When Parents Lie to Children – Excerpt from Original Faith by Paul M. Martin

This is the last in the recent parenting and book-themed posts that I’ve found myself doing lately. Today’s post is a guest post in the form of an excerpt from the book Original Faith: What Your Life is Trying to Tell You, by Paul M. Martin. Although between here and BellaOnline I’ve gotten myself a bit backed up in the book department, and haven’t been able to read Original Faith yet, I’ve been enjoying the discussions about spirituality on Paul’s blog, which I was introduced to by mutual friend Jan at Awake is Good.

Paul is a certified elementary school counselor with over twenty years experience in the public schools and has master’s degrees in religious studies and counseling. He has had a fascinating personal journey, including years of spiritual doubt, a spontaneous meditative experience that served as the genesis for Original Faith, and the onset of a debilitating condition that has currently left him homebound. You can read more about his story and his message here.

The following excerpt from Original Faith, entitled When Parents Lie to Children, discusses the fundamental spiritual misdirection that occurs when parents are only able to offer their children ‘conditional love’ – love dependent upon fulfilling the parent’s own ego needs.

Ego-Involved

A parent or other primary caretaker either does not love us or, far more often, does not express it clearly and consistently enough for us to be sure of it. An experienced lack of love from a parent is the fundamental source of the wounds that so many of us receive in childhood.

When this occurs, it is because our parent is somewhat ambivalent about his or her feelings for us. The parent doesn’t completely accept something about our real nature. We may not be smart enough or talented enough. We may be too physically rugged or assertive for a girl or too small and quiet for a boy. We may be too inhibited or not self-disciplined enough.

Our interests and aspirations may be wrong. We may not like working with our hands enough—or with our intellects. We may like music too much and not take enough interest in sports, or the other way around.

The real problem, of course, is that we are not sufficiently like our parents or their aspirations to satisfy their ego. Many of us spend years of our adult lives coming out from under the burden of this unnecessary baggage. As parents, this is a burden we can and should avoid passing on to our own children.

The Lie

Having preconceived notions of what our children must be like in order to be fully acceptable to us is the equivalent of telling them a terrible lie. What our children hear is that they are not good enough – that something is wrong with or lacking in their very being.

Though it’s a lie, children readily believe it. With little or no knowledge of the outside world as a potential source of acceptance and approval, young children are in no position to realize, “This is only my parent’s hang-up. No reflection on me!”  They believe the lie in the act of hearing it.

Viewing the abilities of our children as a means to satisfy our ego desires is unhealthy for parents as well as children. Indeed, outgrowing egoism is a good two-word summary of our primary developmental task as adults. And clearly it helps our children develop trust, confidence and self love when they see themselves with eyes unclouded by the illusion that that they were put on earth to be made in our image. It even becomes that much easier for them to take first steps toward standing in right relation to the greater truth that embraces us all.

SKY SMILE
By Paul Martin

The big sky smiled so wide!
“Why don’t you smile too?”
It seemed to say.
But Jessica was crying.
“I’m blue – don’t you even get it?”
“So am I” said Sky.
“I am the blue that’s light.”
And Jessica saw that Sky was right
And really was light-blue,
Like that half-unraveled crayon
She liked to use when she was drawing sky.
So she kicked off both her shoes
Right there on the grass
To feel another kind of blue.

- Excerpted from Original Faith: What Your Life is Trying to Tell You, by Paul M. Martin

Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief – Book Review

First a couple of notes for regular readers: 1) I will post the guided chakra-work mp3s that I mentioned in the 21 Ways to Care for Your Sacral Chakra post early next week. I am going to add a few more than originally planned, and have the perfect opportunity this weekend to get in the right ’space’ for this. 2) This week I am doing a couple more parenting-themed posts, but then I’ll swing back around to some of my other topics, so if parenting is not your thing, just hold on. However, I think some of these themes are interesting for any of us to look at, because it’s always enlightening to examine how you were parented, and how it shaped your worldview.

