The Four Day Old Universe
I have been saddened by the growing prevalence of what I’ve come to call McSpirituality – the fast-food, empty calorie version of the road to “enlightenment” that seems to be so prevalent nowadays, especially in the Social Media.
We want it served fast - a week-end seminar if we must, but better if it could be a one-hour webinar in the comfort of our own home (and better yet if it’s recorded so that we can listen/view it at a time that’s convenient for us.).
We want it easy – we’ll do some exercises, if you insist, but even better if it’s just some inspirational lecture that gets us excited and makes us feel exhilarated.
We want it to leave us with a full belly – we’ll settle for feeling emotionally purged, but better yet if it promises to fill all our material wishes. (This is, after all, the
We want to have it our way – we Baby Boomers are, after all, the most self-involved generation in the recorded history of the planet. Why shouldn’t we believe that the Universe exists solely to fulfill my individual wishes, regardless of the cost to anyone else?
The purveyors of McSpirituality are easy to spot. They are Marketers in Guru’s clothing.
They will promise anything necessary to make the sale (payment, of course, is always due in advance of any results).
They’ll tell you that getting everything you’ve ever wanted is quick and easy, as long as you buy their product.
They’ll tweet you silly with quotes from online quote-machines that have no context. (Especially from Einstein. Apparently, the one sure way to prove that you’re really “deep” is to quote Einstein.)
They’ll Facebook you ‘til their blue in the face – posting about their marvelous events, messaging you about their marvelous events, re-messaging you to remind you that they messaged you about their marvelous events, re-re-messaging you to remind you that their marvelous event is taking place in only an hour, re-re-re-messaging you to tell you that their event is over, but not to worry – it’s recorded and you can download their marvelous event here.
But here’s the surest sign that you’re dealing with a Spiritual Marketer (known quaintly in the old days as Snake Oil Salesmen): In the
My sadness has two deep roots:
- The reason people are so susceptible to McSpirituality is that there is a genuine hunger in the world today for spiritual growth. It is the most heartening development of the last hundred years. But the attention of people truly seeking spiritual nourishment is being diverted by the spiritual fast-food joints.
- These spirit-burgers ought to come with a warning: “Please be aware before consuming this product of the Law of Unintended Consequences.” Many of these offerings have their roots in deep truths that are often poorly understood by the practitioners. For ages, tales of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the Genies in the Arabian Nights have warned us to be careful of what we wish for, especially if we have not done the due diligence necessary to make that wish and deal with its consequences.
Here’s the long and the short of it: Life is very, very simple, but not all easy. We have all emanated from the simplest being in all the Creations: The One. The One is, by definition, pure simplicity. Our spiritual path is a road to return us to that simplicity. But we have traveled so far down the road in the opposite direction, unnecessarily complicating our lives to try to assuage our appetites, that the road back is not at all easy.
If someone tries to tell you that Wisdom is complex, don’t believe them.
But … if someone tries to tell you that the road to Wisdom is easy, don’t believe them.
And if someone tries to feed the worst addiction in the modern world, the need for speed, by offering to serve up “The Truth” quickly, then turn away.
After all, what’s the hurry? When I hear about how we will all be enlightened momentarily, or how the world will end in 2012, etc., I remind myself that the Universe is really only four days old (give or take a few hours).
I think of this Universe, and all other Universes, as playgrounds that we incarnate into so that we can exercise our “Beings” and grow. As Universes go, this is the “E Ticket” ride. (If you’re old enough to recognize that reference, please raise your hand. If you’re not, Wikipedia “E Ticket”.) What makes it such a deluxe thrill-ride is the Law of Entropy – the physical nature of this Universe that makes things “not easy”. We get to really work out and grow in this Universe. That’s why it’s such a popular ride to incarnate into.
But, as rides go, this one hasn’t been around very long.
The Universe feels old to us because we are the inheritors of the Ancient Greek maxim that “Humans are the measure of all things.” We reduce everything around us into human terms, even the Universe itself.
