The Gold Standard

At the gym this morning I was watching an informercial on "six-pack abs". Having been a personal trainer in a fitness center, I wondered: when did "six-pack abs" become the "gold standard of physical fitness? When I was a scrawny kid in elementary school the national gold standard was The Presidential Physical Fitness Award which I never won. But it was the local gold standard that mattered more to me since this was the prize in the eyes of my peers. This involved climbing ropes suspended from the gym ceiling, climbing up from the floor to the ceiling. I struggled all through elementary school to make this great achievement, watching other athletic kids scramble up and down while I just hung there trying to figure out how to make this rope climbing thing work. I can still hear the strains of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" in my mind. It wasn't until late in the 6th grade that I actually made it all the way to the top. But --- to my horror instead of proud satisfaction, I looked down from this unnatural and dizzying height wondering about the newly discovered "other side" of this "ropes" paradox: now, how do I get down?

Somehow I did. It didn't take me years, but only minutes. I decided then that there might be other gold standards I could aspire to, so I went into a life of Art instead of Sports. 25 years later I was a personal trainer in a fitness center training folks to climb "fourteeners".

Today, in science, the gold standard is not "results" like six-pack abs nor information in infomercials. (And besides, did it ever occur to you that those fitness models pictured in the ads had the abs BEFORE they had the program or device claiming it bestowed perfect abs on them?) The gold standard in science is the double-blind (placebo) peer-reviewed journal published experiment. In science, failure is as illuminating as is success. As many experiments are constructed in order to "disprove" an hypothesis as there are those designed to "prove" one. A genuine scientist does not go to television and its "results" for his or her best data but to the scientific community.
This all made me wonder, "What is the gold standard of Scientific Spirituality?" For me, the word "scientific" means that I cannot entirely discount the role of intellect or reason in the unfolding of my understanding. I read books. Reading is not just about awareness. My awareness alone doesn't read the book, reason is involved and acting. My trained intellect interprets the books I read as I read them, but I am aware that my reason is always overshadowed and foreshadowed by my intuition which is listening and watching and waiting to insert itself at unexpected and surprising moments. What is the genuine interpolation (insertion) of intuition and what is spurious? How is the spiritual fact discerned unless its meaning bestowing power enlightens reason which unfolds from "faith" (doubt) to "understanding." When an understanding unfolds, a doubt is put permanently behind me.

"Faith" is the rear guard of reason, that is, it is the commitment I myself make to the Truth of Being as my primary fact. It is also my goal of living to live freely the I am that I am. For my reason to become "correct" my intuition must be "clear". Science is a standard which includes both --clear AND correct. Divine Mind speaks the language, the dialect or dialectic of my own understanding; it is recognition and acknowledgement, insight and intellect functioning in unison (harmony). I cannot make sense of Reality or Truth in any other way. So "faith" is a promise I make to myself and I myself keep. Just like "six pack abs".

When I discover that I have been had by the infomercials and realize that my closet full of fgadgets, formulas, packages, programs, recipes, mantras, and rituals will never produce "results" unless I produce them, if I am not committed to myself, The Whole, then I will not see my way clearly enough to follow it. Becoming aware as God-- as Being fully aware of Itself alone I feel the built-in Reason for reason. This Insight or Light within me enables my reason to steer my own inner tendency of "projecting". When I am into a not possible project of becoming that which I can never be, giving all my energy to making it seem so, my intuition deserts me. I may gain the world but I forfeit the Soul. Suffering tells me I cannot get "there" without all of me --imagination or reason to make sense of my experience and intuition or insight - which alone satisfies reason. Considering a bird flying, which wing can it do without?

Talking the talk, walking the walk, are no longer standards of spirituality --- flying is.

"Mind must have conscious identity to be Mind. This is the Reason for man and is the Principle by which he lives, moves, breathes. Originality, wit, humor, versatility, spontaneity, joy are characteristics of Mind. They are Mind Itself and not mere qualities. The substance of Mind is Spirit, and Spirit is Love and Love is Infinity—omnipresent perfection. “Being is infinity, freedom, harmony and boundless bliss. This is the Science and the Reason we say, “Be and by being heal the sick." --Bicknell Young

"You are radically relying on Truth when you believe only what you find within yourself as understanding. The night of dualism is far spent. We are learning to know ourselves and to demonstrate the human and divine coincidence as the individual perception of Truth. This is the reason for the writing, as well as the reading, of this book. When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears. All doctrine and dogma for the identity of Truth are constantly being outmoded by Truth unfolding form the withinness of consciousness. The evolution of consciousness does make the dogma wrong for the identity of Truth in the age in which it appeared, but makes it obsolete for the succeeding age. Consciousness or conscious (37) being is Mind—a ceaseless disclosing of Reality. This is the Reason that I am. In an earlier age Meister Eckhart said it this way: “Everything that is has the fact of its being through being and from being.” Being is ceaseless awakening to Reality. It is the discovery that nothing exits external to our being, either to gain or lose.
Mrs. Eddy was not the first to identify Mind as the ordering Principle of the Universe, original and individual. Plato regarded Mind as including the forms, the universal ideas which are the Reality (structure) of all things. He, however, considered Mind transcendental, and its ideas as ideals separate from sense phenomena. What made Mrs. Eddy’s vision unique was her recognition of the indivisibility of consciousness and her identification of Mind as the all-pervading substance or energy which constitutes existence. “One infinite God (Mind, Good) unifies men and nations constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars;" --Margaret Laird

Today -- healing is no longer the gold standard of scientific metaphysics and mysticism. Stopping wars is.