Which brings me to today’s book review: Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief. This book is primarily geared for parents that consider themselves atheist, agnostic, and/or secular humanist, none of which I personally embrace. When I have to label myself (which I assiduously try and avoid), I usually go with ’spiritual but not religious.’ Of course, ’spiritual’ is pretty broad, but for me it does mean I believe in something beyond what my physical senses or science can currently validate. Belief is not a bad word for me, not something I need to get beyond, nor is it incompatible in my mind with freethinking. So this book wouldn’t seem a good fit for me.

And yet I really liked it, and feel it is a book I will turn to again and again as my children get older. I liked it because what I have come to believe spiritually has been the result of personal questioning and seeking, and the main thrust of this book is how to raise children that approach life in an open, questioning, educated, and ethical way. From that perspective I think it is a book any parent could benefit from (and I am not big on parenting books.) That being said, this book is certainly not for fans of most organized religion, theistic beliefs, or the hierarchical theology typical of the world’s religions (and that’s fine by me.)

First the basics: This book is a collection of essays and parent-child exercises written by Dale McGowan, Molleen Matsumura, Amanda Metskas, and Jan Devor, all of whom are secular humanists, or, in the case of Ms. Devor, Unitarian Universalist, with parent education experience. You can read more about each of them at the Parenting Beyond Belief website. Each chapter introduces its topic and then presents a series of questions and answers based on the concerns of real parents that the authors have interacted with. The chapters each end with suggested parent-child exercises for exploring the theme further, and a list of related resources, including books, websites, movies, and more. Some of the chapter themes are how to:

- Encourage critical thinking while maintaining respect for other’s beliefs.

- Help children navigate the social pressures oriented around authority and conformity (both religious forces and other social ones.)

- Develop an ethical foundation not based on a traditionally religious POV, i.e. divine reward and punishment.

- Achieve “religious literacy without indoctrination”, which is especially important if you have family members with religious views other than your own, or if you live in an area where ‘going to church’ (or the equivalent) is the norm.

- Sort through the mixed messages regarding sexuality, our physical bodies, and pleasure that have seeped into our culture from religious viewpoints, and how to offer a healthy alternative.

- Celebrate traditionally religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter in a secular fashion, or develop alternatives.

- Develop rituals and/or a conceptual framework for dealing with life passages and death.

- Find and/or create the sense of community that is often provided by religious organizations.

The chapter on religious literacy was particularly interesting to me, because my husband’s and my own family embrace a wide range of religious beliefs, and my children will need to sort through that as they grow up. In addition, I have been trying to determine what of my own beliefs I want to introduce my children to (which is part of what inspired my own spiritual and religious book lists for young children.) Raising Freethinkers only increased my sense that religious literacy is essential for functioning well in society, or at least American society, due to the ongoing religiously-based ‘culture wars’ here, and the corresponding conversion pressures some teens face from peers (the questions and scenarios posed by parents in this book are very eye-opening in that regard.)

The book offers many interesting statistics regarding American’s religious beliefs as well, including that 86% believe in God (although that drops to 78% when the option of ‘universal spirit’ is also offered, which is probably what I would select myself if pushed), 81% heaven, 69% hell, and 61% that the biblical creation story is literally true. The statistics on the same issues in Europe and other ‘developed’ nations are drastically different. In addition, unlike in the U.S. most Europeans receive religious education in schools, and are therefore much more aware of religious history and religions other than their own. As Jan Devor puts it, “The United States is both the most religiously enthusiastic and the least religiously literate country in the developed world.” And as our most recent presidential election highlighted, this is a trend that is only increasing in our country, and that our children will be dealing with for some time to come.

Although I am interested in all world religions, and have found mystics within most whose writings and experiences I resonate with, the way that religion is usually passed on from parent to child has always seemed absurd to me. Jan Devor quotes a recent speech by Richard Dawkins that captures this sentiment exactly, in which he responds to a newspaper photo of three young children with the caption ‘A Sikh child, a Muslim child, and a Christian child’ by noting:

“No one bats an eye…But just imagine if the caption had read ‘a Monetarist child, a Keynesian child, and a Marxist child.” Ridiculous! Yet not one bit less ridiculous than the other.”

