With all the changes going on in our world, often it seems that our natural choice is to respond with fear, anger, sadness or the feeling of powerlessness.

From catastrophic world events such as the current oil spilling into waters in the Gulf of Mexico to family matters that have to do with feeding our families, it seems like we are experiencing crisis and challenge with increasing harshness and frequency.

Life is seen as an ongoing hurricane of emotions, financial pressures, and what may appear to be endless evidence of our inability to find peace with our own selves and each other.  Escalating pressures seem to face us more forcefully.  Many turn to addictive distractions in a vain attempt to deal with daily life: drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sugar and carb addictions, reading escapist fiction, and numbing ourselves with mindless television.

Collectively, we are in the process of discovering that these distractions are not worth the price we pay for indulging in them.  After the hangover wears off, the bills still need to be paid.  When the high wears off, the pressure is felt again to either deal with life as it is or to get high again.  Life can become a seemingly endless cycle from anxiety to addictive indulgence to higher levels of anxiety.

For some, dealing with life may not be about addictive distractions as most people think of addiction.  We can let off emotional steam by regularly treating our loved ones in a mean-spirited way, stealing from a neighbor or employer, or finding some other way to artificially feel better about ourselves at the expense of others.

Just living from day to day can become a crushing weight upon your shoulders, a kind of living hell.  You may not feel that you have either the time or the energy to take the steps necessary to pull out of your cycle of pain, to deal with life positively and proactively.

Collectively, we are a society of avoidance addicts.  As we identify ourselves with our ego, the frequency with which we indulge this addiction expands in scope.  It can be seen as a way to self-medicate, a way to deal with the pain so we can feel better.  Whether it is shoveling excess food into yourself, sticking a needle in your veins or getting drunk, the satisfaction of avoiding the life that is yours is always short-lived if you are self-medicating in a way that hurts yourself or others.

What if for just one day you chose to see life in a completely different context.  For the next 24 hours, what if you chose to see everything that occurred in your life as your teacher?   If you look at everything that happens to you for this one day as an opportunity to become a better person rather than as a monstrous weight upon your shoulders, life takes on an entirely new meaning.

For one day, you can choose to respond to the challenges in your life by asking yourself three quick questions when you experience a tough time emotionally.

1. What is happening right now?
2. What emotions am I experiencing?
3. Can I allow these emotions? (Then take three deep and long breaths.)
4. What can I learn from this to enhance my life and to be of service?

By seeing your life as a teacher, you open up new possibilities for yourself.  If you see life as an endless series of burdens, you just create more burdens for yourself.

Viewed from the spiritual perspective---the only perspective that really matters in the long run---we might come to understand after a while that the only reason we are all here is to learn how to love more effectively and consistently.

For just one day, consider carrying these questions with you, giving yourself a little time out just as you would to a misbehaving young son or daughter.  What can we learn about ourselves in claiming this quiet time with ourselves when we ponder life’s challenging moments from the perspective of learning rather than feeling victimized by life?  We learn how to love.  This learning is the process of spiritual empowerment.

Notice how it works when you carry these questions as shown above with you for a day.  You might just find that it serves you to keep them with you beyond just this one day.  As you become more and more willing to be with what is, as you treat yourself more kindly, and as you learn to trust your life as your greatest teacher, you may also find that the world becomes more of a friend than a bully.

How do we identify ourselves spiritually and religiously?  Most importantly, does this identification match up with the way we live our lives?  The process of spiritual empowerment has much to do with how we answer these questions.

It has come to light recently that the Catholic Church has begun using Facebook in an effort to recruit potential priests to its fold.  Their slogan in this effort is “Why Not Me?”

Let’s look at some potential answers to that question, not only for those who might be considering a religious vocation of any kind, but from the perspective of one who may be questioning religious labels by which we identify ourselves.

From the outset, let me be clear that my premise in this article is that the vast majority of all religion as we practice it in our world at this time is spiritually counter-productive.  If we are, indeed, in the process of communally evolving into a more harmonious and loving planet, then the purpose of any worthy religion would be to lovingly unite and empower us.  Most religion divides and weakens us, casting non-believers as inferior, seeing proponents as superior and falsely creating a god that is schizophrenically both all-loving and quite wrathful.

Religion as we know it today is dying, and with good reason.  People’s allegiance to religion is the cause of more death, pain and suffering than any other social cause.  It has been the central cause of most wars and persecution.

