KARIN WILSON | at Imagine Summer, 12 July 2007
A Quest for the Spiritual
 NAMESTE (Sanskrit) excl. - a Hindu greeting; All that is the highest ability, thought, and action in me, greets all that is the highest ability, thought, and action in you. And when you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, together we may realize a state of being that is beyond our individual experience of reality and therefore greater than ourselves.
"Religion is for people who are scared of going to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there. ~ Quote from an anonymous native who is an alcoholic, posted at the Enowkin Centre in Penticton.
I meet Birgit Schneider at the Bohemian on Bernard. It doesn't even strike me how appropriate the setting is. Here we are, two women who have never met, coming together to talk about spirituality - a subject that sparked up like so many joints in the early Sixties and now seems to be on the verge of some kind of explosion.
Spirituality is the buzz in this first decade of the 21st Century, and it's been crackling through the media. A few years back it was Madonna and her red string Kabbalah conversion. In 2007 it's the omnipresence of The Secret - a little book from Australia that evolved overnight into a movie and exploded onto Oprah, the unofficial preacher of our cultural subtext.
But don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to all this. In fact, I'm part of it. Spiritual exploration has had me hooked for decades now Š and it's getting more intense as each year passes.
So I'm anxious to hear what Birgit has discovered on her quest. I have her book - God Revisited: A Contemporary Understanding of History's Antidote to Stress - in my hands and it quickly sends a signal to Birgit that I've arrived. She's sitting at a long wooden table. I can see her Northern European roots in her pleasant oval face, her blonde shoulder-length hair, her sparkling eyes. She's relaxed, yet quickly apologizes for scratching out a few notes on the paper in front of her. "I probably shouldn't do that, should I," she asks, not really expecting a response. "No worries," I say.
Before we start, Schneider wants to know my spiritual credentials. What's my perspective on this God thing? Interviews don't usually start this way, but I'm quickly finding this subject is different. People need to not only feel comfortable, they need to feel safe. In a spiritual way. And I'm learning how to feel out exactly what that means.
Spirituality isn't religion. But it can work in tandem with a particular religion, or interestingly no religion at all. Spirituality is how we personally express the beliefs we have. It's not the rules and the regulations. It's our internalization of our relationship with God, or Spirit, or Yahweh, or Tao, or Allah, or even simply, Energy. It's our expression of It. It's how we engage It. It's how we feel when we recognize It operating in our lives.
"I'm studying to be a minister," I say. Interestingly, she's not surprised at all. In fact, it makes sense to her. She smiles. It's as it should be. Because when you're in the flow, life is like that. The right people show up at the right time.
Schneider self-published her book in 2003, and she's shared it with dozens upon dozens of people. She even has a course starting up next month for seniors based on her book. But in all that time she hasn't granted an interview. She hasn't felt comfortable. Until now.
Interesting.
Not for a moment until it happened did Schneider ever think she would become spiritual. And yet, looking back, it all makes sense.
Schneider's European parents left their churches while quite young, mostly in reaction to the hypocrisy they witnessed.
"It's not an uncommon story. I was pretty much brought up an atheist, so the thought of something like God never entered my mind. It wasn't something that was part of my life. But looking back I can see that there were aspects to my nature - I was quite contemplative, I liked playing with the bigger questions. I was drawn to nature. And I was drawn to yoga before most people knew what that was. I've always been an explorer - travelling and learning about other cultures.
"I figured I was insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and then after my children were mostly grown I thought what's next? Is this all there is? I thought life was random, and things that happened were random. But then I had a set of experiences over the course of a few days and this gradual awareness dawned. And I thought: Oh my God, there's something here, and then it just seemed like the puzzle pieces came together. And it wouldn't let me go until I wrote it all down."
What unravelled for Schneider was the connection between thoughts and experience. How everything is based on a cause and effect relationship. How stress in our lives blocks our flow of energy, and how this Energy is actually the creative flow of Spirit. She found support for her ideas in various teachings found in the Kabbalah, the Gnostics and other mystical works.
"We're so lucky in this day and age to have access to such a variety of perspectives, a variety of religious languages. Up until recently you had to evolve within the teachings in order to be privy to this information. Now we're ready for a deeper understanding."
And there are signs in the Okanagan that Schneider is bang on. Things are changing in the Okanagan, or perhaps just what was always there is being revealed.
