Political problem-solving on the spiritual level


Most people, surely, would agree that the world is in a dangerous and volatile state. The first decade of the 21st century saw us draw no closer to solving, collectively, the massive problems posed by climate change. Floods rage in Pakistan, landslides have brought death and destruction in China, people in the Niger region face famine, another huge mass of ice has broken away from the Arctic ice cap, yet we continue to rely on our dwindling supply of fossil fuels and are no nearer to reducing humanity’s over-mighty carbon footprint. Nor, indeed, do we appear to have any will even to discuss ways of tackling the nightmare of our continuous population growth. Worse still, we face an apparently ever-escalating ‘War on Terror’, which is effectively embroiling us in a conflict between religious groups of the sort we once imagined we had left behind in our medieval past.

The reason is that we are continuing to think and act on the very level of consciousness that got us into this planet-threatening mess in the first place. As Einstein suggests, the solutions to our complex problems lie in our as yet underdeveloped capacity to think from a higher level of consciousness – in this case, the spiritual level. This expression may mean somewhat different things to different people, but as far as the writers of this blog are concerned, thinking on the spiritual level means accepting that as individuals we are part of a greater whole and that what we do and even what we think will affect that whole, as well as ourselves, for good or ill. If what we do damages the whole, then we too will ultimately suffer. If we think only of our own interests, then we will damage the whole and therefore, in the long run, ourselves. This does not mean we have to neglect ourselves, of course, for we are part of the whole and should value ourselves and our place in the greater scheme.

The logical levels model used here is found in NLP: neurolinguistic programming, which is a form of therapy/psychology/way of understanding the mind and the mind-body connection, much used across a wide range of modern life and business coaching. In this model, the lowest level is that of environment (Where? When? With whom?); next comes consciousness at the level of behaviour (the activities going on in the environment). Above this come capabilities (the skills and knowledge we can bring to bear on the behaviour), which lead on to the next level, that of beliefs. Our beliefs, in turn are affected by our values, our motivation. Beliefs and values contribute to the next level, that of identity, a level at which we have become trapped, at our own great peril.

Thinking on the spiritual level, the level above identity, should not be confused with being religious, in the traditional sense: a sincere belief in the underlying principle of compassion and tolerance, if it forms an integral part of an individual’s religious/spiritual life will encourage thinking on the spiritual level, but ‘religious’ people can often fail dismally to think and act on the spiritual level, while non-believers may find it comes naturally to them.

In fact, many religious extremists are trapped by their religious beliefs into acting and thinking from the lower levels of beliefs, values and identity. Instead of seeing themselves as part of a whole, connected to numerous other parts, each of which has its place in the web of life, they see themselves as set apart, special, different, better than or, even worse, selected and empowered to subdue, dominate, control or even eliminate the rest of the whole, especially the human part of that whole.

War on Terror –crusades revisted?
The War on Terror (or whatever you choose to call it) offers a clear example of the dangers of thinking below the spiritual level. Without going here into great historical detail, the indisputable facts are these: the official reasons given by Al Qaida for the assault on the Twin Towers were the injustice meted out to the Palestinians and the general exploitation of the Middle East, including the presence of the American military in Saudi Arabia. The western powers, especially America, have indeed ruthlessly exploited the Middle East’s oil reserves to their own advantage, maintaining a range of autocratic kings, princelings and dictators in power in order to achieve this. In addition, we have backed Israel in its progressive land theft and its gross maltreatment of the Palestinian people, in clear violation of numerous United Nations resolutions.

By completely ignoring the effect on others of our own selfish actions, we brought upon ourselves a highly undesirable reaction. In response to that reaction, we again failed to act from the spiritual level. A spiritual response to the destruction of the towers might have included dealing with those responsible, of course, but also redressing the situation that had provoked this attack. We have done absolutely nothing to oblige Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, compensate the Palestinians for all their sufferings, negotiate with them (yes, including Hamas) and reach a viable peace settlement. Instead, we seized the opportunity to invade Iraq, a country which played no part whatsoever in the destruction of the Twin Towers, wrecking its infrastructure, bringing about bitter civil and religious strife, causing the deaths of well over a million of its citizens and the displacement of yet more, and leaving behind toxic dust from depleted nuclear weapons that has already cost the lives of untold numbers of children.

So ill-thought-out was our war in Afghanistan, meanwhile, that instead of capturing the leaders of Al Qaida (or indeed, finding any ultimate proof as to who really master-minded the attack on the Twin Towers), we have ended up supporting a regime that includes some of the vilest and most brutal drug barons in the entire world. As a result, opium production, reduced to a negligible size under the ghastly Taliban, has sky rocketed. Our (spiritual) claim that we were going to improve the lots of women remains largely unfulfilled, since the rulers we put in place have failed to give their support to those brave Afghan women who have tried to make our promises a reality. The war, in all its cruelty, has spread to hapless Pakistan, bringing that country ever closer to the tragedy of all-out civil war.

