This Week’s Quotation:

Human civilization is largely built around the assumption of victimhood and the attempt to change the experience of victimhood to the experience of being happy consumers. We have structures of commerce, government, and religion, and even spiritual paths that are based in turning ourselves into happy consumers, perhaps even happy consumers of the gifts of God. The problem is that this approach, while so widespread and seemingly so logical, denies who we are as Creator Beings. It omits the role that individuals have in creating their world. It omits the role that we, as humanity, have in creating the world.

Becoming a Sun p. 114

From Victimhood to Creatorship

Spirituality seems so promising. And so logical. Perhaps if we take it in, it will make us happy and content when all else fails. Connect spiritually so you can have more peace and joy in your life. Who wouldn’t want that?

You might even read the subtitle to my book to mean that I am attempting to make happy consumers out of my readers: Emotional and Spiritual Intelligence for a Happy, Fulfilling Life.

The quote above from my book—in a chapter titled Flipping the Switch—calls out a seemingly subtle distinction between a practical, empowering spirituality and a weak one that disempowers anyone who follows it. It is the difference between knowing oneself as a creator vs. experiencing oneself as a consumer.

At the mundane level of things, of course, we both create and consume. But at a spiritual level, the great joy in life is creating—creating friendship, works of art, projects, families, and so much more. And creation is a dynamic flow of energy at many levels.

The truth is that our relationship with the invisible reality of Being we sometimes call God is not just a matter of consuming God’s love or enjoying the beneficence of the Divine. It is a relationship of giving and receiving. It is a reciprocal relationship in which we can receive love and then love back; a relationship where we get to pay love forward. It is a shared creatorship.

Speaking of Emotional and Spiritual Intelligence for a Happy, Fulfilling Life, here’s an essential piece of intelligence you have probably discovered: As human beings, we can’t consume enough of anything to make us happy. Not even love. And not even from God.

Here is what we can do. We can be in the flow of love in which there is both giving and receiving.

So let’s be happy. Let’s create. Let’s move in the flow of creation.

What does it mean to become a sun?

Every human being is already a sun on the inside—a being of intense love and light. The difference is that some people have the vision and courage to become a sun on the outside. This difference is our human destiny.