Looking into the Light is an outgrowth of my professional and personal experiences during the past 40 years. My work as a pastoral minister, jail chaplain, psychotherapist, addictions treatment program director, high school and college instructor, and visual artist, radically altered my thinking about spirituality–how to define it; how demographic, social, and cultural variables influence it; and the meaning and consequences of religious cruise control. Where there is understanding, growth is possible.
Being spiritual is living mindfully—being conscious of one’s consciousness.
To be spiritual is to be grounded in perceptions gleaned from one’s own experience, not in standardized opinions on the essence of reality. A spiritual state of mind requires no prerequisite beliefs, structured claims, or historically systemic contexts for entrance. A framework of specific claims about the universe and the purpose of human life steers one’s thoughts, and can be a constraint to a free and self-responsible inner self quest. These personal explorations and understandings are how we get to know ourselves, and realize our universality with others.
To foster a mature spirituality is to understand the human condition without desires or fears—nothing can disturb your peace of mind. It is the capacity to be silent and at ease with the unknown; to be aware of what you are, and what you are not; what is real and now, and what is ideal and longing. Contemplating mystery is a source of strength. Spiritual growth requires living with the questions that arise from the inscrutability of life.
What matters is simply the intention in your heart, the awareness of your mind, and the quiet of your soul. The sensing heart lives in wonder. The conscious mind lives in questions. The receptive soul lives in silence.
I invite you to be open to thinking about your beliefs and to not be fearful of questioning, exploring, observing. The result: intellectual integrity and the discovery of dazzling reality. If the entire planet practiced this approach, the whole world would be on the same side.
“We are constantly invited to be who we are.”
— Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)