Since for me spirituality is not about inheriting beliefs but about personally seeking, Dale McGowan’s first chapter ‘The Inquiring Mind’ was also a favorite of mine. He unpacks the underlying assumption of many religious parenting books that “our primary job as parents is to stave off a bubbling depravity that lurks just below the surface of our children.” As he puts it:

“I want the idea that questions can be feared because of the answers they might produce to baffle my kids. I want them to find hilarariously silly the idea that certain lines of thought cannot even be pursued, lest they be caught.”

Amen to that (hehe). And the examples he provides for how to encourage questioning in kids, and how to avoid falling into the trap of authoritarian or answer-providing parenting were very insightful. However, here some of my own beliefs regarding the limits of reason and science clashed a bit with some of the exercises, such as having kids create staged UFO photos to help them see how easily the eye can be tricked, or attempting to disprove the existence of unicorns to show how proving the negative (i.e. there is no God) is impossible, and therefore “the burden of proof must rest on those making spectacular claims.” Both exercises seemed to me to be awfully close to teaching freethinking=’rationality’ or ‘current scientific knowledge’, which is not exactly what I want to pass on (after all, science is a product of its time too – the theory of microscopic germs was once considered idiotic.)

All of the other chapters – on ethics, secular rituals, life passages, sex ed and more – were all excellent, and I feel they did offer material I will turn to as my children get older. Many fascinating studies are referenced, including those on what type of parenting is more likely to engender empathy (not moralistic), and how sex education really impacts the sexual behavior of teens (abstinence-only programs, steadily increasing in U.S. schools, do not delay the average age for first-time sex, which is currently 14.9 years.) I also especially appreciated the parent questions, which raised so many issues I had never thought of, from how to respond to a young child who wants a first communion after attending her cousin’s, to how to talk about good and evil without a religious framework.

This is called a ‘practical guide’ and it definitely is that, rich in exercises, book suggestions, and resource lists. A particular favorite of mine is the ‘Recommended Films’ list in the appendix, which includes the categories “Religious Literacy”, “Coming of Age Issues” and “Exploring Death and Loss.”

So if you are looking for guidance in secular child-raising, hold unconventional spiritual beliefs yourself, and/or want to prepare your child well for navigating a sometimes religiously rigid world, Raising Freethinkers is worth considering. Check out the website for more info.

Feel free to post any questions you have about the book in the comments, and I will answer them there. I’m also interested to hear about your own experiences or insights for handling atheist or unconventional spiritual beliefs with children, or advice for handling some of the issues that often arise when children are confronted with other religious beliefs through friends or family….

The Importance of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders

A friend who knows me well was surprised (when she finally got around to reading my blog) that I am focusing a lot on women’s spirituality. That’s because in the classes that I teach I often warn people about the various subcultures present in spirituality, all of which, to my Buddhist-trained mind, just seek to reinforce a limited personal identity, rather than helping us break free of it.

Here in Los Angeles, I meet so many people that define themselves by their membership in a particular meditation group, or wellness program, or yoga style, etc. While I don’t doubt that they are  benefiting from what they learn, I am often uncomfortable with the level of certitude, and even self-righteousness, that often accompanies it. This self-righteousness is no different in my mind than the self-righteousness of the religious right, which many of these same people regularly bash and denounce as ‘arrogant’.

The human ego thrives on a sense of tribe, and on categorizing everyone outside that tribe as ignorant, wrong, or even downright evil. So I am suspicious of tribes, and of my own tribal instincts. So much so that I don’t even consider myself a member of any one religion or spiritual tradition, despite the fact that my spirituality is the foundation for my life. Of course we all have to have opinions, but defining ourselves according to them only binds us more to delusion – it doesn’t liberate us, which is what I view the purpose of spirituality to be.

