There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem

2 ANCIENT “RADICAL” IDEAS

The average man who does not know what to do with this life, wants another one which shall last forever.

—ANATOLE FRANCE

WE ARE CAPABLE OF REACHING A STATE

OF AWARENESS IN WHICH WE CAN

PERFORM MIRACLES

As I mentioned in chapter one, in preparation for writing this book I became blissfully involved in the teachings of a saint called Patanjali, who reportedly lived here on earth several thousand years ago. No source that I have reviewed has been able to precisely identify who Patanjali was, if he was indeed more than one person, and even when he lived. Like Shakespeare, or Jesus, and many other major figures, Patanjali’s ideas and teachings have retained their influence, in spite of the lack of details we have about his existence.

In the previous chapter I refer to his translated works How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali. There are very few books which have caused me to feel the sense of excited anticipation I felt while reading The Yoga Aphorisms. Patanjali teaches that we are capable of reaching a state of awareness in which we can perform miracles. He explains that we are transcendent beings to begin with and counsels us to be unafraid of transcending the limitations imposed upon us by the material world.

Patanjali’s words caused me to truly think of myself as capable of living at a much higher level than I had ever considered before. He presents ideas that are life changing. I felt urged to go beyond traditional ideas that acted as obstacles to my union with God. I urge you to suspend disbelief as you read this chapter. I am fully aware that some of this material may clash dramatically with your inherited religious teachings.

The title of this book makes a powerful claim: that there is a spiritual solution to every problem you will ever face. In order to apply this idea you need to be aware of these so-called “radical” ideas, because they can open you to your ability to implement spiritual solutions to your problems. It may help if you keep in mind that there is a distinction between spiritual development and formal religious teachings.

Patanjali offered hundreds of specific suggestions and practices to reach the oneness or union with God, which he called yoga. Some of Patanjali’s aphorisms will undoubtedly sound far too removed from our twenty-first-century life to apply to the problems we have in today’s world. I have selected five of the aphorisms that helped me recognize that spiritual solutions are only a thought or two away. I introduce each of them along with my commentary on their value to spiritual problem solving in the world we presently live in.

In our materially oriented world we are often confronted with problems that seem insoluble. A shift in thinking is required in order to discover that we have something at our disposal that we can put into practice. We need to see ourselves as containing a force that can be called upon for spiritual solutions. We don’t have to consult an expert in theology, or thumb through ancient manuscripts to find our answers. We need to realize that spiritual solutions are readily accessible.

A while back during an intermission of a half-day seminar that I was conducting, someone left this note on the table onstage.

Question to God: “Why did you let all of those people in that Denver school die?”

Response from God: “I’m not allowed in school anymore.”

In the twenty-first century many Americans seem to equate God with religion and religious training which they insist be separated from teaching and learning in our schools. But nowhere in our Constitution is it specified that we must separate God and state. It says quite clearly that a separation of church and state shall be the way of our land. To separate God and state we would have to recall every coin and piece of currency issued by the state and strike out “In God We Trust.” We would have to amend our Pledge of Allegiance and all references to God in our government documents! Trying to legislate God out of our daily lives contributes to the growing spiritual deficit that our world is experiencing.

The ideas that Patanjali wrote about several thousand years ago are of immense value today. These ideas are not part and parcel of a religion or a church. They are a prescription for coming into union (yoga) with God and consequently regaining all the power and majesty of one’s source.

Enough of my disclaimers and warnings. Here are five aphorisms from approximately twenty centuries ago that can help you gain access to your spiritual answers. I have arranged these five major themes in a way that I found useful for myself and I trust will be helpful to you.

THE FIRST APHORISM

The central act of ignorance is false identification.

Patanjali describes ignorance as a basic misunderstanding of one’s real nature. According to this ancient master when we identify ourselves as our name or title, our body, our possessions, achievements, or reputation, we are denying our true identity. This he maintains is ignorance.

This act of ignorance forces us to misread nature and consequently to dwell on the outwardness of things. When the world is viewed as a collection of separate things and beings, awareness of wholeness is impossible. This ancient master made it quite clear that when we deny God within us, we deny God everywhere. Finding a spiritual solution to every problem begins with a commitment to end this kind of ignorance.

