Belief

There is a difference between believing something, and believing in something. Even a cursory glance at a dictionary reveals these two indepedent aspects of the definition of this word. The former it says “an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.” The latter says “trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.” I think people underestimate the real difference between these definitions. It’s not just that the words are in a different order, it’s the words require a different order of being. Let me be clear: believing something, as a religious function, is child’s play, but believing in something is a very tall order.

You can get someone to believe something simply by repeating it, or threatening them, or withholding other information. If I don’t tell you about the key I have in pocket, I could get you to believe that we’re locked out of the house. If no information is available, then believing something is just silly.

But you can’t get someone to believe in something just by repeating it or threatening them, or withholding information. Belief 1 is “accepting” but belief 2 actually requires an experience of truth, or faith. It gives power to that which you trust in, or have faith in. It gives power to you for having that relationship.

So, when someone says they “Believe in God,” does that mean they take as true and accept that this indeed exists, or does it mean, like you might say, “I believe in you Jimmy,” that God’s existence is taken as a given and there is an experience of trust.

For many then, the full picture is “I believe that God exists (an acceptance that this thing exists) and I believe in God (meaning I have faith in his power, and trust that he will serve me in the ways outlined in the contract passed down in my religion)”

For many others, there is no belief that God exists, and therefore no one to believe in. For others, God is another word for life, and so while they do not believe that a God exists, but they believe in life (they have faith in life to be ok in some grand sense, even if it is painful in a relative sense).

What’s my system for this sort of thing?

The system is this: Focus more on believing in yourself and the natural process of life than on trying to believe some fact about the universe. Adopting some belief about the world is really easy (and if a religion is incessantly stuffing down your throat, and you’re vulnerable to that sort of that, it’s way easier), and therefore less important in taking charge of your salvation (you like that word lilah!?). What is difficult is observing yourself and your life to a degree where you can actually notice patterns and begin to develop a real trust or faith in life itself. Believing in life (like “You can do it Life, I believe in you!”) is infinitely more productive, not to mention verifiable and solid, than having a belief about life.

So, when life has got you down, or if you subscribe to some belief system, see if you let that go and focus more on believing in life pure and simple. Believing something that doesn’t exist (God) exists will only serve to weaken your resolve. Where a lot of fundamentalist atheists and fundamentalist religious people neglect to recognize is that cultivating belief deeply and strongly in the life process itself (in other words, building a relationship with life) and admitting to yourself how that is a spiritual endeavor is immensely more powerful than trying so hard to adhere so strongly to a belief or deny so adamantly that life has meaning or purpose. Why don’t you investigate the life process deeply (working on believing in God/life) while letting go of beliefs about God/life.

This system has many advantages. Your belief about watermelon is different than the taste of watermelon. If you want to taste the watermelon, and you’re focused on understanding where the watermelon came from you may miss that yummy taste. And you still may get it wrong and end up at the wrong farm. Why not sit and enjoy the watermelon first (believe in God), and if you have any spare time go figure out where it came from (possibly discover belief that God exists)?

Writing your systems down, i.e. Journaling

“The Garage Clicker Fail,” as I will now be calling it, is the perfect demonstration of why keeping a systems blog (or a journal of your thoughts) is so useful. Obviously, leaving the clicker in the car is a more perfect system than carrying it on your person. Jacob was kind enough to comment on the post, but I had already made the shift. In fact, it was right after my post that I realized that keeping the clicker in the car was the obvious choice.

In writing it down I realized that I was basing my clicker-in-the-pocket choice on something someone else had said. It was my laziness that kept me stuck in that view, and it was the investigation and awareness of the system that showed me precisely where my delusion was. While the garage clicker is a minor thing, the process I went through is exactly what anyone goes through with anything, including partying and taking care. Bringing awareness to it reveals what parts of a system are good and true and insightful, and what parts are based on fear, preferences, laziness, or idiosyncracy. My friends, this is the primary reason I like writing about systems…you can actually learn a thing or two about yourself.

But, in the case of the garage clicker, the choice was clear once I thought about it. Many things in life aren’t that clear and simple, however. For example, in wanting to have a fun time, how can I know if hanging out in a rotted factory with indoor fireworks and broken glass dance floors is a good choice or not? I agree, this may not be so clear. Most people would agree that it’s not a good choice, but maybe most people are wrong, or maybe carrying the clicker on your person is better in some situations.

