. How I Translate Joyce Meyers Into A Secular Spirituality Religion is Just The Product of Intuitives – Its Message Is Consistent With Psychology – Could be the Seed of A Secular Spiritual Wisdom Living With Passionate Purpose youtu.be/t9Lfvg3q0tQ She highlights the important of purpose. Erich Fromm highlights this also. If we don’t help people to find constructive purpose – they may invest themselves into destructive purpose. “Stop trying to live someone else’s life.” The essence of therapy is to find out who you are and to be that. Another message of hers is don’t be controlled by your emotion. Putting that message into secular/spiritual language - The emotional part of our brain is an evolutionary older part of our brain, more primitive. Then we have our more rational part of the brain that appeared later on the evolutionary scene. If we want society to be more civilized we have to make the more rational part of us ascendant over the more emotional/primitive part of ourselves. Passion, living a passionate life, has more to do with commitment than emotion (mine). Commitment is what is emphasized in existential psychology – what is needed in a secular spirituality that unites instead of divides. “You’ll do what you need to do.” Here she emphasizes being active rather than passive. This also is a key concept in psychology – taking responsibility for your life and not feeling like a victim. From an existential point of view – finding the meaning in your life – choosing your role/how to respond. “and you’ll pay the price” – In psychology we say the successful person does what they need to do to be successful. The unsuccessful person isn’t willing to pay the price of success which is often a lot of hard work. And also entails uncertainty about ends/consequences. All we ever control is means/the amount of work we are willing to put into things. What she isn’t emphasizing enough is celebrating how God made you – unfolding your nature – being inner directed so that happens rather than outer directed. What I disagree with in Meyers is her emphasis on – “you can change your attitude if you want to” – That is saying Will is preeminent. To me that is an unspiritual (unnatural) comment. Joyce Meyers is introspective. That is the source of her commitment/strength. She should ask people to be more introspective – it is introspection that leads to insight, not just changing your attitude through an act of Will. Will is ego – and that is the problem – not the solution. You can change your commitment, not your attitude. Commitment first, attitude may follow. Commitment is an act of reason, attitude is automatic/part of emotion. Notice about attitude she says – “you can just decide” – so what she is really talking about is decision/rational choice/change of commitment. Now she’s on firm existential ground. Ah! She used the word – CHOOSE – now she is being existential. When she says – “I do it for Jesus” – I believe that is what she thinks. But really the commitment is coming from her. She may be doing it because she believes in Jesus, but in a secular spirituality we might do it – make a commitment – because we see that is how to transcend our more archaic emotional selves/not be dominated by emotion. “When you choose what is right your feelings will catch up with it.” Now she is saying what physicist David Bohm is saying. – The world is a whole – one thing flows from another. Feeling flows from thinking. Change how you think/your commitment and feelings will flow from that. “just stop talking about your problems” – In a more secular language – put problems in the backround by changing your commitment, putting something you choose to concentrate on in the foreground. What does the glory of God mean? In my secular spirituality I would speak about being in awe of nature which we participate in, the power of nature (our own healing, for instance), the beauty of nature. We are part of a Whole/nature/the universe. “The Glory of God is man fully alive.” I love this. In my book, The Search for Being, I, too, talk about aliveness as central to being – the fulfilled life, the only life worth living. “you can still live above those circumstances” – This is key. How do you transcend the shit of life? I’m thinking it does take a commitment. It takes putting something you choose into the foreground. It doesn’t make the shit go away – there is just a commitment to think about something you choose rather than what just happens. “I said I’m anointed for this.” We have evolved into thinking beings. We can make a choice to put something we choose into the foreground of our attention, to focus on what we choose to focus on and to let the shit be in the backround. But to do that we must choose something which is more rewarding than focusing on the shit. Joyce has confidence in God. In my more secular spirituality I have confidence in the power of nature which I participate in. What I call the Holy Spirit is the nature of which I am part of. We can still think of it as God, if that is what we choose to call the whole/nature/universe – but think of it less anthromorphically. It’s not like a person, it’s more like an “it.” Joyce says in Christ she will overcome it. I have that same confidence in my own nature – because I am a part of an awesome Nature. I have the same confidence in my intuition she has in the Holy Spirit. I see Nature as the Holy Spirit/thinking less anthromorphically. “In Christ we always triumph if we decide to.” I disagree with this. My Nature is not anthromorphic like her personal God. It does not always give us what we want, but it does give us access to creativity/being part of an awesome intelligence/ nature to deal with what befalls us. I love what she means by “aliveness:” Putting your whole heart into everything you do.” This is commitment. This is living existentially. This is living with Choice/Choosing/Autonomously/self-directed. This is psychological man/to me secular spirituality. Psychology is my religion. “The Dead Praise Not The Lord.” I love this, too. But I take my teaching from Erich Fromm. Read Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. That’s why I call many people living today – zombies, outer-directed people, driven by their emotions, living well below their potential – the false self people who have introjected the values of family and culture and lost themselves, their unfolding in the process. These are the dangerous, destructive, unconscious people among us. These are the people who like continuous war, torture. These are the authoritarians – the programmed people – destructive robots out of touch with their own goodness/nature. “We need to discern life from death.” I love this, too. I would say life is what comes from the hand of nature/the natural. Death is what comes from Ego/man putting himself in place of God/nature. You might think I would be opposed to medicine – but that is the product of man’s creativity. I would just choose natural methods, when available, over medicine. If there is a natural way of healing I’d choose that first over one developed by will – which doesn’t have infinite knowledge/does have side effects/unintended consequences. I believe in personality type. Think Joyce is a judging type – work first, play later and her husband might be a perceiving type – play first, work later. Joyce needs things planned, closure before she can enjoy life. Perceiving types, don’t. “watching his consistent witness” – I wouldn’t attribute this to “witness,” but to learning. When you have a person of a different personality type in your family you often pick up some of their traits/learn them/from their modeling. “you need a consistent witness” – I would say we need role models to learn new things (can also learn new things from books etc.). This is key. What am I suppose to do with my life? “Serve the lord with gladness.” I take a more existential approach – the purpose of our life is to make our existence match our essence. Joyce says God/I say Nature. We are born with a particular nature. We need to unfold it – to have educational institutions, to have families that facilitate that – helping us to identify our gifts and to learn how to use them in society/which will benefit the whole/help us to lead constructive lives/put our energy into constructive things consistent with our nature/personality type. Only 27 minutes into her video. When I finish it Ill post my secular translation on my website - wholenewparadigm
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 23:18:58 +0000
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