In order to eliminate ignorance as defined by Patanjali, you do not have to go back to school. Ignorance is not the absence of knowledge. He is not saying you are ignorant if you can’t spell, or solve quadratic equations, or list the capitals of countries from memory. Each person has a vast storehouse of facts and knowledge at his disposal. For some it involves reading blueprints, and for others it is repairing bicycles. For some it is preparing a sumptuous meal, and for others it is driving an eighteen-wheeler across the country. Who is to say that any one set of facts and skills is any more important than any other?

If one set of skills allows you to make more money and that is important to you, then by all means learn and apply those skills to your money-making efforts. But the person who elects a different set of facts and skills, which produce less income, is not ignorant, even though our culture often tends to equate low income with ignorance.

What we are exploring here is ignorance defined as falsely identifying oneself as only of the material ego-based world.

To eliminate ignorance from your life using this definition, you will need to reprioritize your basic definition of both yourself and God. For yourself, try to let go of the false identification of God with the five senses and the intellect. Replace that false identification with imagining yourself eternally connected to a divine source. With this new identification comes an inner resolve to reorient yourself when faced with a problem. Rather than asking an external God to solve your problem for you, identify yourself as a part of the beloved divine creation that you are. Dedicate your actions to God and you will gradually see the error of false identification disappear.

For example, if you want to stop a compulsive habit of overeating, begin by no longer identifying yourself as a body full of cravings (ignorance). Instead imagine yourself as pure eternal peace and joy always unified with God. Ignorance keeps you from genuinely experiencing pleasure or fulfillment via the senses because you clutch at what appears to provide it rather than seek purity or true happiness. A false identification will always betray you. The senses will keep tempting you with objects of desire.

Unlearn the false identification of your thoughts with your ego-senses and instead see yourself as a part of the infinite. As you do, you will still act on your thoughts but you will be acting as a divine perfectly balanced eternal being. I love the idea of eternal soul presented in this excerpt from the Bhagavad-Gita:

The illumined soul …

Thinks always: “I am doing nothing.”

No matter what he sees,

hears, touches, smells, eats …

This he knows always:

“I am not seeing, I am not hearing:

It is the senses that see and hear

and touch the things of the senses.”

To become an illumined soul we must not conceptualize ourselves as our senses and all that they lust after. That is ignorance. We are not the objects of experience, but the silent observer within the experience itself. Seeing ourselves in this way provides us with a new tool for problem solving. Try it the next time you feel the impulse to overeat or consume a toxic substance or even to spend time in painful grief over a loss.

A dramatic example of this presented itself in the following letter and poem I received from Mary Lou Van Atta of Newark, Ohio. She is speaking directly to this idea of false identification as she writes of her ordeal and how she ultimately found a spiritual solution by remembering who she is, rather than who she had falsely believed she was.

Dear Dr. Dyer,

My son was murdered in a robbery attempt two years ago. Frankly, I thought I would never recover from my grief and loss. Amid all the clouds in my life and mind, I was somehow led, once more, to your books and tapes. I had read and listened to many in previous years and while I had enjoyed them, I was too busy to truly listen. Upon going over them again, I realized one underlying truth in all. We are spirit in body—not a body with a spirit.

I am once more a happy, healthy woman with a full steam ahead system. I will always feel my loss of Ross, but I know it is not the end of the story. I can wait. It’s O.K.

I have enclosed a small poem that I hope you will enjoy. I wrote it but you taught it.

Again, thank you.

Sincerely, Mary Lou Van Atta

Indeed, as Patanjali reminds us, we are spirit in body. Believing otherwise is ignorance through false identification. In that state of ignorance we become solutionless in form. When we experience what Saint Paul called a “renewal of the mind” we are able to see ourselves as we truly are.

With Mary Lou’s permission I include the poem she wrote. It summarizes this first ancient “radical” idea. The central act of ignorance is not being ill-informed, but in falsely identifying yourself as your form.

I AM

The “I” that is me—you cannot see

You see only the form that you think is me.

This form that you see, will not always be;

but the “I” that is me—lives eternally.

The next time that you face a problem that you have been unable to resolve, try redefining yourself as Mary Lou suggests in “I Am,” and put into practice your true identification as the eternal experiencer rather than the object of that experiencer. Ask yourself these key questions from the ancient Upanishads: “At whose behest does the mind think? Who bids the body to live? Who makes the ear hear and the tongue speak?”

Your true identity is the mind of mind, the eye of the eye, and the breath of the breath. Go there and you will find the beginning of a spiritual solution to any problems you believe you have. Here is how Meher Baba described this process of overcoming one’s ignorance as we are defining the term here.

“Thus, though he begins by seeking something utterly new, he really arrives at a new understanding of something ancient. The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have or becomes what he was not. It consists in the dissipation of his ignorance concerning himself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins with spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s own self.” Your objective in applying this ancient wisdom is to dissipate your ignorance concerning yourself and life.

THE SECOND APHORISM

The mind of the truly illumined is calm because the peace of God within all things is known, even within the appearance of misery and disease.

This second aphorism brings to mind the adage that the three truly difficult things to do in life are: returning love for hate; including the excluded; and saying, “I was wrong.” It is the first and most difficult item, returning love for hate, that I want to explore here.

As I was studying the ancient words of Patanjali I came across a reference that implied the following: God cannot express God’s self in you when you are not at peace. As I thought about those words I had a deep realization that God is love. I recognized that it was in a state of stillness that the realization occurred. If it requires stillness to know God, then we need to be in a place of loving calmness in order to be able to have God’s assistance in problem solving. Thus, the most difficult thing to do, to return love for hate, becomes much simpler when we are able to be peaceful because that is actually God expressing God’s self within us.

When we return love for hate we express the peace of God that is within us. Our response has a calm and loving quality. This calmness is a vital aspect of the consciousness that makes it possible to tap into spiritual solutions.

I’ve selected two passages from the Bible to reinforce the relationship between stillness or calmness and God. By taking the scriptural statement and reversing it, we can clearly recognize what happens when we are unable or unwilling to choose stillness. So, “Be anxious, or fearful and you will not know God” is what we have in place of “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Instead of “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (I John 4:16), we would have “God is fear and he that dwelleth in fear cannot dwell in God, nor God in him.”

Probably you are thinking that this makes sense. God is still. God is love. When I am neither, I have no chance of allowing a spiritual solution to present itself. But how do I get to that place of calmness? I believe you can move into that state of knowing God within through stillness by intentionally choosing calmness in moments of anxiety or fear. Yes, you can choose to be calm at any moment by reminding yourself that you are no longer choosing to live by your conditioned past. It is largely because of our conditioning that we leave God behind when we leave calmness.

We have trained ourselves to be fearful and anxious when presented with problems. If we choose, we can retrain ourselves to be calm and to allow God to express God’s self in us once again. As I discussed in chapter one, problems begin, unequivocally, in our minds. We may have to remind ourselves that our mind is where the problem exists, nowhere else. Thus the “illusion” which I mentioned earlier. Correct the error, and the illusion disappears. Our conditioning has led us to the error of thinking of ourselves in terms of finite beings.

James Carse, in his book Finite and Infinite Games, describes a world of finite games in which winners and losers, rules, boundaries, and time are all extremely important. In the world of finite games, titles, acquisitions, and prestige are of paramount significance. Planning, strategy, and secrecy are all crucial. To become a master player in the world of finite games you have an audience who knows the rules and who will grant you a reputation. Being identified with losers in the finite game is frightening and dangerous. The finite game values bodies, things, and reputations. The ultimate loss is death.

In his book, Carse explains that the final result of the finite game is self-annihilation because the machines that we invent to assist us in this finite game of winners and losers will destroy those who rely upon them. Technology, marketing, productivity are all terms to encourage players to buy more machines and one’s worth is dependent on how many machines players have and how well they operate them.

There is also the infinite game, which you can begin to play if you so choose. In this game there are no boundaries; the forces are infinite that allow the flowers to grow and those forces cannot be tamed or controlled. The purpose of the infinite game is to get more people to play, to laugh, love, dance and sing. Life itself is infinitely non-understandable. These forces were here before we were and will continue beyond the boundaries of death and time.

While the finite player must debate and learn the language/rules to operate all the machines, the infinite player speaks from the heart and knows that answers are beyond words and explanations. This is not to imply that players of the infinite game cannot also play finite games, it’s just that they don’t know how to take the finite games seriously.

This is a choice. We are in a world where secrecy, competition, fear, and weapons are part of the equipment used to play the finite game of life. We know that the categories of “winner” and “loser” are highly valued. Players who prefer to spend more of their time playing the infinite game also play the finite game. I think the following excerpt from the workbook for A Course in Miracles says it delightfully.

“There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before.”

This is a prescription for knowing the peace of God even when there is the appearance of misery and disease. The choice is to play mostly infinite games, but while playing the finite games, refusing to take them seriously. Others may think you are serious, but you know better. You know you see your world in the terms of an infinite game. You will smile more frequently, you will feel serene, and you will access spiritual solutions.

I will conclude this section with a story told to me by my friend Gary who lives in New York, but was raised and schooled in India. Each year at the completion of the school year in June, Gary’s father sent him to live with a master teacher (guru) in an ashram with many other young boys. Here he would be immersed for a couple of months annually for the purpose of heightening his spiritual awareness. There were two large cabins at this particular ashram, and on the first day of the summer, all the boys were given the following instructions.

“You are to remain in total silence for the first four weeks. No talking at any time. If you break silence even once, you will leave the silent cabin and live in the second cabin where you may talk to your heart’s content for the rest of the summer.”

There was no threat of punishment. Simply leaving the silent cabin was the only consequence of breaking the silence.

Gary told me that he was able to go for about four days without talking the first year. Then off he went to cabin two. In the second year he went approximately ten days, and in the third year he was able to go for two weeks before he finally broke the silence.

About the time of his fifteenth birthday he knew he was going to the ashram and he made an inner commitment that this year he would definitely complete the prescribed time for silence, no matter what. He actually placed tape over his mouth and used other gimmicks to ensure he would not break silence even once. He noted that each year, at the end of the silence month, only two or three boys were still residing in cabin one. And sure enough, finally after years of struggling, Gary completed the month without ever once breaking the silence.

On the last day, the guru came into cabin one and sat down at the kitchen table with Gary and the other two boys who had been able to remain totally silent for the entire designated time period of one month. He tells me that the four of them had the most remarkable experience of communicating that he had ever known. They told each other stories, they laughed, they cried, and they asked each other questions. For several hours they interacted in the most intense conversations Gary had ever experienced. During the entire time of those conversations in which they all communicated intensely and intimately at a deep feeling level, not one single sound was made, not one word was spoken.

You may find it difficult to believe that communication without words or sounds is possible. Yet I know Gary to be truthful, a man of integrity. I leave you to draw your own conclusions. I am convinced that when we become truly illumined, our inner calmness, when taken to an extreme, allows us to transcend reliance on symbols and noise, and to know the peace of God. My conclusion is that we can communicate through our own inner calmness in ways that are infinite rather than finite. Or as Patanjali put it, “the state of perfect yoga can only be entered into when the thought-waves have been stilled.”

Each one of us must find the ways to our own inner stillness. One of my ways is to study a poster that I have on my wall every day. Beneath a beautiful serene blue sky mountain setting are these words from Paramahansa Yogananda: “Calmness is the living breath of God’s immortality in you.” I contemplate this wisdom every day of my life. I would be honored if you write to share with me the ways you have discovered to find your stillness.

THE THIRD APHORISM

Sin is nonexistent. There are only obstacles to one’s ultimate union with God.

Most of us grew up believing that a sin was an act of disobedience or ingratitude toward a God who is both separate and punitive. This aphorism tells us that behaviors and thoughts that violate a commandment that we ideally seek to uphold are offences against our own true nature, which is God. Thus what we perceive to be sinful can be redirected to be viewed as an obstacle to our spiritual development. Patanjali suggests that what we call sin is misdirected energy, which might have been used to find union with God had we not been misled by ignorance.

The word sin has a literal translation of “off the mark.” In this sense, behavior that religion has taught us is sinful is conduct that is off-the-mark or away from God. This, according to Patanjali, is not a reason to immerse ourselves in guilt and use up life energy attempting to somehow make amends. Rather it should be viewed in the context of an obstacle that we have yet to overcome.

When addressing “sinful” behaviors as obstacles we begin to see what it is we must do to access the spiritual solution we seek. When viewed as sin, we place the responsibility for correcting the conduct on a God who is external to us. Thus we hope that this external God will forgive, and we find ourselves laden with guilt and anxiety over whether we deserve to be problem-free. I like these powerful words of Mahatma Gandhi on how to deal with our shortcomings: “My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents, and I lay them both at his feet.”

Viewing a failure as an invitation to recourse with God is a much more useful way of handling the “problem.” Wallowing in shame, feeling as though we have sinned and are not deserving of forgiveness is not the best way to find solutions! Try this inner dialogue instead: “I have not sinned against God. I have behaved in such a way as to inhibit my complete union with God. These behaviors are obstacles to my finding a spiritual solution. Beginning right now I will work at removing these obstacles from my life.”