The system is this: whatever you do, whether you think of yourself as a systematic person or not, write down or share the decisions you make and why. Be open to discovering your brilliance, and your stupidity. Be open to changing your system when new truths (or previously unseen truths) become available. Be firm when everything has been scrutinized and it is still clear to you, that at least for you, the decision you make in a particular situation is based on wisdom and compassion. Be open to the fact that what is appropriate for you may not be appropriate for someone else and vice versa. Be open to the fact that you have some wisdom to share with other people and that done in the appropriate way, it is your obligation to help that other person see the light and vice versa.

The secondary system is this: do this journaling with other people in a blog called “System Sally” and let them call you on your lies, and stand up for your truth when it’s clear to you. Be an advocate for good systems.

Reading at Bedtime

Lying in bed is an ok time to read. I would recommend against it for serious reading, as dozing is a serious obstacle to focused active reading, but reading at night is nonetheless a great pleasure.

Keep a non-fiction book, a novel, and an “agentive” book. I don’t think agentive is an official word, but I’m using it here to describe any book that acts as an agent of change in your life in whatever aspect. This could include a self-help book, or a religious book, or a how-to book. Having a non-fiction book (information), a novel (entertainment), and an agentive book (instructions) on the nightstand gives you a full range of options depending on what mood you are in when you hit the propped up pillows.

A journal, and a couple of magazines are also great to have on your nightstand. Computer in bed is no good, and we all know that. Use this precious time to connect with solid information, real characters, or truly deep and inspirational instruction of whatever variety after a long day of fast, superficial information from the internet.

When a book has hooked you, I don’t think staying up has any negative effect on your health. I think, somehow, staying up all night reading has the same regenerative effect as sleeping or meditating. Is it just me, or is this other peoples’ experience?

Recommendations

When finishing a book, or reading a particularly interesting blog post, or dining at some great restaurant people often feel impelled to make a recommendation to a friend or relative. Many times this simply irritates the person on the receiving end, or they forget, or they are well meaning but never get around to it anyway. Why is recommending things such a precarious act? Is there a good system out there for deciding when to dole out recommendations or when to heed those that have been doled to you?

Let me analyze one such possible recommendation. If I have a read a book, let’s say Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope,” and found it particularly well-written and intelligent, I may want my friends and family to share in the experience that I had being thoroughly enthralled by it. The problem with this is that everyone knows full well that Barack Obama is about to become the president, and that there are probably some kind of books available either by him or about him that are fascinating reads. If they really thought that following-up with their President meant reading his book, they would have read it, already, just like I did. A recommendation in this case could only serve to put someone over the edge who had pretty much been planning to do it anyway but was a little distracted by other concerns. Maybe my recommendation may even serve as a competitive force for some friends who want to be contemporary with my book shelf, lest they be considered not as well-informed.

For people not planning to read the book, the recommendation is simply unnecessary and worse, probably seen as some sort of self-aggrandizement. A recommendation turns from “You should read this,” to “Look at me, I read this.”

Telling someone about something that they may not know of, like some hidden away restaurant is not a recommendation…it’s a bit of information sharing. When you take that extra step and say “I think you’d like this,” you run the risk of doing some sort of reverse psychology (“Ugh, he thinks I would like this, I hate it already!”) or being annoying “I think you’d like this, because I like this and you should be exactly like me.”

Just occasionally, depending on the person, a recommendation is on the money. Someone reads something, or eats something, that they just know–in their gut–that the other person will appreciate. In these cases, it is important to have a skillful way of communicating this. If you’re too forceful or preachy you will turn them off, and yet if you’re not persuasive enough, this great opportunity may pass.

I’m much more inclined to recommend information sharing over recommendations. I recommend this, because I feel–in my gut–that recommendations are mostly tainted with all of these selfish motives that I have been describing. When it feels appropriate, there are many advantages to recommending things as well, and you should feel free to recommend when you need to.

The system: Share information with your friends, and let them make their own decisions. When you intuit that someone will benefit from something and may not decide that way necessarily, offer a recommendation. Avoid the phrase “You should watch that,” or “read” or “eat,” and replace it with “I think that you would enjoy this. I recommend it.”