To the best that modern science can tell, this Universe has been around for 13.7 billion years. In our minds, we tend to look at that in purely human terms. The current life expectancy for a human in the
But how old is the Universe in its own terms? What is the life expectancy of the Universe as a playground we can incarnate into and play around on the Jungle Gym of the Law of Entropy?
Well, the sun will burn out in a few billion years. And while that will eliminate this solar system as a useful place to incarnate into, there are lots of other places in the Universe.
In about 150 billion years, the expansion of the Universe will increase to the point where the Milky Way will no longer be able to even see light from any galaxy outside of the Local Group. While that will place our galaxy on an island, stars will still form within the Milky Way and other galaxies, providing many fresh new environments to grow into.
In about 100 trillion years, the expansion of the Universe will reach a point where new stars cannot form. Without the energy of stars to drive the processes of life and help us climb uphill against the drag of entropy, the useful life of the Universe as a playground will have essentially reached its end.
So for our purposes, let’s take the lifespan of the Universe as 100 trillion years. Now, what fraction of that 100 trillion years is the 13.7 billion years since its birth? By that reckoning, the Universe has progressed 0.01% into its anticipated lifespan. It’s very, very young!
Let’s bring it back to human terms. The point at which a human has gone through 0.01% of its anticipated 77.7 years is when it is 3.88 days old. So, if we really want to look at the Universe in human terms, it is really only about 4 days old.
How much development has a human baby experienced in only four days? It is astonishing that we have been fortunate enough to incarnate at the very dawn of this Universe’s existence. We are the vanguard of the Universe infusing itself with Spirit. But at the equivalent of only four days into its lifespan, is it surprising that the Universe seems to have so far to go in terms of manifesting spirituality? Do we really think it is likely that this process of spiritual development is meant to end any time soon?
Lable,
Great food for thought, as always.
You said to me once something like that for every truth, there is an opposite, and equally true, truth.
I agree we need to be careful of "too good to be true" promises and I also think we need to be careful not to assume that growth is only available as the result of long, hard, work and much time passing.
As someone who has experienced rapid growth herself this year (and yes, it was probably the culmination of many years of preceding effort) I've begun to see that some of the results I can deliver through my work can be had much more quickly than I had ever realized.
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Hi Isabel,
Yes, after chiding people for quoting Einstein, the grand Poobah of Relativity, all the time, I have to blush and admit that the statement I made to you was me quoting the other grand Poobah of physics - Nils Bohr, the patron saint of Quantum Theory. Bohr said that, "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." And in a Universe this amazingly rich, it is quite possibly the case. (It's long been my theory that the way you create a Universe out of Nothing is to balance everything with its opposite so that the sum total in the Universe is still zero.) But the key word in Bohr's statement is "profound". I will leave it, of course, to each individual to judge what is profound to them.
As you point out, rapid growth is often the culmination of years of hard growth. I believe it was Eddie Cantor who said it took him twenty years to become an overnight success. More recently, Malcom Gladwell has asserted that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly proficient at anything. I think in a flash we can go from Unconsciously Incompetent to Consciously Incompetent (which is what I think happens in most of the week-end seminar "aha!" experiences), but it does take a lot of effort to go from Consciously Incompetent to Consciously Competent (and even more effort to go to Unconsciously Competent.)
Here's the core of my concern, Isabel. I know, for example, the work that you do. It is rich, textured, profound, and very valuable. And you follow your instruction up with Coaching and support. You help people deal with the simple-but-not-easy. But I think that people are missing out on the opportunity to have their lives enriched by practitioners such as yourself because you are drowned-out by the hucksters offering the fast-food versions.