For decades the Okanagan has sported the reputation as the second Bible Belt of B.C., but it's equally true that the Okanagan is imbued with a spiritual essence. The soil here is rich, some would say steeped, in spiritual energy. Locals point to the influence of the First Nations people. And the region doesn't shy away from the esoteric either. This year Naramata marks its 100th birthday with numerous events, including a lecture on the history of mediumship. That's because community founder John Moore Robinson, while a devout Baptist and Methodist, believed in clairvoyance - so much so that the name Naramata presented itself to him during a séance.
So it would seem the Okanagan has two spiritual parents - the outer which manifests in the form of regular church-going, and the inner spiritual practice. And it's this inner spiritual practice that appears to be gaining popular currency. Spirituality is coming out of its shell, and it's taken its time.
"When I first arrived in the Okanagan in 1982 there was not a bookstore, not a centre and not a single alternative church. The only thing happening then was a small group that met out of the old French Cultural Centre. Brock Tully had a coffee house in the basement and there were gatherings called The Circle of Friends and that was about it."
I'm on the phone with Tammie O'Reilly. When I told her I wanted to talk to her about spirituality, she laughs. "Funny you should call now because I'm just about to pick up a bunch of people from the airport. I've got about 120 people coming here from 12 countries for a Crimson Circle retreat at Okanagan Lake Resort. But sure, I've got a few minutes before I have to start packing."
I can almost hear her hands moving as she speaks. I met her many years ago while working at Bridges.com, an upstart web-based education company. She's pixie-like. Small, bright, sprightly even. When we reconnected years later she had exchanged her ad rep career for a new one as a divinity coach - her spin on the person coaching profession. Her newsletter keeps Okanagan residents up to date on various spiritual happenings including her sold-out screenings of movies like What the Bleep, and One. She started out with 100 subscribers. Now it goes out to more than 800.
"I do one on one teaching to help people connect the dots. This is an incredible time of transition. And I have more men calling too. When Neale Donald Walsh was here (author of Conversations with God), I had one man come to me and say he attended the Salvation Army. He asked me where do I find people to talk about this?"
Tammie's spiritual path has taken her into channelled teachings. But she loves working with people as they move through their own path, whatever it may be.
"When the awakening happens, you're going from a caterpillar into a butterfly and you think you're pretty screwed up. Life doesn't necessarily get better when you're waking up. This process can be a bit harsh. You have to start taking responsibility for your reality. You're moving out of victim consciousness to creator consciousness. We are being pushed and challenged right now and there is a lot of intensity."
I remember clearly the moment of my own spiritual awakening. I was no more than eight years old living in West Vancouver. It was a sunny day and I had a large thick salal leaf in my hand. I held it up to the light, and the tiny veins of the leaf broke through. It was just like my hand, I thought. How weird. What's that all about? I didn't stop questioning after that, and dabbled in numerous faiths from Lutheran to Roman Catholicism to Spiritualism, before I finally settled on my new calling - journalism.
Perhaps I would never have returned to the quest, except for one fateful decision - I moved to the Okanagan Valley. Singer-songwriter Jane Eamon says there's a power here. The Lake calls people. Men are drawn naturally, women less so. My preconceived notion was that the Valley was awash in church-going. What I didn't know was there was a deep spiritual expression here too. Looking back now I see that almost as soon as I set foot here, I was on that path again. And I keep bumping into others along the way. Like Jane. We met in an office. She had just picked up her guitar after decades of disinterest. Last year she took her folk music into a new spiritually influenced direction when she went through her own veil of tears culminating in health problems, work problems, and even creativity problems when she lost her voice three times. Telling really. Here she was trying to give voice to her feelings, and she lost it. What she learned, was that spirituality for her was about listening first, then singing from that place.
"I had disconnected from my life. I was out of synch. I hated my job, my life. I was fighting with everything and everybody," she says. Her boss urged her to attend a retreat. Three days into it, despite her scepticism, the walls came down. "I felt someone or something standing in front and on either side of me. And then I couldn't stop crying. We were told going in to listen for a name, and what I heard was Grace, and instantly I felt I knew where I was supposed to go. It happened three more times last year, and then I said 'I'm listening. I get it. I realized how hard-headed I am and said: I will listen, and I will see what happens."