Why do we identify ourselves with any particular religion?

Why We Continue With a Current Religious Identification

For the most part, there are three reasons that any reasonably intelligent people stick with a religion in which they were raised.

(1)Fear of Eternal Damnation or Extended Time in Some Purgatory

In the months leading up to the passing of my mother last year, my father experienced much emotional challenge as she descended into dementia, still holding on to half a lifetime of resentment and anger.  For well over a year, she was continually embarrassed about her “bladder problems” and had little interest or capacity for communicating with anyone.  She had stopped eating anything except ice cream and crackers.

The doctors put her on appetite stimulants.  It seemed to work.  She was eating better and putting some weight back on.  Yet, she was “vacant” almost all of the time.

After months in this semi-vegetative state, her doctor approached my Dad and suggested he might consider taking her off the appetite stimulants as a way of letting her go.  He and I talked about it.  He was going to think about it.   Soon after, we talked again.

“I would feel guilty for the rest of my life if she died after the medication was stopped”, he said.

It was his decision to make, yet I was compelled to explore:  “Dad, you know that the whole guilt thing and the eternal damnation stuff that your church puts out is a bunch of crap, don’t you?”

His response, “Well, yeah, but what if it isn’t?”

This is the kind of thinking so many religious people carry like a weight around their shoulders.  For fear of frying in eternal fires, we live a life that makes it fine to shoot a horse to save it from pain, let we cannot let our people die a natural death.  Such thinking is simply ignorant.

(2) Fear of Rejection by Family or Peers

High up on the Fear Meter along with eternal damnation is the prospect of being disowned by family or friends.  If all your family and friends identify themselves with a given religion, you risk their rejection if you decide that the religion does not really work for you.

Maybe you’ll continue to go to church, temple or synagogue on the weekend, but outside of that little show, you don’t really practice the religion, live it.  This is a most destructive and prevalent example of cowardice.

Maybe you have agonized over the conflict, figuring that you will stick with the religion you have until your parents have passed, sparing them the disappointment of your “betrayal”.  You are willing to wear a false mask in the name of family peace and harmony, all the while realizing that you are not being true to yourself.

This appears to be a major factor in, for example, France.  While 41.6 million of France's 65 million population identifies itself as Catholic, only about 2 million attend church each week, according to Jacques Carton of the Bishops Conference in France.  In the United States, the numbers are not so striking, apparently due in large part to the fact that our society here is much more focused on appearances and guilt.

(3) Laziness or Simple Distraction

In lives that seem to be more and more filled with financial challenge, responsibilities and daily pressures on many levels, it’s easy to forget the spiritual aspects of our lives.  Given the oxyomoronic nature of most religion---the fact that it is literally anti-spiritual---it can easily be just another item on your list of things that pull you in two different directions at the same time.  When it comes to making a change in how you see your religion, your mind tells you that there are more important things to deal with, so you sit with the status quo.

You have got other things on your mind, and at least your religion lets you fit in and also feel morally superior to other people, so long as you think about it selfishly, without much compassion.

We are living in a world of change at increasing speed.  For many of us, it is a time in which we are being challenged to shed the old ways of thinking that have not worked for us.  For many, this is the step now being faced in finding true spiritual empowerment.  Is it what you are being challenged to deal with in your process of enlightenment?

Non-religious self-reliance: It's a mouthful you do not hear much.  We have not been taught to rely upon ourselves but upon institutions that do not want us thinking for ourselves.  Please explore within yourself whether it is time to let go of your religion, time to ask, "Why not me?" when figuring out who should be responsible for your own beliefs?  Isn't this what "The Shift" is really all about--trusting our own loving power?

Coming soon: The Case for Letting Most Religion Go: Non-religious Self-Reliance--Part Two

Editor’s note: This article is so extraordinary that I obtained permission from its author to republish it here.  I suggest that you read it twice, then pause for an extended time to contemplate its wisdom.

A huge part of what is to propel our communal unfolding into a more harmonious society is our willingness to be aware and to be open to new ways of thinking, new possibilities.  So many of us were indoctrinated into believing lies about who we are.  We believed these lies because they were told to us over and over by people we trusted and felt dependent upon.  Consider this alternative way of thinking about a very important subject, please:

Why We Suffer by Wynn Free

Once upon a time you and I were part of God. It’s not that we’re not part of God now, because we still are. The difference is we knew it back then, so because we knew it, we could act like it was so. When we acted like it was so, we were able to have anything we wanted, after all God is the creator, so in as much as we were part of God, so were we creators too. As fast as we could conceive of something, it would manifest and exist. With one exception; since everyone else was also part of God, we couldn’t create anything that would violate someone else’s Godliness.