So, getting back to women’s spirituality, I am often uncomfortable with the tribal feeling of many books and sites labeled as such. Too often they seem to be  a backlash against the patriarchal history of the world’s religions, and in my view they ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’, by rejecting everything those traditions have to teach us because of past discrimination. To me that is a grave mistake, because the true teachings of Buddha, and Jesus, and yogic masters such as Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi, and of hundreds of other mystics within all of the world’s religious traditions, can lead us to spiritual liberation. They have nothing to do with gender (or any other level of identification, for that matter.)

However, one of the biggest problems historically, and one of the biggest crimes against women, in my view, is the restrictions placed on their access to teachings and official roles. Many religions restrict women’s rights or abilities to read certain scriptures, or to teach or preach. Since scriptures are often considered the word of God, or a conduit to enlightenment (in the East), this sends the message that women are ‘further’ from God or enlightenment, and that they don’t have the right to communicate directly, or to learn, teach, or preach on their own. They have to get everything secondhand.

I recently read an interesting book that highlights this issue called Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality. I posted a formal review on Amazon, so won’t do that here, but basically this book focuses on the role of women within the three ‘religions of the book’ – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The author interweaves religious history with interviews of contemporary women who care deeply about their religions, and derive great knowledge and sustenance from them, but are unhappy with the restricted roles of women within them. Many of these interviews are very touching, much more so than I was expecting, because these women have really struggled with this issue.

I wonder how many more women have just given up, denouncing all spirituality or religion? Or accepted their second-rate status, internalizing the idea that ‘men are closer to God’ (or enlightenment, or liberation, or whatever?) Or settled (in my view) into a backlash tradition, focused solely on goddess worship or other staples of women’s spirituality, giving up altogether on the idea of enlightenment or union with God or nirvana, or whatever you choose to call it?

While Taking Back God focuses on the official role of women in organized religion, things aren’t altogether different in the New Age community, or in many Buddhist or Yoga centers. Although there are more women spiritual teachers, authors, and religious leaders in America than elsewhere in the world, they are still vastly outnumbered by men (just check out the Amazon bestsellers list). This despite the fact that according to book marketing surveys, women outnumber men as the purchasers of spiritual and religious books by as much as 4 to 1. In other words, women would appear to be more interested in spirituality in general, but the majority of books, teachers, organizations and resources out there are male-dominated.What is the message sent by this?

I have seen a bit of this myself, even in my small role as a meditation teacher. I don’t fit the ‘mold’ people are expecting, and can sometimes see the surprise on their face when they enter the room for their first class. Part of that is also cultural, as they are often expecting someone Indian or Tibetan. While most of these people would say when asked that of course spiritual truth or knowledge is not tied to a particular culture or gender, there are subconscious biases that creep in. Initially, they’d feel more comfortable with a Tibetan monk than me, no matter how long I have been doing this.

So, my answer to my friend, the reason I do focus on women’s spirituality so much, even though I am wary of over-identifying with gender issues, is that I think it really matters how many women religious leaders and spiritual teachers there are out there. And I think full access to scriptures, and leadership roles, and teaching positions – within every tradition – is imperative. Women’s access to enlightenment, their relationship with God/Tao/Nirvana/Brahma etc., can’t be secondhand. In a way, changing this is the most essential form of change that can occur, because our spiritual and religious beliefs define our organizational view of the world. If we see women as ‘lower down’ the totem pole, even subconsciously, we are denying ourselves our full power.

Book Review: The Heretic’s Daughter – Religion, Fear and the Salem Witch Trials

I received an advance copy of Kathleen Kent’s first novel, The Heretic’s Daughter, this past Spring at the Los Angeles Book Expo, and have been anxiously awaiting its official publication date to review it. The Heretic’s Daughter takes place in and around Salem, Massachusetts during the 1690’s, before and during the infamous Salem witch trials. The narrator’s mother, Martha Carrier, is based on the real woman of the same name, who was one of the first woman to be tried and hung in the trials. The book’s author is a tenth generation descendant of Martha Carrier.