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Hi Lable,
Delightful reading as always. Indeed, we are sooo young. It seems like there's the real Oneness and then there's the Oneness that sells. People dont want to pay the price of realizing real Oneness. The Oneness that sells, with all it's fun wall decorations, and statues and practices and clothes and community is what most people really want. McSpirituality isn't just a marketing scheme. It's what people really want. You and I both know that the price of real spirituality, real truth, real Oneness is the total turning away from everything we thought we were...all the conditioning, the drama and the stories. Our personalities become irrelevant when it comes to being awake and following what's real. Seriously, who really wants to psychologically die and be reborn into the life of Oneness- True Spirituality? Very few of us, I imagine. We are, after all, in the larger scope of things, only about 4 years old. Hugs to you, Anna
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Hi Anna,
Great insight. Yes, most people have not overcome the fear of dying to themselves to be reborn to their higher selves, but that is wholly consonant, as you point out, with being in a four-day old Universe. We need to be patient. In another 100 billion years or so many more may be willing to make that great leap into the unknown.
But I don't know that McSpirituality is what people want. It is what they are settling for. I think they hunger and yearn for true At-One-ment. That's why through the ages the call to death in order to be reborn, whether it came from Dionysus, Osiris, Mithra, Shiva, Buddha, or Jesus has always been so attractive to us. The desire to answer the call of our higher nature tugs at us all the time. It is simple, but not easy. In the book "The Power and the Glory", Graham Greene wonderfully tells the story of a corrupt priest in Mexico on the run from the revolutionaries. At the end, he is taken before a firing squad. And in his last instant, as the bullet that will kill him is heading right between his eyes, he sees how simple it would have been to be a saint.
I think Compassion demands that those who are awake help others see how simple (but hard) Life really is - before the bullet is headed right between their eyes - so that they don't have to just settle for McSprituality.
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Yesterday I got two letters, personally addressed, one offering me a ring that had the power to solve all my problems, the other providing a number that might be THE number to receive unclaimed lottery millions. How could anyone, I thought, be that gullible? Whether we are gullible or desperate or just in the "why not?" category of hopeful souls, there are enough of us out there to make these businesses thrive. Just as the businesses of the McSpiritualists thrive. And I guess that makes sense to me now, having read your piece, Lable. I we accept the 'wisdom' of a four day old universe as the measure of all there is, we will always remain needy children.
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Hi, Wendy. Yes, difficult economic times are godsends to the vampires out there. People who are not at all usually gullible fall prey to desperation. When I was a teenager my mother was dying of ovarian cancer, and had reached the point where the doctirs had given up all hope. We were Orthodox Jews and a major Chassidic Rabbi, of all people, recommended a Christian faith-healer in the Phillipines named "Reverend Tony" who was reported to miraculously be able to pull the cancer out of people. Now, even though going to this faith-healer violated their life-long religious beliefs, even though getting a visa to the Phillipines at that time was next to impossible due to the Communist insurrection, even though it would take all the money my parents had, they made arrangements to go to this charlatan. My mother was desperate not to leave her two children behind at such a young age. In the end, the trip never happened because her doctor told her she would not survive the plane trip. And, of course, years later "Reverend Tony" was proven to be a fraud who concealed razor blades between his fingers, and the "cancer" he pulled out of people was shown to be chicken guts. But thus doth desperation makes gulls of us all.
What's to lose in giving it a chance? I think of how my mother might have died in an airplane, or on a dirty table in a Phillipine hut with a charlatan cutting her with a razor blade, instead of the beautiful passing she had surrounded by so many people who loved her. I think of desperate people spending their last dollar on some worthless charm. I think of the three people who died in Arizona recently when they paid $10,000 to sit in a sweat lodge, without knowing whether the person conducting the lodge was quakified to do so. I think of how so many people who are hungering for real spiritual nourishment are being fed by practitioners who might as well be asking, "Do you want fries with that?" And it makes me sad. But, then again, the Universe is only four days old. Plenty of time left to "get it.
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Lable,
You have a gift my friend; the ability to express a unique insight that causes one to stop, think and come to terms with the ramifications of your insight on our lives. Keep it up!
Thank you,
Michael
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Thanks for your kind words, Michael. That is my aim: not to convince or argue, but offer another point of view that causes someone to stop, think, and re-examine their conclusions. As Socrates said, "The Unexamined Life is not worht living." So I'm equally thrilled when someone else causes me to stop, think, and re-examine my conclusions.
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