For a while it was great fun. But eventually it got boring. So we all made an agreement to forget that we were part of God. And since we were Creators, we had the power to do that. We would create a planet, put bodies on that planet and then inhabit the bodies. But we wouldn’t remember we did that, once we inhabited the bodies. Of course, when we died, we would remember, but the way we set up the game was that until we could remember who we were while we were in a body, we would have to keep returning to that planet in new bodies. But there would be endless chances. And as soon as we would remember who we were, we could transform ourselves and have anything we wanted once again, as we reconnected with the power of the God/creator self inside us.

Most of us didn’t remember. We did things the hard way. Nothing came easy. And we suffered. We had long ago forgotten our origins and were living in a state of amnesia. We made up our own rules and did our best, but unfortunately our best wasn’t very good. We got all kinds of aches and pains. There was always this sense of isolation, loneliness, and confusion. But there also were numerous clues. For example, every night we would go to sleep and in our dreams, we would return to that place of original creation where we could, once again, have anything we wanted. And so we did. In our dreams we could have it all. But every morning, we would once again wake up in our state of amnesia and have to do everything the hard way.

So the original creator God decided to give us a little help. Various reminder people were allowed to show up in bodies; people like Lao Tzu, Buddha, Muhammad, and Jesus. On one hand, this violated the original rules of our game, but as a group, we were suffering so much that we petitioned the Big Guy for help and this is how he gave it. These new guys could speak great wisdom. The reminder people told us “why do everything by the sweat of your brow” when you could “put the kingdom of heaven first and all other things would be added.” They were able to remember that they were part of God and could create whatever they thought as long as it didn’t violate anyone else’s reality. And people did listen. And they were inspired. Except, the people kept thinking that these new guys were part of God but they themselves weren’t, so they put them on pedestals and worshiped them, even when they were directly told that “these things I do, you can also do and much more.”

The people continued to suffer because they had very limited ability to invoke their God/creator self. They continued to doing everything the hard way. Oh occasionally they would pray to one of those reminder people who were now exalted on pedestals. But most of them missed the real message. They mimicked the words and lived in the constant fear that they were doing something wrong. And they were going to be punished. The Big Guy had become a wrathful Father, separate from them instead of a loving support system. And that was OK, because eventually they would figure it out. Perhaps not in this lifetime. Perhaps not even in the next thousand lifetimes. But eventually they would tire and pay attention to their dreams and get the idea. They would understand the real message of those who had come to remind them.

If you happen to be one of those people who is still suffering and perhaps don’t believe in God, or entertain the thought that God has abandoned you, or put others on pedestals above you, or live in fear and guilt that you’re doing something wrong, here’s a key to awakening the God/ Creator inside yourself. Act as if it’s so. Assume that it is true and see if there’s a shift in the world around you. You must prove to yourself beyond a shadow of a doubt that it works this way. This is the meaning of faith – acting as if it’s so before you know. Eventually you will get an experience and you won’t have to imagine anymore; that you can think about something and it can occur as long as you don’t violate someone else’s reality. (also you must create the physical circumstances where it has the possibility of happening.

For example, if you want a job, you must make yourself available where jobs exist.) Also, when your wish does manifest, it may not look like a miracle. It might just look like a coincidence. But you’ll recognize it and know what it is. Ask for things to happen that are in “the highest good of everyone concerned”. You were created in God’s image ultimately to be an equal partner with Him. But this equal partner business might take millions of years of training. After all, if you’re going to be equal, you’ll have to know how to create an entire Universe. But that’s down the road. For most of us, loving our wife and kids and earning a living is about all we can handle. But it’s all part of the training. Are you better than your children because you were first? The very first step is faith. Make believe it’s so and see what happens. And be patient. Sometimes it takes a while to break down the patterns that you’ve grown accustomed to. And perhaps, you still really want to do things the hard way. Perhaps you’re one of those who have grown overly familiar with their suffering and would rather stay in the reality, which is comfortable. After all, if you should ever finally succeed, at least you’ll know that you did it all yourself and you can take all the credit, without any outside help from the part of yourself we’ve identified as God.