Ms. Kent has done her research, and she does a beautiful job of depicting the harsh realities of life during this time. While the initial Puritan settlers had come to this land to escape persecution, and hoped to found a new religious community, they were besieged by plagues, crop failures, and attacks by indigenous tribes. The child mortality rate was so high, we are told in the first pages, “that some families did not name their child until the child was past twelve months and more likely to live. And in many households if a baby died, that same baby’s name would be passed on to the next born. And to the very next if that babe died as well.”

This is from the novel’s narrator, Sarah Carrier, Martha Carrier’s daughter. If Sarah sometimes seems distant and unfeeling as she describes horrific events, it is no wonder, based on the climate in which she was raised. In fact, Sarah’s voice and attitude was at first a put-off to me, making her difficult to relate to or feel for. But as the novel progresses, her voice becomes one of the book’s greatest strengths, because it provides such a vast contrast to our emotion-laden, Oprah-fueled times. Sarah helps us to see what a stark and difficult existence does to people, and as she does mature – through watching her mother’s trial and surviving her own incarceration - her growth and new-found wisdom is that much more evident.

As the novel begins, Sarah and her family are on their way to live with her grandmother, and, unbeknown to them, are bringing smallpox with them to their new community. This fact, along with Martha Carrier’s headstrong and outspoken nature, will ultimately lead to the family becoming a target when the terrible accusations begin. Those accusations, as presented in The Heretic’s Daughter, gain traction in the community because of the lethal combination of fear and damnation-based religion. The community, facing so many challenges to its existence, cannot fathom why they are being targeted by God for such wrath. Surely there must be some offense, some sin, that they are being punished for? In their desperation, they seek out the ’sinners’ amongst them, literally demonizing their own neighbors for the smallest of offenses. They seek to scapegoat and purge - as so many have done in the name of religion throughout history.

From there, the paralysis of fear takes over, with each new charge silencing more people within the community, all seeking to protect their own lives and families. Children as young as four are taken into custody – since the ‘devil’ is behind it all, and can take over anyone’s mind, no one is considered innocent. Quite the contrary, during the trials the defendants are most definitely considered guilty until proven innocent. And their innocence is in the hands of several hysterical, adolescent girls no less (I’ll let you read the book to learn more about this.)

One of the most touching aspects of the book is how Martha gets Sarah to save herself, helping Sarah to realize that behind her mother’s stern exterior lies the greatest of maternal loves. While Sarah at first despises her mother’s difficult personality, wishing she would just capitulate to others, she comes to realize her mother’s seeming obstinance is actually born of tremendous faith and wisdom. This is exactly the opposite of what her community elders teach – that strict obedience is the foundation for faith. As Sarah observes, that obedience, along with fear, is what allows the madness to continue for so long.

And so The Heretic’s Daughter works on at least three levels. First, as a gripping historical novel that masterfully depicts a certain setting and time period. Second, as a personal story of a mother and adolescent daughter struggling to understand each other. And third, as a cautionary tale about how religion can be twisted when a society is ruled by fear.

You can purchase this book though Amazon, or for more info about it, go to its official website. To view a video interview with the author, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDbUVZUv9yM.

For more book reviews on this blog, to the Book category.

Book Review: Deepak Chopra’s Why is God Laughing?

I picked up Deepak Chopra’s latest fiction effort, Why is God Laughing?: The Path to Joy and Spiritual Optimism, with high hopes. I generally like Chopra’s work, although I am not a hard-core fan, and I love to laugh. I also believe humour is a key companion to spiritual growth – when you can laugh at yourself, you probably have hit on some self-truth. And Mike Myer’s Foreword seemed to be heading in the right direction, quoting Lenny Bruce’s  equation for comedy as “laughter = pain + time”, and noting that Chopra would call the ‘plus time’ detachment. Enlightenment and comedy share that in common.

Unfortunately Why is God Laughing? doesn’t quite follow-through on its promise, although it has some nice moments. The main problem for me is that the book seems more like an outline, and a derivative one at that. It doesn’t evoke any powerful emotions, because we don’t have enough time with the main character, Mickey, to feel invested in him. The entire book feels rushed, more like a premise for hitting certain spiritual points, chapter by chapter. These points, or lessons, drive the book’s progression more than the character’s inner growth. This is often a problem when non-fiction writers cross over to fiction, but I thought Chopra had solved it after his last fiction effort, Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment (recently released in paperback, and which I highly recommend.)