What happened was she lost 55-pounds, her voice returned, and she put out her next album - a testament to her newfound faith rooted, not in a church teaching, but her spiritual path.
"That's what the song Good Lordy Mama is about. It's my testament. My way of saying: okay, I'm listening. I'm getting it."
There are so many pathways to spirituality it can seem almost impossible to get there. And it's hard sometimes to figure out just where "there" is. I know I've wondered. Over and over I think I've finally nailed it, so to speak, and then something comes along wagging a metaphorical finger as if to say close, but not quite.
But a few themes do seem to rise to the surface again and again. First, keep the ideals of compassion and respect upper most in your mind when dealing with others. This is critical because it opens up our heart, and it's once we come to know our heart that we can do as mythologist Joseph Campbell suggests and follow our bliss.
Marilyn Perry has spent her lifetime in the United Church, but she's also deeply rooted in her own spiritual practice.
Perry believes what challenges so many people is that God's message is sometimes lost behind the rules and regulations. "Look at the 10 Commandments - they're guidelines to show us ways to love God fully and love our neighbours fully, not to judge somebody else. Love is the guiding principle. But over the centuries, what was meant to point the way got used to divide people." When we remove judgments, the spirit is allowed to breathe. "Jesus Christ got in trouble with the religious authorities of his day. They tried to tie it all down, but you have to let the spirit breathe.
"Statistically, there is a high number of Canadians who do believe in God, but it's interesting to see how people live out their belief. I see wonderful things happening - like people helping a refugee family, or a friend at work gets cancer and they hold a benefit. Isn't that compassion and respect? I saw a video once where a plane went down in Washington, D.C. It crashed into the ice. And there was one man who kept hooking on people, saving them. He died. And the question posed was: was he Jewish? Muslim? Christian? From any faith community? And did that matter? If the true way to judge spirituality is through respect and compassion then he was a very spiritual person."
The other critical part of the puzzle is to cultivate that same ability Jane talked about -- the ability to listen.
A few years ago, Marilyn was forced to re-examine one of her basic beliefs: if you love someone you can work it out. Life experience was proving otherwise. "Those were basic values that I lived my life by. But did that make me doubt God? No." Instead, she saw the face of God emerge through her friends and through her new work as editor at Wood Lake Publications of The Whole People of God Sunday School curriculum. "I felt God very near, and realized I could make it through, but it's not easy. When I've gone on a women's retreat, I feel God really close. The rest of the time, it isn't that God isn't there. It's that the clutter of life gets in the way. There's just a thin veil between you and God."
The third part is keeping a discipline. For some that can mean daily meditation, for others like Marilyn it translates into church attendance.
"The reason I continue to go to church it that it's a bit like an old-fashioned barbeque -- you heat up the coals and about two hours later they're still warm. I need to go and be with people to be reminded. If I don't, then it gets lost in the clatter and noise of the everyday. And I also make room for quiet reflective living, but then I can get too inward looking. I need other people's insight to stay broader. God speaks to me through other people."
We are far more spiritual than our church attendance makes us appear. Late last year, Statistics Canada released the findings of its 2002 Ethnic Diversity Study. One of the key discoveries was that while a rising number of Canadians describe themselves as having "no religion", a significant number of these same people take part in a regular spiritual practice of some form. About 37 per cent of those who infrequently attend church said they carried out a spiritual practice at home every week. Another 27 per cent who didn't attend church at all, said they too practiced at home. Along side that is another telling detail. University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby, who has examined the details of the 2001 Census, determined that our relationship with religion ebbs and flows over time.
"Forty per cent of adults and 35% of teenagers who report having no religion not only say they believe in God but say they believe in a God who cares about them," Bibby says in his paper The Canadian Religious Situation: Making Sense of the Census. In Kelowna, around a quarter of the population describe themselves as having "no religious affiliation" - as much 29 per cent between the ages of 45 and 55, and 20 per cent aged 45 to 54.
So spirituality is a real phenomenon, but Bibby says that doesn't mean growing numbers of people are joining the ranks of non-traditional religions.
"Between the 1960s and the end of the last century, weekly attendance in Canada dropped from about 50% to 20%. If people had actually "dropped out" of religious groups, one would assume that alternative "religious companies" would have been the benefactors. Yet, census data spanning 1961 through 2001 show that groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-Day Saints, and Unitarians experienced negligible growth relative to the population. The new census has found, for example, that our country of some 30 million people now includes 1,525 individuals who identify with the highly publicized New Age movement, another 1,525 with Scientology, and a further 850 who see their religion as Satanist. Incidentally, we also have 2,100 explicit humanists, which will be seen by some as "phenomenal growth" since the total represents a 68% increase from 1991."
