Ultimate Questions

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Ultimate Questions
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The Question of Purpose

• Why is there anything at all rather than nothing?
• What is the purpose/meaning of life?
• What is the purpose/meaning of your life?

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Cosmic Riddles The World of Science

• Copernicus Galileo
• 17th Century
• Beginning of scientific revolution
• Everything is called into question
• Rene Descartes
• 18th Century
• Isaac Newton
• 19th Century
• Science and the common person
• Technology
• Science as the new deity
• Characteristics
• Ernst Haeckel
• Unrest
• Dickens Tennyson
• 20th Century
• Second scientific revolution
• The atom
• Conclusions

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Telling the Human Story Literature

• http//falcon.jmu.edu/ramseyil/storyorigins.htm

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A Schizoid World The Social Sciences

• Schizoid
• Existentialism
• Anxiety
• Social Anxiety causes
• Nuclear weapons
• Competitiveness
• Exaggerated expectations
• Mobility
• Lack of religious center
• Two Responses to Anxiety
• avoidance and denial
• the courage to be
• Intellect, Will Emotion
• Eros vs. Thanatos
• C.S. Lewis (storge, philia, eros, agape)
• Determinism

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STIMULUS
RESPONSE
WHAT CAN HAPPEN BETWEEN STIMULUS RESPONSE?

• PROACTIVE vs. REACTIVE

They cannot take away our self-respect if we
dont give it to them. -Gandhi
No one can hurt you without your
consent. -Eleanor Roosevelt
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Proactive Model
FREEDOM TO CHOOSE
RESPONSE
STIMULUS
Independent Will
Self Awareness
Conscience
Imagination
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Reactive Language
Proactive Language

• Theres nothing I can do, thats just the way I
  am
• He makes me so mad
• I have to / I cant / I must

• Lets look at our alternatives, I can choose a
  different approach
• I can control my own feelings
• I choose / I prefer / I will

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THE MOBIUS STRIP

• Thoughts on the Mobius Strip
• by Parker Palmer in the book,
• A Hidden Wholeness

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Take a strip of paper with which we will make a
Mobius Strip.

• One side of the strip represents your outer,
• onstage life.
• What is my image
• influence
• impact?

The other side represents your inner, backstage
life Ideas, values, faith, heart, spirit, soul,
etc.
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Stage 1

• Children come into this world with no separation
  between the inner and outer life.

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Stage 2

• Hold up the strip of paper so that it makes a
  wall, separating outer and inner worlds.
• We erect walls to serve as barriers between inner
  truth and the outer world.
• Examples

If you live behind a wall long enough, not
letting the world see who you are You might
forget there is a real you hidden there.
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Three Consequences of Living Behind a Wall

• 1) My inner light cannot illuminate my work
• in the world
• 2) The light in the world cannot illuminate my
• inner darkness
• 3) People see us as not being real in our
• relationships and close themselves off
• from us.

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Pain will crack open our closed worldif we are
willing to feel it

• It could be loneliness, depression, anger,
  alienation, failed relationships, etc. that
• force us to admit something needs to
• change in our lives.

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Stage 3

• Form the strip of paper into a circle.

I decide I want my inner truth to be the measure
for the decisions I make. Who am I? What am I
about? a good step
But theres another side to this stage.
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Shadow Side of Stage 3

• When we live inside this new identity, we form a
  secret garden to which we invite only people
  with whom we feel at ease.
• We use our inner truth to exclude those we find
  challenging.
• This circle is really only a wall in
  disguise.

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Stage 4

• Make a Mobius Strip with the paper.
• Whatever is inside us continually flows outward
  to form or deform the world.
• Whatever is outside us continually flows inward
  to help form, or deform our lives.
• There is really only ONE REALITY.

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The Bottom Line.

• (1)We learn that stages 2 and 3 are illusions,
  although they were necessary at the time.
• (2) We think we are hiding our truth behind a
  wall.
• (3) We think we can use our truth to screen out
  what is alien to us.
• But we all live on a Mobius Stripwe are
  constantly engaged in an exchange of what is out
  there and what is in here.

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OUR CHOICE

• We can walk the Mobius Strip wide awake to its
  continual interchanges, learning to co-create in
  ways that are life-giving to ourselves and
  others.
• Or we can sleep-walk on the Mobius Strip,
  unconsciously co-creating in ways that are
  dangerous and often deadly for relationships,
  good work, or hope.

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All spiritual traditions ask us to wake up to
the reality in which we live

• What are we sending from within ourselves to the
  world and what impact does it have?
• What is the world sending back to us and what
  impact does it have in us?
• We have the POWER TO CHOOSE MOMENT TO MOMENT
  between THAT WHICH GIVES LIFE and THAT WHICH
  GIVES DEATH.

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In Stage 4 we come full circle to the place where
we beganthe adult version of the wholeness into
which we were born.

• T.S. Eliot wrote
• We shall not cease from exploration
• And the end of all our exploring
• Will be to arrive where we started
• And know the place for the first time.

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Anthony DeMello
Wake Up Spirituality
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How To Be Real
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• What is the significance of the story of the man
  hanging off the cliff and eating the berry?
• How can you live life one moment at a time while
  beginning with the end in mind?
• What is the significance of the story about the
  diamonds?
• Life is a banquet but most people are starving.
  What does this mean to you?
• What is the significance of the story of the man
  and the mendicant?
• I dont want this diamond. Could you give me
  the riches that make it possible for you to give
  this thing away?
• Life is something that happens to us while were
  busy at something else You have 3 ½ months
  left at Cathedral. In what way (s) do you need
  to un-busy yourself and focus on life?

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1. The tragedy is not in how much we suffer, but
   in how much we miss. What does this mean to
   you?
2. Human beings are born asleep, live asleep and
   die asleep. How do we wake up?
3. DeMello says were all given a drug as a child.
   What is the drug DeMello is talking about?
4. What happens once you take the drug?
5. What do you lose the ability to do when under the
   affects of the drug? What drug are you under
   the affects of? What have you lost the ability
   to do because of it?
6. In what ways do you respond as a robot?

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• What does DeMello mean when he says if you drop
  the drug everything will be the same, but, You
  will have dropped out. You will be in the world
  but not of the world.
• How does this idea parallel living a life of
  faith?
• What is the difference between loneliness and
  aloneness?
• Think of someone whose approval you think you
  need. In what way have you lost your freedom
  because of it?
• Think of someone you think is necessary to ease
  the pain of your loneliness. In what way have
  you lost your freedom because of it?

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1. What are the two kinds of desire DeMello talks
   about? What is the significance of this?
2. As long as I need you, I cannot love you. What
   do you think DeMello means by this? Do you agree
   or disagree? Why?
3. How does DeMello define spirituality? What role
   does religion play?
4. How often are you attune to what others think,
   feel and will say about you?
5. What do we need to discover in order to be
   transformed?

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Determinism

• Genetic Determinism
• Your grandparents did it to you
• Psychic Determinism
• Your parents did it to you
• Environmental Determinism
• Your environment is doing it to you