Our Shadowy World They say reality is an illusion. For instance, maybe we’re dreaming. In the Zhuangzi, an ancient Taoist text, we find Zhuang Zhou’s famous butterfly dream. In it, the sage experienced himself as a happy butterfly. When he woke, he felt confused. Was he a butterfly now dreaming he was a man, or a man dreaming he’d been a butterfly? He couldn’t tell, for we can’t always trust our senses. [1] During the early twentieth century, the Baha’i teacher, Abdu’l-Baha, taught this same thing, that the world is an illusion. Reality exists only in God’s realm. What we see here “is only its shadow stretching out.” [2] Plato,…
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Land Iguanas and the Illusion of Control
Land Iguanas and the Prickly-Pear Land iguanas on the Galapagos Islands eat centipedes and carrion, but they prefer prickly-pear fruit. Unlike their marine cousins, they can’t climb the cactus, so they stand beneath the sprawling limbs and gaze up at the pears, waiting for one to ripen and fall to the ground. This can take hours or days, yet through it all, the creature waits. [1] I first learned about this startling reptile from one of our URC members who shared his experience of seeing them sit unmoving for days at a time. From reading about the reptiles, I learned that the creatures take breaks to catch insects and copulate,…
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Letting Go of Envy
Envy Versus Jealousy Most of the authors I’ve read who write about envy start by explaining the difference between it and jealousy. In Emma Varvaloucas’ introduction to the topic in Tricycle magazine, for instance, we read that jealousy arises out of the fear of losing something we have. Envy is fueled by desire and longing, a wish to have something that is not ours. [1] When I think of envy, though, I think of more than that flicker of desire that arises when a friend receives some award I wish I could have or lives a life I want to enjoy. This is a fleeting emotion, one that passes as…
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Embracing Impermanence
Denying Impermanence Buddha taught that everything is impermanent. We get sick, we lose jobs, we lose homes, we lose loved ones, we die. Even rivers change course; mountains wear away. Nothing lasts; nothing stays the same. This is not new information. In the book of Ecclesiastes, we are warned to remember our creator “before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it.” (Ecc 12:6-7) To cope with this reality, many religious people speak…
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We Are Nothing But Love
The Illusion of Beings in Need According to A Course in Miracles, God is love and only love, and since we are the same essence as God, we, too, are only love. Anything we experience that is not love – pain, evil, ugliness, judgment, hatred – is an illusion. Only love is real and true; everything else, we imagine. Such a theology can be twisted to blame those of us whose illusions are filled with misery. From a New Age perspective, we might say that we are not enlightened enough. We need to deepen our practice, pray, purify ourselves. In a similar way, Jesus’s teachings have been twisted to condemn the poor and…