Why is God Laughing? revolves around Mickey Fellows, a famous, self-absorbed Los Angeles comedian whose father has recently died. As he struggles with his grief, a mysterious stranger appears in his life and starts providing him with boilerplate spiritual lessons – overcoming fear, seeing beyond ego, embracing humility, etc. In format the book seems to follow in the footsteps of Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior; in fact it is kind of a cross between Way of the Peaceful Warrior and Tuesdays with Morrie, which should be a winning combination, but it just falls short of both in emotional depth.

Chopra is at his best in this book when speaking through the mysterious teacher, as it gives him a chance to expound on his usual spiritual themes. There is no question that he is a master at communicating usually complex ideas in simple nuggets. Some of my favorites are:

“Either you’re a person wondering if you have a soul, or you’re a soul that knows being a person isn’t real.”

“Your soul and your ego are as invisibly mixed as white wine and water…[people] wander through life searching for their soul when it’s right there all the time. They talk about losing their soul when that’s totally impossible.”

“Before, what you experienced was personal happiness. It was based on having a reason to be happy and no reason to be sad. But happiness based on a reason can be snatched away from you at any moment. Now you are happy without a reason. That’s far more durable…”

Throughout his spiritual journey, Mickey experiments with humour. The state of his humour becomes symbolic of where he is in his process of awakening. When he is self-absorbed or self-pitying, his jokes are often crude or based on putting down others, and they fall flat. As he progresses, his jokes come from a lighter, more joyful place within himself, and become funnier. That’s the idea anyway, which I like in theory, but I didn’t personally find many of the jokes funny, at least not in print, so the whole humour aspect of the book didn’t quite work for me.

Chopra’s epilogue is interesting, as he lays out his own ideas on how to embrace joy and optimism while living in a scary, fear-based culture. If the story doesn’t grab you, you can always jump straight to the epilogue for a good Chopra fix. The bottom line is, the themes of this book are true to his usual message, and clearly presented – it just doesn’t work as a novel. So you probably won’t be deeply disappointed, but you won’t be deeply moved either. If you don’t want to risk it, just buy Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment instead.

For other book reviews on this blog, go to the Book category.

Book Review: The Shack – The Spiritual Lessons of Parenthood

The Shack, in case you’ve been living in a cave this summer, is the runaway bestselling Christian novel by William P. Young that has the religious blogosphere overflowing with both beaming and scathing reviews. Amazon.com currently has 912 reviews of the book (and growing), mostly 5 stars and 1 stars from each end of the religious spectrum. Many consider it a life-changing book, with its message of love and forgiveness a welcome reminder of the core tenets of Christianity. Others consider it subversive, undermining Church authority and the Bible.

Personally, I’d have to say both sides are right, and that’s why I loved the book. Although entirely Christian (the main character spends much of the book ‘visiting’ with the Holy Trinity of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit), its exploration of good and evil, free will, the nature of love, and the role of religion, are all done in a way that can appeal to anyone, regardless of their religious faith. And in the end, the focus of the book is on the spiritual process, not religious beliefs – the process of growth and learning that true seekers within any faith engage in.

Since so much has already been said about The Shack, I’ve decided to highlight the theme most relevant to this blog – themes of parenthood. The plot of the book is designed to plunge the reader into one of the most fundamental questions of religious faith – if there is a loving God, how can such evil exist in the world? And the way it does so is through a storyline representing every parent’s darkest fear – the main character’s youngest daughter, just six years old, is abducted and brutally murdered by a serial killer.

There is perhaps no more basic, or universal, love then a parent’s love for their children, and nothing that could inspire more raw anger and hatred than the harming of a young child (in polls, when people are asked if they believe in the death penalty, many who otherwise don’t support it pause or change their answer when specifically asked about child molesters or murderers.) In this way, Mack is forced to face the disconnect between his ‘beliefs’ and his true inner thoughts – while he professes to ‘believe’ in a loving God, inwardly he is angry at God for not protecting his daughter, and cannot understand how God can possibly allow such an event.

