Midweek Faith Lift
March 10, 2021
Embracing the Complexity
& Increasing the Capacity
Befriending myself seems to be about opening my heart as a homeless shelter for all the destituted and prostituted aspects of my being that I have been running from for years without even knowing that's what I have been doing.
~Dawna Markova in I Will Not Die an Unlived Life
by Dawna Markova
—
To Practice This Thought:
Give refuge to the parts of yourself you'd rather not invite to dinner.
Hmmm….yes, give refuge to the parts of yourself you’d rather not invite to dinner, or that you would actually prefer to send away altogether! As we embrace the complexity of who we really are as human/divine beings it requires great courage and open-heartedness, first to ourselves as we embrace all of who we really are, warts and all. It is a huge challenge to do that on a regular, ongoing basis, especially when some part of your very human self shows up and says something that really lands the wrong way and damages your connection with someone you really care about.
It seems that our human mind is a very complex organism, given to staying in familiar ruts of thinking and reacting. Brian McClaren, after researching this issue, identifies 12 different types of Bias that we all experience as noted by Rev. Richard Rohr in his March 1, 2021 blog: https://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/1F736CFA4E91101F2540EF23F30FEDED/FB36CAEDB1E450AC148F9D201EEB5695:
I am going to name them, and then just highlight a few of them:
Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.
Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.
Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.
Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.
Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.
Comfort or Complacency Bias….
Conservative/Liberal Bias…..
Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false.
I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.
Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).
Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.
Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators. [1]
Brian McLaren, Why Don’t They Get It? Overcoming Bias in Others (and Yourself)
(Self-published: 2019), e-book.
Wow, it is hard to admit/accept this, but every one of these has been a part of my bias pattern whether I want to acknowledge it or not. In truth, real Truth, recognizing and admitting my biases has allowed me to grow in consciousness. It is necessary, painful, and NOT easy, but worth the effort. My favorite story on myself happened at Unity Village, at Unity Inn, a number of years ago when I said to a friend about a mutual acquaintance, “Oh, she is so judgmental!” It took me a while to really hear that one!
The one I really resisted is the last one, the Conspiracy Bias. What I had to recognize is that in my younger days before I found Unity and 12-Step recovery, there was a part of me that always suspected something when people were seeming “too” kind or generous to me. “What do they want from me, or what are they going to expect from me in return?” I did not yet understand the energy of giving and receiving that is true prosperity! That led to withholding until I was sure the receiver was truly appreciative of my efforts. That can be a long wait and a for sure dead end.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop whenever things were going well or I was having a good time was another part of the victim consciousness that had to leave for my spiritual growth to take a leap forward to a higher perspective. I had to give refuge to all these parts of my human self and open my heart to myself in order to grow in consciousness. All of us have some version of that because we all have some part of ourselves we would rather send to a homeless shelter than invite to dinner. How do we make peace with these parts, how do we heal?
One big step was recognizing that any pattern of behavior I strongly condemned in someone else was something I was also doing in some form or other, otherwise, I wouldn’t “see” it so clearly in them, if they weren’t mirroring it so clearly for me! Oy! I really don’t enjoy when that happens, when I am triggered by someone else’s actions or words. I would much rather “take their inventory” and then coach them in how to stop doing the behavior that I find so offensive so I can feel more comfortable. That probably hits on at least 6 of the 12 biases that McClaren identified, no doubt!
For me, the healing process has involved a contemplative practice of just being comfortable with whatever arises when I sit in the Silence, in meditation. It is only in that energy that I can literally “see” how I have been thinking about people, events, situations in my life and “see” my reactions to them. And then at some point, I remember an “ah”a of realizing that others were also doing the very things I was doing in how I was thinking about them. That was a moment when the seesaw came into balance when I could hold the tension of the “other” the opposite, without trying to prove to them or myself that I was not like them or establish without a doubt that they were wrong and I was right!
In Seminary, we called that cultivating self-awareness, so that you begin to recognize some of the biases that you bring to the table for your part of the dinner party. The Truth, much larger spiritual Truth is that the energy of God is large enough, spacious enough, gracious enough, and loving enough to hold all of us in our human imperfections. The Truth is that each one of those “others” who trigger a reaction in us are doing us a huge favor by allowing us to “see” ourselves past our biases. Robert Burns, the Scottish poet says, “O the gift that ye would gie us: to see ourselves as others see us!” That is a gift, a treasure, even though it doesn’t feel like it at the time.
So we have been looking at the complexity with the question of how to expand our capacity to hold all that is in that place of love, to welcome all of it into your heart. We read in Paul’s letter to the Philippians 2:5-7
5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave(servant), being born in human likeness. (NRSV)
Our capacity expands when we let the same mind be in us that was also in Christ Jesus. Paul acknowledges that Jesus was in the “form” of God, but that this equality was not something to be used or exploited. Rather, as a human/divine being, his form was that of a servant. The consciousness of the Christ was to be in service to God or Goodness, or that, which is higher than human self. How do we do this emptying that allows us to take the form of a servant of the greater good?
We gain further guidance from Paul in his letter to the Romans:
Romans 12:2
2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (RSV)
This process of expanding our capacity to embrace our humanity in all its complexity and then renewing our minds, growing in consciousness to a greater reality is our spiritual journey. Every one of our human biases has the potential to open us to this greater pattern of the Christ presence in our hearts.
Myrtle Fillmore says it very clearly on p. 92 of How to Let God Help You when she writes:
But the great pattern, which God gave is unchanged; it is revealed to us through Jesus Christ. We are to work by that pattern, to bring forth the life idea that Jesus Christ brought forth. We may feel confused by the manifold activities in the world, yet there is only one impulse back of them all. When we get so still that the One becomes visible to us, then we see our own Christ within. Truly, we know that there is only one Power, one Presence, one Wisdom.
Our human biases mean that we want to find a pattern, an example that already fits into our perceptions, what we believe to be true, even if it seems uncomfortable like it doesn’t fit. Sometimes the picture has to be so completely distorted and unfitting for us to move into a new paradigm. This was the message of Jesus. He was not trying to found a new religion, he was trying to call his fellow Jews to higher consciousness, to a higher perspective of loving one another, even those who would be called enemy. Our prayer is to discover our biases that no longer fit, and move to a place of greater clarity and vision that can welcome all, befriending all whom we might reject both within and without, if not for our clearer vision and open heart.
May it Be So…Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb