The Yellow Brick Road
by Chris Lihou
Service at UUCSS on July 29, 2001
Opening Words
However precious it may be, everything that springs into existence
eventually dissolves back into the source, making way for new gestures
of being. We humans are not the endpoint of evolution, not the favorite
darlings of the Creator, but only clever players in the ongoing drama.
Nevertheless, we may be useful, even crucial, to the work of Creation.
We have been given the distinctive, and perhaps unique ability to discern
the laws that govern the universe, and to express what we discover in
words and images and formulas. The search for understanding and the struggle
for expression are therefore the most vital of our pursuits; by comparison,
the struggle for wealth, power, status and pleasure is a mere sideshow.
We matter as individuals, as societies, and as a species, in proportion
to what we contribute to the evolving self-awareness of the universe.
Our part in the cosmic story is to gaze back, with comprehension and
joy, at the whole of Creation. Our role is to witness and celebrate the
beauty of things, the elegance and order in the world, and the Ground
of Being that we share with all creatures. We do this through painting
and storytelling, through dancing and singing, through the raising of
buildings and the launching of telescopes into space, through the shaping
of poems and pots, through our never-ending talk. In however small a
way, each of us helps to push outward the margins of consciousness.
From:
Sanders, Scott Russell, Hunting For Hope: A Father's Journeys.
Beacon Press; ISBN: 0807064254
Lighting of the Chalice
May this light warm our hearts with love and caring, and guide us in
the ways of truth. As we gather here for worship, we pledge ourselves
to the endless search for truth, to the right of each to believe as mind,
heart, and conscience dictate, to accept the responsibilities this freedom
commands, and to implement our belief in the essential worth and dignity
of every human being.
Song of Exultation
Since what we choose is what we are
And what we love we yet shall be,
The goal may ever shine afar,
The will to win it makes us free.
Sermon
The Yellow Brick Road
by Chris Lihou
As I grow in understanding and wisdom, as my life's journey uncovers
new perspectives and new countries of the soul, my knowledge of what
is true also changes, from year to year. The search for truth and the
process of change and the process of growth never end, until the day
I die.
The two most watched movies of all time have been Gone With The
Wind and The Wizard Of Oz. Both take us on a symbolic journey
in search of truth, both have a female as their central character,
and both tell us that beauty, or the nostalgic memory of beauty held
in the heart, will never perish. But Gone With The Wind deals
with facing great changes with courage, while The Wizard
Of Oz talks about seeking great changes with hope. Gone
With The Wind has a subconscious level which it never explores,
the subconscious theme of the ugliness of slavery. The Wizard Of
Oz, on the other hand, is almost entirely about the exploration
of the subconscious and the discovery of beauty and hope in that other
land of the soul.
Dorothy lives in Kansas, a monochrome country of black-and-white truths
which are unquestioned and rigid. Along comes a tornado, the most violent
and destructive force of nature, a force which is known to sweep away
all supposedly permanent realities and leave behind nothing of the old
order after it has passed. When Dorothy arrives into a new state of consciousness
she wakes up, into a world which is in brilliant Technicolor, which is
loaded with myth and metaphor, and where absurd possibilities may become
reality. It is the world of Dorothy's unconscious. The land of Oz.
In this world she comes face to face with aspects of herself, characterized
by the Scarecrow, who has no brain and is so ineffective at his job that
even the crows laugh at him, the Tin Man who has a thick skin and no
heart with which to feel joy or pain, but who nevertheless manages to
feel the absence of those things, and the Cowardly Lion without courage
who has a vision of his possibility as a magnificent and awesome creature,
but who doesn't frighten anybody. She comes face to face in these symbols
with those "truths" about herself, those unchallenged "truths" which
we all tell ourselves, and which have become so much a part of us that
we have ceased even to think about them. Much as the shirt which I put
on this morning has become so much a part of me that I don't even notice
it any more. It has become a part of me, a thing which I would not take
off in public for fear of shame and embarrassment, a thing which conceals
the real me from the rest of the world, and which I have forgotten is
in truth a thing of cotton and synthetic fiber, not a thing of living
flesh and blood.
In the same way, we cover our souls, the real us, the truths of who
we are, even the truths of whom we would like to become, with a tissue
of lies about ourselves in order to protect ourselves from the pain of
shame and embarrassment. But here is the amazing thing. When I put on
my shirt, whom am I hiding myself from? From other people. When I adopt
this fabric of inner lies, whom am I hiding myself from? Myself. So many
times, since I was first born, life has refused to cooperate with me,
the world has refused to give me what I know I deserved, has withheld
its love, has heaped abuse and disappointment on my head, that little
by little I begin to believe, I begin to KNOW, that the fault for all
that lies in ME. That it is because I am stupid, like the Scarecrow.
That it is because, like the Lion, I just don't have the courage to go
on, my courage is all used up. That it is better not to keep fighting,
because that way I only get bruised and cut up. And that all this is
so painful that I have shut off all feeling, I have ceased to feel, I
have lost even the capacity to feel, I have lost my heart, like the Tin
Man.
How do we get out of this? How do we follow the yellow brick road to
Oz, where we will become whole again? How do we get rid of these negative
visions of ourselves and discover our real selves, our true selves, our
smart, creative, intelligent, compassionate, courageous selves? Well,
here's a big secret. We can't GET RID of those negative visions. We can
never get rid of something if we keep fighting it. If we want to get
rid of an enemy, we shouldn't wrestle with him. We should run away and
find some friends. Instead of fighting with the negative visions and
trying to win the argument with ourselves which we have been losing for
decades, (how can we possibly win?), we have to find new truths, new
stories, new visions.
Peter Senge, in his book The Fifth Discipline, says this:
"Most adults have little sense of real vision. We have
goals and objectives, but these are not visions. When asked
what they want, many adults will say what they want to get rid of.
They'd
like a better job - that is, they'd like to get rid of the boring job
they have. They'd like to live in a better neighborhood, or not to
have to worry about crime, or about putting their kids through school.
They'd
like it if their mother-in-law returned to her own house, or if their
back stopped hurting. Such litanies of "negative visions" are
commonplace, even among very successful people. They are the by-product
of a lifetime of fitting in, of coping, of problem solving. As a teenager
in one of our programs once said, "We shouldn't call them grown-ups,
we should call them given-ups."
Eric Hoffer, in his book, The Ordeal of Change, says:
"When people subjected to drastic change are not allowed to
attain self-confidence and self-esteem , the hunger for confidence,
for worth,
and for balance directs itself towards the attainment of substitutes.
The substitute for self-confidence is faith, the substitute for self-esteem
is pride, and the substitute for individual balance is fusion with
others into a group. It needs no underlining that this reaching out
for substitutes
means trouble. In the chemistry of the soul, a substitute is almost
always explosive, if for no other reason than that we can never have
enough
of it. We can never have enough of that which we do not really
want. What we want is justified self-confidence and self-esteem.
If we cannot have the originals, we can never have enough of the substitutes."
Is that our condition? Have we given up the fight, have we given up
on the attainment of spiritual wholeness, and settled for substitutes?
Well, maybe so, but it doesn't have to be that way. The battle is not
over till we say it's over. And to take the analogy further, the most
useful asset in war is military intelligence. If you understand your
enemy and know what moves he's going to make before he makes them, you
have a huge advantage. So what I want to start with today is to understand
what's going on. Without understanding, our battle with our demons is
fought in the dark.
So, to understand it, let's look at this as a process. The first process
we have to understand is that of what Peter Senge calls creative conflict.
This is the gap between our vision of where we want to be and the reality
of where we are now. This gap causes us emotional discomfort.
This is a dynamic system, in which our discomfort can be resolved in
one of only two ways: We either take actions to bring reality into line
with our vision, or we change the vision to bring it into line with reality.
Now, don't take this wrongly - this emotional discomfort is an essential
part of our life process as human beings. Without it we could not live.
From the time we are born, the gap between our empty stomach and our
desire to be full causes us to protest loudly. And from then on the process
never stops. But if as an infant adjusted our desires to conform with
reality, and accepted our empty stomach, we would live only a few days.
Since we are here, we KNOW we have some experience and skill at bringing
reality into line with our vision.
So what stops us from always bringing reality into line with what we
want to achieve, and instead causes us to give up our vision and align
our desires with reality? This is the second process, which Peter Senge
calls structural conflict. He says:
"Most of us one of two contradictory beliefs that limit our ability
to create what we really want. The more common belief is in our powerlessness
- our inability to bring into being all the things we really care
about. The other belief centers on unworthiness - that we do not deserve
to
have that which we truly desire."
He calls this structural conflict because this is a structure of conflicting
forces, pulling us simultaneously toward, and away from, what we want.
There are three generic strategies which we use to resolve structural
conflict.
The first is that which we have already considered, letting our vision
erode to conform with the status quo. The second is conflict manipulation,
in which we try to manipulate ourselves into continued effort by focusing
on avoiding what we don't want, or adopting substitutes for our goals.
