Finding Hope in the
Face of Difficulty
I met a man recently who found out that his best friend had been sleeping with his wife for the past 10 years. That's not just betrayal, that's double betrayal! Just as Jesus suffered his betrayal with spikes driven through his hands and feet, the man experiencing betrayal from his friend and his wife suffered an invisible spike driven through his heart. One thing we all have in common with Good Friday is the experience of betrayal and setbacks. Yet these betrayals have within them, evolutionary life lessons that can, according to Mary Manin Morrissey, either crush us or change us. She will be sharing her story at Seaside Church in Encinitas this month (info at end of article.) Reverend Christian Sorensen of Seaside Church says, “Mary is a giant in the New Thought movement. She has an uncanny ability to bring people together for greater good. She has a global perspective that people really enjoy hearing. She has worked with Nelson Mandela, his Holiness the Dalai Lama, and many ground breakers in New Thought. ”
Betrayal, disappointment, and setbacks are all amazingly inconvenient as we try to organize and control our lives into a smooth velvet ride on this pot-hole filled road of life. We have come to expect that we somehow deserve to miss all those pot-holes in our human experience. Yet, we get easily irritated when we hit a big one, when tragedy strikes, or when a major crisis occurs. But why? Could things get any worse than having to face a mob of angry Roman soldiers with hammers and spikes? Of course they could.
Life's little surprises should not really be all that surprising if you are truly embracing this wild ride we call a “human experience.” Just ask Mary Manin Morrissey. This gal understands disappointment, betrayal, and those painful learning opportunities like you wouldn't believe! Riding the wave of a successful career as an author, minister, and spiritual leader in New Thought, Mary Manin Morrissey is in the midst of financial and personal challenges. Even so, she is steadfast in her message. She says “You've either been there, you are there, or you're going there, or… you know somebody who is there.” In other words, if we didn't get to experience betrayals and disappointments in our lives we would be missing out on the full human experience!
Steve Dahl: Mary, how do you describe yourself and the mission you've been on in recent years?
Mary Manin Morrissey: Part of my mission is to mainstream new thought. New thought is the flowering of the world's religions. It synthesizes the core teachings of all the major world's religions. It becomes the jewel point of all the great traditions. Because at the core and center of all religions, regardless of the dogma or the clothing that that particular tradition wears, the mystical part of the traditions still permeates one teaching. New Thought flowered in the 1850s and it taught the idea that Jesus was the great example, rather than the great exception.
Some would say that for thousands of years, traditional religions have really been the catalyst or cause of many of our wars.
I think that it is the practice of the religion rather than the religion itself. The mystical part of any tradition is the very core of it. As we look at different human beings we can disagree about skin color, we can disagree about clothing, we can disagree about our values, but we all drink the same water, we all breathe the same air and we all walk the same earth. Yet, every religion has sent its roots down into the same underground stream. And so, it depends on where you are on the tree of that religion, as to whether it becomes a motivator or a separation. And it can be economics! There are people today that believe big business is doing as much to disintegrate connections as anything! Throughout history religions have been politically powerful. But today we have a different kind of power, we have capitalism. It doesn't go and attack in Africa when there are human atrocities being done; instead it goes to Iraq because there's oil in Iraq.
So is there a place for spirituality in capitalism?
Absolutely? But it brings with it the mandate for what's called the triple-bottom line versus a simple-bottom line. You see we have an immature idea of what true capitalism is. We think that true capitalism has to do with making a profit that is measured only in dollars. It's that kind of profit that his Holiness, the Dalai Lama speaks of when he speaks of the triple-bottom line. He says it must be profitable not only in economic standards, such as dollars, but it must be profitable in human values both for the people who are working for the company providing the service as well as for the people who are receiving it. It must have a profit in human values and it must also have an environmental profit. It must be sustainable for the earth. When you meet those three standards then it truly is a spiritual enterprise.
So what are some of the core beliefs that have made you and your teaching so popular?
I don't think they are my core beliefs as much as I practice the beliefs that you will find at the core of New Thought churches and at the core of all the traditions. It says in the bible, “All things work together for good for those who love God.” And that would be a core teaching or principle that I practice. This is the good that is beyond our understanding. It's difficult when you are diagnosed with cancer or the company or church you served went bankrupt. It's hard to call that in and of itself good but held in context versus the content of the situation it may be just that. All of us know people who have had a diagnosis of cancer, who with enough time will say, “This is the best thing that ever happened to me,” simply because of deeper truths and greater realizations that occur even in situations that we would choose to avoid. It is my relationship with this understanding that attracts people to hear me or get involved with the work I've done.
In your first book Building Your Field of Dreams, you said, “When we remember and acknowledge who we are we begin to treat others and ourselves in more loving ways.” What do you mean by “Remembering who we are?”
When we come into this life called the human experience, we move through a forgetting process and we forget that we are eternal souls having a human experience. We begin to believe that we are our human story. We forget our real identity and we begin to identify with our body or our past, our education, with the role that we play. We think that that is us. For most people it takes some sort of spiritual crisis before there is a breakthrough from that myth identity or misidentification to a sense of, “Oh, I have a body but I am not my body, I have thoughts but I can choose which thoughts I will have. I have emotions but I am not those feelings. The “I” that is… “I” did not begin with this human birth and “I” does not end with this human death. In the bible it says you become a new preacher in Christ. Christ is a kind of consciousness, if you're a Buddhist you would call it Buddha consciousness, it's a way of being and operating. So when you have this awareness, everything changes. It's not that the world changes but you see everything differently because you are seeing differently. So when we remember ourselves we begin to treat ourselves and others with more respect because we know who we are.