Labels or no labels, society's connection to spiritual issues is shifting, believes Dr. Kenn Gordon, co-pastor of the Kelowna Centre for Positive Living. He teaches Religious Science, a branch of New Thought which he describes as combination between philosophy, psychology and spirituality. Over the last year he's stepped outside his church congregation to offer lectures to the general public. More than 300 people jammed into the lecture theatre at Okanagan College and spilled out into the hall to hear his latest talk - Beyond The Secret. He believes society is on the verge of a realizing that there is yet another "mind" for us to consider.
"One hundred years ago we were still debating whether we had a subconscious and there was a lot of resistance to the idea and it took a while for it to catch on. But now people are absolutely and totally of the belief that we have a subconscious. You talk to any Grade 5 student and they know. That's the way the knowledge has expanded out.
"Now what's happening is that we're beginning to recognize that there is another mind behind the subconscious mind. This is the Universal Subjective Mind, or the Creative Force. There is a creative process of the spiritual that operates in us, and it is part of who we are as much as the conscious and the subconscious is. This is the direction that spirituality is taking and people are headed towards accepting that."
Gordon says the reason why connecting with this Force makes a difference in our lives is because "we are bypassing the subjective mind (our unconscious) and going straight to the Universal Subjective. It's one of the primary facets of every religion - Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist - the discipline that they teach to rise above the worldly beliefs that belong in the subconscious. In Religious Science we use a method of affirmative prayer that bypasses the subconscious when that tool is used effectively and with clarity and understanding. And I believe this will become the tool that everybody is taught in the future."
The other side to the picture is that this energy is what creates the connection between us. It's what links us back to the other key components Marilyn raises of compassion and respect. And ultimately, it is what makes us feel that we as humans are all One.
Kelowna artist Gayle Liman has spent a lifetime in her own version of a comparative religious studies program. She's Christian, her husband is Jewish. She has Muslim friends, and she's travelled the world taking in as many faiths as she can. Shortly after arriving in the Okanagan, she got to know members of the aboriginal community and expanded her understanding once again.
"Look at this beautiful area we live in. We need to have respect for the people who were here before us. That's what spirituality is about. It's about listening to one another. We're just passing through. Spirituality is where ever you are."
It's in the sharing of beliefs that Gayle finds her spirituality. She's felt Spirit move through her in a synagogue, on top of the Andes in Ecuador, listening to a Christian hymn. Most recently it occurred through her work with the Kelowna Museum as director of exhibitions. The Westbank First Nation and the City of Kelowna were marking a new relationship. The museum had commissioned an eagle staff and gifted two artefacts that were used to create it. In the handover ceremony, both the Westbank chief and the city's mayor were blessed with a smudging. "It made us all One at that moment and it was a recognition of the relationship. And then they sang the Okanagan song that says in part we are all One because we are connected to the land. We are beautiful people. To me, that's spirituality."
The pathways to spirituality are infinitely personal. I'm halfway through ministerial training in my faith of choice - religious science - and honestly, sometimes I feel like Christine Lavin crying out "what was I thinking?" But then I remember that spirituality is not the place of right and wrong. It's about that journey of awakening that comes to us. Setting out on the path can seem scary at first, because, as Tammie says, we are stepping into the unknown and it will change us. Once we take that first step, whether into a church, a synagogue, a temple, buying a metaphysical book, or mindfully attending yoga class, we begin the journey from moving from our small ego reference to something much bigger. We begin to gather some idea as to purpose in our lives. We start to learn what it means to live from our highest good, rather than from the good that comes from feeding our basic needs. And while we may not be able to define the experience of nirvana, we know when we spend time there. We can feel it. I can feel it. It changes us. We start to gather the courage to begin to live from that place, rather than the small place of self-absorption and insecurities. Connecting with our spirit makes us bigger and smaller all at the same time. It's like our breath - we breathe in and we expandŠ we breathe out and we let go. The flow of life in perfect unison.
Nameste.
Copyright © 2007 Karin Wilson. All rights reserved.
|
