In an article published yesterday in Yes! Magazine entitled Freeing the Spirit of Change by Rabbi Ted Falcon of the Interfaith Amigos, he examines why the common moral core of the world’s religions has been overshadowed by violent conflict and economic despair, and why recognizing our oneness is the first step towards healing. The points he lays out in the article are ever so timely and I believe accurately represent the global spiritual and intellectual awakening that we are currently experiencing.
Rabbi Falcon believes that there are two major reasons why the world religions have failed to “motivate loving action.” The first is the struggle to survive and expand the reign of institutionalized religion. The other is the struggle to survive and expand our inner-institution; our ego. Ultimately, both continue to distract us collectively and individually from understanding the true spirituality of our faiths.
Just yesterday I was having a conversation about the history of institutionalized religion. By no means am I a religious historian. But when you look back to the time of the colonies, it makes complete sense. At that time, religion and state were closely ties together. In many ways, religion was the state. In the race to gain power and control over newly founded lands, all kinds of religious doctrine and law were imposed to insure their survival and expansion. Although the times have changed greatly, religions continue to “confuse their spiritual mission with their institutional success.” As a result, the positive spiritual teachings of religion have suffered, and will continue to suffer until we get back to the source of why it all began.
The second point Rabbi Falcon makes about the ego I find particularly interesting. I was watching a video yesterday about Japanese culture. The video explained how Japanese society is built strongly on community and the collective best interest of that community. In contrast, western society is very individualistic. I don’t believe that individuality is a bad thing, but anything taken to an extreme can be damaging. In many ways, our egos distract us from the rest of humanity. Rabbi Falcon says it best, “As long as we pursue our individual desires as if we are not in fact interconnected to each other, we will at best only mouth words of spiritual wisdom but never truly express them in our lives.”
In the United States, Rabbi Falcon sees this same confusion of ideals and institutions within American politics. “Instead of a language of caring, we are party to the constant rhetoric of attack: It’s Us versus Them, and We are always right. Out of this polarization comes frustration and anger, helplessness and hopelessness, and a loss of the spiritual awareness that alone can help us escape the Us and Them battles taking place everywhere—in our homes, in our families, in our communities, in our country, among our countries and, perhaps most essentially, within ourselves.”
Despite all the confusion, Rabbi Falcon has a solution. And at this time I am reminded of a very famous quote by Mahatma Ghandi, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Our inner confusions, values, and priorities are directly reflected in the state of our world. We must accept the challenge to “create climates of remembering within ourselves,” says Rabbi Falcon. He adds, “This is one of the deepest functions of all spiritual traditions: to support inner environments of awareness from which effective and loving action in the world can be born.”
Rabbi Falcon concludes the article with a simple affirmation for each and every one of us to practice in moments of silence. Let these words run through you when you find yourself caught in the isolation that distracts us from the reality that we are one:
“I am One with all that is.
Lovingkindness expresses through me now.
I act to make things better.”
Website: www.yesmagazine.org
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