Liturgy and Prayer

Liturgy is Dead

The only way that the dead God can ever be brought back to life is if we instead slay the terrible beast of liturgy. Mumbling and chanting are appropriate for crazy people and performers, not humans intent upon seeing the living God. Any religious form is limited and potentially misleading, but none is more potentially damaging than scripted dialogue with Divinity. Spontaneous prayer, expressed in words, is a liberating force. Spontaneous open-hearted moans and groans let us hear the sound of our minds. Scripted prayer is dead from the moment we have to look on it. A script is all about expectation and conniving. Scripted prayer is a mockery of real prayer and it has no place in our houses of worship, and it certainly has no place in your spiritual life if you actually desire a true experience of the unknown.

Liturgy should be read like a history book. Liturgy is a record of how people may have prayed in the past. In that sense, it can be an inspiration for us. But at no time should one consider reading or memorizing a prayer prayer. If the goal of the spiritual aspirant is to pray, the prayer book needs to be put down and the petitioner or meditator has to inquire directly into their current state of mind and attempt to work out their disharmony with the living God in the moment. This is not possible through a rote memorization of prayer, and in fact becomes more difficult as one’s mind becomes filled with approximations and sketches of other peoples’ prayers. In other words, the more you are clogged with ideas about prayer, the less prayer can actually take place.

I would concede that perhaps there are numbers of people who are simply not able to envision what a prayer would feel like. In these cases, I would have no problem encouraging people to read prayers from others as long as there was the understanding that this was to be read as an inspirational piece of writing, not as a script to be delivered at the moment of encounter with the Divine. God actually will not respond if you are approaching his Holy chamber through the words of another. He really does not respond to incessant mumbling of words that even you yourself do not understand because they are written in a foreign language. Do not underestimate God’s standards in this regard. He only cares about the sincerity of your hearts wisdom. He cares for scripted words only to the degree that they happen to match up with yours. Given that that overlap may only happen once every few months, it seems like a waste of time attempting a God approach in such a rigid manner.

Liturgy needs to stay where it belongs…in the canon of the tradition. It records the vision of masters. Literature is just that, however. Never mistake liturgy for prayer, or you are destined for a life reduced simply to a mimic or actor on a stage. Real prayer can look a lot like any of the number of prayers you have read, but it’s mostly silent and pithy in actual practice. I have never prayed to god in more than one sentence. In fact, many times it is no more than one word: God. Most of the time, prayer is a chaotic rumble of thoughts resolving themselves, and tensions self-liberating themselves through a gentle awareness. If prayer were about getting all the words right, then how can the illiterate man pray, how could the woman left alone with no prayer book call out for help? We all know that prayer is possible at any time, in any situation, for everyone, so why are we so obsessed in institutional settings with this liturgy nonsense? It is because so few religious leaders actually know how to pray they have to entertain people’s inquiries with other peoples’ prayers. Because if people realized that prayer was a natural act that was happening constantly, there would be no incentive to attend church or temple or mosque, and religion would crumble. Great!

Do yourself a favor and try and forget all but the simplest prayers you have read. Try and recreate the environment of the liturgy rather than the actual script. Put yourself there and let the process of prayer unfold naturally. Only then will you be able to compose your own liturgy which may then act as an inspiration for someone else.

Watch your language

I have massive respect for languages, and the range of what those languages can express. I also have massive respect for all aspects of the human experience, from the sacred to the profane as some would say.

Still, I can’t help but feel that a little taste goes a long way. This is not censorship, or anything. If you need to be vulgar, go ahead, just do it with care. The basic feeling is, if you’re re-using the swear words over and over again, that seems to me to be a little uncreative. It gets old, and while I’ve heard everything and I certainly am not going to die from hearing someone say something (unlike second hand or third hand smoke), I don’t necessarily feel good when people around me are using dirty language.

I know I’m opening up a major can of gummy worms on this one, so please feel free to comment.

