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GET READY SPIRITUALLY

Great persons are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force.

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Many people define success in terms of their material possessions. To be successful is to own a large, expensive home, with swimming pool, hot tub, and an entertainment center fit for captivating royalty. Add to that a vacation home by the shore, a luxury yacht, and two or three automobiles, including a high-powered sports car, a luxury sedan, and perhaps an upscale sport-utility van. Not many people can rise to such heights of affluence, but these artifacts populate the dreams of millions. It’s all right to dream of these things, and it’s all right to acquire them if your dreams take you that far.

THE GREATEST MAN WAS THE POOREST

But you won’t find true happiness in these material possessions alone. And success is an empty attainment if it doesn’t bring happiness.

Elvis Presley is an example of someone who had it all: a fine mansion, every luxury money could buy, and the adulation of millions. He was so saturated with money that he could buy a luxury car for a total stranger as a gesture of generosity. Yet, in the end, he died in despair.

In contrast, as Ralph Waldo Emerson points out, “The greatest man in history was the poorest.” Though Jesus Christ had no home of his own, few material possessions beyond the clothes he wore, and no army or workforce at his command, he was able to proclaim success on the eve of his trial and execution: “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

Despite his material poverty, Jesus had created a spiritual legacy that would transform the world and result in immeasurable joy for himself and those who followed him—even in the midst of suffering. Elvis Presley's tragic end was not the result of an evil life. He brought pleasure to millions, and millions yet unborn will probably enjoy his music and his movies. But his life was lacking in its spiritual dimension.

INSPIRATION ENTERS THROUGH THE SPIRITUAL SIDE

The spiritual dimension is that which touches the core of your being. You gain access to it through the intuitive right side of your brain. When you have spiritual balance, you are open to inspiration—that mysterious source of creativity that lies behind every great accomplishment.

“The great decisions of human life have, as a rule, far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness,” wrote Carl Jung, the renowned psychiatrist. Jung explains:

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.

George Santayana, the Spanish-born writer and philosopher, phrased it more poetically:

It is not wisdom to be only wise,
And on the inward vision close the eyes,
But it is wisdom to believe the heart,
Columbus found a world, and had no chart,
Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;
To trust the soul’s invincible surmise
Was all his science and his only art.

In other words, it was faith in an inward vision that enabled Columbus to discover America, and not cold, calculated logic. Columbus, after all, didn’t know where he was going when he started out, didn’t know where he was when he got there, and didn’t know where he had been when he returned. But he followed his “invincible surmise” that the earth was round and became an indelible part of history.

Einstein’s Spiritual Side

My spirituality is founded on my firm belief in the teachings of my Lord, Jesus Christ. Some, though, feel that you don’t have to be deeply involved in religion to be a spiritual person.

Albert Einstein was not a religious person in the usual sense of the word, but he was deeply spiritual. As he put it:

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men.

To be spiritually balanced is to experience a level of joy and satisfaction that is unimaginable to those who think only in material terms. As philosopher Bertrand Russell observed, people who live only in the world of logic “know too much and feel too little. At least we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.”

Such people, wrote Emerson, are like scientists who comprehend only the scientific aspects of growing things and “love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, and all their botany is Latin names.” Emerson brilliantly captures the difference between a spiritual-minded and a strictly materialistic-minded person:

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world bums and sparkles with light.

To launch your actions toward true success, you need to tap into these wells of inspiration that can set your world on fire and make it sparkle with light.

SUGGESTIONS FOR ACHIEVING SPIRITUAL BALANCE

Here are some suggestions for achieving the spiritual balance that makes it all possible:

Value Intangibles

That’s another way of saying “Stop and smell the roses.” Remember that tangibles such as money and property are not truly ends, but are only means toward an end. As Santayana noted, “Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.”

When your goal in life is true happiness, then money becomes incidental to your central purpose. It isn’t totally irrelevant—it’s hard to be happy while you’re living in poverty—but wealth has never been synonymous with happiness. Many people have made wealth their central object in life and have accumulated money and possessions beyond their wildest dreams only to find their personal lives in wreckage. A full vault is poor compensation for an empty life.

Einstein maintained that the great technical strides of mankind are meaningless apart from their effects on the human conditions. He wrote:

Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors . . . in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

Among the intangibles we can value are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. These are the nine biblical “fruits of the spirit” that, when cultivated, can bring pleasure and fulfillment to life. And fulfillment, for me, is eternally more satisfying than mere happiness.