Barbara Marx Hubbard talks about a conscious evolution she believes is putting us on the edge of something incredible. She thinks we're finally going to get it. How is this evolution thing going? Is it getting worse? Is it getting better?
I think it's both! I think it's getting worse and better, both at the same time. We're in a polarizing moment. Everything is getting amplified. So it's getting worse on one side of the scale and getting better on the other. Even look at the country during the last elections. It was red and the edges were blue. We're definitely polarizing. It was almost 50/50 on all fronts. We're losing the middle class right now. We're getting more poor people and more rich people. It really has to do with where our attention is.
What advice do you have for us as we watch all of this craziness in the media? How should we perceive our world in the midst of all of this?
Well I think it's important to keep some sense of balance. In New Thought we've tended to look for a Good that didn't include the Bad. This is another relative good, when I say “All things work together for good,” in this world you can't have a win without a loss; you can't have a game without a loser or an up without a down because we're in this world of duality. For each one of us, as we look at our daily lives, our role is for us to practice as an enterprise ourselves. It's not just Nike or Microsoft or the U.S. Government which are enterprises, every individual is also an enterprise. And how you deal with all of the different materialities of your life; your relationships, your finances, the way you drive down the road, impacts the triple-bottom line. I'm here to make my contribution and receive my contribution of the full human experience. So when we are in full partnership it means that we are participating in that triple-bottom line and bringing our full gifts in such a way that it is sustainable financially, it is contributing to human life, and it is also contributing to the sustainability of the other forms of life including our planet.
Some people might say that your faith is being tested by some of the challenges you've been facing in Oregon State. Do you want to share anything about that?
I can share a little of it, but I will share more in my talk. The Living Enrichment Center bought a very large piece of property and we were stretched financially. Due to some zoning changes the value of the property was decreased by millions of dollars. The refinancing we badly needed was not able to be acquired due to these issues. So my faith was not only tested but it was deepened. It's been a great failure, disappointment, and hurt. And all the human emotions that come with that. In the midst of this I remembered it was Carlos Castaneda that said, “The true warrior never chooses pain but when pain comes, he learns from it.” I would not have consciously chosen the circumstances that I find myself in or have been facing. Given that they are in my life, I am using them in the best way I can. I am using them to take me deeper spiritually and to make stronger what I've practiced for many years.
So what has Mary learned about herself in this process?
In Exodus, God gives Moses three promises. He doesn't say there won't be dark days. In fact Jesus later said “In this world there will be tribulation but be in good cheer for I have overcome this world.” So I have got to take heart in the promises that I find in the scripture I've studied for 30 years. God doesn't say to Moses “When I take you into the desert you are not going to have a tough time.” But rather, when God told Moses to go into the wilderness, he said, “I give you three promises. Number one, I will be with you. Number two, I will guide you. And number three, you will be changed.”
I have taken those three promises to the wilderness that I have been in and I have seen God work with me even in the midst of horrific times. God has not been absent from my experience. In fact my realization of the presence of God has deepened and expanded. I feel that I am being guided each and every day. I'm learning a whole different depth of the spiritual practice I've been involved in for many years. And I have changed! My values are being deepened and I feel that I am maturing in my understanding in the faith that I've practiced ever since my first awakening in 1971.
What advice do you have for others who feel they are facing insurmountable challenges?
Well first of all don't try to solve all your life's problems today! Do one thing at a time. And seek to take care of yourself in the process. You cannot make good decisions if you have not found a way to continue some basic self care. In every hurricane there is an eye. Don't stay on the edges, move back to the center. You can move through anything if you stay in the center. And the center is always in the presence of this day.
In the midst of all of your challenges did you ever feel like all this lovey-dovey spiritual stuff was just not working?
In this human life every one of us is constantly maturing. Barbara Hubbard talks about this evolutionary process. When we move this next turn on the spiral of evolution it's not the last turn it's just the next turn. Not only as the collective but for the individual. When we are confronted with circumstances that are bigger than your wherewithal to handle, you are in an evolutionary turn. And you either get bigger or you get crushed. And by getting bigger it means you lean into something that is greater than your own understanding of who you are and what you are about. I believe that my understanding of New Thought, in some regard, even as successful as I was as a minister and a teacher, had some immaturities to it. So my process has been to evolve for myself a deeper understanding of the whole story.
What do you think people can expect to learn or experience when they hear you speak at Seaside Church on Good Friday?
When Jesus spent a moment in the garden just before the trial and crucifixion, it seemed his whole world was falling apart. I hope people will see that in the story of Jesus, his garden experience is a model for our own lives. When your whole world is falling apart and you don't know what to do, it's in that moment that you make a decision about how you will be as you go through that experience. It's very powerful. This is truly a story of how each of us is to master our own understanding and to become the masters that we are in this world.
We will all have betrayal in this human experience yet the Good Friday story is the story of great hope in the face of steep difficulty. Every one of us logs time in that wilderness experience in this human life. You've either been there, you are there, or you're going there, or… you know somebody who is there. And so, as we join together and share a Good Friday, it will not only be inspirational it will be practical.
Is there any one thing that no one knows about Mary Manin Morrissey you would like to share with us?
Yes! That I look so young and have seven grandchildren!
Mary Manin Morrissey's most recent book is No Less Than Greatness (Bantam). Her website is www.FriendsofMary.com. She will be appearing at Seaside Church, Friday March 25th at 7pm. Advance reservations are strongly recommended. Seats are $20 in advance, and $25 at the door. Call Seaside at (760) 753-5786 ext. 3. Seaside Church is located at 1613 Lake Drive, Encinitas, CA, 92024. Visit: www.seasidechurch.org.
Steve Dahl is a business strategist, speaker, organization development consultant, and freelance writer in Carlsbad. He can be reached at (760) 804-6271. See also www.wisdomcircles.com.
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