bythemethod.com blog

We’ve just been celebrating the 40th anniversary of a person landing on the moon. I’ve enjoyed watching the programmes and I’m just old enough to remember when it actually happened. There is still something very exciting about seeing it happen and it’s a real testiment to the ability of people to achieve great things when they are motivated enough.

One of the programmes I watched was about the people who walked on the moon. Two things strike me in particular about their experience.

The first is that they are just very ordinary people who still seem a little amazed that they were the ones who got to go to the moon. There was a clip of Neil Armstrong’s parents on a T.V. programme when he had just been picked for the space programme and they were just very ordinary people – like anyone’s mum or dad. You don’t have to be superman to achieve great things.

The next thing came at the end of the programme. The astronauts were speaking about how the moon landings had affected them. Every one of them that were interviewed said something about the spiritual impact of looking back at the earth from such a distance and seeing this small blue disk hanging in a great expanse of black. This had a profound effect on them which even today 40 years after can bring tears to the eyes of an astronaut. It took that distance to make them think bigger than they normally did. At a moment when technology had given them the chance to walk on another world, and at a moment when they were surrounded by technology to keep them alive, and at a moment when we might suppose they would think about the brilliance of mankind, they thought of God.

So I want to encourage you to think bigger. Try to see beyond the obious stuff of life and see the bigger picture. Why not get a picture of the earth from a distance and spend time thinking about the bigger picture of life.

There is a tendency at the moment to see the “self” as something bad, after all self is part of the word selfishness and we know what kind of bad things stem from being selfish. Various forms of religions/world views offer us an understanding of what the self is and its importance.

There are three broad strands of thinking in spiritual terms when it comes to thinking about the self.

The first of these is the idea that god is impersonal and so the self does not exist or is essentially something to escape from. We see this idea in many of the ancient faiths of the east and in much of the so called New Age movement. Buddha, for instance, saw his greatest moment of spiritual achievement as being released from the self. As Buddha himself once put it: ““Life is suffering.” This turns the self into something to escape from and so in spiritual terms we need to be released from the self if we are to achieve wholeness. Happiness and enjoyment and success are alien to this way of thinking because they are things that concern the self.

The next is the atheistic approach. We see this in many of the philosophies of the early to mid part of the 20th century. Here the self is whatever we choose it to be. We can decide for ourselves what we want to be or where we find wholeness. In much atheistic literature we read that there are no limits for the self at all. However if we try to find a purpose or meaning in life then we discover ultimately that there is none. This approach truly does lead to selfishness and it can do no other. Ideals of getting benefits from helping others will in the end come down to the benefit to yourself in doing this.

The third approach comes from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths where God is viewed in a personal, even intimate, way. Here the self is a created being who finds purpose and meaning within the purposes of God. God who is working to make right a world gone wrong gives meaning and purpose to those who will help him. Yes the self can become selfish but that is not a part of the approach to spirituality that we talk about but is part of the broken world God is trying to mend. Here we find our purpose and reason for being in following God. Within this view of spirituality the self is important but the self is also part of the whole that works towards the building of a kingdom of God.

It is, of course, up to you where you want to seek your spirituality but it’s the latter of the three approaches that makes the most sense to me.

There have been many models of change over the years and they all seem to offer something different. More recently a model has come to the fore known as TTM or Transtheoretical Model. It’s used in the treatment of addiction. This model offers us a way that anyone can use to make changes in their life.

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Here is a list of 100 things you could do to make yourself happy. The list has been compiled from research undertaken by scientists – so this isn’t just opinion.

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