Meditation allows us to "remain peaceful despite turmoil. Even when one cannot control the circumstances of his life, he can control his response."
"Stress is physical, mental, emotional and intellectual pressure." Stress is unavoidable but can be controlled. We cannot change unpleasant objects, ideas or people which cause us discomfort but we can change how we "think about that thing."
"Our response causes stress. Our response is based on our thinking. When thinking is not managed, it will cause frustration. If we can manage our response, we are definitely on the way to managing stress," says Swami Chidatmananda.
Focusing the mind inward helps one understand a situation properly. "When we see what is there, most of our problems will end. Our projections of feelings and fears cause problems. Look at things exactly as they are, not as you wish them to be."
Once stress is managed, spiritual development is furthered "by practicing values for excellence: honesty, compassion and love in thoughts and actions. The values each religion has developed are manifestations of these ideas.
The world can feel right because we ourselves feel good. "This feeling of goodness is independent of situations or people. When we discover that feeling of goodness in our lives, we find true freedom. Thought freedom is real freedom."
"Remember all earthly positions and honors are temporary. Only the joy derived from selfless service to others endures," says Chidatmananda. (The Morning News, 8-2-02)
Wogaman believes we are in a "fascinating, transitional time" where people hunger "to have a wholeness in their spiritual life where their feelings and their minds are not at war, (where) the mind and heart and the world are integrated."
He feels growing disputes over homosexuality are one of the greatest challenges facing the church and the nation. Once, as dean of Wesley Theological Seminary and a professor of ethics, he saw homosexuality as either a sickness or a sin. When the United Methodists began a "rancorous debate" he helped establish a committee to study the issue. But they could not get clear answers or establish the church's stance on the matter.
So Wogaman looked at the people involved. He found "a lot of very normal good people who are gay and lesbian. I began to feel an empathy for people who are being treated as pariahs."
His pivotal understanding became 1 Corinthians 13:13: "So faith, hope, love abide, these three: but the greatest of these is love." (The Washington Post, 7-5-02)
The Star Wars "myth" created by George Lucas has both the "good guys and the "bad" guys similarly telling Anakin Skywalker to trust his feelings. In this, Jedi and the dark side agree.
This ambiguity is criticized. "It matters if Lucas is stuck somewhere between karma and Calvinism, spinning morality tales in a universe ruled by an impersonal 'energy field created by all living things' that somehow has a will and a plan for the souls it controls."
Lucas once called Star Wars "the story of a man's fall from grace and his subsequent redemption." Instead of inventing a religion, he sought "to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people, more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system." He concludes that "all religions are true." (The Morning News, 6-28-02)
All nature is but art unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear,
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it... Genesis 2:17
It is not given to man to judge what is right or wrong. Men always did and always will err and in nothing more than what they regard as right or wrong. —Tolstoy
Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness is the right hand of light. —Ursula LeGuin
During a recent talk at the University of Arkansas Swami Chidatmananda stated that meditation is not just sitting quietly with eyes closed. "Meditation is responding to a situation."
The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. —Milton
The Rev. Philip Wogaman, one of Clinton's pastoral advisors, has often been condemned as a relativist, a person who makes no sharp distinctions between right and wrong. He challenges "moral absolutists" because every law, guidebook or moral principle advanced by groups or individuals "is less than God. God "transcends these things."
"Whatever IS, is RIGHT." —Alexander Pope