Pakistan flood appeal
And now, of course, the poor unfortunate people of Pakistan are facing the additional horror of the worst floods in their history. Time will tell whether these are a side effect of global warming or the normal, if ill-understood, workings of nature. What is clear is that the people of Pakistan now desperately need our help: they need us to think, feel and act from the spiritual level.

Sadly, this writer has recently had some unpleasant experiences which suggest that we may fail to rise to this challenge. The first was a round robin-type email, received yesterday, containing a range of vile racist jokes. (One example: ‘The rescue workers at the Pakistan flood area say that the smell of bodies is unbearable. They expect it to get worse when they start finding the dead ones.’) The second was an argument with a friend – a genuinely decent, loving person and an atheist – who sincerely believes that Muslims are far more dangerous than Christians or Jews (try explaining that to an Iraqi or a Palestinian). And the third was reading on the net that there has been a very disappointing response to appeals for help for Pakistan, from governmental levels downwards.

Thinking and acting on the spiritual level would reveal that we in the west have a chance here, for once, to show our better nature, to reach out and help those who are so much worse off than we are, to stop thinking in terms of ‘us versus them’ and ‘Muslim=extremist’ and, if we can do nothing more, at least give generously.

And the more we practice it, hopefully, the easier and more natural it will become for us all to start thinking on the spiritual level, recognize our common humanity, and start working towards finding solutions to our global problems instead of making them worse.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Consciousness

Our consciousness is profoundly influenced by, if not entirely based upon, the stories and myths that we create to explain the world and our place in it to ourselves. When we talk about consciousness, we mean not only the beliefs that underlie our emotions, thoughts and actions, but the very way in which we perceive the world, act in the world and define ourselves within it. How we perceive the world and our place within it in turn affects our reactions to it, and to the other beings with whom we share it. It is no coincidence that we are finally confronted by an economic and ecological planetary crisis of massive proportions which, if we fail to act collectively, will destroy the world as we know it. Nor is it by chance that we also face the very real possibility of a third world war.

For many hundreds of years we have adhered to various faiths/myths that we call religion, and from these religions we draw beliefs on which we base the way in which we conduct our lives, individually and collectively. Even if we call ourselves atheist, our societies are still organised to accept these beliefs as facts, as givens, as universal laws. Among these beliefs are many that have created the collective consciousness of which the current dangerous state of affairs is an inevitable manifestation:

• A lack of the close connection and integration with the earth and nature that has resulted in a wanton exploitation and destruction of the planet
• A denial, degrading and belittling of the feminine principle as an essential half of everything and the whole.
• A contempt for ‘the other’ that has lead to a denial of the essential oneness of humanity
• A hierarchical way of looking at and living in the world, in which women are seen being of less worth than men, non-believers as deeply inferior to believers, certain races as superior to others, and other species of less worth than humans
• A fear-based, greedy, short-term and egotistical way of thinking and behaving
• A tendency to give away our power to those who are above us and hence a failure to take full personal and collective responsibility for our actions
• A readiness to accept war as the ultimate solution to problems, challenges and conflicts

Man versus nature

Seeing man as created in god’s image and not only different from but above the rest of nature has encouraged a contempt for nature that is reinforced by the way we lead our lives.

For example, a small ancient tribe completely dependent for their very existence on their natural surroundings will treat the earth in a very different way from a group of inner city dwellers whose food is available, sanitized and detached from its source, on the shelves of their local supermarket. The first group will realise that they are dependent on nature and will try to preserve the natural source of its existence. The second group may not even be aware of the fact that they are exploiting the earth by, for example, excessive consumption of natural resources and sheer waste.

Again, a tribe in which the people see everything around them as possessing a living spirit, including animals, plants, rocks and rivers, will probably consider all life forms on this planet, and the planet itself, to be of equal value and equally sacred. On the other hand, people who believe that life on earth exists in the first place to serve mankind will see all other life as inferior and will therefore treat it with a certain degree of arrogance.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach us that there is a heaven, to which we go after our time on earth, if we have been good. Heaven is a better place than earth. It is where God lives and everything there is perfect. Earth is, therefore, by comparison a lesser place. Worse than this, for Christians, earth is only temporary; its life is finite. It will eventually pass away, leaving only the infinite heaven as a dwelling place for the blessed. While Old Testament laws tell people to look after the earth, allowing the land to lie fallow and recuperate once in every seven years, it has unfortunately proved a short step for many Christians to exploit the earth, as heaven is in the end all that matters.

Given this kind of thinking, it perhaps should not surprise us that mankind seems set on abusing the planet, as if it does not matter that our actions may have devastating consequences for future generations. Compare this with the generally-held belief of ancient tribes that every action should take into account the outcome for the next seven generations. One group puts Mother Nature/Mother Earth at the heart of their consciousness; the other acts from a self-centeredness that at times seems positively matricidal.

But for the peoples of the Book, as Muslims refer to followers of all three religions under discussion, being good is not so much a matter of caring for all life on earth as of pleasing God. Significantly, not one of the Ten Commandments tells people to cherish our beautiful planet. In contrast, spiritual systems that are based on the relationship between humans and nature, seen as a flow of energies, regard looking after the earth and other living creatures as an essential part of human existence and spirituality.

And of course both Judaism and Islam enshrine another curious belief: that part of creation is unclean. While not eating pigs, shellfish and so on in a hot climate makes dietary sense, the idea that certain creatures are inherently unclean is divisive. We now know, of course, how intricately the complex web of life on earth is woven. Nothing is unclean. Animals, plants and insects that at times are a nuisance to mankind are an essential part of this complexity and we play god at our own peril.

The negation of the feminine

If our only deity is male and, with that, male attributes become something ‘sacred’, and if women are characterised as being inferior to men from the very start of creation, it is not surprising that the feminine principle is denied existence, with catastrophic consequences. And what is the feminine principle? It is that which gives life, nurtures, is all-encompassing, yielding (yielding, that is, to the earth, not conquering it), loving, life preserving, caring, intuitive, emotional and compassionate. It is certainly not conquering, territorial, punishing and aggressive.

Sadly, within Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the feminine principle struggles to find a voice, as do women themselves. The Catholic Church, beset by scandals caused by paedophile priests, continues to refuse to allow the ordination of women. The Anglican Church, while more liberal in general, is riven by conflict over the ordination of female bishops. Orthodox Jews likewise condemn those more liberal Jewish sects that allow women to become rabbis, nor do Muslims hear women call them to prayer or preach in the mosque. The mainstream followers of all three religions claim to honour and respect women: as mothers and homemakers. This is absolutely not the same as recognising that the essentially female ‘virtues’ that make a woman a good mother and homemaker embody the attitudes and principles that we urgently require right at the centre of our governments, our economies and our international relations in the 21st century.

The masculine principle, untempered by the feminine, has brought our world to the brink of destruction. The war on terror presupposes that opposition can be crushed – the feminine principle would urge us to seek compromise and mutual understanding. Water, that eternal symbol of the feminine, is being used as a weapon, denied to Palestinian children. We have read that the answer to global food shortages and the population explosion is to allow mass starvation in third world countries. Our governments, traditionally thinking and behaving along the male principle and mostly composed of men, though with the occasional exception, ignore the basic needs of the planet (mother earth), allowing it to be exploited to the limit and beyond, and proclaiming their concern over global warming while in reality doing the minimum about it. We are destroying the very source that gives us life and nurtures us.

  

A truly integrated, spiritually powerful person – man or woman – has a balance of male and female and has the wisdom of discernment, knowing when to act from one side or the other. But society as a whole still fails to recognise this urgent need for restoring the balance. The imbalance between the masculine and the feminine in all of us and in life itself now threatens our very existence. The masculine-based consciousness created through biblical texts continues to nurture and encourage this imbalance.

 

Believers and non-believers

Added to the division between heaven and earth is the equally dangerous division between believers and non-believers, between the ‘chosen ones’ and the ‘dammed ones’. If the Jews are ’the Chosen people’; the rest are by definition lesser, and valued only insofar as they support or serve the Jewish people. By an extension of this principle, anyone who is not Christian (or Muslim, depending on your belief), however saintly and compassionate they may be, is damned and will burn in Hell for all eternity. And of course, if someone is condemned by God, why should mankind have any respect for them? If they are going to burn in hell, how can any of their beliefs and values have anything to teach the saved?

Can it be true that this still affects our consciousness? Oh dear yes! We only have to look at extreme intolerance of Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalist movements, all of which are attracting growing numbers of adherents.

Historically, there have always been divisions between tribes, clans or races, and sometimes these have led to wars. The problem with believing that one faith is better than another, bearing in mind that Christianity and Islam have often spread through conquest, rape and mass conversion, is that already existing divisions are reinforced by religious divides, which in turn justifies racial aggression and inter-racial contempt and abuse. So once again, divisions are reinforced; our essential human oneness is denied.

