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The Same Story

By Published On: February 18, 20190 Comments on The Same Story

 
Every human being has the same story. We come into the world with some genes, a particular environment, and an unfolding sense of being an individual person.

As we develop, we are constantly bombarded with information that we organize into patterns. Trying to make sense of the onslaught of data that comes our way, we create an order of reality, a mental construct that we are able to understand. And then we utilize this structure to filter future data and also to further refine and delineate the structure itself.

The problem is that the reality that we create is a fabrication that corresponds only partly with the reality that is. Our inevitable tendency to fit information into patterns that we have created inevitably distorts that information. Each and every one of us creates our own private world.

In order to be in touch with reality, we all need to be set free from our world. The door must be opened, the light must come in. Anything has the capacity to set us free. It could be a friend, a stranger, a tree, a sky, a baby, a rainbow- every encounter of our life has the potential to be that event that frees us from our confinement.

The liberation, however, is momentary. Freedom requires continual nourishment because our delusion resists being dismantled. We are comfortable in our self- made prison. Consequently, we need help in order to continue in the light, and that help can come to us from many directions.

One way is through other people, a process that has two dimensions. First, they can support our growth in awareness. Second, other people can also be critical of our continued confinement, lest we slide back into our old style of thinking and being. Support and critique, both, together.

A second way is working on our own self-improvement. This can happen through study and meditation, for example, and needs to be a life-long process.

What name shall we give to this initial event and ensuing process? Many words have been used. At the top of the list, I suppose, are conversion and awareness. A new word to which I have just been introduced is “woke”, probably a newer version of “awakened”. Inasmuch as the world we create is a confinement, I like the word “opening”, followed by a process of unfolding, sort of like a flower.

What ultimately differentiates people from one another (besides wealth, class, race, etc) is whether or not they have begun the process of becoming open and unfolding. It is not whether they are religious or not, spiritual or not, Christian or Hindu, French or Canadian, black or white, earthling or martian, sapiens or neanderthal. None of that. The only question is: are you woke, sister?

This openness is available to everyone. We are not born evil or sinful, but we are born with a natural desire to make sense of our world, to create order out of the chaos bombarding our senses. The problem is that this desire makes mistakes and then builds on those mistakes. That desire and the ensuing mistakes, however, can and must be reversed.

Some of us will see god as part of this picture. Most particularly, god can be seen as the one who enables the openness and unfolding. Or god can be seen as the creator of the self, perhaps by implanting a consciousness, a soul, spirit, or eternal mind. The point, however, is that it isn’t crucial whether or not one speaks of god, or soul, or spirit, or eternity. What matters is how one lives: open or closed.

How we live is not a constant, such that once you open, you are forever open. No. Being open is not a state of being, but a way of becoming, and we vacillate in that process. Sometimes we got it, so to speak, and sometimes we don’t got it. Confronted with constant abject misery, Mother Theresa confessed to us that her faith in God often succumbed to the surrounding sickness. Martin Luther would go into fits of disbelief as he threw ink bottles against the wall, aimed at his tempter satan. No one is any different. We are not always open or woke or loving. If we have a faith in god, we are not always faithful or believing. But we can try.
 
Dr. Krieg received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and Ph.D. from The University of Chicago Divinity School. As professor and pastor, he has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. In a world of conflict and confusion, he writes to all who seek to understand what it means to be both a human being and a partner with God.

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