In his visit with God (who appears to him as an African-American woman, because that is what he least expects), his anger and these questions are the focus of all the discussions regarding free will, and what it means for the world to exist independently of God. That independence enables both suffering and the joy of the spiritual process, the joy of rediscovering God through one’s own mistakes and inquiry. As God explains to Mack, removing humanity’s free will would end suffering, but it would also end any possibility of engaging in spiritual practice, and finding God for oneself.

And what is the pathway to finding God for oneself, even in the separate and independent world? LOVE (of course)  and parenthood emerges as one of the primary means for humanity to do this. In fact, in one scene, a spiritual judge uses Mack’s feelings for his own children as a way of explaining the crucifixion to him. She asks Mack to choose two of his children to be ’saved’ and two to be damned. Mack refuses to choose, and instead says ‘take me in their place’ – the same choice, the judge explains, that Jesus made.

The love of parent for child is also expounded upon as a pathway to finding God, in addition to all other types of human relationships. God explains to Mack that it is first through our love for others that we learn what love is, and only then can we pursue a loving relationship with God (or Christ.) And since our parents are our first experience of love, they largely shape our initial relationship with spirituality. If our parents abuse us or are unable to love us, we will struggle with the trust required for any true faith. We can heal this as adults through forgiveness, and through our own adult relationships, with friends, spouses, and, especially, our children.

While I do not consider myself Christian – or at least not exclusively so – The Shack’s exploration of love is broad enough for me to embrace. And although I am hesitant about paths that expound parenthood as a spiritual path (see my post on the Spiritual Mommy Wars for more on that), I think the author here has made it clear that truly loving in any form takes work, and ALL our relationships, not just parenthood, are potential vehicles for exploring love.  So overall, I recommend this book to absolutely anyone with spiritual interests of any type, although if you are not Christian, you will need to look past the surface.

If you are interested in some of the current religious debate surrounding The Shack, one of the best places to go is Amazon.com, where the most influential reviewers have excerpted their reviews. The official book website is www.theshackbook.com, and there are of course links to many positive reviews there. Two theologically critical reviews (both LONG) can be found at: http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/the-shack-by-william-p-young.php and http://sharperiron.org/2008/07/17/the-shack-a-review/.

Two others posts from this blog that explore ways to use your own parental love as part of a spiritual journey can be found here: Meditation For Busy Women Part III – Love and Mystic Parenting. For other book reviews on this site, go to the Book category.

Book Review: My Stroke of Insight – Spirituality and Our Brains

At this point, Jill Bolte Taylor’s bestseller My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, hardly needs my endorsement. But I thought I would write about it anyway, specifically from a spiritual perspective. In case you’ve managed to miss it, this book is written by a neuroanatomist (specialist in the brain’s anatomy) that had a stroke at 37, and over the course of a morning, lost the ability to speak and move.  However, through it all, she retained alot of her knowledge of the brain, and so knew what was happening to her, and what parts of her brain were being impacted, as the stroke progressed. It took her eight long years to recover all of her prior functions. She gives a detailed, personal account of both her stroke experience, and her long recovery process.

What is most fascinating in Jill’s case is that she mostly lost left brain function. The left hemisphere of our brain is usually considered the ‘logical’ side, and the side that helps us structure language, sequence instructions, and rationalize in general. Our right hemisphere is popularly considered the ‘intuitive’ and ‘creative’ side (although some scientists would take issue with that) - the side that helps us see connections between different pieces of knowledge, and read beneath the surface of an event or situation. In Jill’s case, she was plunged into a world of right brain perception, without the left brain to structure (or some might say to inhibit) what she experienced. The results are downright mystic, consider:

-”the boundaries of my earthly body dissolved and I melted into the universe” (p. 49)

- “my consciousness ventured unfettered into the peaceful bliss of my divine right mind” (p. 61)

- “I learned the meaning of simply being” (p. 68 )

- “I experienced people as concentrated packages of energy” (p. 74)

All of these experiences are so similar to those described by mystics of every religious tradition. It would seem that mystic experience, and particularly meditation, is at least partially a process of shutting down our left hemispheres and moving our awareness into the right hemispheres of our brain. Right there within the physical organ of our brain we already possess a doorway into another mode of being and seeing. Meditation and other contemplative practices simply offer us a way to find this doorway, by helping us to quiet the parts of our brain that limit how we normally perceive things.

