In his book, Religions of the World, Houston Smith writes of the two issues on which most religions agree.
- They all advise adherence to some version of the Golden Rule and avoidance of self-centeredness.
- Generally, we do neither one.
Self-centered and shameless, we too often do to others and our environment whatever we can get away with.
We get by with this behavior in the short term.
In time, we find that we are victims of our own exploitation.
For the way of life, the architecture of life, reveals an exquisite intimacy among all phenomena.
Life also broadcasts a riveting truth from which there is no escape.
I call it the reverse side of the Golden Rule.
The Golden Rule commands that we do to others as we would have others do to us.
The reverse side of the Golden Rule does not command anything.
It warns that what we do to others we do to ourselves.
In an interconnected world, all exploitation and oppression inevitably returns to its source.
This is a reality that we must understand, and from this understanding make the critical mindshift required of us if we are to sustain humanity and advance our civilization.
This mindshift is to understand clearly, unequivocally, that what we do to others we do to ourselves.
What does this mean?
The answer is in our foundational relationships.
In each one there exists a dynamic between self and other.
- Consider our relationship with our environment. If we damage and destroy our environment, we damage and destroy ourselves.
- In our relationships with other people, if we mistreat and are unkind to others, our actions return to haunt and torment us in one form or another over time.
- In our relationship with ourselves, if we abuse ourselves — our health — in any one of countless ways, sooner or later, we will suffer the consequences.
When all of this becomes evident and acted upon, our belief system and behavior become fused and aligned, not with some fantasy or fictional story, but with the reality in which we exist.
Our belief system is not just something for one day of the week, or a particular time of the day when we pray or bow to this or that god, or to be celebrated in special places only.
Our belief system becomes our lifestyle, and our lifestyle becomes aligned with and honors the larger reality in which we exist.
Religious People
Often, we are confronted by well-meaning “religious” people who read, quote from, and thump their “holy” books.
- These people are everywhere: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, internet, and billboards.
- They even knock on our doors to evangelize and proselytize in an attempt to get us to join their tribe.
In interacting with these people, it often becomes evident that many don’t know how to take of care of their health, how to get along with their neighbors, or understand our fragile relationship with our environment.
One feels like saying to them, “Some of what you have in your book is fine, but what is going on in the rest of your life?”
Free Will
Many of us have been taught that a creator has “endowed” us with “free will”.
This ingenious bit of theological inventiveness, among so many others, was designed to relieve gods of the responsibility for having created the dark side of life.
- Gods get the credit for all the good things.
- We, because of “free will,” get the blame for all the bad.
This is a very clever construction.
That aside, do we really have free will?
Yes, of course.
Like all other creatures, we can do whatever we like.
We can lead unhealthy lifestyles.
We can mistreat and exploit others.
We can pollute our air, water, and soil and deplete and destroy our resources.
In other words, we can and do destroy the foundational relationships of our lives.
We have free will.
But we do not have free will over the consequences.
We cannot will the consequences.
In an interrelated, interdependent world, the consequences, like the outcomes of mathematical equations, are fixed.
Our only choice, in fact, is to honor the way of life as it really is and prosper or violate the way of life and suffer needlessly.
Sacredness
Sacredness is not a complex, difficult, and esoteric issue to understand.
It is found in real life relationships here and now, not “out there” somewhere.
Sacredness is not about a Supreme Being.
It’s about a way of being.
The focus of our beliefs must shift from what was imagined to exist and be sacred in some heavenly realm to what does exist and is sacred here and now.
It is time to find our comfort not in the worship of distant mythological gods, but in present, real-life relationships with each other, with our extraordinary environment, and in our own unique individuality.
These “commandments” are not issued by a god, but by the undeniable reality of our existence.
Certainly, the fictional gods of our historical religions would approve of this shift of emphasis.
When we take care of ourselves and each other, and leave our environment as we found it or improve it, we are living a sacred life.
One would think that if there exists anything benevolent in dimensions beyond our perception — call it a god, creator, supreme being, the force, universal intelligence, divine consciousness, or whatever — that it, she, him, or them would cheer us wildly when the focus of our lives is on health for ourselves, kindness toward each other, and respect for our environment.
For what more could any god of any belief system anywhere ask of us?