But if you are one of those who are reaching the point of being sick and tired of your suffering and would like to try a different approach, perhaps a much faster track, try imagining that this story is true. Don’t believe it, but try it on for size. If part of you is also part of God and if you can call on that part of yourself, perhaps you’ll get an answer and something will transform in the physical world around you and you’ll have your own personal validation. Not only will the circumstances of your suffering shift, not only will you be able to see God inside everyone else, but step-by-step you will be able to create a life full of love, joy and miracles. And you might even get to be one of those reminder people yourself. And it won’t be much longer (give or take a million years) that you’ll be out there creating planets, solar systems and universes yourself.

For more about Wynn Free, see www.messageaday.net

Spiritual Empowerment IIa-- Shifting Away from the Need to Fight

As we see so many challenges in front of us---in America and around the world---we have also seen a variety of responses to them.  As the controlling monied forces, with the assistance of our paid-for governments and our so-called free media, have methodically taken away many of our freedoms, masses of people have generally  had one of four responses:

1.      Apathy: “There’s nothing I can do about it.  I do not have the power.”

2.      Denial: “It’s not really happening, and if it is, it’s no big deal.”

3.      Distraction: Unconsciously: “Ice cream, beer, drugs, TV, romance novels….

Which of these can I numb myself with today?”

4.      Confrontation or Fighting: “I gotta get angry.  I gotta show ‘em I am upset.  I am fighting mad.”

Let’s take these one at a time.  Apathy is “I don’t know and I don’t care.”  It’s provocation is the simple sense of powerlessness.  Deep down, there is a sense of caring, but if one doesn’t feel empowered to do anything about the problem then to avoid pain, the egoic mind pretends nothing challenging is happening.

This is no solution.  It is avoidance, a state of pretending not to care in order to avoid the potential pain of facing a reality.

Denial is just another way of avoiding reality.  If one pretends something difficult is not happening, then for the moment, pain is avoided.  The tricky thing is that when challenges are ignored, the potential lessons keep on getting projected to us until we face them.

This brings us to the “solution” of distraction.  People want to numb the pain that comes with challenging realities.  As a result, record numbers of people in “developed” countries are obese or find themselves controlled by their perceived need to distract themselves with excess quantities of harmful foods, alcohol, drugs or destructive activities.  Some say these actions are a way of trying to self-medicate so that we can feel better.  There is some truth to this, but unfortunately the challenging situations do not just disappear.  They keep coming back, so many people just increase their dosage of silly foods, booze, drugs, the venting of rage on family members, or mindless entertainment in the name of very short-term relief from their pain.

Distraction is the ultimate tool of the ego-mind.   Temporary satisfaction comes with the pint of ice cream or six-pack of beer or the vicarious living that comes with reading romance novels.  The problem is that the satisfaction is quite temporary.  When the hang-over wears off, when the quart of ice cream is emptied, when last page of the silly novel is completed, the challenges are still there in front of us.

Sooner or later, in this lifetime or one to come, we face what is in front of us that is asking us to see it.  Some are now willing to see the realities of our world.  Often, it seems, their response is one of anger and confrontation.  This has not worked.  Angry confrontation is not a solution.  The emotion of anger says that what is happening right now is not OK, that one does not accept what is happening.

The hope in anger is that it will produce a solution to the perceived problem.  What it does is often exacerbate the problem, because without trust anger is no more a solution than apathy, denial or distraction.  Trust is a prerequisite to solution.  Rather than trust, some people cling to hope, something that implies that some external power will save us from ourselves.  Hope is the ultimate masturbation.

In America, our President recently spoke about how we must “fight” for what we know is right.  Whom shall to fight?  Part of what we are here on this Earth to do is to learn how to cooperate with each other, to let a more loving way of living be our way of life.

In the same speech, President Obama said this: “There are things that have to be done.  And that means marching forward, not standing still.”  Of course, when we see something that we intend to accomplish, perseverence is important.  Still, I see it as ironic that the true solutions to all of our apparent problems in this world will surface when we are willing to sit or stand still.  When more of us are willing to be in the silence, to quiet our silly, panicky minds, to accept each other and love each other, then the need to march or fight or harshly judge the worthiness of any other person will evaporate.

Next: Our Collectively Stupid Beliefs