Cultivate a Sense of Wonderment

“Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them,” wrote philosopher Immanuel Kant: “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

There’s nothing so awe-inspiring as the sky on a clear, smog-free night. Oscar Hammerstein, the great Broadway lyricist, called it “a dark blue curtain ... pinned by the stars to the sky,” and numbered it among “100 million miracles.” His estimate is conservative. We can see about five thousand stars with the naked eye, but they exist by the trillions. Our middle-sized galaxy, the Milky Way, contains one hundred billion of them, and the universe contains billions of galaxies. Most of those stars are at least as large as our sun, and many are much larger. Each of them glows with the energy of billions of thermonu-clear explosions. When we look at the heavens and contemplate the enormity of what is out there, we can’t help but feel awe, a sense that we’re a part of something much greater than ourselves.

The grandeur of mountains, the vastness of the sea, the exquisite geometry of a snowflake, and the incredible complexity of a living cell can all provide us with a sense of wonderment. Even everyday objects, when viewed through the spirit, can inspire wonder. As Walt Whitman put it, “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” Contemplate these things, and you’ll nourish your spiritual dimension.

Ask Fundamental Questions

Did the universe begin with a “big bang”? If so, was it planned or did it occur by accident? And what happened before the big bang? If the universe is constantly expanding, will it eventually contract? And if it does, will time run backward? If there were only one object in creation, could it move? What would it be like to travel at the speed of light?

Fundamental questions such as these provided the starting points for Einstein’s mental exploration of the nature of time and space. One of the questions he asked was “Why don’t we feel gravity when we fall?” Ask such questions, not necessarily with the idea of corning up with scientifically correct answers, but for the purpose of expanding your mind into the awe-inspiring reaches of reality.

Turn Your Imagination Loose

“The debt we owe to imagination is incalculable,” wrote Carl Jung. When we enter the world of fantasy, we set our minds free from the constraints of what is possible. Thus freed, they can transport us into the land where dreams come true, and can even show us how to make the dreams come true.

Cultivate a Sense of Place in Time

“People who grow up without a sense of how yesterday has affected today are unlikely to have a strong sense of how today affects tomorrow,” wrote Lynne V. Cheney. “It is only when we become conscious of the flow of time that the consequences of action—whether it is taking drugs or dropping out of school—become a consideration. It is only when we have perspective on our lives that motives besides immediate gratification can come into play.”²

Spiritually balanced people don’t live in the past, but they are aware of their place in the flow of time, and cultivate an appreciation for the contributions the past has made to the present. Contemplating the endless span of time also fills us with a sense of awe. The question of where we came from and how we got here has intrigued thinking people for millennia, and has inspired some of the most breathtaking leaps of insight.

Accumulate Good Memories

“There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home,” wrote Feodor Dostoevsky, the great Russian writer. “If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if we have only one good memory left in our hearts, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”

The way to accumulate good memories is to dream toward the future, act in harmony with the dream, and savor the fulfillment. The good moments of the present are the good memories you will carry into your future.

Pursue Happiness

Happiness comes to those who go after it. “Make up your mind to be happy,” was one of the daily dozen items in Robert Louis Stevenson’s personal creed. And, as Abraham Lincoln observed, “Any man can be just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be.” Playwright George Bernard Shaw found happiness by living life to its fullest. “I rejoice in life for its own sake,” he wrote. “Life is no brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it to future generations.”

Happiness is something you can obtain by helping others to become happy. A brokerage house may seem like an unlikely place for this philosophy to emerge, but Judith Resnick, chairman and CEO of Dabney/Resnick & Wagner Inc., of Los Angeles has made it a part of her corporate culture. “If you can get your employees to play well with each other, share their toys, remember the golden rule, you’ll be okay,” she told an interviewer.

Involve Yourself in the Arts

Poetry, music, literature, sculpture, painting, and dance are all forms of expression that spring from the human spirit. They speak to something deep inside us. Each is the product of inspiration and each in turn has the power to inspire us.

Keep a Positive, Open Mind

“The bigoted, the narrow-minded, the stubborn, and the perpetually optimistic have all stopped learning,” wrote Bill Crosby in his book Quality Is Free.

We obtain spiritual strength by reaching out to understand our fellow humans. Love is the most positive force on earth, and each of us can cultivate it. How can we cultivate love toward those whom we instinctively dislike or resent? By “faking it till we make it.” If you practice the principle of love, you will soon find your feelings taking their cue from your actions.

You also cultivate love by banishing hatred. Hatred is the most destructive force on earth. It does the most damage to those who harbor it. “Hating people,” said Harry Emerson Fosdick, “is like burning your house down to get rid of a rat.”

Stay Young

You don’t do this with facelifts, magic potions, and fountains of youth. Youth is an inner quality, not an external one. As Samuel Ullman puts it:

Youth is not a time of life; it’s a state of mind; it is not a matter
of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the
will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is
the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long you are young.

