Spiritual Rationalist

Spiritual Rationalist

October 4, 2011
Conservative; liberal; Christian; Muslim; Hindu; atheist; ‘believers in god’; married; single; divorced; smart; stupid; rich poor; happy; unhappy – the list of ‘labels’ goes on and on. If we had to wear a ‘tag’ for every label, we’d run out of room before needing to overlap labels. Labels mean one thing to the labeler, and another to the ‘labeled’, and yet another thing to those who hear the label. Labels tend to have a ‘sticky back’ that sticks to you endlessly. Why be attached to any ‘label’ whether it’s a ‘self label’ or one cast upon you?

Personally, I prefer to avoid labels for myself as I’m often asked if I’m this or that politically, or what beliefs I have, god or no god. I rather skillfully either dodge the questions or present some mind ‘twister’ of an answer that leaves the questioner walking off in perplexity. My answer to, ‘do you believe in god’ (which is the most frequently asked one), is three fold. Three things: 1) there is no god; 2) there is a god; and, three, both a wrong! Hence, the bewildered look as I add the ‘asterisk’, that I have no beliefs! Either I know or I don’t, and I stay open to knowing more.

As someone said, be in the middle of the road, but ‘pack heat’ – or have a passion for the truth. To use a label that means different things to different people will evoke misconstrued opinions, or judgments that ‘paint one into a corner’ that’s quite deceptive of who one really is in entirety. Healthy humans are like a flowing river, only flowing ‘uphill’ to greater and greater insights, and clarity of truths. For time immemorial, we have lived without the same possibilities of change, and personal evolution that we know have at our easy disposal. Rapidly expanding technology has created innumerable ways to access information in seconds that was not even, until recently, available anywhere.

MInd is one of the most significant things in life, but only as a servant, and not a master. Mind is rational, logical, but not when it takes over your whole skewed being. Your ‘being’ comes first, then the heart followed by the mind. The balance is an authentic human being, and being human in the highest consciousness. Use the mind, but not be used by it. Seek balance. Plant both feet on the ground, and allow yourself to rise up to the stars. That could be called a ‘spiritual rationalist’, or one who acts from the heart, and the head in a balance, or as Buddhism calls it, ‘the middle way’ for a ‘balanced being’. Arhata