The third is willpower, in which we psych ourselves up to overpower
all forms of resistance to achieving our goals. How many of us bully
those around us - (wonderful word, bully, like the proverbial bull in
the china shop,) or how many of us bully ourselves, losing all humor,
all sense of joy, in a single-minded determination to force things to
go our way? Eric Hoffer, in The Ordeal Of Change, says:
"There is a close connection between lack of confidence and the
passionate state of mind, and, as we shall see, passionate intensity
may serve as a substitute for confidence. The connection can be observed
in all walks of life. A workingman sure of his skill goes about his
job and accomplishes much though he works as if at play. On the other
hand
, the workingman new to his trade attacks his work as if he were
saving the world, and he must do so if he is to get anything done at
all. [It
is] a reaction against a loss of balance - a swinging and flailing
of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat. Faith, enthusiasm
and
passionate intensity in general are substitutes for the self-confidence
born of experience and the possession of skill"
How many of us can say we are so skilled at the game of life that we
sail through it with ease and grace? For myself, I can only say, not
me.
Each of these coping strategies: adjusting our vision to accommodate
reality; telling ourselves we are powerless or undeserving; and a passionate
struggle to overcome by force of will, has its downside. And I am sure
we can all recognize one, two or three of these strategies in ourselves.
In the same way, there are three strategies which we need to adopt
instead of these. The first way to overcome these destructive limitations
and liberate ourselves is a brutal, often painful, and unwavering commitment
to TRUTH. You know, I spent about $5,000 on therapy, just so that my
therapist could do two things: to make me tell him what I was truly thinking,
at the level of feelings, and to keep on challenging me and asking, is
that true? Is that based on reality or a myth? Eventually, I became able
to do this better for myself, not perfectly, because the process is a
life process which I recognize will never be perfected and will never
end.
We MUST keep asking ourselves, is this what I TRULY want my life to
be, is this what I truly want MYSELF to be, or is this a substitute?
How much of the substitute will ever be enough? How many travel magazines
should I read to equal one trip to the Bahamas? Or, alternatively, have
I adjusted my vision and settled for less? Does settling make me feel
satisfied? Be honest, now, is telling myself my jail cell could be worse,
it's better than some, make it as good as freedom? Or am I focusing so
much on the battle to overcome these forces that I am too exhausted to
enjoy my victory? For that matter, is it really a victory if I kill myself
in the process? As Jesus said, "Hold to the Truth, and the Truth
shall make you free."
The second strategy is to use this commitment to the truth to become
aware of the mental and emotional structures which hold us prisoner.
If we become aware of them, they will lose their power over us. Someone
who doesn't know how a car works will kill himself if he tries to drive
it. Once he knows how it works, he can master it and use the same forces
to get him to where he wants to go. Once we know and understand the processes
of creative tension and structural tension, we can harness them to do
our bidding.
The third strategy sounds the simplest, but is probably the most difficult
to do, because reality keeps on bettering at us. This is o focus our
mind and our whole being on the visions we want for ourselves, and NOT
on the processes by which we achieve them. Otherwise we may become lost
in the minutiae of process, and lose sight of our visions. Great athletes
do this. They don't concentrate on the running, they envision themselves
breaking the tape at the end of the track. As they fly down the track,
they keep imagining the feel of the tape across their chest, and the
tape draws them towards itself like the world's most powerful magnet.
Great performers do this. They don't act a role, they become the role.
You will remember that in The Wizard of OZ, nobody had any clear idea
of how they were going to get to the Emerald City. It was always, in
almost every scene of the movie, to be seen beckoning just over the horizon,
but nobody knew which road, or which fork in the Yellow Brick Road, led
there. They just kept on skipping and singing along, and of course they
made it in the end
So let's stop giving up. Let's stop settling for substitutes. Let's
arm ourselves with understanding and do battle. Let our visions go before
us like a banner of hope, and our understanding shield us like shining
armor. The promised land lies before us at the end of the Yellow Brick
Road, a land of the joyful, powerful spirit, a land flowing with milk
and honey. It is ours for the taking. Let us begin.
References:
Senge, Peter, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the
Learning Organization.
Doubleday: ISBN: 0385260954
Hoffer, Eric, The Ordeal Of Change. Buccaneer Books (1976): ISBN:
0899667481
Benediction
The courage of the early morning's dawning,
And the strength of the hills,
And the peace of evening's ending,
And the joy of all creation, abide with us.
May we carry the flame of peace and love in our hearts, until we meet
again.
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