LOOK BEYOND THE ARTIFACTS

Sometimes, in this materialistic world, we lose sight of the spiritual side of our natures. We build our lives around the artifacts that bring us convenience: refrigerators, microwave ovens, central air conditioning, automatic garage-door openers, automatic transmissions, automatic door locks, computers, video games, and VCRs.

Sometimes, amid the pace of change, we lose our spiritual perspective. How do we regain it? Start with the fact that the verities we salute so reverently today are mists in the night, wisps fated to dissipate before winds of planned obsolescence. Today’s young people will live for a while in the world of their elders, which is already like none that has existed before. They will change it dramatically into their world, for the distinguishing feature of the twentieth century has been rapid change and impermanence.

In the preceding century, the sum total of a parent’s knowledge could be passed on to son or daughter with the reasonable expectation that it would be useful and relevant. The values and morals held by the preceding generation would hold up for the succeeding age.

Today, the frontier of knowledge moves so rapidly that yesterday is obsolete before it becomes a memory. Today’s pearls of wisdom are tomorrow’s outdated concepts. Today’s social environment is tomorrow’s old-fashioned society. Today’s behavioral standards are tomorrow’s outmoded morality. Today’s Madonna is tomorrow’s Rosemary Clooney.

And so I offer these observations to put things in perspective:

• Happiness is not the same thing as having a ball. Life is a series of highs and lows, and the measure of happiness is the plateau that lies between them. People who make fun their goal in life may end up having a ball but being miserable in the process. True happiness comes with the feeling of being at harmony with self, with God, and with fellow humans.
• Machines are the artifacts of our culture, and should not be mistaken for its substance. Machines make life more convenient and often more fun, but the mind that becomes overly absorbed in gadgets may lose out on many of the pleasures that enrich the human experience. Music, poetry, drama, dance, comedy, have all benefited from the technical progress of mankind. The piano, the electric keyboard, the stereo system, movies, television, and other technical artifacts have enhanced our enjoyment of these arts. But music, literature, and drama are not the products of machines. They are the products of the human mind, connected to other human minds by centuries of accumulated knowledge.
     To know the operation of a machine is good, but that knowledge is like a dangling, disconnected wire unless it is accompanied by a knowledge of the historical, philosophical, and intellectual processes that have brought us to the machine.
     The people who lived before us were not less intelligent than we; they simply lacked the fund of knowledge that we inherited. The Neanderthal man couldn’t build a car, because he didn’t have the tools to make it. So he started inventing the tools so that we could build automobiles.
     Learn about automobiles—and about hardware and software and microchips, if these terms are still relevant to the technology of your age. But learn also about Alexander, the Greek general who wept because there were no more worlds to conquer, and Cincinnatus, the Roman general who sought nothing more than the peace and contentment of his farm after he had saved Rome from invaders. Learn about Chang An, which was the capital of a great empire in China when Rome was a rural village, and Carthage, the city that challenged Rome for supremacy and was reduced to a barren wasteland. Learn about Jefferson, the prophet of freedom, and Marx, the progenitor of tyranny; about Homer and Virgil, Shakespeare and Wordsworth, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Dante and Milton. And learn about Ptolemy, Bacon, Newton, and Einstein, who slowly built up the concept of the universe on which the latest technology rests, and who did it with the most sophisticated tool of all—the human brain, aided by artifacts scarcely more complex than pen and paper.
• The last shall be first and the first shall be last. You will be taught, as you pursue higher education, or as you progress in your chosen calling, how to look out for your own interests and to pursue opportunities aggressively. But even more important is knowing when to sacrifice your own interests for the good of others. People who invariably put themselves first will find that others tend to put them last, and they will end up as lonely failures.

TWO GREAT PREACHERS

If you have studied English literature, you know of John Donne, the great seventeenth-century poet and preacher. I would like to share with you the wisdom of Donne and of one other great preacher whose words will ring with eloquence and relevance long after today’s media and entertainment idols have been ignored as cultural oddities. Donne wrote:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The other preacher, the greatest one of them all, condensed into fifteen words—in the English translation—the best formula yet advanced for human peace and happiness: “As ye would that men do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”

These truths do not change. They were valid when your grandparents lived and their parents before them. They will not be rendered obsolete by advancing knowledge of this waning century and the one emerging. As guides to future happiness, their value exceeds that of anything that has emerged from the laboratories of Silicon Valley, the studios of Hollywood, or the lecture halls of MIT. In an age in which most things that glitter are plastic, they are nuggets of gold. Treasure them.