Either way, the system is this: don’t overuse any word, especially the dirty ones. I guess this is a kind of “moderation” injunction. But it’s also a good system. If you train dirty words into your vocabulary, you may end up speaking them in situations where you shouldn’t, causing your other systems to fail. A question for reflection: Would you say this in front of your 3-year old niece or your 95-year old grandmother? If not, why are you really saying it? For attention? For an easy laugh? Because it’s become so ingrained you don’t even realize it? Or just because? If it’s any of those I would think that training it out of yourself would be a good thing.

It’s ok to use dirty language when quoting someone, but why not use the all-age appropriate “The x-word.”?

Garage and Clicker

My friends, I now have a garage for my vehicle and I have nothing but good reviews.

Still, it presents Pocket Sally with a Pocket Problem…what should I do with the clicker?

System for right now is: keep the clicker in the left pocket of my well fitting coat (this new addition is definitely part of the problem). You say, “Sally, why not keep it in the car?” Well, entering the code to enter the garage is a chore (the buttons require extra hard pressure and sometimes you have to repeat the code). This may be worth it, however, to not have to feel the burdens of another electronic device in my pocket.

The advantages of keeping the clicker in the pocket:

1. You always have a joke/gag device, or a conversation starter.

2. No worrying about entering the code.

3. No losing it somewhere in the car, or somewhere

4. No pressing the button to close the garage. Simply walk away hitting the clicker.

I expect this system to change soon.

Pockets, more

I have a coat that is well fitted, and yet it doesn’t fit when I stuff a lot of stuff in the pockets. Once again, I am forced to face the lack of good systems re: pockets and stuff you carry on you. My pants pockets are already overloaded, and winter is an awkward time to feel uncomfortable. Will the pocket gods every let up?

I refuse the murse one more time. It is THE most tempting thing, but every time I try it, it fails as a system.

This is not a system, but a deep longing for one.

Following-Up When Afraid (By Request)

My system for following up is pretty straightforward. Do it! But what happens when you’re a little anxious or afraid of following-up? Let’s break this down.

Fear is a difficult thing to work with, and perhaps in another post, I’ll speak more directly to that, but in this case I think some clear things can be identified to help one follow-up even though afraid.

First, what are you following-up on? If it’s a job or a relationship situation, then there’s always the fear of rejection, or having to speak a truth that may be particularly hard for the other person to hear. This is a normal fear, and I think part of our responsibility to ourselves is to work (over the course of many years possibly) to be comfortable speaking our truth, even when it means rejection for us, or possible hurt for another. My system is simple, but not easy: Work over time to be more communicative with your truths, your needs, and your own power. This is not a Tony Robbins pep talk blog, this is a system blog, and I think that is the best system for overcoming fear in these situations: Train yourself to honor your needs and communicate your truth. How you work on that individually is laid out in many types of self-help books, and working with a therapist or learning meditation is probably a good place to start this kind of growth work.

If you’re having a hard time following-up in other situations (responding to a casual email, meeting someone for dinner) it seems to me like this would be more an issue of overcoming flakiness than overcoming fear. Maybe being flakey is one way of exercising fear (of becoming your best self?, of having people begin to expect too much of you?, of connection, intimacy?), in which case, I would also say that training over time to work out these kinks in your system is the best system. But if being flaky, is just flakiness, then I enthusiastically recommend embracing the simplicity of System Sally’s injunction: Just follow-up…it’s a great system for having people trust you, and for creating a strong foundation for other systems to work efficiently.

Please let me know in the comments if this was helpful, or if there’s some other angle I’m missing.

Following Up

It is important to follow up on many things. Applying for jobs requires following up. Responding to blog comments requires follow up. Having plans with a person requires a certain amount of follow up.

I owe someone a huge follow up. I let her know in a short direct email, and in person. These types of temporary follow-ups serve to let the person know how deeply you care about whatever is needing follow up, but the current circumstances aren’t allowing the follow up to meet up.

Also, follow up is very similar to responsibility. All my dedicated readers have probably been wanting more insight and systems from System Sally, but I haven’t been able to respond to that need in the way I would have liked. So, the need to maintain and update a blog, for example, is more a responsibility, which is really a constant follow up. A follow up is a short term responsibility.

This is less a system than an explanation of things. But the system is “Be responsible, and follow up where necessary. Do temporary follow-ups where necessary.” The advantages of this are many and include having people trust you, and creating a reliable system-wide system for other systems to work better.