Jill’s account also begs the question as to whether women are particularly well-suited to meditation (despite the historic dominance of men in the world’s ‘wisdom traditions’.) Books like The New Feminine Brain by Dr. Mona Schulz point out that on average, women have four times as many connections between their left and right brain hemispheres (see my post on Multitasking for a little more about this). This means we might be better at integrating left and right brain functionality, and at accessing our right brain perceptions in general. Although I don’t like gender stereotypes, particularly in women’s spirituality (see The State of Women’s Spirituality), I do think this has important implications for the type of meditations that women find the most beneficial (no space for that now, but maybe someday!)

Of course, as Jill’s painful recovery experience makes clear, we need our left brains to function in the world. And in the end, spiritual living is about integrating our right and left brain perceptions and knowledge. I have known people (both men and women) that described incredible meditation experiences, but remained jerks in their daily lives:-) So there is more to spirituality than being good at getting into our right brains. But Jill’s book offers a beautiful and accessible look at it all, and triggers many questions about our brains and spirituality. Check it out, and while you’re at it, check out Jill’s website at http://www.mystrokeofinsight.com/ for more ideas along these lines.

For other book reviews on this site, go to the Book category. Or for ideas on incorporating meditation into a busy day, go to the Meditation for Busy Women series.

Book Review: Enlightenment for Idiots

I love when I come across a good book accidentally – or by all appearances accidentally anyway. I found a copy of Anne Cushman’s Enlightenment for Idiots at my local library, while browsing cookbooks of all things (it was on the next shelf over, in New Fiction.) This book is the perfect summer read for those spiritually inclined, interested in yoga, or all things India. It is Ms. Cushman’s first novel, although she has co-authored a nonfiction book on spiritual travel to India, as well as many magazine articles and essays (you can read more about her at http://www.enlightenmentforidiots.com/pages/bio.html.) In any case, on the spiritual front, she has clearly walked the walk.

This novel chronicles a year or so in the life of Amanda, an almost thirty, somewhat yoga-obssessed, romantically-challenged writer living in San Francisco. She is commissioned to travel to India and write a guidebook for spiritual seekers entitled – you guessed it – Enlightenment for Idiots (with all the commercialization of spirituality these days, it’s hard to believe this book hasn’t actually been written!) She spends 6 months there, and encounters a dozen or so different spiritual teachers, covering virtually every major spiritual tradition of India. From hot yoga, to Buddhist Vipassana, to tantric sexuality, to complete renunciation, she has it covered. With a quick wit and an adorable, quirly sidekick named Devi Das, she comments on everything and everyone she meets with insight and affection.

What I really love about the book (and the reason I have recommended it to my own meditation students) is that it offers a real education on all of the Indian spiritual traditions in an easy to read context. The book reads like your standard chick-lit summer fare, but in the end, the concepts it is covering are more than a little sophisticated. It affectionately paradies many of the most famous (or infamous) contemporary spiritual teachers, such as Amma, Sai Baba, and Gangaji, and some of their more over-the-top devotees (all of whom I think I have met!) It manages to do this in a way that doesn’t diminish these teacher’s spiritual lessons, but does pose important questions about what true faith and spiritual inquiry is.

All of this is within the context of Amanda’s more personal story, which is fraught with the usual chick-lit romantic issues, and a larger twist that I won’t reveal, so that you can discover it for yourself. Overall, I highly recommend giving it a try. You can read more about the book at http://www.enlightenmentforidiots.com/pages/about.html, and read a guest post from the author at http://www.annemini.com/?p=976 .

For other book reviews on this site, go to the Book category.