 

Hierarchies

Besides being divisive, all three religions are hierarchically structured. God is at the top of the tree, then the angels, then prophets, then rabbis/priests/ulemas and so on. After this come men, then women. Rabbis, priests (and the former US President?) have a direct line to God and their utterances are to be valued above those of lesser mortals. All women are worth less than men, regardless of ability or wisdom. Girl children are worth less than boys. Sunni Muslims would argue that their religion is not hierarchical: that they do not have the equivalent of pope or bishops and that women are equal to men, according to the Qur’an. These writers would not wish to test their equal rights against the all-male religious police, backed by the all-male clergy/judges of Saudi Arabia!

Within this hierarchical system, animals count for very little. Do they have souls, for example, as nature-based teachings, such as those of Native Americans, have always held? Not until 1990 did the Pope agree that this was so. Would the horrors of modern factory farming ever have come about if we saw all life forms as sacred?

And just as there is a hierarchy among spiritual beings so, as we have seen, there is a hierarchy among nations. Nations of believers are worth more than nations of non-believers (in other words, those who don’t believe what you and I believe).

Moreover, if you believe in a hierarchical order of things, then most of us are at best absolved or at worst actually prevented from investigating or developing our spiritual side, our contact with the divine within and around us. That is the job of mediators in the form of priests and so on. And if we do not make contact with the divine, within ourselves and nature around us, then we do not look for the divine in each other.

The acceptance that hierarchies are necessary at every level of society had profoundly adverse effects, and not only with regard to spiritual matters. On every level of society we scarcely look for other ways of organising ourselves and we all too easily tend to accept orders given by figures in authority and hence abdicate our own personal responsibility.

 

Fear-based thinking patterns

Worse still, all three religions are fear-based. If we are supposed to fear God/the divine, the over-powering, punishing father figure, then our whole way of thinking and our approach to others and to the world around becomes fear-based. This is hugely significant because if our spiritual thinking is fear-based, then we are denying ourselves what spirituality could really do for us. Instead of feeling safe and loved, protected and integrated through spiritual practice, we become fearful.

Becoming fearful, we become either weak and disempowered or aggressive and intolerant, or swing between one extreme and the other. More importantly, if we cannot overcome the automatic fear-based reactions of the brain, then we cannot develop our true psycho-spiritual abilities of connecting with the whole and using the energy fields of the whole to the benefit of us all, individually and collectively. Any religion, therefore, which reinforces our fear reactions holds us back from developing our higher mental and spiritual capabilities.

In orthodox religion, if we do not play by the severely restricting rules, we will end up being eternally punished, or so we are told. Fear paralyses the higher mental functions, so rather than examining the rules in the light of spiritual compassion, it becomes easier to accept the rules laid down by others. We are reduced to frightened children, but these children have cold-hearted and cruel leaders, who are in charge of chemical and nuclear weapons, cluster bombs and the like.

And if we can’t play by the rules – and not even the most rigid fundamentalist can play by the rules the whole time – then we face the prospect of damnation. The easiest way out of the dilemma is to project our dark side onto others. This becomes blatantly obvious when we look at issues of sexuality. So the fundamentalist youths of Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, who have never had a chance to explore their heterosexual adolescent urges in a normal way, project their sense of sexual sin onto their hapless women. Similarly, certain Orthodox Jewish sects oblige their women to wear wigs and cover every possible piece of flesh in order to avoid being wicked temptresses. So, ‘we wouldn’t have these wicked urges if women didn’t look sexy’. Meanwhile, fundamentalist Christians condemn women who want equal rights as ‘witches’ and tell them they should obey their husbands and their place is in the home. And this unpleasant transference is backed up by the story of the Garden of Eden: ‘the woman it was who tempted me’.

War as a means to an end

Since god is not just seen as fearsome and separate, but as all-conquering, aggressive and a god of battles, war becomes a divinely-justified way of settling human disputes. Moses’ massive slaughter of the Israelites after the golden calf episode proved to be only the start of things. Moses’ god went on to order the destruction of other nations; genocide therefore became something that could be sanctified. And, of course, if other nations/religions are ungodly, then it doesn’t matter how you treat them in defeat and there’s no need to look for an amicable solution to the problem in the first place. This was the thinking behind some of the most appalling massacres carried out by the crusaders, the slaughterhouse which Germany became during the Thirty Years’ War, the atrocities perpetrated by both sides during the troubles in Northern Ireland, the massacres in Kosovo and possibly the callous attitude expressed by many politicians in the US, Israel and Britain towards the ‘collateral damage’ inflicted upon civilians in Iraq, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Not to mention consequences of the religious civil war currently raging in Iraq.

If we do not look for the divine in each other (as Buddhists would say ‘the Buddha essence in everyone’), we look for the differences. And once we see others as different, then they are soon considered to be ‘below’ us, conditioned as we are to hierarchical thought processes. With this, they begin to appear potentially dangerous and we therefore need, and have the right, to control and suppress them.