What if just ten words could change your life - and the world - for the better?
They can!
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book,
TEN WORDS: AN INTERSPIRITUAL GUIDE TO BECOMING BETTER PEOPLE IN A BETTER WORLD
On sale October 1 on Amazon and all your favorite booksellers
Each one of us must make his own true way,
and when we do, that way will express the universal way. - Shunryu Suzuki
The young woman in front of me was in tears. Sitting on the edge of her chair, she twisted the hem of her dress anxiously as she spoke.
“The world is such a mess,” she cried. “I just don’t understand why we just can’t get it right. What can we do—what can I do—to make it better?”
She is not alone. Many of us feel this way. I, too, have had many teary days and sleepless nights wondering how we got ourselves into this situation and what we can possibly do to get ourselves out of it. As an ordained Interfaith/Interspiritual minister, chaplain and spiritual counselor, I daily encounter people of all ages who are desperately asking these same questions...and coming up short.
It’s not hard to feel overwhelmed today. We are surrounded with political upheavals, war, poverty, oppression, disease, inequality, injustice, and environmental destruction. And that’s just what we see or experience in the external world. Our inner worlds are equally as painful: many of us suffer from depression, anxiety, fear, rage, despair, and grief. We are confused; we seek answers. How can we heal ourselves and the world around us? How can we be better people in a better world?
None of this is new. From time immemorial, people have struggled to be better people in a better world and looked for guidance. Some looked to religion, mythology, divination, or philosophy, and more recently to psychology, science, politics, and economics. These days, the internet is filled with suggestion from all corners, and then some.
Many of these give us partial answers at best or feel-good Band-Aids at worst: we can meditate, we can protest, we can pray, do our yoga, change our light bulbs and our diet, or we can look to God or science to save us. While some of these are useful, most are singular solutions and don’t get us to all the way to what we really seek—a world where everything and everyone truly thrives. What we really need is a complete, simple set of guidelines that combines the best of what we know to help us become better people in a better world, today. We need a map.
What we really need is a complete, simple set of guidelines that combines the best of what we know to help us become better people in a better world, today. We need a map.
Where can we find that map? For thousands of years, the traditional spiritual paths have been the antidote to fear, suffering, and confusion in an uncertain world, and they are straightforward. Indigenous traditions have their beliefs and methods, Abrahamic faiths, theirs, and Eastern religions, theirs.
Each of these have time-tested practices, teachings, and teachers that, if followed faithfully, can indeed lead to living lives of happiness, peace, joy, and genuine spiritual insight and connection. After all, at their heart, all wisdom paths are asking those same Big Three Questions: Who am I? What is going on here? And how am I supposed to live in relationship to that? It’s just that the answers can vary.
At the same time, many of these paths have become institutionalized and exclusive. For some of us, a singular tradition feels limiting, stifling, or even traumatizing. Many have left the religions of their birth, never to return. Others have sought to combine them with less restrictive or more appealing traditions. As a result, we have largely become an interfaith, interreligious, multi-belonging world. We are Christians who practice yoga, Jews who sit in Zen meditation, Buddhists who participate in indigenous ceremony, Muslims who attend sound healings, and atheists who practice Forest Bathing. Yet, many of us still aren’t finding what we are looking for. Why are we not finding it? What’s missing?
Many of us still aren’t finding what we are looking for. Why are we not finding it? What’s missing?
In his 1999 book, The Mystic Heart: Discovering Universal Spiritual- ity in the World’s Religions, Brother Wayne Teasdale, a Christian/Hindu monk, coined the term “Interspiritual” to express an understanding of the common roots of all religion and spiritual knowledge, or what is sometimes called The Perennial Wisdom. For Brother Wayne, Interspirituality was what modern seekers truly sought: a spiritual path that recognized a mystical truth that transcended the boundaries of institutionalized religion and, at the same time, acknowledged our common spiritual heritage.
The great teachers and teachings of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and the Indigenous traditions all offer remarkably similar guidelines and practices to help us navigate the pain and suffering we experience individually and collectively. Each, in their own ways, teaches us how to become better people—happier, healthier, kinder, more content, and peaceful—in a world that supports all beings to thrive.
Many of these teachings are as relevant today as they were when they were first taught thousands of years ago. It is why they have stood the test of time. Others are a bit outdated or not useful in the modern world. But underneath their diversity, there is a common truth, an interspirituality, that is echoed across all the wisdom and faith traditions; if we humans take care of ourselves, one another, and our world, following fundamental natural laws or principles, we will live in happiness, peace, and harmony. We will be better people in a better world. If we don’t, well, you can see how well that works.
If we humans take care of ourselves, one another, and our world, following fundamental natural laws or principles, we will live in happiness, peace, and harmony. We will be better people in a better world. If we don’t, well, you can see how well that works.
Ten Words is a version of that underlying truth. It’s my way of trying to answer those niggling questions we’ve been asking for millennia, but for today’s world. Distilled from the teachings and practices of all the world’s great faith and wisdom traditions supported by what we have learned from modern psychology and science, each of the Ten Words describes a specific common aspiration, principle, or a foundational way of being and behaving that is true across the board and will help us become better people in a better world. They cover both our inner worlds and our outer actions, or who we can be and how we can be with others. Taken together, the Ten Words give us a complete, holistic, and practical map of the path we need to today.
In many ways, we already know these things; they are the ways we behave when we are at our best. We’ve been doing them for thousands of years...or trying to. I didn’t make them up and they aren’t new. Ten Words simply organizes and articulates them in a holistic, contemporary, and practical way that is applicable and understandable for people in today’s changing world.
Today, more than ever, we need an inclusive, relevant, and practical map to guide us to becoming better people in a better world for all. I believe that Ten Words is that guide. I am certain that if we each spend time with these ten simple words, explore them and apply their practices into our daily lives, we will find ourselves happier, more connected, more peaceful, and more fulfilled, and we will work with others to create a world where all beings thrive. We will become better people in a better world.
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. - Rumi